Anyone Seen Django?

[gluvnast]

Well, "endings" is in quotes. Not literally. Ending as in the the "shootouts". The movie felt like it was about to end. And then it went on again with another shoot out. There are critics who say it's too long and I think editing wise there could be a way this could flow way better.

if you speaking on the shootout after the handshake scene. the only reason you may feel that way is because hilde was about purchased from her freedom and u was expecting some shootout in where django comes out successful in escaping.

but you missed the whole point of why the final act was necessary if you thought that way.

things do not come full circle UNTIL he was sold back to physical bondage, but this time with a complete different state of mind.

 

[HHR]

I really wanna echo this. It might be because it's not him, or it might be because it's a white person, but the way he talks about these films definitely implies some degree of "ownership" over these topics that he feels has been violated.

Spike made Inside Man

Spoiler

A film about a white guy covering up that he profited immensely from the Holocaust

How much ownership does he have of that subject?

 

[Rapmastermind]

Django had a 100 Million Dollar Budget not counting avertisement. No Black Director would ever get that budget on a Slave Subject Matter. Also it's not like QT breaks the box office that much. "Grindhouse" and "Jackie Brown" both flopped. "Kill Bill 1 and 2" made most of it's money overseas. "b*stards and Pulp" are his only hundred Million Grossing films. "Django" will get there also.

 

[Tony D'Amato]

I feel ya...I think that Spike is jealous of the way the film is being received positively by white critics and that it touches on one of the most sensitive subjects for black people. The fact that a black man can't tell the story of his ancestors should be bothersome not only to Spike but to all black people.

Spike is jealous becuz he could never make this movie. He could never get the funding or support from Hollywood to do it. And that does bother me some. But QT's movie was dope and entertaining, and doesnt deserve Spike jealous azz sh1ttin on it

 

[Rapmastermind]

I really wanna echo this. It might be because it's not him, or it might be because it's a white person, but the way he talks about these films definitely implies some degree of "ownership" over these topics that he feels has been violated.

I don't feel Spike feels he own's "Black Subject Matter" in film. I think he is very well suited in Black Culture past and present. If Spike was just some Hack, his opinion on "Django" would of went no where but Spike's opinion became WORLDWIDE news, everyone ran the story. Why? Cause Spike commentary on Black Culture in film is well respected across the world.

People act like Spike ain't a living Legend already. Yes Spike has beef with QT in the past so some may say he just doesn't like QT but the fact is I'm sure Spike was not happy with a Slave shoot em up western. Maybe he feels just doing a film like that at all is trivalizing Slavery. Again that's just his view but I don't think he feels he owns Black Topics. Spike has done films with plenty of White Leading actors including "25th Hour", "Inside man" and his new movie "Old Boy" stars Josh Brolin. Again I find it very disturbing that Hollywood up until now never let a Black Man/Woman direct a movie about Slavery. That is really sad.

 

[daze23]

Django had a 100 Million Dollar Budget not counting avertisement. No Black Director would ever get that budget on a Slave Subject Matter. Also it's not like QT breaks the box office that much. "Grindhouse" and "Jackie Brown" both flopped. "Kill Bill 1 and 2" made most of it's money overseas. "b*stards and Pulp" are his only hundred Million Grossing films. "Django" will get there also.

Jackie Brown didn't "flop"

The film grossed $39,673,162 in the domestic box office on a $12 million budget, and an additional $33 million added the worldwide gross to $72,673,162.

Kill Bill did very well too. Grindhouse was a flop though

 

[GzUp]

One of the best movies I've ever seen.

Jamie does deserve a reward.

Great film.

 

[gluvnast]

Even Amistad. Steven got it right in the beginning showing a Slavery Revolt on the ship but the movie then got Whitewashed during the whole Court Drama. The "White Savoir" context is even in Django. There's no way you will get a REAL Slave Revolt film cause it doesn't have a White Savoir. And people love to bring up "It won't make money" as an excuse for Black Stories to never get told is pathetic. So based on that logic, only stories about White People need to get made cause the country is mostly white. SMH. This is exactly what Racist Hollywood wants people to think so they can continue getting away with Whitewashing our history and never green lighting our stories.

you're on point with amistad, but ur off on the "white savior" in this film because QT purposely use it mockingly, hence the entire reason why schultz got killed prior to the END of the picture.

 

[jadillac]

You copping out like a bytch because you can't refute what I've said....typical. Again, whites like you aren't capable of even having an open and honest discussion about race. Knowing that, you consigning the movie makes it suspect to me.

The fact that whites were entertained by a movie using slavery as the backdrop is suspect, that's what I'm saying. I never assumed that whites would laugh at the scenes that did a good job of depicting how horrifying slavery was. You can say that the comedy in the movie was mostly at the expense of whites, and I can't really argue with you. Again though, there has to be a reason why Hollywood is backing the movie so tough. There has to be a reason that so many whites are praising the film. We all know that as a whole whites aren't comfortable having an open and honest look at slavery and the mentality that allowed them to be ok with subjecting black people to slavery. The movie had to cheapen or water things down in order for it to make whites comfortable enough to enjoy it.

