Dodd wrote:Q and the cast had a killer photo shoot in this months GQ

eromero wrote:

Dodd wrote:Q and the cast had a killer photo shoot in this months GQ

Is this it?

Universal Music Group’s Republic Records will release the soundtrack album for Quentin Tarantino’s highly anticipated film Django Unchained. The album will be released on December 18, 2012 and is now available for pre-order on Amazon. No word yet on the tracks featured on the release, but check back on this site for the details to be revealed within the next few weeks. Mary Ramos who has worked on all of Tarantino’s features serves as the movie’s music supervisor. Django Unchained stars Jamie Foxx as a slave whose brutal history with his former owners lands him face-to-face with German-born bounty hunter, played by Christoph Waltz. Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington and Samuel L. Jackson are co-starring. The film will be released on December 25, 2012 by the Weinstein Company. For updates on the project, visit the official movie website.

An Inside Look at the Making of One of the Season's Most Anticipated -- and Controversial -- Movies

By Reginald Hudlin From Ebony Magazine
February 2012, Jackson Hole, Wyoming
We're high in the mountains in Jackson Hole, and it's freezing. The temperature never gets above 12 degrees Fahrenheit, but when we first arrive on set at 5 a.m., it's 15 degrees below zero. You have to watch your step; I moved off the path and one leg plunged waist deep in the snow. Jamie Foxx is training to be a quick-draw gunfighter. Sometimes the guns are so cold, the misfire. They have to be warmed with hair dryers to function properly. The working conditions are tough, but it doesn't matter because the shot looks great.

February 2012, New Orleans
Quentin is very unusual in the film industry because he is "cinematically ambidextrous" -- he's as good a writer as he is a director and vice versa. He's also a brilliant film critic. One the weekends, Quentin would screen movies for the cast and crew. It might be a classic kung fu film such as Snake in the Eagle's Shadow; a great Black action film such as Coffey, or an early film in the career of a Django cast member, such as Return to Macon County with Don Johnson. The best part would be Quentin's introduction of the film, during which he would provide insights into why he loved it. His observations would transform how you saw the movie. Afterward, there would be a vigorous discussion that was better than any you'd hear in a graduate film class.
February 2012, New Orleans


Kerry Washington is on set now, and she's spending a lot of time perfecting her German. Her character in the film, Broomhilda von Shaft, grew up as the servant of German immigrants who taught her the language. This creates a special bond between her and Django's partner and ally, the German dentist-turned-bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz. Although her language coach says she sounds great, she keeps practicing. she goes beyond the dialogue, learning a German lullaby that ends up in the film.

This is Jamie Foxx's second film with Kerry Washington playing his wife, and their bond is evident on-screen and off-screen. Whenever she speaks German, he beams with pride. He loves the idea of Black viewers seeing a character and an actress with that much versatility.

March 2012, New Orleans
Though we had been filming for months before Samuel L. Jackson came to the set, his arrival changed the vibe on the film. He's the actor most closely identified with Quentin's films -- especially his brilliant work in Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown -- and he's made some type of appearance in nearly every Tarantino film. Jackson plays Stephen, the treacherous head house servant on the plantation where Broomhilda has been sold. Quentin and Samuel have a deep trust and respect for each other, similar to the relationship for each other, similar to the relationship Quentin has with Christoph Waltz who won an Oscar for his magnificent performance as Col. Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds. To have Samuel and Christoph and Jamie and Kerry and Leonard DiCaprio -- one of the biggest stars in the world -- feels like an embarrassment of riches. Leonard playing a supporting role -- and as the villainous plantation owner Calvin Candie, at that -- is unusual for him. But he did it because of his respect for Quentin as a filmmaker and his strong feelings about racial intolerance. In conversations with him about the role, Leonardo said he wants people to understand the twisted logic that people in that era used to justify their behavior. Despite his classic movie star looks that allow him to effortlessly play roles that would have gone to Clark Gable in another era, he's very much a member of the hip-hop generation. As each generation sheds the racial baggage of the previous one, it's important to remember how things were so we can understand where we are.

September 2012, Los Angeles
Birth of a Nation is [studied] in film schools across America. It is a historically important film because of many of the technical innovations of the time, such as the close-up, but also because it tells the story of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in heroic terms. While the racist politics of the film are dismissed out of hand by professors who encourage their students to focus on the filmmaking, I remember watching it and hearing my fellow students (none of whom was Black) cheering at offensive points of the film. When it screened at the White House, President Woodrow Wilson said, "It is like writing history in lightning," I think that was an apt description. Except for the history part. It's a period film that mythologizes the most vile racism.

I thought about Birth of a Nation while watching the first hour of Django Unchained. Sitting in a converted garage-turned-editing room in a suburban neighborhood, we were transported to another time and place. For an intense hour, we alternated between suspense, all-out action, tears, laughter, pride and love. If we got all that out of the first hour, what was going to happen when we saw the whole movie?

