Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1159832
13 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 25 AUGUST 2019 CULTURE ENVIRONMENT ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST ONCE UPON A TIME ONCE UPON A MIDNIGHT DREARY ONCE IS ENOUGH ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ The verdict Though a dizzyingly gro- tesque burst of violence is present and accounted for, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is mainly a gor- geously shot, deliciously unspooling love letter to Tinseltown's classic era just as the tide is about to shift into darker, murkier wa- ters. The work of a mature master just having a blast, its joys are numerous and infectious. ★ ★ ★ ★ O N C E U P O N A T I M E I N H O L LY WO O D ( 18 ) The greater flamingo (M. fjamingu) is one of the most striking birds we see in Malta: large, with impossibly long neck and bubblegum pink legs (in adults), and a spectacular black-red wing plumage that would catch the eye of even the least nature-inclined among us. The flamingo's odd beak seems almost a mistake but is actually ideal for sift- ing small crustaceans from the shallow lakes where these birds live. Flamingoes are gregarious animals, living, nesting and travelling in groups. We have nowhere in Malta large enough for a bunch of them to nest but nearby Sicily and Tunisia do, thanks to which we too can enjoy regular annual sightings of flocks flying past on migration. How tragic that this country is still blighted by several thousand men who think that the only good flamingo is a dead flamingo. Text: Victor Falzon Photo: Aron Tanti 675. GREATER FLAMINGO Visit Friends of the Earth's website for more information about our work, as well as for information about how to join us. You can also support us by sending us a donation - www.foemalta.org/donate GREEN IDEA OF THE WEEK 575: Find out more and try our delicious recipe: www.foemalta.org/goodfood all the while neither confirm- ing nor denying the industry rumours that swirl around him, the most egregious of which being that he murdered his wife (Rebecca Gayheart) and "got away with it". Ignoring the suggestion, made by his agent Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino), that he capitulates to the go-to ca- reer option for fading stars at the time and go to Rome to shoot Spaghetti Westerns, Rick takes on a role on yet another TV Western, 'Lanc- er', in which he'll once again play the bad guy opposite James Stacy (Timothy Oly- phant) and whose pilot will be helmed by Sam Wanam- aker (Nicholas Hammond). While he's away, Cliff notices some strange goings on with youths in a nearby ranch, af- ter giving a ride to a game and probably underaged hitch- hiker, 'Pussycat' (Margaret Qualley). It's a situation that comes to an explosive head some months later. In the meantime, we are left with a deliciously rambling traipse through the highest echelons of Hollywood in that shim- mering, momentous year of 1969, and Tarantino takes his sweet time to weave a layered tale of movie careers both spiralling and on the up, on- set dynamics both warm and tense, the lunatic fringe grow- ing like toxic weeds under the Hollywood sun and the brutal violence they unleash in their wake. Literally and deliberately crammed with so much pe- riod detail you feel as if you're being thrown into a museum for 1969 that's been warmed up at just the right level of humidity, the film's languid pace is unconcerned with hit- ting plot-point time-stamps, instead simply allowing you to immerse yourself in Tar- antino's kaleidoscopic and yes, utterly indulgent, tribute to the film's that shaped him. That is, until the violence re- ally hits… but even then, it plays out largely for comic ef- fect; a grotesque piece of slap- stick that the non-squeamish are likely to lap up with per- verse joy. It is only the likes of Tar- antino who get to make such original – in the not-based- on-a-comic-book sense of the word – and leisurely long feature films aimed squarely at adults out for a good time at the movies. In a climate so aggressively homogenised, where entertainment has become synonymous with bland, repetitive safety, the notorious director's own trademark flourishes of blood and cussing actually feel like a welcome whiff of humanity – the juicy, heaving art of cin- ema giving us its worst, which is, of course, its best.