The quintessential Quentin Tarantino fanboy fait accompli in book form, the ubiquitously titled QUENTIN TARANTINO, is a slip cased celebration by Ian Nathan, one of Britain’s best known film writers.
From Reservoir Dogs to Once Upon A Time in Hollywood and detours into True Romance and Natural Born Killers, Nathan plots the rise and rise of the cinephile phenomenon who became the cult film maker who successfully blends art and commerce, show and business in movies that court controversy and unadulterated adulation.
Named after a character played by Burt Reynolds in Gunsmoke, Quentin famously didn’t go to film school, he went to films, shoring up a reservoir of cinema from all over the world that would inform his own distinctive work.
A self proclaimed and unapologetic film geek, Tarantino’s prodigious and encyclopedic knowledge of cinema fills every frame of his work, distilled into living, breathing, heaving film experiences, crisscrossing genres, appropriating with abandon and ambition.
Nathan’s book is rich in critical appreciation, behind the scenes information, and castings that could have been. Tarantino’s track record of resurrecting flagging careers is more astonishing in its entirety if certain wish fulfilment and scheduling conflicts had been realised.
As befits a visual artist, the book is also rich in pictorial splendour, a trove of Tarantino inspiration and composition.
Tarantino at fifty five is a survivor of the tectonic treachery of Tinseltown creating his own seismic impact that changed the complexion of cinema and continues to cram audiences into multiplexes.
“Whether it is that monumental self belief, or the insistence of that God given talent, combined with a skilful management of his own celebrity and bankability, the next film from Quentin Tarantino, his tenth and apparent final picture, remains an event still able to stop Hollywood in its tracks.”
Big, bold, and handsomely packaged, much like the man himself, QUENTIN TARANTINO is a must for any film buff or any aficionado of popular culture.
QUENTIN TARANTINO by Ian Nathan is published by White Lion through Murdoch Books.