movies

[Jocephus]

the opening scene is epic

[JL21]

I finally got around to watching Inglourious Basterds last night. It suffered a ton in pacing and editing. Tons of time is lavished on certain scenes (the opening scene in the farm house is great, but could have been shorter. The rendezvous in the basement of the French bar goes on forever), but it seems like we really only get one scene of the Basterds themselves doing their thing in the war.

Don't get me wrong, it's a fun revenge fantasy (especially for those of the Jewish persuasion like me). I just wanted more time with the Bear Jew, more of the back story of the soldiers, and less fartin' around in cinemas and cafes.

That's interesting. That's a huge reason I liked it so much. Watching the trailers, I assumed the whole movie was going to be nothing but Brad Pitt doing a bad imitation of a hillbilly soldier, and the Basterds doing their thing. It's the #1 reason I was apprehensive about even seeing the movie. When I saw it and it was so much more, I was very, very pleasantly surprised.

(and of course, after seeing it, you realize that the bad hillbilly soldier imitation is easily the best way to play that role)

[The Third Man]

I finally got around to watching Inglourious Basterds last night. It suffered a ton in pacing and editing. Tons of time is lavished on certain scenes (the opening scene in the farm house is great, but could have been shorter. The rendezvous in the basement of the French bar goes on forever), but it seems like we really only get one scene of the Basterds themselves doing their thing in the war.

Don't get me wrong, it's a fun revenge fantasy (especially for those of the Jewish persuasion like me). I just wanted more time with the Bear Jew, more of the back story of the soldiers, and less fartin' around in cinemas and cafes.

To me that film is great precisely because it's such a hilarious deconstruction of a revenge film. The basic premise of the film is that the Basterds are these awesome, badass, [expletive]-kicking dudes but they're probably the stupidest characters in the film. They're lead by a total backwoods redneck, their plan is hilariously bungled and they only end up succeeding at all because Shoshanna's plan is such a massive success and does most of the heavy lifting for them. The primary villain, "The Jew Hunter," is the smartest character in the film, and he refuses to take ideological sides, admitting that he only does what he does for the Nazis because he's good at it and finds it fun, and not out of any particular loathing of Jews. The other central Nazi character, about whom Nation's Pride is made, makes it clear that he feels regret that he had to kill all of those American soldiers. All we see of the film seems to be nothing but him sniping American soldiers for 90 minutes (or however long the film is) - it's a ridiculously sadistic propagandist film, but it's also exactly the type of film that a lot of people that went to see QT's movie probably went in expecting (I include myself in that group), and of course, the movie climaxes with a totally sadistic bloodbath, but before that it's like 2 hours of conversation with probably less than 15 minutes of actual violence in the film.

It's basically QT making fun of us for wanting to see such a sadistic, violent film, but not in a preachy tone - QT enjoys violence as much as anybody, obviously - he's laughing with us, not at as.

[JL21]

Next month:


I'm stoked about both of these.

[JS04]

really looking forward to shutter island JL...they've been running previews for that movie since last January it feels like..

rented "gamer" last night from redbox...felt they could have done a lot more with the story but got lazy...Dexter was really good in it I thought..

[Jocephus]

wolfman seems boring and its going to be a disappointment to me...i dont know why

shutter island im started to get interested in...when i first a trailer a few months ago i was like "eh"...but the more i see the more i do want to see it...and it doesn't seem like a scorsese movie

[Maclowery]

I haven't seen this movie as it isn't out yet, but I felt this was an acceptable thread to post this link.

The movie promo embedded here is super, super, super NSFW. It's also probably not safe to watch in the company of others.

It's also really, really, um, personally revealing of the two female leads.

Anyway, I'm sure there are some hornballs here who will enjoy the next two minutes of their lives. Oh, apparently the guy makes really good movies or something.

http://www.joblo.com/room-in-rome-promo ... ingly-nsfw

[Radbird]

Now that's my kind of chick flick.

[cardsfansince82]

That's a lot of stuff to fit into one night.

[ghostrunner]

I watched Basterds last night.

[SHOW]

My Immediate take is that it's better than Kill Bill and most of Tarantino's recent stuff. But still not great. I'm tired of Tarantino deconstructing, and I'd like him to just construct for once. There were maybe 2 or 3 movies in Basterds, any one of which I think I'd have liked much more. The constant tonal shifts annoyed me. You've got a pretty decent Dirty Dozen-esque movie going, then suddenly you break into a 70's-looking, opening credits-style introduction of Hugo Stiglitz. Samuel L Jackson narrates once here (I think) and then much later to give what I thought was a clumsy exposition of the flammable qualities of nitrate film. Then he's never heard from again.

The 80's video sequence with Shoshanna getting herself ready - didn't work at all for me. I've seen anachronistic stuff like this work before, but I don't think Tarantino pulled it off. By the way, the rouge on her cheeks= warpaint, in case anyone missed that.

The little graphic tricks seem frivolous and again out of place - the little chalky arrows pointing out the famous Germans in the audience, the reveal of the explosives around the Basterds legs, etc... That worked in a movie like Amelie, which is generally whimsical and light hearted. It worked in From Dusk Til Dawn (showing the lady kidnapped in the trunk) because it gave you a hint of what kind of movie you were in for. But here, it just seemed unnecessary. I'd prefer just telling that in the course of the story, rather than suddenly inserting these little hints.

Eli Roth - I don't know what it is. Maybe it's Hostel, but I think his face just makes me want to punch him. I thought the build up to him emerging from the cave was weird too. Why would that happen? And I thought it was deflated by the fact that we just saw him before that in the scene with Brad Pitt addressing all the Basterds for the first time.


Stuff I liked:

The girl who plays Shoshanna was fantastic I thought, and to me she stole the movie more so than Landa. I enjoyed his performance, but I don't understand the excessive hype over him.

The opening scene at the farmhouse reminded me of the introduction of Lee Van Cleef's character in Good Bad and the Ugly, and obviously was meant to evoke those movies. Wasn't too derivative and I really enjoyed it.

Loved the scene between Landa and Shoshanna with the strudel, (and him ordering her the milk.)

Loved the bar scene, and I thought it was cool that Hugo died and you never even saw it happen. After all that buildup he's just caught in the crossfire. At least I didn't.

Shoshanna's face projected in the smoke after the fire starts - awesome.

If Tarantino only made those kind of scenes, I'd be much more on board with him. But then he gets into the overt homages and overt quirkiness and it loses me. I get the feeling he thinks "wouldn't it be cool if we did this.." and then he does it whether or not it makes any sense. His movies don't feel honest to me, which is about as well as I can put it.