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| Marj |
 Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 1:20 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 10497
Location: Manhattan
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| Gary--regarding your spoiler - apparently Dillinger did just that! |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 1:23 pm |
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| Really? Where did you read that? It seems so improbable. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 1:24 pm |
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| I actually don't think it is really a spoiler, but it might be more fun to see that scene without knowing it beforehand. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 1:27 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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I can't understand anyone expecting a Tarantino movie to refect real life. I didn't get to Inglourious Bastards yesterday, due to a power outage at home among other things. Which makes it less likely I'll be able to see the movie this weekend. But I am eagerly looking forward to it.
And speaking of mcbain wrote: I think what the Newsweek review is akin to saying "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is dishonoring Jews by making Nazis goofy serial villains in the name of Christian triumphalism.
I believe some critics did just that. I remember a few losing it over the depiction of minorities in both it and Temple of Doom. But if people don't know a genre quotation when they see it, it's their own fault. Of course for years Mel Brooks was reprimanded for making Nazis into a joke. |
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| Marj |
| Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 1:36 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Manhattan
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marantzo wrote: Really? Where did you read that? It seems so improbable.
Not when you're a folk hero and as arrogant as he apparently was.
I wish I could tell you where I read it, Gary. After seeing the movie, I read a lot about Dillinger. And now I don't remember which article or review I read it in. Sorry. But if memory serves he pulled these kinds of pranks more than once.
And you're right. It's not technically a spoiler, but you don't want to give that scene away. It's too great. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 2:11 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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| This is, after all, the guy who broke out of prison with a wooden gun. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 2:48 pm |
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| I think the gun was made of soap, but that may have been another gangster. |
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| McBain |
| Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 3:05 pm |
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Joined: 26 May 2004
Posts: 1987
Location: Boston
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marantzo wrote: I wouldn't compare Tarantino's latest with Munich.
I didn't. |
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A life, Jimmy. You know what that is? It's the shit that happens while you're waiting for moments that never come. |
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| McBain |
| Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 3:07 pm |
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Joe Vitus wrote: I can't understand anyone expecting a Tarantino movie to refect real life. I didn't get to Inglourious Bastards yesterday, due to a power outage at home among other things. Which makes it less likely I'll be able to see the movie this weekend. But I am eagerly looking forward to it.
And speaking of mcbain wrote: I think what the Newsweek review is akin to saying "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is dishonoring Jews by making Nazis goofy serial villains in the name of Christian triumphalism.
I believe some critics did just that. I remember a few losing it over the depiction of minorities in both it and Temple of Doom. But if people don't know a genre quotation when they see it, it's their own fault. Of course for years Mel Brooks was reprimanded for making Nazis into a joke.
Interesting, Joe. |
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A life, Jimmy. You know what that is? It's the shit that happens while you're waiting for moments that never come. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 3:39 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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marantzo wrote: I think the gun was made of soap, but that may have been another gangster.
No, same guy. You're probably right that it was soap. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 6:37 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Just got back from Inglourious Basterds with a smile on my face. I'll have to let it sink in a bit to decide if it's his best since Pulp Fiction (Jackie Brown's the competition for me, and it's stiff competition.) Yes, there's a lot of dialog, a lot of it serving to rack up the tension to insane levels (in the opening scene and the bar scene, for example). I don't mind the playing with history; I just view it as a what-if film. In this case, it's what-if the Allies had employed a crack squad of Jewish-American (and allied) assassins?
I love Brad Pitt's performance in the movie, including his drawl, which got some big laughs from me especially when he starts speaking Italian with the same outrageous accent. Mélanie Laurent is wonderful thoughout, as is Diane Kruger as a German actress working for the Allies. The climactic scene (actually parallel climaxes) is excellent, and the very last scene is perfect.
Odd, despite the long dialogue-driven scenes (and the dialogue is good), I didn't get worn out by it, and I was actually surprised when I realized it was coming to an end. It didn't seem as long as the running time.
