Listless: Best 5 Films by Quentin Tarantino

This past Sunday we finally saw the winners of the 2013 Oscars. While most of the Oscars were predictable, one of the biggest surprises was Christoph Waltz’s win for Best Supporting Actor in Django Unchained. While no one doubted Waltz’s acting ability and prowess, the fact that Waltz had won an Oscar only a few years earlier with the same director seemed to upend the usual Oscar trend of not giving awards to actors consecutively.

This win, along with Django’s win for Best Writing, is a credit to the skill and power of Quentin Tarantino, probably one of the last few artists left from the era of filming that also holds the works of Steven Speilberg, Martin Scorsese, and Stanley Kubrick. Tarantino considers each one of his films to be an important piece of work; he recently went on record stating that he believes every bad film is equivalent to three good ones in terms of how much people remember. So when one looks back at Tarantino’s filmography, it’s no surprise that almost every single one is a great piece of cinema.

Today, Pixel Splatter takes a look at the best of the best of Quentin Tarantino, the top 5 of his films.

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#5: Django Unchained

The D is silent

While this may be Tarantino’s most recent film, it certainly will have a lasting legacy. While Tarantino’s films have always been controversial, to say that Django was abnormally so even for Tarantino might be an understatement. Everyone from Spike Lee to The New Yorker criticized the movie for its portrayal of African-Americans to its use of violence.

To say that Django Unchained is not a brilliantly unique piece of work, however, would also be a mistake. As with all Taratino’s films, the characters, dialogue, and acting all work in conjunction. While Jamie Foxx was nothing to write home about, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Samuel L. Jackson all stole the show. Waltz’s turn as a German bounty hunter managed to show a morally complex character, one who opposed slavery and racism but who was able to kill someone without mercy. More surprising was DiCaprio’s inspired portrayal of the eccentric plantation owner Calvin Candie; he was hilarious, yet incredibly disturbing and dark. It was even more surprising when you realize this was DiCaprio’s first time not being in the lead role and being a villain. Jackson’s portrayal of a slave who liked things the way they were, the Uncle Tom character, seemed one dimensional at first, but became much more complicated and interesting as the film went on.

This is not even mentioning the controversial look at the antebellum South. While Tarantino’s film did have some historical inaccuracies, it certainly provided an interesting look at the darkness, pain, and attitudes of the South. The use of the N-word (a recurring theme in Taratino’s work), while also controversial, seemed to show to the audience that after a while, the word can, and should, lose its power, especially when Django starts using it himself. However great this movie is, its overly long third act sadly drags it down to #5 on this list.

#4: Kill Bill Part 1 and 2

I'd hate to be Bill. Wait, maybe...

Here is a film that is just sheer fun. This was Tarantino’s time to explore two new territories for him: Kung Fu and Western films. As with both genres, a common theme running throughout is revenge, and Tarantino took that theme and ran with it. Spread out through two films, Tarantino explored a very interesting mix of both genres that maintained his normal episodic style.

The Kill Bill films have some of the best-choreographed fight scenes that are a feast for the eyes. While the storyline is relatively simple for most of the film, it’s really about one woman trying to take back her dignity and get back at the man she once truly loved. As the film goes on, Uma Thurman’s character, The Bride, transforms from a simple outline of a person trying to get revenge into a woman who was betrayed and hurt by the man she loved most. When the Bride finally meets up with Bill, it’s a deep and emotional moment that Tarantino lets us revel in. Kill Bill stands as one of his most engaging and evolving movies and able to be a hybrid of two different genres.

# 3: Pulp Fiction

Watching Uma Thurman is like a stab to the heart (See what I did there?)

The placement of this film at number 3 on this list might be surprising. That isn’t to say that Pulp Fiction isn’t a great work. What makes Pulp Fiction work seems to be the opposite of what a great movie should have; chaos instead of order. From its non-chronological structure to its seemingly random plot developments (such as Bruce Willis finding himself in a sex dungeon), this is a piece that really tries to mirror real life. In real life, storytelling can’t work; things happen that don’t fit the narrative, people don’t always follow a single path. Like real life, Pulp Fiction is chaotic and doesn’t have a clear beginning, middle or end. It has no set plot and it makes no real sense. It’s a way to show us that trying to impose a story on real life can’t and won’t work.

