- Finally saw Django Unchained last night! It was pretty awesome. It’s just about exactly what one would imagine a Tarentino homage to Spaghetti Westerns based in the antebellum Deep South to be. It’s incredibly violent and bloody, which should not come as much of a surprise considering its namesake. Django – the original, 1966, coffin with a Gatling gun Django – was at the time one of the most violent films ever made. It was banned in several countries, and even when it wasn’t it often received an 18+ only rating (I think we used to call that “X”). But I don’t want to paint Django Unchained as a single, well over 2 hour outburst of gratuitous violence. There’s also some other lovely things going on here: great performances (particularly from DiCaprio, Jackson, and Waltz), cool cinematography (the shot of Big Daddy getting shot on the horse wherein the horse’s legs are the only viewable subject was awesome), the Western equivalent of The Crazy 88 fight scene, some great references, and sweet, sweet justice. I’m sure he can do better, and maybe someday he will. But to see Tarentino tinker with another polarizing and shameful part of history is just too much fun for me. I think people need to take these things far less seriously.
Basterds fan art:
One hundred and fifty thousand people pour into Lima every year from Peru’s provinces. Like Rodas, most end up in pueblos jóvenes—literally young towns—in improvised dwellings with no running water and sporadic access to electricity. This constant influx means houses are added by the day, built into the rocky hillside with walls of salvaged wood or concrete if the family can afford it. Like Rodas´s parents, most immigrants come to Lima to find work, shelter, and perhaps a way to break out of poverty—they aren’t able to build themselves homemade shelters, except in some of the poorest areas of the country, where they often do so on unstable ground. Paradoxically, many residents of the pueblos jóvenes are forced to pay two to three times more than they would to live in downtown Lima: these settlements are unauthorized and so subject to extortionist landlords who tax access to pirated utilities.
-Sonny
