Quentin Tarantino says Cate Blanchett's 'arty' films don't have 'shelf life'

Quentin Tarantino has dismissed the staying power of films featuring Australian actor Cate Blanchett in an interview with New York magazine last week.

“Half of these Cate Blanchett movies – they’re all just like these arty things. I’m not saying they’re bad movies, but I don’t think most of them have a shelf life,” he said.

In a wide-ranging Q&A the American director said films that were once “treated as independent movies, like the Sundance movies of the 90s” now attract bigger stars, budgets and are awarded Academy awards – but would not prove to have the same longevity.

“They’re good, but I don’t know if they have the staying power that some of the movies of the 90s and the 70s did. I don’t know if we’re going to be talking about The Town or The Kids Are All Right or An Education 20 or 30 years from now.”

He also named Notes on a Scandal, starring Blanchett, and Philomena, but acknowledged he could be “completely wrong about that. I’m not Nostradamus”.

The director also made comparisons between the “impeccable casting” of The Fighter, directed by David O Russell, and Ben Affleck’s 2010 film The Town in which he calls every cast member “beyond gorgeous”.

“When you see David O Russell cast those sisters, and you see Ben Affleck cast Blake Lively, you can’t compare the two movies. One just shows how phony the other is,” he said.

Tarantino is finishing his spaghetti western The Hateful Eight, a project that was nearly scrapped after a leak of the film’s screenplay.

He said the film, which is backdropped by the American civil war, “is about the country being torn apart by it, and the racial aftermath, six, seven, eight, 10 years later”.

He acknowledged the film would reflect current discussions around America’s race relations, something he was “very excited” about. “Finally, the issue of white supremacy is being talked about and dealt with. And it’s what the movie’s about.”

The film follows two of Tarantino’s best-received films of his career, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, which both picked up Oscars.

A recently released trailer shows Samuel L Jackson as Major Marquis Warren, a union soldier-turned-bounty hunter hitching a ride with fellow bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) and fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh).

The film is set for general release on 8 January 2016 with a premiere on Christmas Day.