On New Year’s Eve, I met up with a pair of great friends and took in a showing of Quentin Tarantino‘s latest film, The Hateful Eight (check out our recent review by Adam Frazier), which I found to be a brazenly sinister and violent black comedy sneaked in on unsuspecting moviegoers beneath the sheepskin of a classic big sky western. Then we all made a short pilgrimage to a local tavern where we proceeded to ring in the new year and I learned that I knew all of the lyrics to Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual.”

Love the film or hate its evil guts, one of the undisputed highlights of Hateful Eight was the original score composed by the legendary Ennio Morricone – his first score for a western in four decades! Tarantino has long wanted to team with the famed Italian music man responsible for some of the most iconic film scores of our time (Morricone even wrote an original song, “Ancora Qui,” for Tarantino’s previous film, Django Unchained), and the director’s latest provided “Il Maestro” a magnificent playground full of amoral characters talking and shooting each other to death with which to work. Unfortunately, Morricone was not able to create a full score due to a rushed schedule, compelling Tarantino to fill in a few gaps by utilizing selections from other scores composed by Morricone.

The Hateful Eight
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Screenwriter: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, Demian Bichir
The Weinstein Company
Rated R | 187/167 Minutes
Release Date: December 25, 2015

Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained), The Hateful Eight is an ambitious Western that deals in deceit, betrayal, and buckets of bad blood.

In post-Civil War Wyoming, bounty hunter John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) is escorting fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to Red Rock, where she will hang for murder. Along the way, they encounter a gunslinger named Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), a southern renegade who claims to be the town’s new Sheriff.

A blizzard forces the quartet to take shelter at a stagecoach stopover called Minnie’s Haberdashery where they encounter four strangers: Bob “The Mexican” (Demian Bichir), Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), and ex-Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern). As the storm overtakes the mountainside shanty, the eight unsavory strangers realize they may not make it to Red Rock after all.

Director Quentin Tarantino‘s latest western, The Hateful Eight, is set to be released in theaters on Christmas Day, December 25th. We’ve already seen trailers and such for the movie (you can find them right here if you’ve not yet seen them), and now a different kind of preview has been released online.

A prequel comic has been released that sets up The Hateful Eight, which is actually written by Tarantino himself. The artwork for the comic is created by Zach Meyer. You can read a full synopsis and read the set-up comic below.

The Weinstein Company has released the latest trailer for The Hateful Eight online. Starring Kurt Russell as the bounty hunter John Ruth, who is bringing in Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) for a hanging, the two must hunker down in a remote cabin with six strangers to weather out a blizzard that has hit Wyoming. The question is can John trust another bounty hunter (Samuel L. Jackson), a confederate (Bruce Dern), a sheriff (Walton Goggins), a Mexican (Demian Bichir), a little man (Tim Roth), or a cow-puncher (Michael Madsen).

Tarantino has been making the news headlines as of late, with the filmmaker joining protests about police brutality, while the targeted major metropolitan police departments are asking people to boycott the upcoming film. It’s not really clear if this will have a huge effect on the film, sometimes these things blowover, especially when there are those who will probably high off watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens just a week before. Though there are chances that his actions could come back to haunt him. In any case, check out the full trailer below.

There is no question that Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight is one of our most anticipated films of the year. We know that we are being given the option to see the film in 70mm, and that Tarantino is retrofitting at least 50 theaters so that we can see the movie in Ultra Panavision 70. As exciting as it sounds to be able to see a film in such a rare format, the director is now saying that those who will see it in 70mm will see a very different cut from those who see it in the regular multiplex. So much so that there is even an intermission time.

More on the story below.