Yeah but you are missing the point, this is a Quentin Tarantino movie. Not a documentary on slavery or the reality of slavery. It's just a movie.

There were also a lot of white people who went to go see movies such as "Life"

At the end of the day, all of the racist white people in the movie were killed.

A black man was the hero and rode off into the "sunset" with a black woman. You can't name 3 movies over the past decade with such endings

 

[Marvel]

One of the best movies I've ever seen.

Jamie does deserve a reward.

Great film.

Ain't no way white people giving Jamie an award for killing Cacs on film.

They are really trying to push Samuel's Uncle Tom role and Leo's slavemaster role as the ones needing recognition. Just the way they like it

 

[valet]

if you speaking on the shootout after the handshake scene. the only reason you may feel that way is because hilde was about purchased from her freedom and u was expecting some shootout in where django comes out successful in escaping.

but you missed the whole point of why the final act was necessary if you thought that way.

things do not come full circle UNTIL he was sold back to physical bondage, but this time with a complete different state of mind.

Even if you keep the shootings, the problem is it still feels too long. It's more of editing to me, the flow of it. He just packed too much stuff in there and needed help in making some things shorter. I'm not in isolation in this thinking, some critics feel the same way about this being too long.

 

[The_Sheff]

Ain't no way white people giving Jamie an award for killing Cacs on film.

They are really trying to push Samuel's Uncle Tom role and Leo's slavemaster role as the ones needing recognition. Just the way they like it

I aint gonna front, dude killed it. He had the whole theater rolling as soon as he hit the screen.

 

[Gravity]

Yeah but you are missing the point, this is a Quentin Tarantino movie. Not a documentary on slavery or the reality of slavery. It's just a movie.

There were also a lot of white people who went to go see movies such as "Life"

At the end of the day, all of the racist white people in the movie were killed.

A black man was the hero and rode off into the "sunset" with a black woman. You can't name 3 movies over the past decade with such endings

No you're missing the point because that(the part in bold) is my point. It's just a movie made to entertain people in order to turn a profit using slavery as the backdrop. Life isn't a movie about slavery. If Django was a movie or documentary that showed a no holds barred look at slavery and the true mentality of white people, then it wouldn't be entertaining. The movie is entertaining because it's not a real honest look at slavery and white people. Its just a movie. I don't know what's so hard to understand about what I'm saying. There are real life stories of slave revolts and real life black revenge stories that QT could have told if he was just trying to keep it real. He didn't have to make one up. He's making money, it's as simple as that.

Interesting article that I came about the other day:

The Django Moment; or, When Should White People Laugh in Django Unchained?

Beware some SPOILERS in this piece.

To paraphrase Oprah, call it a "Django Moment." This is the moment when, while watching Quentin Tarantino's campy new slave-revenge movie, a person of color begins to feel uncomfortable with the way white people around them are laughing at the horrors onscreen. Though the film from which it stems has only been in wide release for less than 48 hours, if what I've heard in private conversations is correct, the Django Moment is already a fairly widespread phenomenon.
My personal Django Moment came when an Australian slaver, played by Tarantino himself, haphazardly threw a bag full of dynamite into a cage of captive blacks before mocking their very real fear that they might be exploded to nothingness. A white man behind me let out a quick trumpet blast of a guffaw, and then fell silent. My face got hot, and my nephew, who was sitting at my right, shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Throughout the film, I'd laughed along with everyone in the theater as a lynch mob of bumbling rednecks planned to slaughter the "fancypants ******" Django, and when the villainous house slave Stephen, played pitch perfectly by Samuel L. Jackson, limped dumbly around his master's plantation, kowtowing to every absurd demand with an acerbic and foulmouthed loyalty. But for whatever reason, the dynamite in the slave cage was a bridge too far for me. What the fukk is he laughing at? I thought, and just like that, the theater went from a place of communal revelry to a battleground.

Just so we're clear, I really liked Django Unchained, and there's probably no other movie I'll discuss more with my friends—and friends of friends—over dinner in the coming months. I also don't think it's important for everyone in the world to have the same opinions about what is and isn't funny. God forbid, for instance, that Seth MacFarlane were forever allowed to be the one and only arbiter of comedy in the United States. Nevertheless, as Tarantino's latest continues making its bloody cultural ascent, it seems more important to recognize the difference in audience reactions to Django Unchained more so than, say, the difference in audience reactions to Love Actually.

Dave Chappelle once said that the impetus for him walking away from his hugely successful Comedy Central show was an incident in which he felt like a white employee was laughing maliciously at one of his more racially steeped sketches. "omebody on the set [who] was white laughed in such a way—I know the difference of people laughing with me and people laughing at me—and it was the first time I had ever gotten a laugh that I was uncomfortable with," Chappelle told Oprah months after he'd quit the show. "Not just uncomfortable, but like, should I fire this person?"

