Django Unchained

Django Unchained is a 2012 USA western by Quentin Tarantino.
With Jamie Foxx, Don Johnson and Leonardo DiCaprio.

The BBFC have passed Django Unchained 18 uncut for strong bloody violence.

The running time was noted as 165:11s for its cinema release.

Re Django Unshortened

Meanwhile Tarantino has been speaking about the length of the film. It seems that there is a longer version waiting to get out.

During a press day in New York City, Tarantino revealed that Harvey Weinstein had once suggested splitting Django Unchained into two films, a la Kill Bill . However Tarantino explained why he felt Django Unchained had to be one movie:

This had to be Django's journey from beginning to end. It had to be an odyssey. As Django and Schultz traverse America to get to Broomhilda. At one point Harvey was talking about splitting it up [into two films]. And I said, No, it won't work here. You have to follow Django's journey to the end. There are so many emotions -- there's the action adventure, the gallows humor comedy that runs through it, there's the pain of the story, there's the catharsis, there's the suspense, and hopefully at the end there's cheering, if the audience isn't cheering then I haven't done my job. That I got that cheer at the end was the biggest issue. As far of the pain of the story I could have gone further. I wanted to show more, to show how bad it was. But I also don't want to traumatize the audience to the point that they aren't where I need them to be in the last reel.

That said, Tarantino hasn't ruled out the possibility of putting out a second, longer cut of Django Unchained, although he's not exactly sure when:

I'm going to wait until the film goes around the world, does what it does. And then I'm going to make a decision. I make these scripts that are almost novels. If I had to do this whole thing over again I would have published this as a novel and done this after the fact. Maybe next time. I could do what Kevin Costner did with the expanded edition of Dances with Wolves, and I could very well do that. Because if I put some of that in I have to change the story. But I want this version to be the story for a while.

Re the recent school shooting

 See  article from  bbc.co.uk

Quentin Tarantino's latest film, spaghetti western Django Unchained , features graphic violence, including buckets of blood exploding from characters as they are shot.

He said at a press junket in New York for the film on Saturday that he was tired of defending his films each time the US is shocked by gun violence:

I just think you know there's violence in the world, tragedies happen, blame the playmakers. It's a western. Give me a break.

Update: Premiere Cancelled

19th December 2012. See  article from  bbc.co.uk

The US premiere of Quentin Tarantino's western Django Unchained has been called off in the wake of last week's shootings in a Connecticut school.

In this time of national mourning we have decided to forgo our scheduled event, the film's distributor said.

Tuesday's event in Los Angeles will be replaced by a screening for cast and crew and their friends and families.

Update: Re two versions, the MPAA and traumatised audiences

19th December 2012. See  Quentin Tarantino Talks Race And Violence from  twitchfilm.com

Interviewer:

There are some very strong scenes, like the eye gouging scenes - which they cut away from in the version we've seen. Were there any particular censorship problems with this one and how did you approach the violence given that most of it is tied into slavery which, for a lot of people, is still a sensitive issue?

Tarantino:

I didn't have any censorship problems in this movie whatsoever. Not in terms of censorship. The MPAA got this movie immediately. They actually gave an R rating to a more rough, more violent version than what we're actually presenting to the public as the released film. They got it right away. So I didn't have any problems with the MPAA whatsoever. I had more problems with the studio than the MPAA.

Basically what kind of happened was I could handle a rougher version of the movie than what exists right now. I have more of a tolerance for it. But I kind of realized when I watched that version of the movie with audiences that I was traumatizing them too much. I traumatized them. And I want people to enjoy the movie at the very end of it and after I traumatized them with the dog scene and traumatized them with the mandingo fight scene ... I cut their heads off. They grew another head and they continued watching it but they were traumatized and they weren't quite where I wanted them to be at the very end because of that trauma. And so, as rough as it is right now it's a little easier to take.

The Christian Film & Television Commission, an nutter group in Hollywood, is petitioning the MPAA to change the rating of the 'ultra-violent' new western from Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained , from R to NC-17. [Note that in UK terms R is a 17A and NC-17 is in fact an 18 rating].

Founder and spokesman Dr. Ted Baehr spouted:

This movie ends with two of the most violent scenes we've ever seen in more than 27 years of reviewing movies. As countless research studies and recent events in Connecticut have shown, some young boys and men like to imitate the violence they see in movies, TV, and video games.

The group claims that the movie shows blood erupting like lava from bodies when people are shot. Also in the movie, a slave is eaten by dogs and a man hanging upside down is threatened with castration.

The group has started a petition calling for the NC-17 rating.

Django Unchained will play in China with the same running time as elsewhere. However Chinese film censors have asked Tarantino to turn down the blood.

Zhang Miao, the director of Sony Pictures' office in China, has announced that Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained has been approved for release in China by the national rating and censorship board, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

In order to get approval for the Chinese release, Tarantino agreed to modify the film's dramatic violence, muting the color of the blood in some sequences and making the spray of the gore less intense.

Zhang said in an interview: 

What we call bloodshed and violence is just a means of serving the purpose of the film, and these slight adjustments will not affect the basic quality of the film -- such as tuning the blood to a darker color, or lowering the height of the splatter of blood.

Update: Cinema release cancelled

12th April 2013. See article from nytimes.com

Django Unchained was abruptly pulled from theaters in China on Thursday, its opening day, a surprising move that underscored the fragility of Hollywood's evolving relationship with the Chinese movie industry. No reason was given for the decision to suspend the release .

Chinese media and film blogs were filled with speculation that the movie had been withdrawn because state censors somehow missed a brief scene with nudity. That explanation seemed unlikely, however, given the careful vetting the film is said to have undergone before it was approved for release.

Whatever the reason, the last-minute nature of the decision was surprising. Potential problems with Chinese censors are usually identified and addressed long before the film's opening.

Tarantino's representatives and financial backers in Los Angeles and New York on Thursday were still scrambling to learn what had gone wrong, and looking for a way to reopen their movie. Sony have indicated that Django Unchained may be rescheduled suggesting that problems could yet be rectified.

Abruptly pulled from cinemas on its original opening day April 11, Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained is poised to return to Chinese screens with its nudity scenes expunged, according to local newspapers and microblogs.

Local media is now claiming a May 7 release after full-frontal nudity was cut. The film's distributor, Sony, has not confirmed the date though.

A post on the TNABO microblog, one of the more authoritative sources of film industry news and statistics in China, said Django Unchained will be returning to the big screens on May 7 after undergoing another round of censorship.

Quentin Tarantino's Oscar-winning film, Django Unchained , has reopened in cinemas in China, a month after it was pulled for supposed technical reasons .

A manager at a UME Cineplex cinema in Beijing said: The new version is one minute shorter than the previous one. He speculated that a nude scene may have been cut.

In a previous round of cuts, the distributor Sony Pictures said Tarantino had agreed to slight adjustments to reduce the violence prior to its initial release in China last month.