Tarantino also blurs the line of whom you are supposed to like and whom you are supposed to hate. Initially Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta’s characters are supposed to be hated, yet Tarantino forces you to start identifying with them. They are mob hit men, but they talk about cheeseburgers, read magazines, and even go to the bathroom. All the characters in the film, from the mob boss to Bruce Willis’s boxer all seem to initially fit in the mold of hero or villain, but by the end are shown to be much more complex then what the normal movie character mold would have us believe. Pulp Fiction might be the most accurate depiction of real life and real people that movies are likely to give us. 

#2: Reservoir Dogs

This movie confused me about tipping

Tarantino’s first film might also be his strangest. Reservoir Dogs is a true character study. The film follows a group of robbers after they fail to rob a diamond store. We are never given their real names, but are only given names like Mr. White or Mr. Green. Yet, despite not knowing their names, we know who they really are. The movie’s first extended scene at the family restaurant where events like Steve Bucemmi’s character talking about his disagreement with the idea of tipping a waitress show us that these characters are real people. Like all of us, they have strong opinions even about the most minor of details. This idea continues throughout the film. Put in an extremely stressful situation, some of these robbers are shown to be torturers, cowards, or brave men. Tarantino found a way to push these characters to show us who they really are.

Also, like Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs tries to say something about real life. When Mr. Blonde deicides to torture and cut off the ear of another robber, he dances to the song “Stuck in the Middle With You.” It’s a completely ludicrous juxtaposition: a horrible act committed to one of the most jumpy, upbeat songs of the age. Real life is rarely poetic and contradictions can exist together. Reservoir Dogs has easily the most complex, contradictory, and compelling characters of any movie.

#1: Inglorious Basterds 

The movie that taught a generation how to spell swear words

What can’t you say about Inglorious Basterds? There is so much to love about this film; from the plot to the acting and the dialogue, everything about this film is clever and unique. While this film initially seems to be a straight up historical fiction, you quickly learn that that is not the case. While using WWII as a backdrop, this film totally makes history its own and never apologizes. It revels in its own world, from “killin’ Natzis” to the “Bear Jew.” Taratino literally rewrote WWII to give it the ending that everyone wanted, and to give back the ultimate revenge to Hitler for his terrible atrocities.

Yet there is much more going on here then sheer fun and historical revisionism. First, the acting is fantastic. We are wowed by Michael Fassbender’s first major acting role where he owns the scenes. Brad Pitt’s wonderfully simple Lieutenant Aldo Raine, with his brilliance and stupidity, surprises us. Like Django Unchained, Christoph Waltz makes this movie work. Who would have thought that someone could write a Nazi character that we would both love and hate at the same time? Hans Landa is so amazingly compelling, every scene he is in feels electrifying, and Tarantino knows it. Instead of zipping from scene to scene or set piece to set piece, Tarantino lets us sit in every single scene. Each scene is long, so very long, yet it never overstays its welcome. The acting and dialogue becomes so compelling that you never want it to end.

Even the film’s themes are complicated. While the film shows Tarantino’s trademark ultra-violence, there is something more interesting at play. The climax of the film takes place in a crowded theatre, with dozens of people including Hitler sitting to watch a movie that is essentially historical revisionism showing the Nazi’s doing better than they were. A fire breaks out and we get to see Hitler’s face blown off. Yet it seems oddly creepy because at the same time this happens, you yourself are sitting in a (hopefully) crowded theatre, sitting with dozens of people to watch a movie that is essentially historical revisionism. The people in the movie are doing the same thing that you are, yet we are supposed to be horrified by their enjoyment of the violence they watch. How are you to think that when you yourself are enjoying Tarantino’s own violence? It’s hard to come to terms with once you start to look at the complicated way Tarantino sets out to provoke his audiences.

While I know that many will agree with the films that ARE on this list, they may disagree with my placements on the list. Do you agree or disagree with this list? What are your favorite Tarantino films? Discuss below!

Gatecrash Review:Gruul

By James Earl

James Earl continues Pixel Splatter's look at the newly released Magic: The Gathering card set, Gatecrash, by taking a look at the Gruul guild.  

Take the burn of red with the large creatures of Green

At first I was very reticent to all of the Gatecrash guilds. While each of them seemed to be interesting, none of the new guilds seemed to suit my super quick, super aggressive play-style that I had honed with decks like Rakdos in the Return to Ravnica set. I first tried my hand at Orzhov, believing that that might be the only one that interested me, but after losing terribly with my first Orzhov deck, I found myself thinking that Gatecrash might be a total bust for me.

