Posts From Author: Month: December 2015
Tarantino’s White Hell
The Hateful Eight Directed by Quentin Tarantino Release date: December 25, 2015 Running time: 182 minutes (roadshow version, screening in the 70mm format); 176 minutes (digital version, sans overture and intermission) Rated R for strong bloody violence, a scene of violent sexual content, language and some graphic nudity PERVASIVE SPOILERS Most of the characters in Quentin Tarantino’s new movie, The Hateful Eight, seem to be governed by codes of behavior and philosophies that they hold to be more important than the sanctity of their own bodies. The vile and fantastic carnage that transpires is a direct consequence of their collective disregard for human life. This is not untypical of Tarantino’s work. From the greedy thieves of Reservoir Dogs to the perverted honor of Kill Bill‘s assassins, his characters have regularly indulged in acts of grotesque violence — and put themselves in danger of being its subject — in the service of various notions and aims concerning revenge or money. Death and mutilation occur when these notions reach their (il)logical conclusions. The special genius of The Hateful Eight, which makes it my favorite Tarantino movie since Kill Bill (and I’ll allow it may be better), lies in locking so many of these characters in a snowbound cabin in Wyoming and simply waiting to see what happens. https://youtu.be/gnRbXn4-Yis Kurt Russell is bounty […]
Read MoreBest of 2015: A Personal Take
“Best books” lists are a perennial inducer of anxiety. So this isn’t quite that; rather, a short tour of impressions from a year of reading — haphazard, sometimes misguided, always pleasurable. Starting with fiction, I’m perhaps ashamed to discover, while tallying, that I read mostly the Great White Males. I both enjoyed and was frustrated by the firestorm now typical of the publication of a new Jonathan Franzen novel — for better or worse, Franzen has become the locus for a debate over all the inequities of the publishing industry, while his work is autopsied by those hoping to prove he’s the misogynist they, strangely, seem to want him to be. The actual book (Purity, from Farrar, Straus and Giroux) won me over with the vomitously tense novella at its center — the Tom Aberant section, if you’ve read it — in which our hero’s masochistic relationship with a neurotic feminist heiress is played out in gruelling detail. It’s an abject, despairing piece of writing — and no doubt at least partly a playful provocation of the author’s critics. I also enjoyed Peter Buwalda’s rather nasty Bonita Avenue (Hogarth; review), and Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island (Knopf Doubleday), a “corporate anthropology” romp packed with failed parachutes and data-anxiety. Tom Cooper’s debut novel, The Marauders (Crown; review), a thriller set in the swamps […]
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