Music Man

Quentin Tarantino is a mastermind. Enough said. And his soundtracks are as masterful as they get. He has the capability to place songs in a scene as if they were written for the film and you cannot imagine any other piece fitting more soundly. He does this throughout all his films and I wanted to highlight some of my favorite examples of his artful use of music.

One of his most iconic scenes appears in his first film Reservoir Dogs. “Stuck in the Middle with You” comes on the radio and Mr. Blonde shuffles along to the tune as he cuts off a cops ear. It’s a perfect example of what Quentin does best: horror and humor. The combination of the upbeat tune and the gory act blends beautifully to create an unforgettable scene. It’s sadistic. It’s cruel. And it’s amazing.

Another scene that is hard to forget is the opening of Kill Bill Volume 1. After the beaten Bride is shot by Bill; Nancy Sinatra’s “Bang Bang” lulls over the credits. It seems as if the song is telling the story of the whole movie. The last line is solemnly sung, “My baby shot me down.” The film came out decades after the songs release but it’s hard to believe that it wasn’t made for the film. Now I cannot hear that song without linking it to the film and that scene. It’s one that stays with you.

Django Unchained rightfully opens to the tune of “Django” by Luis Bacalov as Django is shackled and marched across the desert. Similar to Kill Bill, this opening song seems to tell the story of the whole film. Bacalov belts out, “Django, now your love has gone away. Once you loved her, now you lost her.” This is the ultimate battle throughout the film. Django lost his wife is on the search to find her. If this song was not made for the movie then this movie was made for this song.

The rise to the climax in Inglorious Basterds begins with Shoshanna preparing for the Nazi film premier. David Bowie’s “Cat People” comes on and nothing will stop her from killing every Nazi in sight. The song builds with her fierceness and brings the viewer into the beginning of the screening. The line, “I’ve been putting out fire with gasoline” perfectly fits her anger she’s kept all these years for the murder of her family. Now is her time for revenge and she burns the place to the ground.

I cannot think of any songs that could fit better in these films. Tarantino himself said that he asked workers to suggest other songs for the scene in Reservoir Dogs and everyone came to the unanimous decision that nothing would work better than Quentin’s choice of “Stuck in the Middle With You.”

The way Tarantino uses music in his films is an art form. One cannot go without the other. And I cannot imagine his films without these iconic moments of film and music.

 

To Cameo or Not to Cameo

What some people may not know is that Quentin appears in all his films besides Kill Bill 1 &2. In some of the films he plays small roles and in others even smaller. Yet, he is always in it somehow.

I always thought it was a strange concept to be in your own film. If you are the one directing it, who directs Quentin when he acts? Does he tryout for himself? Does he purposefully write himself good lines? Granted, the roles he plays are only a few lines but it’s still a different concept.

Quentin plays the character Jimmie Dimmick in Pulp Fiction who helps Vincent and Jules hide a dead body. He plays a LeQuint Dickey Mining Company employee in Django Unchained who gets blown up by Django. He is the first scalped Nazi in Inglourious Basterds. And he plays Mr. Brown in Reservoir Dogs. All of these characters are relatively small roles with only a few minutes on screen, if that.

Some people criticize directors who give themselves cameos but I think it’s something to look forward to in their films. You never know when they’ll pop up but you know they’ll be in there somewhere. It’s like a game within the film called Find the Director.

However, many critics don’t seem to mind that Tarantino is in his films but rather criticize his lack of acting skills. One website boasted Tarantino’s cameo in Django Unchained as the fifth “Incredibly Weird Director Cameos.” The critic found Tarantino’s cameo to stray from the film’s progression and they felt that the cameo was forced as if Tarantino added it purely for his limelight. Further, they criticized his lack of a Southern accent in a spaghetti western film. In other words, they did not enjoy his appearance as a LeQuint Dickey Mining Company employee.

While there are many other critiques similar to this one that criticize his acting and the purpose of the cameos, I still enjoy them. Of course, Quentin is not the only one who has directorial cameos. There are a plethora of famous directors that have cameos in their own films from Alfred Hitchcock to Martin Scorsese. Like an artist that paints themselves in the background of their paintings, their cameos are a way for them to be a part of what they created. They are constantly behind the cameras and this is a way to be in front of them.

There will always be criticism of directorial cameos but it’s their film and they can do what they please with it. Ultimately, I think fans enjoy seeing the directors make an appearance in their films and Quentin should keep up the cameos. Who’s with me?

Killer Queen

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Gogo Yubari, Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino

As many of you know, Kill Bill is filled with some fierce killing ladies. Characters like the Bride, O Ren Ishii, and Elle Driver are some people I would not want to pick a fight with. And yet, even though the Bride is an obvious bad ass, I believe Gogo Yubari is the fiercest of the bunch.