But most of all, I thought, this movie is the anti-Birth of a Nation. Whereas Birth painted Black men as evil brutes, Django is a full human being: strong, moral, intellectually curious and courageous. In a world where Black men aren't allowed to ride on horses because that literally elevates them, Django's willingness to shoot straight, ride hard and talk back to White men reminds us of the great men and women of courage whose stories aren't told but paved the way for our freedom.

eromero wrote:Tarantino Talks about Leo and about the character Calvin Candie

PLAYBOY: Leonardo DiCaprio was initially mentioned for the Hans Landa role that won Christoph Waltz an Academy Award in Inglourious Basterds. DiCaprio’s your new villain now.

TARANTINO: Leo and I never actually got together and talked about Inglourious Basterds. He was curious about playing the role, but I knew I needed somebody with all those linguistic skills. Leo can actually speak good German, but Landa spoke French in the movie more than German. So it was never in the cards. But Leo and I have hung out over the course of 15 years, and he likes my writing and makes sure he gets a copy of scripts I finish to see if there’s anything that might float his boat. He got this one and really liked Calvin Candie.

PLAYBOY: He called you?

TARANTINO: Yeah.

PLAYBOY: When you wrote Candie, did you have anyone in mind?

TARANTINO: I did, but I don’t want to say who, simply because when I finished the script I realized they were a little older than I wanted the character to be. That’s a problem I have. I’ll be thinking about somebody and not take into account that I’m thinking of them from 20 years ago. Leo was younger than I had initially written, but I read it again and could see no reason why the character couldn’t be younger. And since I’m hitting hard this notion of the American South re-creating European aristocracy in this amateur make-it-up-as-you-go-along fashion, the notion of him as the boy emperor was cool. His daddy was a cotton man, his daddy’s daddy was a cotton man and so was his father before him. So Candie doesn’t have to do anything. It’s all set up, and he can be the petulant ruler with other interests. His passion is not cotton. It’s Mandingo fighting.

PLAYBOY: Is he a classic Tarantino villain?

TARANTINO: He’s the first villain I’ve ever written that I didn’t like. I hated Candie, and I normally like my villains no matter how bad they are. I see their point of view. I could see his point of view, but I hated it so much. For the first time as a writer, I just fucking hated this guy.

PLAYBOY: Why?

TARANTINO: He is master of the institution of slavery, and my despising that is why I wrote this whole thing. He’s the bedrock of it all. So I thought, Wow, I got Leo, and he doesn’t know that it’s a lot of smoke and mirrors and not as good as some of these other parts. But working with Leo, we ended up making it as good as all those other parts. The whole petulant boy emperor idea solidified as opposed to the older plantation big-daddy fellow. Leo formed a new character, and he was direct about what he wanted to do. Just as I have an agenda about history that I want to get across in this movie, so does he, and he brought all this research into his character. Leo had a nice monologue, talking about being a boy and his father doing this and being surrounded by black faces growing up. How could he ever be anything other than what he is? He was born into this. Is a prince going to deny the throne, his kingdom? I still blame him, but what chance did he have?

http://www.playboy.com/playground/view/ ... -tarantino

Perhaps the boldest move in DiCaprio's 20-year career is playing antebellum plantation owner Calvin Candie in Django Unchained. DiCaprio was drawn to him from the moment he read Tarantino's script. He calls Calvin "one of, if not the most, despicable, indulgent, radical characters I've ever read in my life." Naturally, DiCaprio signed on right away, and he promptly presented Tarantino with a gift: an antiquarian book on phrenology, the racist pseudo-science used to rationalize slavery. From there, DiCaprio and Tarantino made some striking modifications. "Writer-directors tend to be very precious about their material and their words," he says, "but Quentin's whole process is getting input from the actors and adding levels to their characters." Perhaps no character evolved as much as Calvin, the master of Candyland plantation. "A lot of the talks we had specifically about phrenology really took him to a completely different level."

Adding philosophical underpinnings to Calvin's racism helped unlock the character, informing his affection for his surrogate father, a house slave played by Samuel L. Jackson, and his leering need to possess—as chattel—Django's wife, played by Kerry Washington. Tarantino drew on phrenology to fashion an epic, incendiary monologue on racial superiority. The moment DiCaprio finished delivering the speech, the entire cast gave him a spontaneous standing ovation.

"He creates shades and layers and probes and just goes deeper than anybody else ever desires to," says Stacey Sher, one of the film's producers. "The last day, when everyone was saying goodbye to him, Leo was like, 'Yeah, I'm sure happy not to be that guy anymore—it feels good.' You knew he just felt lighter."

Yet for the newly liberated Leonardo DiCaprio, there was never any hesitation about letting it all hang out—in Django, in what he calls Scorsese's "really wild, nuts movie," and in a musically charged makeover of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "sacred" American novel.

"Of course it's all risky," he says, as a production assistant calls into the office to tell him he's needed for the next scene. "I mean, that's the excitement of doing it, you know?"

justGuest wrote:Yet for the newly liberated Leonardo DiCaprio, there was never any hesitation about letting it all hang out—in Django, in what he calls Scorsese's "really wild, nuts movie," and in a musically charged makeover of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "sacred" American novel.

"Of course it's all risky," he says, as a production assistant calls into the office to tell him he's needed for the next scene. "I mean, that's the excitement of doing it, you know?"