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Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009) +
Maybe I just live in an Alternate Universe from everybody (or an alternate movie universe since there's no difference). You remember the awesome scene in Pulp Fiction where the Uma Thurman character draws a "square"? I agree it's an awesome scene, but she draws a rectangle which somewhat mitigates the "Coolness Factor".
I don't hold Tarantino in any special regard. In fact, the more I learn about him, the more immature I believe the guy is. I'd rather have you MoFos be in our discussions about Powell/Pressburger, Persona, Alain Resnais, The Tenant, The Innocents, etc. because I believe that Tarantino wants everything to be easily representational, except for perhaps his idiotic changing of his movie's title to somehow make it seem that he's DEEP. HA! C'mon, QT, join MoFo and talk to us. We'll show you deep!
Inglourious Basterds, I have no problem giving it a +. It obviously doesn't stand up as a legit war adventure. It's not The Guns of Navarone, The Train, Where Eagles Dare, The Dirty Dozen, Operation Crossbow, Von Ryan's Express, etc. It just doesn't have that strong a plot, but it does have a hook, a gimmick and a reason to want to watch the thing. The hook is obviously that this guy (Brad Pitt), who stole his name from Aldo Ray, wants scalps of all dead Nazis and wants all living Nazis to wear something which will always identify them as Nazis. Now, this Guy has American Indian "Blood" in him (even if it's not Apache), so the scalp thing makes sense to some people even if it's mostly BS.
Tarantino does seem more oibsessed with namedropping Leni Riefenstahl and G.W. Pabst, and then he even brings in Oscar winner Emil Jannings to the conclusion. It's unclear what, if anything, Tarantino understands about pre-WWII German cinema and WWII Goebbels propaganda, but since his movie doesn't even take place in any form of reality, it doesn't matter to me. I'd probably say that overall, I gave the film extra points for trying to act like Tarantino knew "anything" about German cinema at all while just faking it to try to make his film better and more "realistic".
I have a few more points to make. Tarantino goes out of his way to have the SS Officer compare King Kong to African slaves and then he has another Officer do the same to try to condemn an African-Frenchman who seems so conducive to the Jewish woman's plot to destroy the Third Reich. On the other hand, the Nazis are quite disturbed that African slave blood helped the U.S. during the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics. I find the film very complex politically, but since it's a fantasy, you have to decide for yourself whether that's a strength or a wimpy weakness.
Maybe I just live in an Alternate Universe from everybody (or an alternate movie universe since there's no difference). You remember the awesome scene in Pulp Fiction where the Uma Thurman character draws a "square"? I agree it's an awesome scene, but she draws a rectangle which somewhat mitigates the "Coolness Factor".
I don't hold Tarantino in any special regard. In fact, the more I learn about him, the more immature I believe the guy is. I'd rather have you MoFos be in our discussions about Powell/Pressburger, Persona, Alain Resnais, The Tenant, The Innocents, etc. because I believe that Tarantino wants everything to be easily representational, except for perhaps his idiotic changing of his movie's title to somehow make it seem that he's DEEP. HA! C'mon, QT, join MoFo and talk to us. We'll show you deep!
Inglourious Basterds, I have no problem giving it a +. It obviously doesn't stand up as a legit war adventure. It's not The Guns of Navarone, The Train, Where Eagles Dare, The Dirty Dozen, Operation Crossbow, Von Ryan's Express, etc. It just doesn't have that strong a plot, but it does have a hook, a gimmick and a reason to want to watch the thing. The hook is obviously that this guy (Brad Pitt), who stole his name from Aldo Ray, wants scalps of all dead Nazis and wants all living Nazis to wear something which will always identify them as Nazis. Now, this Guy has American Indian "Blood" in him (even if it's not Apache), so the scalp thing makes sense to some people even if it's mostly BS.
Tarantino does seem more oibsessed with namedropping Leni Riefenstahl and G.W. Pabst, and then he even brings in Oscar winner Emil Jannings to the conclusion. It's unclear what, if anything, Tarantino understands about pre-WWII German cinema and WWII Goebbels propaganda, but since his movie doesn't even take place in any form of reality, it doesn't matter to me. I'd probably say that overall, I gave the film extra points for trying to act like Tarantino knew "anything" about German cinema at all while just faking it to try to make his film better and more "realistic".
I have a few more points to make. Tarantino goes out of his way to have the SS Officer compare King Kong to African slaves and then he has another Officer do the same to try to condemn an African-Frenchman who seems so conducive to the Jewish woman's plot to destroy the Third Reich. On the other hand, the Nazis are quite disturbed that African slave blood helped the U.S. during the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics. I find the film very complex politically, but since it's a fantasy, you have to decide for yourself whether that's a strength or a wimpy weakness.