1. Set The Entire Movie In The Snow
All right, so this might sound like a rather strange "lesson" to be sitting pretty at the top of the list, but hear me out: when I saw the first trailer for Django Unchained, I was so thoroughly excited to see that Tarantino had opted to include some scenes in the snow, just like in masterful spaghetti western The Great Silence, and in Robert Altman's underrated masterpiece McCabe and Mrs. Miller. There's something odd and surreal about setting a western in a snowy location, but it also imbues the movie with a brilliant, unexplained quality. The portion that Tarantino did opt to set in this terrain for Django Unchained was good, but it didn't last all that long. There were about 10 minutes of snow-set scenes, and I was disappointed that more time wasn't spent with Django and Dr. Schultz wrestling with the wilderness - hey, what was I expecting? It was a "southern," after all. But whereas most westerns look the same, sepia-toned and dusty, this is Tarantino's opportunity to direct a movie that looks and feels like nothing else in his filmography. Taking the action to a white Wyoming, or to the snow-filled landscapes of Utah, will surely help the talented filmmaker to differentiate this work from that of Django Unchained.
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