Oh, and great soundtrack, too. |
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| McBain |
| Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 6:43 pm |
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Joined: 26 May 2004
Posts: 1987
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Syd wrote: Just got back from Inglourious Basterds with a smile on my face. I'll have to let it sink in a bit to decide if it's his best since Pulp Fiction (Jackie Brown's the competition for me, and it's stiff competition.) Yes, there's a lot of dialog, a lot of it serving to rack up the tension to insane levels (in the opening scene and the bar scene, for example). I don't mind the playing with history; I just view it as a what-if film. In this case, it's what-if the Allies had employed a crack squad of Jewish-American (and allied) assassins?
I love Brad Pitt's performance in the movie, including his drawl, which got some big laughs from me especially when he starts speaking Italian with the same outrageous accent. Mélanie Laurent is wonderful thoughout, as is Diane Kruger as a German actress working for the Allies. The climactic scene (actually parallel climaxes) is excellent, and the very last scene is perfect.
Odd, despite the long dialogue-driven scenes (and the dialogue is good), I didn't get worn out by it, and I was actually surprised when I realized it was coming to an end. It didn't seem as long as the running time.
Oh, and great soundtrack, too.
Glad you liked it. I *loved* the bar scene. |
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A life, Jimmy. You know what that is? It's the shit that happens while you're waiting for moments that never come. |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 7:16 pm |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
Posts: 1949
Location: Lawrence, KS
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 7:31 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 6916
Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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marantzo wrote: I think the gun was made of soap, but that may have been another gangster. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 8:48 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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Inglourious Basterds is amazing, amusing, exciting and enjoyable. Greatest use of music on Tarentio's part yet. Largely a dialogue movie, and easily the least violent movie he's made yet. A feel good picture more than anything. The audience I saw it with seemed to love it and applauded at the end. The cast is appealing in a mostly cartoonish fashion. Melanie Laurent is the best of the more realisitic performers, though Daniel Bruhl is pretty good, too. Brad Pitt is the best of cartoon characters, though Rod Taylor's Winston Churchill got the biggest laugh from me when I first saw him. Mike Myers is the worst of the cartoons (I don't know what he's doing in the movie, and I don't think Tarantino does, either.) Eli Roth as Donny Donowitz, "the Bear Jew" and Til Sweiger as Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz are completely satisfying, but I wish the movie were longer (I know, I know) because I'd like to see all the Basterds get their fair screen time the way the individual members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad got in Kill Bill.
I don't think on a moviemaking level it equals the first Kill Bill, but the subject is larger. It's great to see a big movie that isn't a pretentious movie, and for all the Jerry Bruckheimer crap out there jam packed with exploding action (Pearl Harbor comes to mind, don't know why), it's great to see a dialogue driven movie that tops them all in excitement.
It's also a movie that feels particularly good right now. We're still living with the continuing (but hopefully heading for an end) debacle of the War on Terror, and there's a lof of self-flagellation most of us have indulged in—whether we believed in the invasion of Iraq and then wised up or always knew the argument made for it was a lie. But we've made some major changes in leadership, and we're trying to keep a better eye on the new leaders. We're ready to let ourselves remember a time when we used force for right, even if force itself is rarely an attractive quality. It's inconceivable that this movie could have come out when Bush was still in office, and it's light years away from the Reagan/Rambo all-hail-the-soldier motif.
For all its Sgt Rock jolly jingoism, the movie is not an out-of-control maniac ride through war movie excesses. There's an absolute awareness of what we should laugh at and what we shouldn't. This is the least morally careless movie imaginable. As it came to and end, I realized the movie had left me with a cold spot in my heart. Popular entertainment simplifies everyting beyond human recognition, and it's easy to kick back most of the time and say "That's how life should be," no matter how bizarelly untrue to human life the fantasy is. Sometimes we let go too far and actually believe the lies we create, and try to live them. But we know—and Tarantino expects us to know—World War II was not a Hollywood movie, nor an exercise in jolly jingoism. The movie gives us a war experience we want in exchange for the war experience we actually had and the real one still going on outside the theater. It's a nice break, but we never buy the lie. The very absence of reality sharpens the impact of the real world.
It's an interesting picture. |
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