Whipped Cream Difficulties

I want to throw Lawrence some linky-love for his review of Django Unchained. If I don’t, I’ll hear from him.

And, more to the point, he says a lot of what I wanted to say. My comments are more in the form of notes on his review than an actual review.

The script is clever and fairly taut for it’s 165 minute running time, and it doesn’t have the dead spots of (for example) Inglorious Basterds.

I disagree with Lawrence on this. Specifically, I found what I’ll refer to as “the third act” (people who have seen the movie should understand what I’m talking about) to be kind of draggy. I think that entire sequence could have been tightened up considerably; I was ready for the movie to be over long before it was over.

Dear Quentin Tarantino:
You’re a good director. Really. Please stop trying to act as well. Thank you.

I was glad to see Zoë Bell in the credits, though I honestly missed her in the movie itself. Maybe one of these days Tarantino will give her the role she deserves.

There is a scene where Django and Schultz have hunted down a wanted man; Django balks at shooting the man in front of his child until Schultz has him read the wanted poster. I thought this was a very clever scene, more clever than I actually expected from Tarantino, for two reasons:

1. Django has trouble reading the wanted poster. Of course he does; he’s a slave, he probably wasn’t taught to read very well to begin with. There are a lot of hack directors who wouldn’t have thought of developing Django’s character in that way.
2. That scene also sets up a key plot point much later in the movie, which I won’t spoil here.

Generally: yeah, I liked it, but I would have liked it a little more at 2:15 or possibly 2:30, not 2:45.

Edited to add: For some reason, Lawrence’s comments about this film self-selecting its audience, and comments I expect to get from certain other people, remind me of ham. Don’t know why.