The D is silent

In theaters Friday: Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, Prometheus

New on Blu-ray/DVD: John Carter, Machine Gun Preacher, Safe House

The highly anticipated spaghetti Western revenge tale Django Unchained from Quentin Tarantino, which was filming in New Orleans until recently (read our story on one of that film’s costumers Mollie Gates here) at last has a trailer.

After fleeing his years of 1970s-sploitation schlock for his first period drama in 2009’s Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino goes further back, this time to the 19th Century, with his tale of a high-priced bounty hunter played by Basterds‘ Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz who frees a slave to help him hunt and kill his next prey.

“Kill white folks, and they pay you for it?” Jamie Foxx’s Django says. “What’s not to like?” Waltz agrees to help Django find his wife in return, leading the former slave into to a showdown with Leonardo Di Caprio’s aristocratic rake. Foxx looks collected and complex (and pretty good in a cowboy hat)—if slightly better when in savvy killer mode than playing the shackled victim—but I still think “Stringer” would have been best suited for the role.

If this first look is any indication, Tarantino seems to have again struck the right balance between camp and character development, something sorely lacking from Death Proof and both volumes of Kill Bill. Django Unchained arrives this Christmas. Watch the trailer below, and yes, that is Johnny Cash growling “Ain’t No Grave (Can Hold My Body Down).”