When John and O.B. hurled, why was there lots of blood but no chunks of the stew they had just eaten? :dubious: 
From what city? 
Because straight blood, and an impossible amount of it, made a much better visual.
Cinematographers (aka directors of photography or DPs) have to have light to create an image on the film frame or image sensor. When filming night time scenes in which a moon might plausibly be present, they can use the old trick (not so often used these days) of “day for night,” in which you shoot during the day, but stop down the lens and put bluish filters over it to make the sunlight resemble moonlight.
In scenes like the one you refer to in The Hateful Eight, where the moon could not be the source, it’s more challenging. Many DPs will just use a soft, diffuse down light that doesn’t cast hard shadows and plausibly recreates the very faint light from the moon and stars that might get through cloud cover or from distant sources on the ground. Or they use side light that doesn’t have an apparent source.
But for whatever reason, DP Robert Richardson, who has 30 years experience, 42 credits to his name, and three Oscars (JFK, The Aviator, Hugo) decided to essentially put the light sources in the frame in that scene. I found it jarring, too.
However, in feature films virtually nothing happens by mistake or randomly. Whenever you hear film crews talking about why they made certain choices – the color of a costume or set, the angle of a shot, use of a certain tune in the score – they always have reasons for the decision that they feel advance the story, explain a character, or add to the mood of the scene. So Richardson was trying to say something with that choice. We may not be sure what, but he had a reason that QT agreed with. Perhaps the stark light highlighted the cold climate and remote location that a softer light wouldn’t have.
BTW, if you look at the lighting inside the haberdashery, there was a lot going on there that couldn’t be explained by the available light sources, which were mostly candles and oil lamps: strong backlighting on many characters, the bright pool of light illuminating a piece of paper that a couple of characters are reading, etc. For most viewers, lighting choices like this are invisible, which is a good thing. But it’s rare that the lighting you see in movies, especially period films set before electricity, or in night exteriors, could actually come from sources that could plausibly be present in the scene. In doing what they need to do to make the shot work, DPs establish conventions that are perceived as “natural” in that context.
Anecdote. My wife and I went and saw this with our kids (16-21). Not knowing there was an intermission coming up, my wife leaves to hit the bathroom and get a drink. While she was gone, Samuel L. Jackson goes into his explicit white guy blow job monologue. She comes back right when the intermission starts, looks at the kids and asks “what did I miss?” They sort of mumble something about SLJ killing the General’s son, and she keeps asking for more details…The kids reeeally didn’t want to tell their mom how the guy died, or how he tried to stay warm for that matter.
Yeah, I’m aware of all that. I was just surprised they would do something so blatantly anachronistic as to place electrically-powered floodlights behind the buildings. There were other ways they could have provided illumination in that scene.
I’ve also done living history and know what it’s like to be stuck in a shack like that during a snowstorm. My problem wasn’t so much with the interior lighting—very few movies have ever done that realistically; Barry Lyndon was one—it was the apparent warmth inside the building.
Hell, Michael Madsen was content to go around in shirtsleeves. With all the chinks in the walls and the wind blowing the way it was, not even a fireplace and a stove would have been enough to heat the room. To get any warmth at all, you’d have to wrap yourself in a blanket and huddle around them.
The violence was too over the top. And, somehow I think killing 8 people (they couldnt plan on others) to rescue one was not a great plan.
Just stop the stagecoach with a tree, shoot The Bounty Hunter with a Sharpes at range, and ride away.
Yes, and many of those chinks could have been fixed with one of those pieces of wood and nails.
I gave the film a B-.
But you gotta use…YOU GOTTA USE TWO PIECES!
I saw it in a regular theater and it still looked good. I enjoyed it up until it became the QT gorefest. After that I didn’t dislike it but just laughed at the ridiculousness.
I have to say he did a good job making us forget about Channing Tatum being in the opening credits. Excellent surprise. The plot hole we identified is yes, SLJ is suspicious of Bob but should have known something was really wrong – where was the driver of the first stage, etc.
Please see Reservoir Dogs. Please! 
Someone (Bob, I think) said the driver had gone off to shack up with a woman until the blizzard was over, presumably at one of those homesteads I noticed in the background.
Aha! Thanks!
You need to get out more. He sounds like Samuel Jackson, who was acting way before the Nick Fury character ever was introduced.
I’m surprised more was not made (Aside from the mentions in this thread) of the connections with The Thing…Kurt Russell…pieces lifted directly from the soundtrack…two guys at the end and their fate…
…guide ropes stringing vital buildings together in a blizzard…being surrounded by people in close confinement, unsure which ones are out to kill you…holding the suspects at gunpoint, and handing a gun to a former enemy that you can now trust to help you, since at least he’s not one of them.
I was using “Nick Fury” as shorthand…
I thought it was the biggest POS I’ve seen in a long time.
Eight things I hate about the Hateful 8:
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Tarentino’s absolute love of that word. I wondered how long before it made its appearance, and even then I was surprised that it was practically the third line of dialog. Yes, people really did talk that way. And they still do. but movies don’t exist in a vacuum. The director chooses what to show and what to omit. People also took ugly shits and wiped their asses with corncobs, yet QT doesn’t show that on screen. You don’t need every use of it to tell the story, so why does he over do it?
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It’s too long, and not in a good way. The flashback not only was totally unnecessary to the story (we could piece almost all of it together from what was said, the evidence shown and some imagination, with only the General’s story being new info) but getting to that flashback took five minutes of (admittedly beautiful) outdoor tracking to get there. We see the wagon going through the snow, going up a hill, going through the woods, going along a river, going through the snow, going through a field going…going…going…not there yet…going…I see the store…almost there…whoa! There’s just too much of that. Long movies don’t bother me. I could stand another hour of Lawrence of Arabia or GWTW and be totally happy. But H8 isn’t one of those. With a bit of editing, you could make a really good 90 minute movie out of it.
*The bad guys’ plan is stupid. After cold bloodily murdering everyone at the haberdashery, their plan is to…wait? The whole bunch was armed. No matter how careful Ruth was, he was outnumbered. Someone could have shot him a lot sooner. Also, if they’d have left everyone else alive, it wouldn’t have raised suspicions. Plus, you couldn’t realistically clean up the store that well in any amount of time. The blood and bullet holes would be obvious. There’d be more evidence than a single jelly bean.
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Daisy’s snow shoe “angel wings” as she was hanging there. That really was too much. Why is she an angel? Because she’s a woman? She’s not the good guy. She’s not even a “good person” (such as Jules in PF) in a bad situation.
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The excessive blood and gore. I don’t see it as homage, or as ironic, just excessive. And unrealistic. It takes you out of the film moment, and puts you in a thrill ride. It’s like a fun house roller coaster. It’s exciting and exhilarating, but at the end, you realize there was nothing there.
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QT is like the bastard child of Paul Verhoven and Lars von Trier. He not only hates his audience, he hates his actors as well. I keep wondering if he laughs himself to sleep at how much he can humiliate and abuse them, and yet they seem to think it’s a honor to be in one of his films. Maybe actors deep down hate themselves, I dunno.
Oh yea, from a review I read:
“In watching a group of people try to build civilization out of savagery, “The Hateful Eight” is the most optimistic film the director has ever made.”
What movie did they watch? Who in this movie was “build[ing] civilization”? Only the dead people at the haberdashery. I can’t see how you get optimism out of their savage murders. Let alone the fact that everyone we see in the movie (every last one) ends up dead.
Didn’t she or Ruth make some remark about making snow angels outside in the blizzard before everybody started getting blown away? :dubious:
If so, I missed it. But could be. At least snow angels is better than real angel, for her.