Given that we’ve taken the time to chart out a meticulously chart out a timeline for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it should be obvious that we here at FilmBuffOnline love a good, multi-film cinematic universe. But while most films that could be described as exisiting in the same world are franchise features like Star Trek or the Bourne films,  director Quentin Tarantino is one of the very few where the connections exist but aren’t necessarily part of the overall ongoing story.*

From fairly early on in his careeer, Tarantino has made it obvious that his films  all inhabit the same universe. Reservoir Dogs‘ Vic Vega (Michael Madsen) is brother to Pulp Fiction‘s Vincent Vega (John Travolta), while the “Alabama” that Reservior Dogs‘ Mr White mentions as having worked with is the same character played by Patricia Arquette in the Tarantino-scripted True Romance. And the movies that they all watch include Kill Bill, From Dusk `Till Dawn and Jackie Brown.

More recently, Tarantino stated that Eli Roth’s Donny “the Bear Jew” Donowitz from Inglorious Basterds is the father of movie producer Lee Donowitz (Saul Rubinek) in True Romance.

And this brings up an interesting notion. While the the modern day set films all seem to exist in a world nearly identical to our own, they actually exist in a reality where World War Two ended in a dramatically different fashion. So how would this have affected society? One writer at Cracked first theorized the fall out that such a change to history would have had and more recently a commentator on Reddit expanded on the idea.

It’s well known that all of Tarantino’s films take place in the same universe – this is established by the fact that Mr. Blonde and Vince Vega are brothers, everybody smokes Red Apple cigarettes, Mr. White worked with Alabama from True Romance, etc.

As it turns out, Donny Donowitz, ‘The Bear Jew’, is the father of movie producer Lee Donowitz from True Romance – which means that, in Tarantino’s universe, everybody grew up learning about how a bunch of commando Jews machine gunned Hitler to death in a burning movie theater, as opposed to quietly killing himself in a bunker.

Because World War 2 ended in a movie theater, everybody lends greater significance to pop culture, hence why seemingly everybody has Abed-level knowledge of movies and TV. Likewise, because America won World War 2 in one concentrated act of hyperviolent slaughter, Americans as a whole are more desensitized to that sort of thing. Hence why Butch is unfazed by killing two people, Mr. White and Mr. Pink take a pragmatic approach to killing in their line of work, Esmerelda the cab driver is obsessed with death, etc.

You can extrapolate this further when you realize that Tarantino’s movies are technically two universes – he’s gone on record as saying that Kill Bill and From Dusk ‘Til Dawn take place in a ‘movie movie universe’; that is, they’re movies that characters from the Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, and Death Proof universe would go to see in theaters. (Kill Bill, after all, is basically Fox Force Five, right on down to Mia Wallace playing the title role.)

What immediately springs to mind about Kill Bill and From Dusk ‘Til Dawn? That they’re crazy violent, even by Tarantino standards. These are the movies produced in a world where America’s crowning victory was locking a bunch of people in a movie theater and blowing it to bits – and keep in mind, Lee Donowitz, son of one of the people on the suicide mission to kill Hitler, is a very successful movie producer.

Basically, it turns every Tarantino movie into alternate reality sci fi. I love it so hard.

EDIT: Oh hai upvotes. Glad everybody liked this as much as I did! Let me address some things:

1) I don’t think the same actors necessarily correlate to the same characters – the bit about Mia Wallace in Kill Bill seemed like just an interesting detail or maybe an exception rather than the rule. Mr. White and The Wolf are two different people. That said, I remember Tarantino mentioning that Sheriff McGraw and The Wolf are the only characters that can jump between the regular movie and the movie movie universe. Proof.

2) I’m not implying that nuking scores of innocent people is less violent than anything else – I just think it would have a different effect on the American psyche. Growing up knowing our home country vaporized two whole cities has influenced our culture in its own ways; I feel like the movie theater plot would do the same. Also, since this is primarily a fan theory, I don’t think the psychology of it needs to be 100% irrefutable and airtight.

3) Yes, I initially saw this on Cracked and then extrapolated on it. Since it was a fan theory and it blew my mind, I posted it here.

I have to say that I really love this idea.  An interesting theory and well thought out to be sure. It’ll be fun to see if Tarantino’s future films will continue to sustain it.

And check out the rest of Reddit’s Fan Theories discussions if you have a couple of hours to kill. So far my two favorites are the one that states that the Fresh Prince of Bel Air actually takes place in the afterlife and a rather creepy one regarding the cartoon series Rugrats.

* Kevin Smith’s “View Askewinerse” would probably be the only other one.

Via SlashFilm.

