I finally saw Django Unchained, which is, according to our buddy Erik Henriksen, "the world's first western blaxploitation revenge buddy comedy" (read his more thorough summation here). For background, I'm not a wholesale Tarantino nut, but I loved the old-timey movie-serial fantasy and justified/stylized violence of Inglourious Basterds, easily my favorite of his films. And the first hour of Django gets an honorary spot on my list of favorite westerns/sons of westerns (alongside Dead Man, Unforgiven, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, John Ford's Stagecoach, the Coen Brothers' True Grit, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, um, Blazing Saddles... what else? I know I'm forgetting some).

The next two hours of Django are not as amazing, but still completely engrossing, and still a great if increasingly cartoonish portrayal of the American South during slavery. I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that what happens to the spotless white grandeur of the movie's Southern mansion is horribly, vengefully beautiful. You just want to sit Scarlett O'Hara down and make her watch it SO BAD. Jamie Foxx is pretty damn good (arguably only until his character descends into total caricature, though that's kind of enjoyable too), but Christoph Waltz, in a role that's the moral opposite of his character in Inglourious, is just marvelous. If you're on the fence, it's worth seeing, and seeing on the big screen because BLOOD SPLATTER (of awful people, so it's okay!).