Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

[JAP]

David Bordwell's Observations on the novelization.

[domino harvey]

A game defense but every last word of prose Bordwell excerpts is excruciating

[Ovader]

Details from the publisher's website for the forthcoming Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: The Deluxe Hardcover.

[therewillbeblus]

I've been thinking a lot about this film lately, and how the impact of covid has granted it additional significant context for posterity. Like 1969 was for Tarantino, members of the boomer generation, et al., the summer of 2019 was the last time we were collectively able to engage in a social world without at least a small part of us anxious or acutely cognizant of the risks of engaging in that way. Unintentionally, Tarantino's film's lucid meditation on transitions and losses of 'opportunity' (for professional and personal mobility, achieving dreams, being 'seen', embracing a naive attitude of free love and etc.), and the subsequent effect of introversion that stemmed from sober fear and isolating systems mirrors similar circumstances today. How many people had life-changing existential experiences when forcibly isolated from their fellow man in 2020, and how do these effects continue to infect us today, and how will they in the future? Like Rick Dalton, events outside of our control coerced a transition from being 'seen' into being alone - physically first, but also in receiving the regular emotional validation of our personhood that existed prior to a necessary descent into video calls and predominately online social engagement in quarantine.

Anyways, god knows I've written enough about this film and its effects on me already, and I won't regurgitate further reflections to take the thread into places nobody is soliciting.. but that summer of 2019 -seeing this movie twice in theatres with a full crowd of film-lovers, who had no worries about contamination and could engage in that collective experience with total relaxation- already feels like a generation lost, a nostalgic euphoria of social harmony taken for granted, and only reinforces the optimism of the ending to prompt us to be more attentive to our intimate outlets in the here and now. Tate's voice on the intercom could serve as Fauci telling us all that we don't have anything more to worry about, casting a spell to undo all the individual traumas that are actively disturbing us on a day-to-day basis, regardless of whether we realize them any more in the face of our resiliences. Or, rather, it's a reminder that we all have dignity and worth and matter, a message we all need to hear after being segregated into loneliness, which naturally breeds self-consciousness and deflates our moods; that every Rick has a Cliff somewhere, even if we don't recognize them when drowning in our own fears, doubts, and insecurities. Maybe this doesn't resonate with anyone and I'm recording these thoughts for no one, and maybe it's absurd and even offensively self-centered to take a film approaching a tragedy like this and appropriating its themes onto our current state, but I suppose that's how Art influences my life. It's impossible to separate that personal relationship to the art when it affects one so deeply, and recontextualizing is an intrinsic variable in defining that merit. I can absolutely see this ascending the ranks of my all-time favorite films, depending on what comes

[swo17]

SpoilerShow

Today's electorate would have chosen to re-murder Sharon Tate

[yoloswegmaster]

Very sad news has been announced today

[Monterey Jack]

Rick fuckin' Dalton...

[Ovader]

Very sad news has been announced today

I wonder if this announcement was made as a publicity stunt for the possible publication of Tarantino's third book titled The Films of Rick Dalton?