Quentin Tarantino Hits the Road

[silverscreenselect]

Quentin Tarantino's latest movie, The Hateful Eight will have a two-week roadshow engagement starting Friday, the first movie in decades to debut in that manner. The roadshow will be limited to 100 theaters (presumably at inflated prices), not simply for marketing reasons, but for practical ones as well. The roadshow will use 70mm film and there aren't many remaining 70mm projectors (most films now are digitally projected. The producers bought up enough of the old projectors to get 100 working projectors for this engagement.

The movie has been shot in a process called Ultra Panavision 70, which hasn't been done in 50 years (the last movie shot in this process was Khartoum in 1966). It results in a 2.76:1 aspect ratio (most widescreen films now are 2.35:1). This seems to me to be a bit of an odd choice because from what I've seen in the trailer, most of the action takes place in a small stagecoach depot, not outdoors.

The regular run of Hateful Eight will start December 31, while the roadshow is still going on. The roadshow will feature a 12 minute intermission and a four-minute overture. With intermission, it runs 187 minutes, while the regular run of the movie will be 167 minutes. That means that the roadshow is about eight minutes longer than the regular run, and, according to Quentin Tarantino, that eight minutes isn't just a couple of added scenes but some different editing of some of the scenes.

The movie also features a score by legendary Italian composer Ennio Morricone, now 87, who is best known for the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, most notably The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. The score has already been nominated for the Golden Globe and will probably get an Oscar nomination as well. Morricone won an honorary Oscar (presented by Clint Eastwood) in 2007 and has five nominations, including The Untouchables, but he's never won a competitive Oscar (he has won two Golden Globes).

http://variety.com/2015/film/in-content ... 201661130/