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His new book "Cinema Speculation" is coming out

Cinema is rock and roll: 60 years of Quentin Tarantino

More than 10 years ago the director of "Pulp Fiction" and "Kill Bill" said: at 60 I will stop with movies and dedicate myself to writing. Now here we are and here are the rumors about "The Movie Critic". Final chapter of his extraordinary filmography?

27/03/2023

At 60 I will stop making films and "I will write novels and books about cinema" especially if it gets to the point where "you can no longer show 35 mm films in theaters and everything will be digital". So said Quentin Tarantino talking about his future as a 'film maker' in 2009 in a roundtable of the Hollywood Reporter.

Here we are, the director of "The Hyenas" and "Inglorious Basterds" turns 60 and a few days ago it was the influential Los Angeles magazine to exclusively drop the bomb announcing that Tarantino would be preparing his latest feature film. According to sources, the subject of "The Movie Critic", this is the title of the project in progress, is ready and filming is scheduled to begin next autumn.

It seems that the story revolves around a film criticism in the Los Angeles of the 70s, which suggests that the film is at least inspired by Pauline Kael, for decades one of the most influential signatures at the New Yorker. At the end of the 70s, Kael, at the suggestion of Warren Beatty, had a "Hollywood" parenthesis as a consultant for Paramount.

Tarantino has never hidden his admiration for the writer, a very popular critic and discussed for her personal style, pungent, often against the tide and out of the box. After all, the title itself, "The Movie Critic", seems to allude to Pauline Kael's approach that the expression 'film' was too academic.

Another clue is the fact that in November 2022 Quentin Tarantino's first essay entitled "Cinema Speculation" was released – his first novel, "Unce Upon a Time in Hollywood" of 2021, is a rewrite of the film that, in 2019, earned Brad Pitt the Oscar for best supporting actor.

Personal history of cinema, in "Cinema Speculation" the director of "The Hateful Eight" and "Kill Bill" tells how his passion for the big screen was born and nourished. A cult for the image and a cinematographic culture that has often been reproached by critics who have lost themselves in hunting down references and quotes in his films.

In the book, the director recounts the origins of his obsession with cinema and confesses his love for New Hollywood directors - from Martin Scorsese to Brian De Palma, from Sam Peckinpah to Clint Eastwood. Just published in Italy by La nave di Teseo the volume will be presented by Tarantino in person in Milan on April 7th.

At 60 "I will write novels and books about cinema". The director who in 1994 conquered the world with "Pulp Fiction" which earned him an Oscar for original screenplay, the Palme d'Or at Cannes and the adoration of the public in the four corners of the planet, therefore seems determined to follow his own script, written over 10 years ago ..

At the time of the promotion of "Inglourious Basterds", in an interview with Alexis Pappademas for GQ, the cinephile director originally from Knoxville, recalling the critical reception of "Jackie Brown", his homage to 'blaxploitation' films – the genre born in 1971 with cult films such as "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" by Melvin Van Peebles and "Shaft" – confirmed that he did not want to become a "big band" director: "I guess that's partly just what happens to you when you're sixty. And for other directors, well, maybe that's okay. But if you're a rock 'n' roll artist and then at some point you start singing 'big band' songs, you can do it and you can be happy, but there's a difference in your career. [...] There's rock 'n' roll time and there's big band time and I don't want to get to that point."

We'll see if Quentin Tarantino decides to add a twist to the script he wrote for himself, meanwhile, in celebrating the 60th anniversary of one of the most influential directors of his generation, let's get ready for a tenth (last?) chapter of pure cinema and rock 'n' roll.