Quentin Tarantino’s last few films have crept closer to cinema’s theatrical roots. Sequences occur in contained rooms, recalling the claustrophobic, object-driven narrative environment established by the physicality of the stage. These scenes are dominated not only by the director’s trademark dialogue but also by an assured language of compositional details, which guide our eyes through the frame and divulge information with a meticulous sense of craft. Tarantino’s detractors are bothered by his compulsion to bloat his works with references to cinema’s long, colorful history, as well as an occasional penchant for comically distorting his vested tone. But after recently having the opportunity to re-watch Inglourious Basterds, it became clear that the work overall was more significant than the handful of lame gestures that prevented me from outright embracing it. A filmmaker calling attention to himself is often irritating, especially when he uses dialogue to inject his own opinion of what he’s created. But this isn’t, and shouldn’t be, anything but an unfortunate stumble along a journey that’s far more complex and rewarding than the singling-out of that gesture would imply.

The Hateful Eight is Tarantino’s most confined feature yet, which initially calls into question his use of the 70mm format. Upon first blush, the decision registers as an arbitrary homage to the golden age of American Westerns. While it is that to some degree, it’s also a method to capture minuscule details in the expressions and appearances of each duplicitous character.

The film begins in the early stages of a Wyoming blizzard as John Ruth “The Hangman” (Kurt Russell, channeling The Duke) nears the end of a journey to collect his reward, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Along the way, they encounter two stranded individuals who Ruth reluctantly adopts as passengers. The first man is the clever and cruel Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a bounty hunter we learn fought in the union army during the Civil War and the closest thing the film has to a lead character. The second scoundrel to be happened upon is Chris Mannix (a viscerally animated Walton Goggins), who identifies himself as the newly appointed sheriff in the town of Red Rock, where the entire ensemble is headed.

The four arrive at Minnie’s Haberdashery, a cramped, one-room lodge where they meet the remaining faces that make up the titular hateful eight. Bruce Dern’s Sanford Smithers was a Confederate general during the war. He has made the trek to Wyoming in the twilight hour of his life hoping to learn how his son was killed. John Gage (Michael Madsen), is a reserved, weathered cowboy who is almost certainly hiding something. Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth, chewing scenery in the best possible way) is a sly Englishman who claims to be Red Rock’s new hangman. Last but not least is Bob (Demián Bichir), the suspiciously gauche steward purporting himself as an employee of Minnie, thus the caretaker of the haberdashery in her absence.

It’s easy to argue that the narrative in which characters trapped in an inescapable setting are driven to face one another has been cinematically exhausted in decades prior. But Tarantino’s perspective on popular hatreds harbored throughout American history is strangely essential and unpacked with a necessary dose of self-awareness. He illustrates the tight-knit relationship between prejudice and contempt by procuring a tonal delirium punctuated by comic terror. Underneath lines of dialogue, which are programmed to register as humorous, lie disturbing implications about who our characters are and what they represent. At first, animosity is personified only through verbal slander. When tensions begin to rise, Mobray decides to split the room in half, sending Confederate sympathizers to one corner and supporters of the Union to the other. Later on, as viewers familiar with the sensibilities of Tarantino would predict, this animosity is emulated through the graphic mutilation of flesh. The segregation, however, isn’t the first instance in which folly manifests itself physically.

A percentage of those who see The Hateful Eight will be crushed by the weight of unflinching cruelty that man is capable of. But the film, circumventing all expectations, has the audacity to end on a note of coarsely drawn optimism. We’re shown the worst sensibilities of the soul through bloodied eyes, and as the tumult begins to dissipate, it becomes clear that someone’s hatred eventually had to be compromised. In a sea of gore with no redemption in sight, a subconscious shift in mindset embodies what is perhaps the most vulgar step toward progress ever captured on film.

Quentin Tarantino‘s really got his hands full, huh?

Following the director’s recent comments regarding police brutality—“I’m on the side of the murdered,” he said at a New York City rally on Oct. 24th—police unions across the country, including the Border Patrol and the Fraternal Order of Police, have called for a boycott of all Tarantino films, including his upcoming snowy western The Hateful Eight.

