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Yahoo!The Santa Barbara International Film Festival has named Quentin Tarantino the 2009 recipient of its annual Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film this week. The writer/director/actor/producer will be the fourth to receive the award, which celebrates an individual’s contributions to the world of cinema. Past recipients have included John Travolta, Ed Harris, and the award’s namesake, Kirk Douglas.
Since busting onto the Sundance scene with Reservoir Dogs in 1992, Tarantino has given his name and numerous talents to such classics as Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Natural Born Killers, and Kill Bill (Vols. 1 and 2). Most recently, Tarantino wrapped and released this year’s Inglourious Basterds, which stars Brad Pitt as a World War II lieutenant who organizes a Jewish-American mini-army to murder Nazis. Since opening last week, the film has earned more than $38 million at the box office, making it Tarantino’s best-selling debut weekend to date.
Tarantino is slated to receive the Kirk Douglas Award on Thursday, October 22 at a black-tie gala at the Four Seasons Biltmore in Santa Barbara. Douglas will be on hand to present the award.
For more info on the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, visit sbfilmfestival.org.
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Hearing the filmmaker speak yesterday on the NPR show "Fresh Air," I started wondering whether I really wanted to see "Inglorious Basterds." In this work of fiction, Tarantino has a squadron of young Jewish American recruits literally scalping the corpses of Nazis they've assassinated, in imitation, he says, of Apache guerrilla fighters. Evidently this desecration of human bodies is shown in graphic detail. I suppose one should see a movie before judging the intent and effect of a particular device, but as the behavior is, to the best of my knowledge, completely made up and surely must be antithetical to the most basic Jewish teachings, the whole thing leaves me troubled. Has anyone seen the movie, and is the scalping completely gratuitous or does it have a redeeming payoff?
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jonkwilliams (anonymous profile)
August 28, 2009 at 9:45 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Sigh. Haven't seen the film, don't plan to. I personally do not get the hype about Tarantino. He seems to know really a lot about movies, and almost nothing about real human life. It's like he learned everything he knows about people from watching movies. He's way too cool for me.
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mtndriver (anonymous profile)
August 28, 2009 at 2:06 p.m. (Suggest removal)
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