That was until I played my first draft with Gatecrash, and discovered the Gruul guild. Although it contained a color I rarely, if ever, played (green), the Gruul guild perhaps best suits my style of fast, aggressive play (shown in its red mana) while also combining it with the sheer power of green mana.

According to Magic: The Gathering lore, the Gruul guild was meant to help keep the wild animals and beasts of Ravnica alive. Their job was to preserve nature at all costs and to keep Ravnica connected to its natural roots. As Ravnica became more and more industrialized, however, the other guilds, especially Azorius and Orzhov, began to see Gruul as less and less relevant. The Gruul began to shrink and eventually fractured into many different clans, but these clans all still consider themselves Gruul at heart. They realized that they need to fight to stay alive, and quickly. Using the natural world around them, the Gruul did fight back, and with ferocious, wild power.

Looked down upon, the Gruul fought back!

The Gruul’s orignal mechanic, called “bloodthirst”, was meant to demonstrate the savage nature of the guild by having creatures with the keyword come into play stronger if you managed to damage another player that turn. Bloodthirst was a decent enough keyword and proved popular with the player base, so much so that the mechanic has recently re-appeared on several Core Set cards, although designers decided to move its affiliation to black/red instead of green/red to better match mechanical flavor. That being said, bloodthirst often just doesn’t provide enough bang for your buck, especially since against certain opponents getting any kind of damage in at all is a tricky proposition.

On the other hand, the new mechanic, “bloodrush”, for the Gatecrash version of Gruul perfectly matches the desperation and raw power of the Gruul. “Bloodrush” allows you, for a mana cost lower then the actual creature cost, to discard a creature with bloodrush from your hand in order to boost an already attacking creature you control. This can range from giving creatures simple power and toughness boosts to granting deadly abilities like trample and deathtouch. As a result of the low mana cost required to play a bloodrush effect, the keyword works well as a fast acting mechanic, allowing you to do tons of damage with one low cost creature early on in the game. In my personal play-throughs, when all goes well you can get rid of almost half or more of your opponent’s life with just a single early attack. 

The element of surprise is one of bloodrush's best features

The mechanic is helped by the fact that there are great cards to back it up. Ghor-Clan Rampager, for only 1 red and 1 green mana, allows you to boost a creature by +4/+4 and give it trample, making you almost certain to damage to a player regardless of whether they block or not. Wasteland Viper’s bloodrush allows you to give a creature +1/+2 and deathtouch, letting you to save your creature from a block and ensure the death of anything that gets in your way. If you just want to hit hard, Slaughterhorn, for only 1 mana, gives you a +3/+2 boost that can hit your opponent where it hurts. The nice thing about bloodrush is that it is put on creatures that, if you are running out of board presence, are good on or off the field. Bloodrush also doesn’t count as a spell, so good luck to blue control players who can’t counter it.

The thing that holds the Gruul guild back is that its non-bloodrush cards seem to be a bit limited. While other options can certainly help with trying to give your (most often) one attacking creature an open field, they don’t leave you many options for dealing with creative opponents who build decks with a lot of removal. Things like Ground Assault (which does damage equal to the amount of lands you have to only creatures) and Serene Remembrance (which gives you three cards plus Serene Remebrance itself back from the graveyard to your library, allowing you to re-use bloodrushed cards) seem to have very limited utility and might not give you a ton of help. Gruul also has absolutely no flying creatures, so while cards like Clan Defiance and Gruul Charm try to stop the flyers, if your opponent has a lot of them you’re probably in trouble. Another drawback is that you need to be very careful with using bloodrush, as a smart opponent will hold back and wait for you to power up your attacker and then blow it away with instant-speed removal, making you waste your resources for nothing. In this way a simple Unsummon, Doom Blade or similar card can be a devastating blow.

This does nothing for Bloodrush.

Gruul is great at what it does, but if you are put in a stressful situation for the guild you may find it hard to adapt, which perhaps also fits the storyline and character of the slowly dwindling guild. Also, the fact that you have to discard creatures from your hand to activate bloodrush means that the longer your opponent lives, the weaker you become.

Overall, Gruul is one of the fastest guilds in Gatecrash, second only to Boros. But don’t let its speed fool you; Gruul isn’t about quickly nicking away at your health like Rakdos, for example. For Gruul, it’s all about quickly taking you down with a big, early punch to the gut. The Gruul say that, “The only law that matters in the world is the law of nature.” For the Gruul, packing a large punch is only natural.

The Walking Excellence: How The Walking Dead Manages to Stay on Top.

