70mm roadshow version ‘The Hateful Eight’ to play in Knoxville

The Weinstein CompanyQuentin Tarantino’s latest blockbuster, “The Hateful Eight”, is due to open in cinemas in the United States on Friday – but good-quality pirated versions of the movie are already being shared on the internet. Odell is a bit of an idiot who does a great job of looking hyper-competent…which only makes him more risky. Part Two begins with an unexpected piece of narration summarizing what’s taken place so far and revealing the backstories of several heretofore inscrutable figures. Either I’m missing an elaborate joke or the madness of the world proceeds apace. There are others inside, and even more in the flashbacks that explain what happened at Minnie’s earlier in the day, and there’s an undeniable and plentiful helping of suspense, along with a constant threat of violence among these people, all of whom are now trapped together, sheltering from what’s turned into a huge wilderness blizzard.

In “The Hateful Eight”, Quentin Tarantino tells the story of bounty hunters in post-Civil War Wyoming with a script the director said he was proud of just after his Golden Globe nomination.

“I’ve never seen this DVD”.

There’s enough familiarity between the players to maintain a barely-contained atmosphere of tension and mistrust, making them the hateful eight of the title.

At the Haberdashery cabin is Bob (Demian Bichir), Minnie’s Hispanic hired hand; the Englishman Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth); a cowboy, Joe Gage (Michael Madsen) and a retired southern General, Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern.) Minnie, herself, has allegedly gone to the North Country to visit her family. “And Quentin Tarantino could be responsible for bringing this back”. (A “roadshow version”, which I’ll address momentarily, is slightly longer.) It has an overture and an intermission-a goddamn intermission, in an era when we can’t even get through an episode of The Big Bang Theory without checking our phones. “Hateful” carries that to an extreme, with virtually nothing happening in the first three chapters other than a lot of exposition, some of it awkward, and a lot of talk that leads to the eight characters – and us – wondering both, “When is this thing going to get going?” and “Who here is in cahoots with whom?”

The only thing for certain in a Tarantino picture is that you can expect the unexpected; and The Hateful Eight is full of delightfully shocking surprises.

Tarantino: I was excited about trapping these exciting characters in a kind of “Reservoir Dogs” Western, and interested in throwing my hat into the mystery genre. His final scene in the diner is just one iconic moment after another, shifting between sharp comedy (that wallet!) and the simultaneously moving and unnerving conclusion (“I’m trying, Ringo…”). For instance, the introduction of virtually every character is met with another character recounting his resume – “I know you, you’re the famous bounty hunter/general/rebel/escaped slave who did such-and-so”.

Q: How do you feel about race relations today? So, whether I’m in the room or out of the room, when they say “the nigga”, I don’t have to look around to see who they talking about. “If you’re not going to censor that, you can’t censor this”. Tarantino expressed the importance of presenting films as they are meant to be experienced and praised 70mm as “what might be film’s saving grace” over anything digital, including IMAX.