Excited for Quentin Tarantino’s latest? Well, chances are you’ll be even more excited when you find out that “Django Unchained” is the “shortest long Western since 'Rio Bravo' ”…no, we weren’t entirely sure what that meant at first either. Well, for QT it’s definitely a thing, and the man knows his cinema, so who are we to argue? He’d apparently been so busy trimming the film down from over three hours to a final running time of 2 hours 44 minutes (hence it’s shortest long Western tag) that he almost missed the deadline for the first critics screenings, which began on Saturday. Luckily the reaction has been pretty great so far, even if some have been questioning its awards potential.
One of the most effusive reactions came from Peter Bogdanovich, who made the comment above at a MoMA benefit Monday night honoring Tarantino, who he described as “the single most influential director of his generation.” After having seen the film the previous day, Bogdanovich said, “I’m still shaking,” and that QT’s pictures “grab you by the shirt front and never let go.” There was a similarly ringing endorsement from RZA who called it a “masterpiece.”
General audiences will have to wait until it hits theatres on Christmas Day, but we imagine that there will be loads of little snippets coming from the film’s marketing department before then. In fact, we’ve got a brand new TV spot (which tells us that Django is the new way to spell hero) and a batch of new images from the film to put you on for the moment. And if those images tell us nothing else, it’s that we should expect to see an excellent array of facial hair this holiday season.[New York Times/HeyUGuys/The Film Stage]