Tarantino’s been defending his stance on the issue, claiming he’s “not a cop hater.” The murder of a New York police officer, Randolph Holder, just a week before his appearance at the controversial protest, didn’t help quell the fiery national debate that quickly erupted around the director’s comments.

Fighting tooth and nail for his right to speak publicly against police brutality is surely the last thing the widely beloved director was planning to do in the final weeks leading up to his eighth feature film, but a shiny nugget of good news has arrived today in the form of a new, awesome trailer for The Hateful Eight.

The movie’s had a rough road—if you remember, it almost didn’t get made at all when the script was leaked to the public by one of star Bruce Dern‘s people (that bastard!). Tarantino scrapped the project in a fit of rage, but thankfully for us he changed his tune. Perhaps most members of law enforcement won’t be coming out to watch the film in “glorious 70mm” this Christmas like the rest of us, but maybe the latest trailer will compel some of them to show up in disguise.

The Hateful Eight stars Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demian Bichir, Tim Roth and Michael Madsen. Here’s the official synopsis:

Set six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the wintry Wyoming landscape. The passengers, bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), race towards the town of Red Rock where Ruth, known in these parts as “The Hangman,” will bring Domergue to justice. Along the road, they encounter two strangers: Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a black former union soldier turned infamous bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), a southern renegade who claims to be the town’s new Sheriff. Losing their lead on the blizzard, Ruth, Domergue, Warren and Mannix seek refuge at Minnie’s Haberdashery, a stagecoach stopover on a mountain pass. When they arrive at Minnie’s, they are greeted not by the proprietor but by four unfamiliar faces: Bob (Demian Bichir), who’s taking care of Minnie’s while she’s visiting her mother, is holed up with Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), the hangman of Red Rock, cow-puncher Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), and Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern). As the storm overtakes the mountainside stopover, our eight travelers come to learn they may not make it to Red Rock after all…

The Hateful Eight drops on Christmas Day, but only in the 70mm format. It releases wide on January 8th on all formats.

Quentin Tarantino‘s long-awaited 8th film The Hateful Eight is set for release this Christmas, but the first real glimpse at footage has just arrived in the form its new trailer. The Hateful Eight collects an impressive ensemble of actors including Taratino’s returning favorites (Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Bruce Dern) along with a couple of new faces (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Demian Bichir, a perhaps-under-wraps cameo from a Foxcatcher star) for this tale of betrayal “six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War.” Filmed in gorgeous 70mm against the snowy mountainscapes of Colorado (in place of Wyoming, where the story is set), this trailer reveals the central cast of characters in all their fur coat, brimmed hat, twanged accent glory.

The Hateful Eight centers on a stagecoach lead by bounty hunter John “The Hangman” Ruth (Russell) as he drives toward the town of Red Rock, where his passenger Daisy Domergue (Leigh) is set to hang. On the road, the two come across Major Marquis Warren (Jackson), a former union soldier who has taken up bounty hunting himself, as well as Chris Mannix (Goggins), a Southern renegade that claims to be the town’s new Sheriff. Attempting to escape an intensifying blizzard, the four duck into Minnie’s Haberdashery to discover four unfamiliar faces in Bob (Bichir), Oswaldo Mobray (Roth), Joe Gage (Madsen), and Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Dern). The travelers attempt to outlast the storm as well as each other, and make it to Red Rock alive.

Let us know in the comments what you think of the latest trailer for The HateFul Eight

Countless films have been made about aliens coming down to Earth, but now director Michael Madsen brings that concept into the realm of documentary with The Visit. Madsen asks what we as a species would do if an alien came down to our planet, and answers his own question in a rather unique way. He makes the viewer take the perspective of the visiting lifeform, and has his talking heads—various professionals across Europe who deal with the type of hypothetical situation Madsen proposes—talk to the camera directly as if they’re conversing with the alien itself. Think of The Visit as less of a straightforward documentary about a science fiction scenario, and more of a realistic simulation of how to logistically handle the presence of an unknown entity.