We’re just a few short weeks away from the release of the first trailer for Quentin Tarantino’s spaghetti western homage Django Unchained in front of Prometheus, but to tide you over until then, we have six new images from the film featuring Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Christoph Waltz and Tarantino himself. (Click on each image for a larger view.)

Django Unchained hits theaters on Christmas Day.

Quentin Tarantino has found the last major piece for the casting puzzle that is his upcoming film Django Unchained. Kerry Washington has been offered the role of Brunhilda in the director’s paean to spaghetti westerns that is scheduled to start shooting in New Orleans in January.

Reportedly, Tarantino had been split between hiring Washington and casting an unknown actress in the part, which lead to the delay in getting the role filled.

Washington’s Brunhilda is the wife of former slave Django (Jamie Foxx) who is being held by the evil Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). With the help of a German dentist-turned-bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz), Django sets out to free Brunhilda from Candie’s clutches. Already in the cast are Samuel L. Jackson, Gerald McRaney, Kurt Russell, Don Johnson, Tom Savini, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Via Deadline.

If you’ve already watched the newly released blu-ray disc for Quentin Tarantino’s modern classic Pulp Fiction, you may have noticed that the picture is slightly different than what you may have come to expect from your average high-def release.

Whereas almost all blu-ray releases are transferred from film using a laser scanning process that produces a solid stead image, Pulp Fiction appears to have used the older telecine process to achieve its transfer. With the telecine process, a film print is run through something that works similar to a regular projector in that light is shined through the celluloid and the image is projected onto either a screen or a CCD (charge-coupled device) which records the image digitally. As with regular theater film projectors, the process is susceptible to the film wiggling slightly in the gate between the light source and the projection lens. This is known as gate weave.

Some reviews of the disc have noted that there is noticeable gate weave in the film’s transfer and predictably, there are probably some folks who are upset by it. But since this release is being touted as “Director Approved,” it stands to reason that this is exactly how Tarantino wanted you to view the movie and coming from Tarantino this doesn’t necessarily surprise all that much. As Grindhouse has shown, the director not only has an affinity for exploitation genre films but also for how those films are presented. And Pulp Fiction, like all of Tarantino’s work, is just dripping with the influence of exploitation films. Preserving some gate weave in the transfer adds just an extra meta-textual layer to the film.

But don’t let this dissuade you from checking out the film on blu-ray. The picture itself is stunning with crisp colors and the sound mix is crystal clear. In addition to the extras that were ported over from the last DVD Special Edition, the disc also sports two new featurettes – one in which several critics discuss the film and another where several of the cast reminisce about making the movie.

You can order the disc from Amazon here.

Yesterday on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, they did a short piece on product placement in the media. And while the report focused on television shows and how, thanks to various methods that viewers now have to avoid watching commercials, advertisers are taking a bigger role in the production of certain shows to get their product and their message in front of viewers, it got me to thinking about product placement in film. Specifically, one example that sprung to mind was the furor that arose when a bottle of Coca-Cola becomes an important part of one scene between Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson in the comedy Volunteers. The film’s co-writer Ken Levine recently talked about the controversy on his blog By Ken Levine –

In interviewing former Peace Corps volunteers we learned that Coca Cola was one of the things they missed most, especially if stationed in a hot jungle… We wrote that Coke scene in the first draft, 1980. It stayed in every draft and wound up on the screen. Originally the movie was set up at MGM. After a couple of years it went into turnaround, finally landing at HBO Silver Screen in partnership with Tri-Star. This was 1984. Tri-Star was a division of Sony, as was the Coca Cola company. No one from the studio ever asked that that scene be in. No one from the studio ever mentioned that scene period.

A year later the film was released and we walked into a major shitstorm.

Ironically, Coke ran came under similar fire over blatant product placement in the 1987 flop spy comedy Leonard Part 6, which, not-so-coincidentally starred the soda company’s longtime pitchman Bill Cosby. That time, though, the placement was indeed intentional. It should come as no surprise that Leonard Part 6 was released by Columbia Picture, a wholly owned subsidiary of Coca-Cola.

Of course, there are some directors who have created a work around by establishing their own fictitious brands for their films. Famously, Quentin Tarantino has Red Apple cigarettes while Kevin Smith’s films feature Nails cigarettes and the fast-food chain Mooby’s.

But for the most part, I don’t mind when real world products appear in films. Providing it isn’t too distracting or obvious, seeing brand name products can add an air of verisimilitude to a movie. Growing up in the 1970s, I started to notice that when anyone drank a beer on a television show, it was almost invariably from a generic, brown plaid can. This ultimately became more distracting than if they were popping open a can of Budweiser or Schlitz.

Now granted, things in film have not become as bad as it appears to have in television. While there is product placement, and as Morgan Spurlock’s film The Greatest Movie Ever Sold showed us, it is becoming too integral to the financing of a film to go anywhere. But as long as studios don’t start putting the cart before the horse, or at least are upfront about it when they do, I don’t see product placement ever being a real problem.

