Quentin Tarantino's Next is "Django Unchained"

I'm an earnest fan of many of Quentin Tarantino's films, most vitally Kill Bill Vol. 1, for bold ingenuity and spectacular technique, and more sublimely Inglourious Basterds, a rollicking good time that maintains excitement not through gore but suspense. I'm totally game for him taking on the western genre with full intent, rather than the remnants of spaghetti westerns that dangle between most of his films anyway. We've been hearing about this film for a long time now, and now we're getting some solid details on the film. For one thing, the title of the feature is Django Unchained, and it tackles what very few Americans have the balls to go all out on: slavery.

You can expect there to be a revenge scheme in here, and the chapter by chapter structure is also a solid bet. There are rumors that Christoph Waltz is going to reunite with Tarantino to play a German bounty hunter who guides the main character in his quest. I do approach this news with apprehension, because I know how distrustful such early news can be. In any case, it all rings a bit familiar, but Tarantino always finds ways of telling a similar story in different ways. It almost always rings as appropriate. The only fears that I can find in this particular case have solely to do with protectors of the western genre. I believe that it's taken a while to revive this all important genre in American cinema, but I also don't believe that Tarantino is making a traditional western. In actuality, it feels like he is making an alternative western. It doesn't make me nervous, because the man knows what he's doing. He knows how to make a good popcorn flick, which always plays well with me.