Django Unchained

I had posted earlier this semester about how I’m a huge fan of western movies, but I couldn’t help but express my excitement for Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming western, Django Unchained! As Quentin Tarantino has an incredible appreciation for the classic spaghetti westerns, I am eager to see what references and homages Django Unchained has in store.

The film stars Jamie Foxx as the Django, a slave living in the South who has been separated from his wife and sold in an auction. After being rescued by the German bounty hunter King Schultz, the two team up to take the bounty on the criminal Brittle Brothers and save his wife from the plantation owner Calvin Candie. 

Django Unchained has an incredible cast, including Foxx as Django, Christoph Waltz as Schultz, Leonardo DiCaprio as Calvin Candie. The film even features a cameo by Franco Nero, who starred in the legendary spaghetti western Django as the titular character. What I found particularly interesting in this casting is that DiCaprio, who normally plays protagonists such as Romeo in Romeo + Juliet and Dom Cobb in Inception, is playing the villain in the film. I was also slightly surprised that Christoph Waltz was not cast as the villain after his incredible performance as Colonel Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds; as a huge fan of Waltz I am very excited to see his performance!

Django Unchained opens on Christmas Day; the trailer can be viewed here, and even features the Ennio Morricone song "L'estasi dell'oro" from the soundtrack of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly:

Creating suspension

Recently in class we watched a segment from The Fast and the Furious and watched how the scene was able to generate suspension.  In the scene Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) races Brian O'Connor (Paul Walker) to some train tracks a ways down the road.  The suspense is generated by the train that is coming.  One aspect of the scene we noticed that helped to grow suspension was the feeling that time slowed down.  Not only was it slowed by slow-motion, but many shots were compiled showing close ups, the train, the cars, the train again, and then back to the cars.  The scene itself takes much longer then it should for two fast moving cars to race a quarter of a mile.  The close ups themselves even aid to the suspension.  Shots of the actors such as this one (Not the exact shot but similar)

Help capture the emotion and the intensity.  

The sound and music also helps to play on the audiences emotions and add anxiety to the scene.  There are different styles to using this sound and music.  In fast and furious you hear the roar of the engines and the train thundering down the tracks.  All of this adds to the action and the intensity.  Another movie I watched however uses sound a little differently.  In The Good the Bad and the Ugly, a classic wester, the movie has one scene in particular that uses very little sound, and only has a slow song in the background which could honestly be considered just whistling.  This movie uses the same technique of closeups to keep the audience on the edge of their seats.

In this scene you have Clint Eastwood, and three other travelers in a standoff.  The scene is only comprised of shots of their face, eyes, and the occasional gun.  The feeling of slowed time is also applied hear.  No action takes place, just the actors standing waiting for the first to make a move, and there is what feels like 10 minutes of just Eastwood squinting confidently in the face of death.  

In both movies, when the train passes and the shootout is over, there is an immediate feeling of relief as you sit back down in your seat.  It is at that point you can finally notice and appreciate how well done the scene was in building up your suspense.

Robert Cannon