Movie News, Reviews, and Discussion Super-Thread

[The Dark Shake 3000]

Wilkinson was the best thing about Michael Clayton, too.

[bud]

swinton's performance was even better, imo.

[brawndolicious]

As for the case against Inglourious Basterds vs The Hurt Locker, I felt the latter pretty much mopped the floor against the former in terms of acting, writing and directing.

And I feel the opposite on all three areas. On top of that, IB did suspense better than The Hurt Locker did (two different scenes, in fact, were more suspenseful than anything in THL - the opening scene and the pub scene), which seemed to be THL's bread and butter.

The problem with IB's suspenseful scenes is that they were wrapped in a morally ambiguous story that rewrites history to make it more accessible, meaning you can't really consider it anything beyond a popcorn flick.

I think A Serious Man was the best movie last year, honestly.  At least to me it felt that way.

[Joe Molotov]

A Serious Man Although in a Single Man's favor I'd still fuck Julianne Moore. My god, I can't believe she is 50.

She has a great little sex scene with Amanda Seyfried in Atom Egoyan's Chloe 

o i c

[The Dark Shake 3000]

As for the case against Inglourious Basterds vs The Hurt Locker, I felt the latter pretty much mopped the floor against the former in terms of acting, writing and directing.

And I feel the opposite on all three areas. On top of that, IB did suspense better than The Hurt Locker did (two different scenes, in fact, were more suspenseful than anything in THL - the opening scene and the pub scene), which seemed to be THL's bread and butter.

The problem with IB's suspenseful scenes is that they were wrapped in a morally ambiguous story rewriting history, meaning you can't really consider it anything beyond a popcorn flick.

I think A Serious Man was the best movie last year, honestly.  At least to me it felt that way.

Oh, I remember you. You're still totally wrong about everything. Nice.

[Ichirou]

nintenho is a nice guy but his opinions on everything utilize some weird form of alien logic I have never been able to understand.

FWIW, I wasn't a huge fan of Inglorious Bastards, but to call it a "popcorn flick" is ridiculous.  It's pretty clear that Tarantino has his head stuck up cinema's ass so all his films feel really divorced from real life.

Inglorious Bastards is really his Once Upon A Time in the West.  A movie that is about movies, but which doesn't feel as cobbled together from disparate pieces like the Kill Bill flicks did.  It's really ambitious and I'm glad he made it, even if I feel it's really flawed.  And it's definitely a major step up from his previous three movies.

[brawndolicious]

I don't look highly on something the utilizes WW2 to create a shallow revengy feeling towards Hitler.  I can enjoy it as a popcorn movie definitely but all that stuff about the French-Jew theater owner was just eye-rolling stimulus.

[Ichirou]

ninteho, it's the fact that Tarantino is taking something that filmmakers do ALL THE TIME (rewrite history) and being completely blatant and out there about it.  I thought it was a pretty brave thing to do, honestly.  He could've gotten tons of backlash from Jewish groups.

[The Dark Shake 3000]

I don't look highly on something the utilizes WW2 to create a revenge-flick.  I can enjoy it as a popcorn movie definitely but all that stuff about the French-Jew theater owner was just eye-rolling stimulus.

Seriously? So do you hate shit like Indiana Jones and The Great Escape too?

(Not that Basterds is on the same level as either of those, but all of them draw on WWII to create pure genre cinema)

[Ichirou]

Yeah, if anyone is guilty of using Nazis as stereotypes to create cackling genre villains, Spielberg is it.

And IB actually delves into exactly WHY these people are so reviled by history, not just making them Snidely Whiplash with a swastika.

[The Dark Shake 3000]

ninteho, it's the fact that Tarantino is taking something that filmmakers do ALL THE TIME (rewrite history) and being completely blatant and out there about it.  I thought it was a pretty brave thing to do, honestly.  He could've gotten tons of backlash from Jewish groups.

