Comic-Con: Tarantino’s killer panel for his bloody Western ‘Hateful Eight’

Comic-book movies understandably dominate the conversation at Comic-Con, but there are plenty of film panels that don’t have anything to do with capes, tights or superpowers – and this year, one of the most highly anticipated was Saturday’s Hall H presentation for Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Western, “The Hateful Eight.�

Tarantino was on hand, along with seven of the titular eight – including cast members Kurt Russell, Michael Madsen, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth and Bruce Dern – and showed off seven minutes from the film that showcased its blend of sweeping Western vistas, gunplay and the director’s trademark razor-sharp dialogue.

Set a few years after the Civil War, the movie finds a group of travelers of varying degree of repute – including two bounty hunters, a prisoner, a Confederate general, a sheriff and a cow-puncher – stranded together during a blizzard. Needless to say, things get complicated and it’s only a matter of time before guns are drawn and blood is spilled.

“The excitement for all of us was just be asked by this man to be in his movie,� Dern said of Tarantino. “He has the greatest attention to detail on a set as any director who ever lived.�

For his part, Tarantino – the writer-director of such film-drunk movies as “Pulp Fiction� and “Inglorious Basterds� – wasn’t just interested in selling the movie, which opens at Christmas. He used the occasion to share his fervently held opinions on the value of traditional old-school film projection in an increasingly digital world.

The film was shot using 70mm Panavision lenses – “the lenses that made ‘Ben-Hur,’ � Tarantino said – and will be rolled out with an old-fashioned, 1950s-era roadshow. “For the actors, it’s like, ‘We’re not on a hard drive. We’re in a movie,’ � said Roth.

In Tarantino’s mind, the industry’s shift from film to digital has been nothing short of, well, hateful.

“We’ve ceded too much to the barbarians,� he said. “I didn’t work 20 years to see diminishing returns. That’s not the movie industry I signed up for.� Of digital projection, he said, “It’s just watching television in public.�

Perhaps not surprisingly for a director so stepped in cinema history, Tarantino revealed that “The Hateful Eight� will by scored by Ennio Morricone, whose spaghetti Western scores are beloved by film fans. “It’s his first Western in 40 years,� Tarantino said with obvious pride.

“The Hateful Eight� marks Tarantino’s second film in a row in the Western genre after 2012’s “Django Unchained.� But he told the crowd he doesn’t consider himself a Western director – at least not yet.

“I think you have to make three Westerns before you can call yourself a Western director,� he said. “Anything else, you’re just dabbling.�

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