By James Earl

This past weekend, the AMC TV series The Walking Dead returned to for its second half of Season 3, once again breaking all kinds of cable viewership records. All this despite having to compete with the Grammy awards also on that night. With the show continually growing more popular, it’s surprising (or perhaps not so surprising), that the television has still managed to push boundaries and retain a stellar and consistent quality. The Walking Dead series has been translated into numerous mediums and yet in each medium it has still maintained an excellent standard of quality. What is it about The Walking Dead series that has allowed it to earn both critical acclaim and commercial success in not just one, but five different artistic forms?

AMC's The Walking Dead keeps breaking cable viewership records

For those that don’t know, The Walking Dead series originally started as a comic book series written by Robert Kirkman and drawn by Tony Moore way back in 2003. While the comic is still on-going, the series has grown into a full blown franchise, with the TV series starting in 2010, a series of webisodes in 2010, a series of books based on the comic starting in 2011, a multiple award-winning video game based on the comics in 2012 (which is also a favorite of the Pixel Splatter writers), not to mention an upcoming video game based on the TV series continuity and a sequel to the original comic-based game. For the especially nerdy, there are even well-reviewed Walking Dead board games. However, within each of these different mediums, from comic book to TV to internet to video games to literature, The Walking Dead never seem to dip in quality, and, even more surprising, has become leading examples in each medium.

So what is it about The Walking Dead formula that allows it to have (such) unqualified success and quality? Perhaps it goes back to its original mission statement. In the first issue of The Walking Dead comic book, writer Robert Kirkmen wrote “How these characters get there is much more important than them getting there. I hope to show you reflections of your friends, your neighbors, your families and yourselves, and what their reactions are to the extreme situations on this book.” Perhaps this is what gives the Walking Dead its power. The Walking Dead is supposed to a reflection of ourselves. While zombies certainly create the impetus and stress for the characters, it’s not the zombies that are important. Like all good zombie or horror fiction, the horrific force is just the impetus for an exploration of character. One only has to look at the recent slew of bad horror movies to realize that when one focuses on the concept too hard instead of characters, the whole thing falls apart.

The popular comic series focused on the characters, not the zombies

This focus on character has certainly helped out the franchise in all its forms. The TV show’s characters have always felt engaging. The ideological battle between the optimistic Rick and the survivalist Shane led to one of the most engaging character studies on television in recent years. In the video game, the relationship between protagonist Lee and the young girl Clementine, and Lee’s (and the player’s) willingness to do anything to protect her echoes every parent or family members love and caring for their loved ones. The Walking Dead only provides an impetus (zombies) for these characters to be put to extremes and show who they really are when society crumbles. It allows us to see what ourselves and our neighbors are really like.

However, it might also be the flexibility of the premise that has helped the Walking Dead. The original comic series certainly left a great blueprint to look at, but it’s how the other mediums were able to make the ideas their own that really helped make them unique. Instead of being a paint-by-the-numbers interpretation of the comic book, the TV series forged its own way. While still following the basic plot and characters of the comics, the TV series took great diversions from the source material. The diversion to the CDC, Shane’s survival past Atlanta, Andrea meeting the Governor, and even the creation of fan favorite character Daryl were all ideas created specifically by the TV show’s writing team, and are nowhere to be found in the comic series. This allowed the TV series to not be bound by preexisting continuity, and allows them to surprise comic readers and new fans alike. This flexibility can also be found in the video game which, despite being set in the same fictional universe of the comics, follows a completely different group of survivors. Despite all the differences between the mediums, it’s the themes that ties them together and still makes them The Walking Dead.

The video game may follow a different group of survivors, but its themes echo those in the other mediums

However, perhaps it is Robert Kirkmen’s other statement in his original issues that really shows the power of the Walking Dead. “I want The Walking Dead to be a chronicle of years of Rick’s life. We will NEVER wonder what happens to Rick next, we will see it. The Walking Dead will be the zombie movie that never ends.” From the very start, Kirkmen wanted The Walking Dead to be something different. Instead of a movie that starts and ends in two hours, The Walking Dead will, hopefully, never have a true finish. Instead, it will keep going on like real life. The story of the survivors of the zombie apocalypse should not be condensed or shorted for, like real life, the dangers and struggles that they encounter are faced on a daily basis. From the very start, The Walking Dead has dreamed to be something that never really ends. If the quality and the sheer beauty of the storytelling keeps improving and pushing new methods of storytelling, here’s to hoping that it never does end.