"I like the way you die, boy." - A thread for Django Unchained

[Lumenskir]

Sneaking in just under the wire* is the Movie of 2012, Tarantino's latest pop culture mashemup about the Western film genre, revenge, slavery, racism, and how awesome fake blood looks when it's splattered against white surfaces.

*Take that Zero Dark Thirty!**
**I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, just come out near me please.

So, anybody else manage to see this? Some thoughts:

-I'd put it comfortably at the Kill Bill level in Tarantino's filmography, and it was pretty much as ruthlessly entertaining as its revenge driven cousin.

-I think in a perfect world Samuel L. Jackson would win all the awards, but more realistically I see Leonardo Dicaprio having his day in the "actually getting hardware" spotlight (I think I read an article about actors striking out in main actor categories but getting deluges once they settled into juicy supporting roles).

-I love how in Kill Bill the human body was basically holding gallons and gallons of red water waiting to be shot out a hose at the sight of the slightest cut, while in Django the body is basically full of trash bags filled with amazingly goopy red syrup and each bullet hits with the force of a fifteen pound bowling ball dropped from a skyscraper.

-Seriously, there's a part in the penultimate shootout where a bad guy keeps getting shot that is one of the funniest things in cinema this year.

-Of course, the proto-Klan insufficient hood thing was also amazing. It was like the not-yet-written fifth best Key & Peele sketch.

-What's everyone's opinion on the "Probably not as happy as it seems" ending? I've read two/three theories (1) It was exactly as happy as presented, (2) Stephen's warning about slavers/white people chasing them down will eventually come true, or (3) Django died after the first huge shootout and everything that follows his castration is a Brazil-esque fantasy. I personally think (3) is most likely (just for how deliriously fantastical the whole dressage thing was after blowing up Candieland), but I can see a mix of (1) and (2) (where Django and Broomhilda make it North while fighting off those who want them dead).

-I'm kind of ashamed with myself that the whole Von Shaft -> Shaft thing had to be pointed out to me later.