Nerd Corner
Stanley Kubrick's The Killing; The Big Combo and Django for the torture scene; Jean-Pierre Melville's films; The Taking of Pelham One Two Three for the color names; Ringo Lam's City on Fire; John Woo's The Killer for the three-way standoff
In the discussion (7)
Approx. transcript time · 00:46:43Read transcript
- Nerd Corner is a new category built for one host's reactions: Tarantino is quoted calling the film his take on Kubrick's The Killing rather than a rip-off of it.
- Given thirty seconds on The Killing, he calls it one of the great Sterling Hayden performances with a top-three final shot in movie history, the film that let Kubrick leap from crafty photographer making B pictures to the most significant film artist of his time, and says its traces run throughout Reservoir Dogs. — Sean Fennessey
- Joseph H. Lewis's The Big Combo and Sergio Corbucci's 1966 Django inspired the cop torture; The Big Combo is fine, Django is a better rewatch after Django Unchained, Tarantino has a relationship with Franco Nero rather than the rights, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has Django-esque flourishes.
- Jean-Pierre Melville's tough-guy French films, Le Cirque La Rouge (as transcribed) and Army of Shadows, are recommended to anyone who loves Reservoir Dogs.
- The color names come from The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3, a great homage with Walter Matthau, and the Denzel remake is not bad; the 1987 film City on Fire is so close that watching it raises whether Tarantino is good or just stole it, the one complicated thing about him, with critics saying he ripped off seven movies rather than paying homage.
- He calls Tarantino a metatextual artist and himself a postmodernist. — Chris Ryan
- Tarantino is not interested in human beings so much as weaving pre-existing stories together; City on Fire is a cool movie, Reservoir Dogs is a masterpiece; the three-way standoff is traced to John Woo films such as The Killer.