At least, that’s what Madsen wants The Visit to be. It’s definitely a fascinating concept, but what sounds good on paper doesn’t always translate well to the screen. Madsen’s choice to take the alien’s perspective falls flat on its face from frame one, a mistake the film never fully recovers from. The interview subjects provide a wide, interesting range of perspectives, but making these people treat the camera as an extraterrestrial only provides one clunky, awkward scene after another. Even worse is when Madsen gets two people together at the same time, like two PR experts from the UK, to discuss handling more operational aspects of the visit with each other. It’s exactly what you’d expect; non-actors awkwardly play acting.

It’s also inconsistent with what Madsen wants to achieve by taking the visitor’s POV. Sometimes the subjects talk directly to the camera. Other times they clearly respond to a question asked of them, and when multiple people talk with each other on camera it’s designed to be conversation between just those people. Madsen just doesn’t commit to the gimmick he lays out, and The Visit becomes largely frustrating since it has no idea of what the hell it wants to do. Also unnecessarily complicating matters is a fictitious storyline where one of the interviewees “enters” the being’s spacecraft, a strange part to add considering the rest of the documentary’s emphasis on realism.

There are some flashes of interesting elements peppered throughout The Visit. Specific facts, like the United Nations having an “Office for Outer Space Affairs,” or the French Space Agency having a theologian as an advisor, are compelling pieces of information. And the film’s use of extreme slow motion when filming large crowds in public turns out to be a simple, effective way to turn the normal into the abnormal, with the smooth, slow-moving images giving off a surreal vibe. In a film filled with sleek visuals and re-enactments, it’s the only time where Madsen comes close to evoking a feeling of observing humans from an outsider’s perspective.

But those moments come few and far between. As The Visit plods along, Madsen begins unveiling the themes he really wants to look at, and they’re the kind of half-baked ideas that easily elicit groans. Madsen realizes that, by having to explain things to an alien, humans would have to confront deep, philosophical questions about themselves. Madsen could use this to explore some interesting existential themes, but instead the film’s narrator blurts out lines like “Man would rather destroy himself than give up the illusion that he controls everything.” It’s an observation that, like the entirety of The Visit, is more insufferable than insightful.

At the 2013 Mill Valley Film Festival, I talked to Zoran Lisinac, a first-time indie filmmaker who had just premiered his film, Along the Roadside. It’s a road movie with heart and humor about a young man from the Bay Area (Iman Crosson) and a colorblind German tourist (Angelina Häntsch) who, through unlikely circumstances, end up traveling together from Oakland to Southern California. Their destination is a giant music festival, but the journey that takes them there transforms them in ways neither saw coming. The film also stars Michael Madsen who plays a strange trailer park mafioso mechanic of some sort, because…Michael Madsen.

Since the last time I met with Zoran, the movie’s played at 14 festivals, and last year he signed a distribution deal for both domestic and foreign release. I caught up with Zoran to talk about the long road the movie’s taken to get to this point, what lessons he learned since we last spoke, his new film, Uploading, whether the film has had an impact in his home country of Serbia, and much more.

As a bonus, I also talked to one of the actors from the film, Danny Grozdich, a YouTube star who plays Mitts, a loose cannon method actor the duo meet on the road. At Mill Valley, I met him and wrote in a piece that he was a “charming, goofy fellow.”

Along the Roadside is available now on metakwon.com, VOD, and in select Best Buy and Barnes & Nobles stores.

It’s been about a year-and-a-half since I’ve talked to you about Along the Roadside.
Yeah, man. It’s been quite a ride. It premiered at Mill Valley in 2013 when I saw you, and since then it’s played at, like, 14 more festivals. We signed a distribution deal back in April 2014 for domestic distribution and for foreign distribution last May. We signed with Osiris Entertainment, and they’re taking the movie to Cannes this May, which is pretty cool. What we didn’t know going in was how long it takes for a fucking film to be delivered! We asked if the movie could come out last summer, and they were like, “Ehhhh….depends how fast you can deliver it.” Deliver it? What do you guys need? Then the marathon started. We needed to export the movie in a certain way, they needed seven different tracks, subtitles…and that’s just part of it. There were legal things, fights about the art, lots of stuff. The whole process took a while, and then they needed to find us a slot. It’s been a long stretch, so we’re happy it’s finally out, at least in the US.