Gogo is an underrated character and she shows no mercy. For starters, she’s 17 and by far the youngest assassin in the film. On top of being the youngest, it’s impressive that she’d already become O Ren Ishii’s personal assassin. O Ren has a whole clan of male assassins called the  Crazy 88 but the one she wants by her side is the girl in the school uniform.

Her schoolgirl appearance greatly contrasts the fact that she’s a killing machine. One of her few lines shows this great contrast after the Bride tells her to walk away from an inevitable fight. She giggles in a typical girl-like fashion then growls, “You can beg better than that.”

Also, while the Bride’s Hattori Hanzo sword is impressive; Gogo shows up to the game with a meteor hammer. That is, two piercing spheres attached by a chain. And if that wasn’t enough, the spheres have extra blades that pop out to ensure a painful death.

To show how brutal Gogo is Tarantino introduces her character with a scene of her at a bar.  After a brief interaction with an older man she asks him if he wants to screw her and after he replies yes she stabs him.

Gogo is a relatively quiet character who lets her actions speak for her. Yet, the few lines she does have are memorable. After stabbing the man at the bar she says, “Do you still wish to penetrate me?… Or is it I who has penetrated you?” If it’s not clear by now, you do not want to fuck with Gogo.

Chiaki Kuriyana, the actress who plays Gogo, says she related to Gogo in some ways. She said, “I loved playing Gogo because the character is so extreme. And she’s pretty close to my real character. Especially the fact that she likes swords.”

She has a unbelievable amount of confidence for someone in a schoolgirl uniform. She casually strolls into her fight scene swinging her meteor hammer; all after seeing the Bride kill dozens of the Crazy 88 assassins.

I think the fight scene between Gogo and the Bride is one of the best in the film. Both are skilled assassins who know what they are doing and only one will walk out with their life. Although it looked as if Gogo was going to be victorious, sadly she dies at the House of Blue Leaves with blood dripping out of her eyes.

Although she does die she put up a fight and no one can deny that she’s a bad ass. She may be young and she may be quiet but that is the end of her innocence. She is a brutal assassin with a meteor hammer and she’s the fiercest killer of them all.

An Ode to Hugo

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Hugo Stiglitz, Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino

Inglourious Basterds is filled with brutal and bad ass characters. The Bear Jew, for instance, will bash your head in with a baseball bat. The Jew Hunter will slyly have a lengthy conversation with you before choking you to death. And Lieutenant Aldo Raine enforced a rule that all the Basterds owe him 100 Nazi scalps. Yet, of all these men I believe that Hugo Stiglitz is the baddest of the bad.

After he murdered 13 Gestapo officers while he was in the Germany army he was recruited by the Basterds for his status of being unmerciful. It’s one thing to be a Basterd but to be recruited by them brings you to a different status. His vicious kills are done so to ensure the officers endure pain and he manages to become the most hated man in the German army. This is an ode to Hugo, the baddest Basterd of them all.

For starters, Hugo’s actions may be cruel  but killing German officers was the most honorable thing to do at the time. And other than Archie Hicox, he is the only non-Jew of the Basterds. That means that not only did he go against the power of the Nazis in his native country but he fought for a nationality that he had no ties with. Hence, he has guts and a heart.

This showed similarities to the actor that played Hugo, Til Schweiger. According to Tarantino, Schweiger, being a German actor, refused to wear a Nazi uniform in any movie other than Inglourious Basterds. That’s because in this case, he got to kill them. In other words, the only connection Hugo and Til wanted with the Nazis was via murder.

And speaking of killing Nazis, the way that Hugo kills the officers is beautifully gory. In his introductory scene, Hugo is shown choking one man, strangling another, and simultaneously suffocating and stabbing a third. This impressive feat made him famous for being a Nazi traitor. His face was posted on every German newspaper, along with the 13 officers that met their end.

But beyond the bravery and the brutality, my favorite characteristic of Hugo is that he is extremely calm. This greatly contrasts his acts of rage that it’s comical. His actions are thought out and planned and he does them without flinching. The scene where the Basterds come to recruit him from jail shows the Basterds killing several guards while Hugo continues to smoke his cigarette as if nothing is happening. He is a boss.

His calm and quiet demeanor gives him a sense of ease and although he doesn’t have many lines in the movie, the few ones he does have are epic. One of my favorites is right before the shootout in the basement, Hugo has his gun right on Major Dieter Hellstrom’s lap he says, “At this range, I’m a real Frederick Zoller.”

Hugo has a venom to kill and a sharpened knife. He is quiet and a little crazy. He is the baddest Basterd there ever was.