Thompson on Hollywood

Franco Nero Talks Meeting Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained

Franco Nero was in London recently for the three-day cult film festival Cine-Excess. Matt Mueller reports:While in town, Franco Nero headed over to the Italian Cultural Institute to be bestowed along with wife Vanessa Redgrave with honorary degrees from Brunel University. Decked out in graduation gowns and caps, Nero answered a few questions about his career and, in particular, the enduring popularity of Sergio Corbucci’s spaghetti western Django and his title role as the coffin-dragging gunslinger. “It never dies,” said Nero. “I just got back from shooting a movie in Brazil and everybody was, ‘Django! Django!’ the whole time.”

By Matt Mueller
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June 29, 2011 3:56 AM
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Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained: Casting is Key; DiCaprio In, Smith Out? Who Will Play Django?

Quentin Tarantino is known for his unorthodox, out-of-the-box casting choices, from John Travolta, Robert Forster and Pam Grier to Brad Pitt, Kurt Russell, and David Carradine. Now Leonardo DiCaprio (who Tarantino chased for the role of Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds) is in talks to play the villain in spaghetti western Django Unchained. He would play evil Mississippi Candyland plantation owner Calvin Candie, who also runs the Cleopatra Club that features sexually abused female slaves and mandingos forced to fight in death matches.

By Anne Thompson and Sophia Savage
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June 8, 2011 4:55 AM
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Jon Favreau Talks Genre-Mash Cowboys & Aliens: The Science of Sincerity

In an interview with TOH's Anthony D'Alessandro last week at the National Italian American Federation Gala, where Jon Favreau was lauded with the org’s Special Entertainment Achievement Award, the actor-director gave up some nuggets of intel on his upcoming summer genre-mash Cowboys & Aliens, starring Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford.Kitschy high-concept vehicles can be a turnoff on their title alone. Before moviegoers even approached the ticket booth, they could smell the stench of the ridiculous in polyester pics such as 1996’s Mars Attacks! ($37.8 million), 2006’s Snakes on a Plane ($34 million) or 2007’s Grindhouse ($25 million) – all of which crashed at the domestic B.O., despite having credible talent attached. However, with Cowboys & Aliens, Favreau and Universal are hoping to best such Z-movie stigma by selling the summer tentpole as a straight-up, serious X-Files western, evident in the first trailer (see below) they released back in November.

By Anthony D'Alessandro
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May 27, 2011 12:18 PM
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Polish Posters for American Westerns, from Winchester 73 to 3:10 to Yuma

Culture Clash alert: here's a selection of 22 Polish posters for American westerns. Winchester 73 is my fave. Check out the range here.

By Anne Thompson
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May 11, 2011 12:13 PM
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Tarantino Wants Will Smith to Star in Django Unchained

If Quentin Tarantino lands Will Smith for his Django Unchained, it will have a huge impact on the movie. I'm not sure how I feel about it, truth to tell. Imagine that the film is The Good the Bad and the Ugly meets Mandingo or Manderlay. It's what Tarantino said he wanted to do: an entertaining spaghetti western--or southern in this case--but it's set in a very ugly place in our history, the racist south in all its abusive plantation glory.

By Anne Thompson
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May 7, 2011 3:27 AM
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Tarantino Speaks on Django Unchained

New York Vulture questioned Quentin Tarantino at the Film Society of Lincoln Center tribute to Sidney Poitier. Tarantino refused to confirm any casting for Django Unchained, including Christoph Waltz, and admitted that the script he finished last Tuesday and handed in to the Weinstein Co. was 366 pages long (that's wrong, I've got a 168-page script). A slight trim may be in order before Tarantino gets the green light. It's unlikely that the Weinstein Co., as well as they did with Inglourious Basterds (worldwide gross: $320 million) at 153 minutes, will want the movie to be quite that long.

By Anne Thompson
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May 3, 2011 6:01 AM
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Tarantino's Next Movie is Black Western Django Unchained CONFIRMED AND UPDATED

Quentin Tarantino has handed in the final draft of his spaghetti western script Django Unchained to Weinstein Co., his agency WME confirms. According to Tarantino Archives, the title Django Unchained pays homage to both the Sergio Corbucci original Django, not to mention Takashi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django, which features Tarantino (see clips for both below). UPDATE: Another long-rumored inspiration, once optioned by Miramax, was Elmore Leonard's 40 Lashes Less One.

By Anne Thompson
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April 30, 2011 4:13 AM
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Summer Preview: Must-Sees on Big Screen, Skippable, Must-to-Avoid

The summer is upon us, with a plethora of viewing choices, many of them utterly avoidable. I lay out the summer movie landscape.

By Anne Thompson
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April 28, 2011 9:46 AM
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Interview Watch: Michelle Williams Talks Career, Harrison Ford on CGI, Gabriel Byrne on Catholicism

- In their May issue, Interview Magazine asks Meek's Cutoff star Michelle Williams about her selective and seemingly wise career choices. Williams responds:"How do I say this? It’s like a mechanism in my life that runs on its own. When other things in my life don’t, and are broken and aren’t going well, for some reason my decision-making mechanism has a little engine of its own, and it’s fine. So I don’t overthink it. I’ve come to learn that the choices I labor over and go back and forth about and ask a million people for their opinions and make lists about...those are always the wrong choices. I’ve definitely made a couple of those, and that’s how I know now that it’s not the best way for me to decide…I don’t think of it as building, or really even a career. It’s just what appeals to me right now, without any real thought about how it’s going to affect my future, or even how it relates to my past work. I have faith in the fact that, as I change, so will the things that I’m interested in, as long as I keep up my own change."

By Sophia Savage
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April 26, 2011 7:09 AM
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SFIFF 54 Day Two: Movies Directed by Women, Miss Representation, The Good Life, Meek's Cutoff

San Francisco TOH corespondent Meredith Brody continues her daily diary from the The San Francisco International Film Festival:If you’re one of the all-access-pass members of a film festival audience, intent on seeing as many movies during its brief annual flowering as possible, one of your main goals is avoiding the fate of the woman who sat in front of me on opening night.