Has it screened in Serbia?
It showed at a festival there. It was the very first screening we had publicly, back in 2013. They flew five of us there, including Michael Madsen. It was pretty scary. We had no idea how the people would react. Luckily it was great and they liked it. But after that festival, after every other public screening I would go back and shrink the film, make it shorter. I think I took out about one minute after every screening, so I ended up taking out 15 minutes of film by the end of the festival run. It’s a school for the future. Right now I’m scouting for our new film, called Uploading. It stars Timothy DelaGhetto, who’s really big on YouTube.

Right! You told me about it last time we talked. The one with all the YouTube stars.
That’s right. We’re actually in preproduction now. But my point was, now I know to screen this new film to as many people as possible! [laughs] We’re going to approach distributors before we even premiere it. Hopefully this one won’t take a year-and-a-half to come out!

The last time we spoke you talked about how you wished Serbia were a more progressive country, more open to different cultures. Has there been any conversation going on about your film? Has it helped make any change?
I’m happy that the film recently just showed there on TV in February. It was on national television. Younger kids really loved it and connected with it, whereas some of the older people thought we pushed the envelope a little too far for them. I’m happy that the youth of Serbia are more open-minded and embraced the film. I give the Internet props for that.

I don’t like all these hate crimes that have been happening in the US in the last couple months. It’s really fucking sad. I don’t know how to politicize this film. I don’t know who looks at it that way, but it actually tackles that [issue]. It’s partially a comedy, so I don’t know if people take it that seriously. I remember at Mill Valley we opened a day before 12 Years a Slave, and we were put in a similar category of films that tackled racism. 12 Years a Slave deals with it head-on, but Along the Roadside kinda pokes at it. [laughs]

Tell me more about how Uploading is shaping up.
It tells the story of a guy who becomes a vlogger after all the doors in Hollywood close on him as an actor. He falls back on YouTube and over time builds an audience. It’s kind of a coming-of-age story, but in a modern-day society where it’s that period of waiting for something to happen, to materialize. That’s why it’s called Uploading. It’s that in-between time. It’s really about relationships in modern-day society and how these invisible fans are just as real, or sometimes even more real, than real-life connections. YouTubers’ work affects people all over the world, and I think it’s really special.

It’s a new kind of relationship that didn’t exist ten years ago, you know? You can actually have a meaningful relationship with people across the world through the Internet. It explores that relationship, but also how messy it gets when real life relationships become neglected. The [main character] is broke, so he finds a job being rented as a friend on a company called FriendForRent.com. He rents himself to this socially inept game developer who has money, but doesn’t have real-life friends.

I had not seen Along the Roadside when we last met, but now I have and I enjoyed it. The lead actress, Angelina Häntsch, is very charming.
She’s a theater actress in Germany. There are a couple of people in Germany who auditioned for that part, and one of the people was this huge star. She won Best Actress at Berlin a couple of years ago. She auditioned and didn’t get the part. She didn’t feel right for the character, although she’s a great actress. Instead, we gave it to Angelina because she fit the bill. I’m really happy with what we got as a director. As a producer, my brother will forever scratch his head saying, “Man, if we had that famous actress the movie probably would have killed in Germany!” [laughs] There are compromises you have to make.

What did you think of the guy who plays Mitts?

Danny? I met him while back at Mill Valley and I wrote a piece and called him goofy!
[laughs]

He was so funny when I met him that I called him a “goofy fellow” in my piece, but after watching the film…Okay, I never laugh out loud when I’m by myself for some reason, but he made me laugh in the film. He’s hilarious.
He was hard to control, though. We’re friends, so it’s cool, but let me put it this way: he definitely worked around the lines. His energy comes across, and it works. Whenever we show the film, the scene when he whacks a guy for no fucking reason with a bottle—an innocent bystander—he gets a huge laugh. That’s how I know people aren’t asleep! The funny thing about him is, he graduated from law school and just said, “This isn’t for me,” and became a YouTube vlogger. To this day, his mom isn’t talking to him. [laughs]

After my chat with Zoran, I gave Danny Grozdich, the “goofy fellow” himself, a call to see what he thought of his director’s comments. He’s in the picture below, which I took when I met the guys at Mill Valley in 2013. Guess which one’s him.

