Thursday, Apr. 01, 2010
Quentin Tarantino
Age: 47
Occupation: Writer, filmmaker
Previous TIME 100 Appearances: 1
Five years after he wrapped the Kill Bill saga (and two years after his less-than-successful genre throwback Grindhouse) Tarantino returned with a feature-length war film that scrambled both history and genre, leaving critics — not to mention Oscar voters — giddy. Probably the only filmmaker with the gall to make a World War II epic with a brand new ending, Tarantino didn't just envision a different fate for Adolf Hitler but gave us a Nazi SS officer (Oscar winner Christoph Waltz) more charismatic than Brad Pitt. Is there anything the twitchy, frenetic master of cinema can't do?