Jim in Idaho: Your assessments and contentions are noted and I won't quibble with many of them (even though I could) but I do take solace in your mention of the word "entertaining" even though you lay the caveats on pretty heavily.
Which you have every right to do.
Let me cast these irons into the fire here - Mr. Tarantino made another movie called "Inglorious Basterds" which to date (January 13, 2,013) has brought in to the box office $316,142,592.00!!!
Thats right at 1/3 of a BILLION dollars!!!
And its still bringing in money!
And it departed (in Hollywood fashion!) from reality much more so than Django and his new owner making it across the country in who knows what amount of time?
I was very much entertained by Brad Pitt and Quentin Tarantino in that movie even though the ending could more be likened to science fiction or a fairy tale than to a "war movie"!
People, LIKE, Mr. Tarantinos way of telling a story on the big screen and I feel Django Unchained is going to ADD to that liking.
Suspension of reality is one of the MAJOR reasons humans enjoy movies so much and pay money to go see them - thank you Mr. Tarantino for doing it so well and so successfully.
Violence in a movie just for the sake of violence is another topic for conversation (argument) but again for some reason (and I do not pretend to know why this is so!) violence SELLS!
Back at the time of the movie (historical era) white people made up about 90% of the non-indian population of America and I am sure they made up at least 95% of the slave owners and wanted criminals of the time so it somewhat stands to reason that a VERY high percentage of the folks killed in the movie were indeed white folks.
I am not defending Mr. Tarantinos depiction (glorification if indeed it was that?) of a negro killing so many caucasians in his movie but I do not find it exceptionally outlandish in and of itself.
I have a cousin with whom I attended MANY movies when I was a teenager and a young man and after several of those movies I found myself remarking "that couln't possibly have happened or that could not have happened in real life" and her reply was always the same and always correct, "oh its just Hollywood".
I still love to go to the movies.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy
P.S.: As of January 13, 2,013 Django Unchained has made $125,000,000.00 in the U.S. alone!
And the Tarantino movie "Inglorious Basterds" cost $70,000,000.00 to make and has earned over four and one half times that much money so far!
Figures for the production of Django Unchained are as yet unretrievable by me but I am sure it was much less than the $70,000,000.00 spent on Basterds having been shot a lot overseas?