I just had a great conversation with Zoran, and I have to say I’m a fan of yours after watching your performance in the movie.
Very cool! It’s better than the alternative, you know? “We’ve got nothing to talk about because you suck!”

We met over a year ago in Mill Valley, and I remember thinking you were a wacky guy, so I wrote a piece saying that you were goofy. I just watched the film recently for the first time, and I never laugh out loud when I’m alone, but you made me laugh pretty fucking hard.
That’s great! You’re feeding an ego that’s already too big. Making the movie was literally the greatest thing that’s ever come my way. I do a thing on the Internet called The Gradual Report, and I basically point a camera at my face and be funny. I have 970 videos online right now. I’ve been going at that since 2007, and I’ve got 147 million views across those videos. I started out as a stand-up comedian and…well, now that’s not true. I started out as a lawyer.

Zoran just told me that. That’s crazy.
Yeah. For a solid week a pushed that ball up the hill, and then I was like, “This can’t be life.” YouTube was invented in 2007, and I started putting stuff on YouTube because I thought I was better than everyone. One thing led to another, and here I am.

How did you hook up with Zoran?
Zoran and I are both Serbian. It’s a really small country, and when you run into someone from there, it’s like running into someone from your own neighborhood. It’s not a deep connection or anything, but it’s like, “Crazy! We’re from that same tiny spot in the world.” Zoran was looking for locations for the scene with Michael Madsen with this guy, Mitch. My mom lives in Palm Springs, so Mitch thought she might know of a place. My mom was like, “My son’s an actor!” Zoran looked at my YouTube stuff, and he said, “You were born to play Mitts.” I think Zoran told me it was the third biggest role in the script at first, and then he told me it was the fifth biggest. Then the sixth. Whatever, man! I come out okay. I’ll be fine.

I love when you smash that bottle over that poor guy’s head for no reason.
That was Zoran’s idea. The guy was an extra, and they told him he’d get a line. He was like, “My moment!” Then they told him he was going to get a bottle smashed over his head. It was made of sugar, so he thought it wouldn’t hurt at all. But apparently it does hurt! They told me the bottles were 50 bucks a piece, and we had two of them. “Don’t hold back, make sure it breaks,” they told me. So I just destroy this bottle on this guy’s head, and he hits the floor! He was really pissed. “You hit me too hard!” It wasn’t supposed to hurt, but he was really mad at me.

The movie got into a film festival in L.A., and the guy came to it. And they cut his line! The one line he had! I see him and say hi, and he just looks at me and doesn’t say a word. Just turns around and walks away. I told Zoran, “That guy’s still pissed at me!” and he said, “Yeah. We cut his line, too, so that probably didn’t help.”

In some disappointing news, Quentin Tarantino has sidelined his recently announced supposed next project (and 9th feature film), an ensemble western called The Hateful Eight, when the script was leaked. Though he hasn’t ruled out making the film in the future, it certainly won’t be his next film. Instead, Tarantino plans to publish the screenplay as a book, entering the arena of prose storytelling like he’s been hinting at doing for some time now. The influencial auteur expressed that he feels “very, very depressed” in an exclusive interview with Deadline.

“I finished a script, a first draft, and I didn’t mean to shoot it until next winter, a year from now. I gave it to six people, and apparently it’s gotten out today,” Tarantino said in the interview. Despite the leak, he says the fact that it’s reached his fans isn’t the reason he’s so upset: it’s that he feels betrayed. “I like the fact that people like my shit, that they go out of their way to find it and read it. But I gave it to six mutherfucking people!”

Those six include actors Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, and Nebraska star Bruce Dern, who Tarantino had been courting for a lead role in the picture. Tarantino suspects one of their agents leaked the script, specifically naming CAA, which reps Dern.

Though the news may come as a huge bummer for Tarantino fans (including myself), the director insists that this was the right choice to make, and that he’s got a bevy of other ideas floating around in his head, ready to come to the forefront and take the scrapped Hateful Eight‘s place. “I give it out to six people, and if I can’t trust them to that degree, then I have no desire to make it. I’ll publish it. I’m done. I’ll move on to the next thing. I’ve got 10 more where that came from.”