In the tradition of “The Legend of Nigger Charley,” and “Boss Nigger,” director Quentin Tarantino tips his hat to the exploitation cinema of the seventies with his own epic tale of slavery, freedom, and avenging those that have been unjustly murdered. Quite possibly Tarantino’s boldest and most courageous cinematic undergoing, “Django Unchained” is yet again another wonderful love letter to classic exploitation cinema, and one that Tarantino revels in soaking with adoration, providing viewers with one of the few African American western heroes with a back story that taps in to the tropes of the hero’s journey. While many did decry “Django Unchained” as exploitative and hyper violent, Tarantino definitely has his finger on the pulse and knows full well what immortalized the classic blaxploitation westerns. They thrived on hyper violence and slavery revenge fantasies and Tarantino holds nothing back with a relentlessly violent and entertaining love letter to his favorite sub-genre.
“Dan O’Bannon’s Guide to Screenplay Structure” often tends to read more like a memoir of a man who worked with the legendary late great director and writer, and less like an instructional book. Author Dan O’Bannon is able to build a book that’s outside the norm of your typical screenwriting book. Author O’Bannon stresses the importance of writing a book that stands out from the shelves of screenwriting books, and while demonstrating how he sought to break the formula of screenwriting in his days of making movies, he tries to break the formula of screenwriting books in general.
Allegedly Michael Miner’s “Deadly Weapon” was supposed to be a sequel to Charles Band’s notoriously awful cult riot “Laserblast.” But when Empire pictures fell, Band basically turned the sequel in to its own film. Really, “Deadly Weapon” feels so much like a remake of “Laser Blast,” and an unnecessary one at that. Like its predecessor it’s hilariously bad and filled with so much horrible editing and acting, it’s more funny than it is entertaining.
With the “Definitive Document of the Dead” you have to take the good with the bad. It completely glosses over Romero’s production of “Day of the Dead” to where it’s almost an irrelevant foot note in the legacy of the Dead films. Yet, the documentary does go back to Romero years after “Day” to where he’s directing “Land,” “Diary,” and “Survival” implying that they’re all valid and relevant projects of Romero’s career. Difficulties in Hollywood and the studio system are side stepped, and often times the documentary can never decide if it wants to be a Hollywood inside look or a fandom tribute, so it tries to be both.