Exactly. If I may be a self-promoting jackass for a moment, I wrote a lengthy article about this for some film website when Basterds came out. My take:

For young filmmakers of my generation, Quentin Tarantino is both a touchstone and a man whose lumbering shadow we scramble violently to get out from under. An energetic pop culture sounding board with big ideas and the tenacity (or is that clout?) to see them through, he’s both the prototype and the continuing poster child for a generation that’s learned to spit out what it so voraciously chews on; a generation that’s managed to put hours wasted away in dark, dank cinemas or rooted stoically before a glowing television set to good use; a generation which has made deriving influence an art form in and of itself. At the risk of damning with faint praise, the man has made being a cultural magpie unequivocally chic.

Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction revolutionized modern cinema even while glorifying its uglier sides; both films are derived less from experience or analysis than a desire to imitate, a desire for tone – their DNA is not life, but movies. They’re brazenly, unabashedly cinematic; their characters are characters, their pathos are skin-deep, their speech is less conversation than rhythmic ballet, less a verbal sparring match than a soulful duet. In other words, no one could possibly mistake them for being what we know as “realistic”. They are flights of fancy printed to celluloid, fantasy films masquerading as nitty-gritty character pieces. They are cool, they are fun — they play like an uninterrupted jam session, constantly doubling back and over, missing a beat here or there, relishing the moments where things “click” to turn a spirited cacophony into beautiful music. They are jazz, they are Godard. They feel fresh and new and vibrant even fifteen years past their expiration date; in fact they’re still so ripe with the splendor and spectacle of pure cinema one wonders if they come with an expiration date at all. They get by on charm and spunk, and are endearing for their playfulness, their willingness to go left where others would go right, their boldfaced assertion that cinema was then and this is now and it’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.

Like most of my generation, I love these films. Like most film geeks, I love them even more because they speak to me and others of my ilk in what we rather arrogantly assume to be Morse code; they are films about films, about the films we love and figure no one else has ever heard of and that no one in their right minds would waste time talking about — and then there’s this motor-mouth with his wild eyes and flailing arms waxing poetic and at a mile a minute about them as if they were the most important things in the world and you know what  maybe they are. Quentin’s early films helped make “cinephilia” cool and admirable instead of odd quirks to raise eyebrows like collecting Beanie Babies or buying comics or doing any number of activities which society deems anti-social and thus juvenile and reproachable. They made film geeks and film geekdom strangely fashionable; they get a pass if nothing else than for the fact that they so clearly and plainly illustrate that Quentin is indeed “one of us.”

And then a weird thing happened. Quentin blew up and, following a poorly received (if unjustly so) third feature (Jackie Brown), went AWOL for six years and left a legion of devotees hanging and waiting around with baited breath. The long-awaited (and long overdue) Kill Bill films were a momentous occasion, and in retrospect they delivered — they’re good, solid films in their own right, not exactly Pulp Fiction but not really trying to be anyhow. And at the same time these films defined the trajectory of Quentin’s career post-Brown; where once the filmmaker guided us along with a certain grace, tongue planted firmly in cheek, now he tosses concept and image and “homage” and everything under the sun at the screen all at once and laughs gleefully while doing it, long and hard and full of pumped-up gusto. His following film, the ironically titled Death Proof (considering it did in fact did die a quick and painful death at the box office as the second half of Grindhouse), could reasonably be described as watching the filmmaker masturbating furiously for two hours on celluloid and talking himself silly while doing it.

These later films are more or less a mess, to varying degrees; there’s this lingering sense that Quentin’s regressed somewhat in the last few years, casting off the bold maturity of Jackie Brown to play in a vast, empty sandbox by himself, where he’s free to do anything he wants and go wherever his heart desires on the slightest whim. Some would call this freedom; others, indulgence.
Which leads me to the heart of the matter, the World War II epic calling itself Inglourious Basterds (the misspelling is intentional, for reasons no one but Quentin seems to know). Originally envisioned as a “guys on a mission” throwback (think The Dirty Dozen with a potty mouth), Basterds has been in the works since before the general public even caught wind of Pulp Fiction a good fifteen years ago, though only now is it finally gracing screens worldwide. Indeed this could very well be Quentin’s epic; it’s broader in scope and more bombastic in execution than any the man’s previous films, including the already bloated and over-the-top Kill Bill series. Over the years, however, the film seems to have morphed far beyond its original scope– the final cut feels less like a Dirty Dozen riff than an ode to Cinema Paradiso.