Today, Django Unchained has me considering, like Chappelle did years ago, what exactly white people are taking away from a film in which a subject like slavery is treated with such whimsy and humor. Was my Django Moment just me being too touchy? And beyond that, did my tittering at some of Django's brutality or Samuel L. Jackson's pathetic moaning cause someone else, black or white, to feel awkward?

Relentless and over-the-top violence is a hallmark in most of Tarantino's work, but in Django Unchained, the gore seems different from the director's previous efforts. There is a wide gulf, for instance, between the ultra-bloody kung-fu fights from Kill Bill and the Django scene in which a pack of wild dogs tears apart a defenseless runaway slave. Also difficult to watch is Django's wife, Broomhilda, being whipped for attempting to escape her plantation, and then being branded on the face. Even Tarantino's other recent take on monstrous ethnic oppression, the WWII drama Inglorious Basterds, had but one scene—the tense opener—that rivaled the hideousness of Django's ugliest moments, made all the uglier because they actually happened.

Considering that some of the real-life, well-documented tortures inflicted upon nonfictional slaves were much worse than the ones shown in Django Unchained, it's almost impossible to not feel self-conscious when Tarantino asks you to rapidly fluctuate between laughing at the ridiculousness of Django's characters and falling silent with shame at the film's authentic historical traumas. It's in this disunity that the Django Moments arise. One moment you're laughing at Mr. Stonesipher's unintelligible bumpkin drawl; next you're wincing as Stonesipher's hounds shred a man limb from limb. (In my theater, one man in front of me scrambled out during this scene and only returned when it was over.) You smile as plantation owner Big Daddy attempts to figure out how to treat a free black man better than a slave but worse than a white person, but then you grimace while watching the vicious slave master Calvin Candie exalt phrenology, the bullshyt pseudoscience many racists continue to cite as "proof" that blacks are biologically inferior to whites. And since Django runs close to three hours long, at a certain point you start to catch yourself laughing where you shouldn't or—worse, even—hearing others laughing at something you don't find funny at all. Eventually, you begin to wonder if you're being too sensitive, or if the movie and everyone else around you are insensitive. Then you start to consider whether any of that even matters.

The tradition of gleaning strength from self-deprecation and gallows humor is prevalent in oppressed cultures. Be it Jews or blacks or gays, there is comfort to be found in picking at your own failings and defeats before others get the chance. But Django Unchained inverts the tradition throughout the film: Tarantino is white, and there are few laughs to be had from seeing slaves tortured over and over again. Beyond that, black viewers are themselves offered times to provide their own Django Moments, such as when I cracked up after Django blasts Calvin Candie's feeble, widowed sister in the guts with a revolver, sending her flying out of the frame, or when, directly in earshot of my nephew's white high school classmate, I giggled at Django saying his dream job was to get paid to kill white people.

After watching Django slaughter every white person in sight, I felt strange as I exited the theater alongside the rest of the mostly white audience. I wanted to pick out the dude who had laughed at the dynamite in the slave cage, but I also hoped nobody had been too put-off by my delight at an unarmed white woman getting more or less executed. Still, the unease I felt walking out was probably my favorite part of Django Unchained: On the one hand, you're unsettled by the behavior of the characters in the film; on the other, you're also unsettled by how you and everyone else in the theater reacted to those characters. Were you laughing with the movie, or was the movie laughing at you?

http://m.gawker.com/5971346/the-django-moment-or-when-should-white-people-laugh-in-django-unchained

Peep the comment section as well. The white guy calling himself "The Weekend" in particular.

 

[gluvnast]

Even if you keep the shootings, the problem is it still feels too long. It's more of editing to me, the flow of it. He just packed too much stuff in there and needed help in making some things shorter. I'm not in isolation in this thinking, some critics feel the same way about this being too long.

it never felt "too long", even with that, whut exactly should be taken out?

we live in an ADD society today. shyt, they were complaining that the HOBBIT was "too long" ignoring the fact its as long as all of those lord of the rings films.

 

[valet]

it never felt "too long", even with that, whut exactly should be taken out?

we live in an ADD society today. shyt, they were complaining that the HOBBIT was "too long" ignoring the fact its as long as all of those lord of the rings films.

I agree some people are like that. Instant society. I'm not in that category though. You're right. The Hobbit was long as the other LOTR but I didn't feel it once. The story flowed well. Same with Dark Knight (Heath). Inception. Godfather 1,2. I could go on. Never felt long in any in those movies and they were long.

You could easily make the Aussie scene shorter. Make the castration scene shorter or cut it out all together (no pun intended). (I'd rather that been Sam who would have did the castration attempt and engage him in dialogue anyway.) Soon as he surrenders, I would have cut to him locked up with the Aussie. Outsmart them. Escape. Do the final battle. Resuce his girl. No horse tricks. The end.