Review: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood

This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad...

We want you... to see this movie so we can talk about it.

[Spoiler-free review] Here’s the best way to know that you’re inside an auteur’s movie. It’s impossible to imagine it having been made by anyone else. Quentin Tarantino’s 10th feature film (creatively referred to as his 9th, presumably to give him a retirement out after his various “I’ll quit after 10 films!” proclamations) is a fable about Hollywood. The movie begins in 1968 and ends in the summer of 1969 when the very pregnant actress Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski’s new wife, and her house guests were all brutally murdered by the Manson family. Any number of filmmakers could have made a movie about that infamous year in California, but only Tarantino could have made Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. 

Historical events, real ones at least, have never been as sacred to Tarantino as the history of the movies. Whenever he’s dipped into “history” -- Django Unchained, Inglourious Basterds-- it’s been as emotionally loaded prefab worlds from which to spin his own idiosyncratic yarns.  In this regard Once Upon a Time is no exception. To this viewer, though, his latest movie feels closer in spirit to Pulp Fiction...

Click to read more ...

Once Upon a Link in Hollywood

• Variety intereesting news about Disney's alternate compensation plan for TV creatives (the television landscape is changing but pay structures haven't and are essentially still based on the old and outdated 22 episodes per season model)
• Vulture HBO has denied the IndieWire charges of what went down on Big Little Lies season 2 in terms of Andrea Arnold and the final edit
• The New Yorker another piece on Big Little Lies and its prescient season 1 finale and season 2 as a metaphor for the Hollywood fallout from #MeToo

After the jump Jennifer Lawrence, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, motion smoothing, Lord of the Rings casting, and more...

Click to read more ...

"Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" Teases

by Nathaniel R

After two absolutely hideous photoshopped posters (we can't even post them they're so ugly) we were beginning to worry about Quentin Tarantino's Manson-era Hollywood tale starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt (as a famous actor and his stunt double) and Margot Robbie as Roman Polanski's late wife Sharon Tate. But the teaser has restored hope...

Click to read more ...

You better link (link), link about what you're trying to do to me...

• NYT Aretha Franklin RIP. Wesley Morris on her power but did we "Respect" it?
• Variety Estonia has selected the single parent drama Take It Or Leave It for the Oscars
• TFE Our updated Oscar Foreign Submission charts 
• Boy Culture because Madonna is awesome she has released her 2018 Met Gala performance to her fans as a charity fundraiser for her orphans in Malawi. Each $25 will givea child food, schooling, and healthcare for a month

 

• Uproxx A little info on Mike Moh, who has been cast as Bruce Lee in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (for those of you wondering why Bruce Lee is a character in the movie -- he worked with Sharon Tate prior to her murder)
• Playbill two time Oscar nominee Janet McTeer talks about playing legendary pre-cinema stage actress Sarah Bernhardt in a new play on Broadway called Bernhardt/Hamlet
• Vanity Fair Ruth Wilson requested to leave The Affair but she's not at liberty to say why for some reason
• Variety The Alienist has been renewed for a second season, meaning it's no longer a limited series but it gets to keep its limited series Emmy nomination
• Gr8er Days we forgot to note last week here at TFE that Charlotte Rae of The Facts of Life fame passed away

And did you see that the cast of Grease (1978) reunited at an Academy event to talk about the movie for its 40th anniversary? (Is this where we mention that the film only got one Oscar nomination, which it lost, for Best Original Song "Hopelessly Devoted to You")  Here's John Travolta and Olivia talking about her being cast in the movie...