Harvey Weinstein, Uma Thurman Honor Quentin Tarantino With Prix Lumiere Award

Emotions ran high at the Lumiere Festival in Lyon, France, where Quentin Tarantino was presented with the Prix Lumiere Award, The Hollywood Reporter recently reported. Conceived five years ago by this festival along with the Cannes Film Festival, the award has quickly come to be one of the highest honors for filmmakers. Clint Eastwood was among one of the first, and now the 50 year-old director, writer, actor and producer is the fifth.

Tarantino has a trademark style to his violent films, starting with the early 1990s Resevoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, leading up to the Kill Bill series. The late Roger Ebert recounted Quentin telling him, "When I'm writing a movie, I hear the laughter. People talk about the violence. What about the comedy?" In Ebert's review of the more recent Django Unchained, he pointed out it was one of the first moments he struggled with a Tarantino film to find a vestige of comic-like absurdity or irony amid the brutal violence. At the end of the review, he gave the film four stars. 

Uma Thurman was in attendance to honor Tarantino at the ceremony, along with film producer and studio excutive, Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein took the stage and joked, "I always felt we were meant for each other and nothing could keep us apart. Maybe if he had been a woman we could have gotten married, had kids." 

Weinstein credited the growth of his first company, Miramax, to Quentin. He added that Quentin saved his current company, The Weinstein Company. 

Weinstein let a personal side come out, contrasting his notorious reputation. "Working with Quentin is like reading a great novel or hearing a great symphony or piece of music -- it changes you. You don't know how, but it has." 

Tarantino recently received media attention for sharing his thoughts on the upcoming Batman movie. We can only expect more to talk about from him, whether it be cinematic masterpieces or frank opinions.