Kevin Costner has dropped out of his supporting role in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Django Unchained, citing a combination of work and personal reasons.

Costner would have been playing against type his normal good guy screen persona as Ace Woody, the sadistic overseer who trains slaves to fight in a gladiatorial arena run by Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Calvin Candie. Jamie Foxx stars in the film as freed slave Django, who comes to Candie’s establishment to free his wife who is being forced to be a prostitute.

The actor currently has a lot on his plate. In addition to working on Zack Snyder’s currently in-production Superman film Man Of Steel as Clark Kent’s adoptive father Jonathan Kent, Costner is also producing and appearing in the mini-series The Hatfield And The McCoys for the History Channel.

Tarantino seems to be having some trouble assembling a cast for this film and I have to wonder if many who might be interested in participating are balking at the exploitation film tone of the script. Of course, Tarantino has been mining the various exploitation film genres for his last couple of films and they have all exceeded their inspirations. I see no reason to think that Tarantino would not do so again with Django Unchained. Hopefully he’ll be able to find an actor willing to take the risk to play the part that Costner has vacated.

Via Deadline.

Writer/director Quentin Tarantino has added two more to the cast of his upcoming take on the spaghetti western genre Django Unchained – Gerald McRaney and his long-time collaborator Samuel L. Jackson.

Jamie Foxx stars in the film as the titular former slave who seeks to free his wife from the sadistic plantation owner Calvin Candie, who will be played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Joining Django will be a German dentist-turned-bounty hunter played by Christoph Waltz.

Jackson will star as one of Candie’s sadistic slaves, Stephen. There is no word as to what McRaney’s role will be.

This marks Jackson’s fourth collaboration with Tarantino. After having large roles in the director’s films Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, Jackson made small cameo appearances in Kill Bill Volume 2 and Inglorious Basterds.

Filming on Django Unchained is scheduled to start in New Orleans next January for a Christmas 2012 release

Quentin Tarantino has found the villain for his upcoming spaghetti western Django Unchained in the form of Kevin Costner.

Costner, who normally plays good guys, will be playing the thoroughly despicable Ace Woody, the man who trains the slaves owned by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Calvin Candie to fight gladiatorial-style for his own amusement. He will be one of those who stand in the way of Jamie Foxx’s freed slave Django from being reunited with his wife. I’m not sure that I would want to be standing where Woody is standing.

The cast also sports Samuel L. Jackson and Christoph Waltz.

This is the second high profile gig that Costner has landed recently, although his role as Pa Kent in Zack Snyder’s upcoming Superman film The Man Of Steel is pretty much the polar opposite.

Via Hollywood Reporter.

Has Quentin Tarantino found his lead for his next film, Django Unleashed, in Jamie Foxx? It is certainly appearing that way.

Originally, Will Smith was the favored choice for the role of a freed slave who seeks vengeance against a southern plantation owner who still holds the ex-slave’s wife. It now seems that he has passed on the project, with some theorizing that he doesn’t want anything to do with any Weinstein Company production due to their involvement with the Paul Tomas Anderson film The Master, which takes some shots at Scientology.

Idris Elba was also said to be in contention for the role should Smith pass. However, Elba just signed to be the lead in Guillermo Del Toro’s next film Pacfic Rim, leaving the field wide open for Foxx.

It should be noted that the role is not definitely Foxx’s yet. The Hollywood Reporter is quoting sources saying that “no offer has been made and that talks are in a delicate stage since Foxx has concerns about taking on the risky role.”

If Foxx joins the cast, he’ll find himself in the company of Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Leonardo DiCaprio is entering into talks to star in Quentin Tarantino’s next film, the spaghetti-western influenced Django Unleashed. DiCaprio would be playing the villainous Calvin Candie.

According to reports from those who’ve tread the script, Candie is a Mississippi slave owner who owns a club where female slaves are treated as forced into prostitution and male slaves compete in gladiatorial death matches. Freed slave Django squares off against Candie in order to free his wife.

Will Smith is in talks already to play Django, though Deadline states that his participation is not 100% certain. The gossip site is reporting that some other names are quietly being considered including Idris Elba, Jamie Foxx and Chris Tucker. While Tucker seems to be an odd choice considering he hasn’t been in a film since Rush Hour 3, he did have a small part in Tarantino’s Jackie Brown.

Once again, Tarantino seems to be gathering himself an impressive cast. Already in the cast is Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds co-star Christoph Waltz, who will play a German dentist who helps Django in his quest.  Another frequent Tarantino collaborator, Samuel Jackson, is expected to play the role of Candie’s valet who is also charged with keeping the slaves in line.