And much as it may surprise you, believe the hype: This film is fucking glorious.

Inglourious Basterds follows two main plotlines. In the first, a young Jewish refugee named Shoshanna (played with steely grace by Mélanie Laurent) takes to posing as the owner of a French repertory theater following the execution of her family at the hands of the S.S., specifically famed Col. Hans “The Jew Hunter” Landa (a scene-stealing Christoph Waltz), and comes perilously close to watching her façade unravel when she catches the eye and attention of a young S.S. war hero-cum-movie star (Daniel Brühl). In the second, a group of Jewish American Allies led by Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt, channeling Rhett Butler) terrorize the Third Reich with regular ambushes, baseball bats to the cranium and (fair warning to the faint of heart) meticulously detailed scalpings mimicking those famously administered by Apache resistance fighters. At a certain point, of course, these two plots begin to convene; a plan is set into motion to eliminate a fair chunk of the S.S. top brass by infiltrating the premiere of a Goebbels-helmed propaganda film and making sure no one comes out alive. And as luck would have it, the premiere just so happens to be taking place at Shoshanna’s theater.


It’s interesting to note just how intrigued Tarantino seems to be by the Nazi propaganda machine (and by association Herr Goebbels himself, who appears in the film about as frequently as the title characters); had Inglourious Basterds been released at the height of World War II it would itself function as an unabashed, unapologetic piece of propaganda. It’s a film less concerned with facts and historical accuracy than with ideas and homespun mythology: Nazis are evil, and they most definitely need to be taught a lesson. (“Nazis ain’t got no humanity”, Raine snarls at his would-be compatriots, “and they need to be destroyed.”) Over some two and a half hours we watch as Nazis are beaten to death, pumped full of bullets and, in a grand finale, herded into a locked room by the hundreds and blown to bits (perhaps the most obvious and satisfying spin on concentration camp atrocities we’ve seen at the cinema). Basterds is wish fulfillment to its very core, a revisionist tale in which the Jews (including Shoshanna, dealing the Third Reich the fatal blow) make the Nazis run scared. Its seventy years of watching Jews herded into boxcars and sent off to a very certain death (in films like Schindler’s List and Shoah) rewritten, a revenge fantasy in which the ultimate “fuck you” is dealt by the cinema itself (both literally and figuratively).

In pure Tarantino fashion, Basterds’ lifeblood is cinema. Scenes of extreme violence doled out at a lightning-fast clip punctuate long stretches wherein characters discuss the merits of Goebbels’ propaganda machine, the work of Leni Riefenstahl and G.W. Pabst, and even a great bit where King Kong is used as an allegory for the American slave trade. (Also notable: characters Aldo Raine, Hugo Stiglitz and Ed Fenech are all tributes to classic character actors of the same name). Of course the fall of the Third Reich must take place in a cinema — where else can history be rewritten with such unflappable confidence as on the silver screen? Those expecting an “accurate” account need look elsewhere; Basterds is pure fantasy, and oh how joyously crazy it all is. It’s a film where we’re asked to cheer on an S.S. officer getting his skull bashed in (as the Basterds do themselves), where Hitler is reduced to a raving loony with a ridiculous inferiority complex, a film that makes even “Springtime for Hitler” look like a History channel special in comparison. It’s fiction totally run amuck, tearing apart and chewing on things as they happened and presenting its own version of how things should have happened. And tribute to Tarantino’s innumerable talents, by the end we’re cheering louder and harder than we really have any right to be — it’s a film so gleefully preposterous we have no choice but to throw preconceptions to the wind and just roll with it.

In perhaps the film’s most tongue-in-cheek moment, Pitt’s Aldo stares right into the camera after carving a swastika in the head of a rather deserving party and muses “I think this just might be my masterpiece.” (Wink wink, nudge nudge.) While Basterds certainly finds the filmmaker back on the right track, calling it a masterpiece may be a bit of a stretch. It’s certainly not a film without its faults; it runs a bit overlong, has a few jokes that fall flat and stay there, and may be just a bit unsettling (as watching anyone beaten to death will be, no matter what uniform they happen to be wearing). It’s not a perfect film, no — and its status as Tarantino’s “best since Pulp Fiction” is highly debatable (this reviewer still prefers Jackie Brown). What it is, in the most basic sense, is a roller coaster ride captured to celluloid: It starts at a leisured pace, builds and builds, climaxes, starts over again, and finishes with a hell of a bang.

