The Margot Robbie conundrum

by Cláudio Alves

This year's SAG Awards feature an assortment of multiple nominees across categories. Nicole Kidman, Al Pacino, and Scarlett Johansson scored a rare triple nod and they weren't the only ones. Margot Robbie also did it thanks to her participation in two of this season's juiciest awards magnets. In Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, she's Sharon Tate, while, in Bombshell, Robbie gives life to Kayla Pospisil, a fictional character that stands in for many of the women victimized by Fox News' toxic work environment.

Since Cannes, Tarantino's take on Hollywood's most tragic ingenue has been put through heavy scrutiny. Robbie's role has been accused of being a misogynistic and limited take on Sharon Tate, terminally underwritten and underutilized to boot. Even so, Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood is a critics' darling while Bombshell has been promptly lambasted as soon as the review embargo ended. Controversies notwithstanding, I confess myself dismayed at the way Margot Robbie's Oscar hopes seem to have concentrated solely on the Jay Roach flick…

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Great Moments in Horror Actressing

by Jason Adams

It's hard not to walk out of Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood without Sharon Tate on your mind. Whether it's because you thought the film needed more of what Margot Robbie was serving or if like me it's because you thought what Robbie did serve was A+ First Class stuff, the specter of that real woman, rightfully, lords over the entire experience. Sharon Tate only got to make six films before she was murdered, and two of them were horror films -- not an unlikely statistic for any young beautiful actress, but one that's linked itself arm in arm with Tate's fate nonetheless. 

I've never seen her 1967 British occult flick Eye of the Devil, which had her playing a witch opposite David Niven and Deborah Kerr. But I've seen her other horror flick of that same year, Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers, more times than I can count, and it's Tate's under-valued performance that I always think of when I think of the film. She's barely in it but she walks away with it -- a pale fire piled in soap bubbles and snow...

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Podcast: Once Upon a Time ... in Listener Questions

with Murtada Elfadl & Nathaniel R

 

Index (59 minutes)
00:01 Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: stars, tension, pacing, violence
27:00 Skin starring Jamie Bell: Murtada hates it
Listener Questions...
30:00 Feelings about Renee Zellweger playing Judy
35:00 Our favourite Brad Pitt roles
37:00 Alternative history movies
39:00 Best cats in movies?
41:45 Who is the next Nicole Kidman? 
49:00 Smackdown scheduling
50:20 Sharon Tate's legacy 
51:30 What happened with Mask (1985) at the Oscars? 
55:00 Is 2019 a weak film year? 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Articles referenced in this recording
• Jason's review of Once Upon a Time...
• Murtada on the Judy trailer
• Nathaniel on Mask 

Once Upon a Time in Listener Questions

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...

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353 Days Until "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"

Behold. It's the first image of Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The film is still a year off, as it won't hit theaters until July 26th, 2019. The release date was originally August 9th, a tasteless choice as that will be the 50th anniversary of Sharon Tate's grisly murder at the hands of Charles Manson's followers. Tate was famously married to Roman Polanski and 8 months pregnant at the time (Tess, an Oscared hit in 1980, was dedicated to Tate, who had hoped Polanski would adapt it to screen). No signs of pregnancy in this photo so perhaps the film will not go there directly (we hope not).

The lead characters are a fictional actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double (Brad Pitt)...

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