A little update on Quentin Tarantino’s “The Movie Critic.” The filmmaker is touring Europe right now, he had a very memorable stop in Paris a week ago, promoting his latest book “Cinema Speculation.”
The latest city was Brescia in Italy, two nights ago. As is accustomed with all his stops, Tarantino participated in a Q&A and, of course, inevitably, the topic of his next film came up.
He went on to again deny the earlier rumors that his last film would be about Pauline Kael, but also mentioned that “The Movie Critic” would be about and revolve around film criticism.
"I'm going to make a film about film criticism, but it won't focus on Pauline Kael, as is rumored."
So, thematically, this next Tarantino is indeed about film criticism, which, as he points out, fits in perfect harmony with his “Cinema Speculation” book. Maybe Kael, Ebert or Sarris will have cameos?
There have been a lot of online theories about the cast of “The Movie Critic”, but we won’t get into that right now, especially since casting hasn’t even begun yet.
What we do know for sure is that it will be shot this fall, the story is set in Los Angeles circa 1977, and the lead protagonist is male. The rest is really anybody’s guess.
What I do hope is that Tarantino manages to send a message to the industry with this one, he hasn’t been shy about his disdain for current movies.
The fact that this new film takes place in the same year as when “Star Wars” was released, a shapeshifting moment for American movies, greed came into the picture, tells me that we might be looking at Tarantino’s scathing indictment of the industry.