Image Credit: MONDO
Twenty years ago, Quentin Tarantino directed Reservoir Dogs. Chances are you didn’t see it in a theater then — it grossed less than $3 million — but there was no denying the bold artistic statement made by the 28-year-old former video-store clerk when his violent feature debut premiered at Sundance in January 1992. Audiences were dazed and dazzled, critics referenced Leone and Peckinpah. But the movie, a non-linear narrative about a heist gone wrong, was entirely something new. And it would reverberate in Hollywood, especially when Tarantino followed it up two years later with Pulp Fiction, arguably the best movie of the decade — and undeniably the most admired.
Tomorrow, eight Tarantino films can be purchased together as part of Tarantino XX, a 10-disc Blu-ray collection celebrating his singular body of work. In addition to Dogs and Fiction, there’s True Romance (which he wrote), Jackie Brown, both Kill Bills, Death Proof, and Inglourious Basterds. Together in the same set, you can’t help but marvel at the purity of the work, the uncompromising vision that Tarantino instills in each movie. It makes one even more excited for Django Unchained when it arrives on Dec. 25. A bloody new red-band trailer for his pre-Civil War western is one of the set’s extra features, and it will remind you that Tarantino shoots to kill.
Below, director Robert Rodriguez discusses his first impressions of Reservoir Dogs and the man who would become a close friend and collaborator, on projects like Four Rooms and From Dusk Till Dawn. It’s part of the most excellent “20 Years of Filmmaking,” a new feature-length documentary that goes back to the very beginning. READ FULL STORY »