I’ve seen Inglourious Basterds three times now, and each time I find myself loving the film more and more. All faults aside, it manages to accomplish something most films only hope to aspire to (and rarely achieve): It makes you want to see it again right after, to pick up on what you worry you might have missed, to experience the highs and lows all over again as if you’re doing so with a fresh pair of eyes and a clear mind. Despite its myriad flaws it ingratiates itself with the viewer in such a way that you forgive and forget what would be death knells in lesser films. In other words, it’s a film that, viewed in the right state of mind, you really just can’t help but fall in love with. After Jackie Brown I must admit I worried we’d never see that side of Quentin again; Basterds proves it may still be too early to put his first three back on that pedestal, to sigh and say he’ll never reach those heights again so why even bother trying. In the end, Basterds proves above all else you can’t count Quentin out — he can still wow you, still floor you, and still make you experience joy and unabashed love for a film that marches proudly to its own beat, expectations and preconceptions be damned.

And in the end, it leaves one anxious to see what Tarantino will come up with next.

Cliffs Notes: Shit is self-consciously over-the-top, and it's doing so to make a point. Whether or not you agree with that point doesn't mean it isn't there.

[Cheebs]

The best parts in IB were with shoushana the theater owner how can  anyone hate on that part! Though I am a sucker for anything in French. Speaking of French I finally saw Le Petit Soldat for the first time. Not Godard's best but a great movie. Anna Karina . Can't wait for the full wide re-release in theaters of Breathless this summer even though it is one of his weaker movies from that period.

[The Dark Shake 3000]

You need to see Sympathy for the Devil. It's halfway between Godard's playful 60s stuff and the fucking out there 70s politco mind fuckery. Also, Mick Jagger.

[youtube=560,345][/youtube]

The Black Panther scene is amazing.

[Ichirou]

That's actually a really good piece of writing, Shake.  Why'd you leave JPRaup's site anyway?  You were seriously the best writer they had.

[Ichirou]

On a side note, I'm so glad Shake and Cheebs are back.  I'll probably be posting way more in this thread now that they are.

[The Dark Shake 3000]

That's actually a really good piece of writing, Shake.  Why'd you leave JPRaup's site anyway?  You were seriously the best writer they had.

That's why.  :tbslol

[Cheebs]

You need to see Sympathy for the Devil. It's halfway between Godard's playful 60s stuff and the fucking out there 70s politco mind fuckery. Also, Mick Jagger.

I downloaded that, I plan to watch it this week. godard

[Ichirou]

That's actually a really good piece of writing, Shake.  Why'd you leave JPRaup's site anyway?  You were seriously the best writer they had.

That's why.  :tbslol

I actually started to read that site when Cheebs (or was it PD?) mentioned you had started working for it.  The breaking point for me was not the sub-AICN-level written reviews, but the fawning interview one of the guys did with one of the producers of the fucking G.I. Joe movie.

You really were way too good for them.  That IB article is really well done.

[The Dark Shake 3000]

Yeah, and whenever I tried to get them to actually proofread what the fuck they were writing or reconsider writing editorials on why Michael Bay is awesome and haters ftl they would act like I had e-leprosy or something. That site was (and still is, from what I've seen) such a piece of shit.

[brawndolicious]

ninteho, it's the fact that Tarantino is taking something that filmmakers do ALL THE TIME (rewrite history) and being completely blatant and out there about it.  I thought it was a pretty brave thing to do, honestly.  He could've gotten tons of backlash from Jewish groups.

The part about Jews being driven to psychopathic bloodlust against any random Nazi is fine with me, honestly.  The part with the cinema-owner's grand plans to execute the top brass of the Nazi leadership as they appreciate their propaganda is specifically where it loses me.  There's no way I can keep interested in something that forced.

[The Dark Shake 3000]

ninteho, it's the fact that Tarantino is taking something that filmmakers do ALL THE TIME (rewrite history) and being completely blatant and out there about it.  I thought it was a pretty brave thing to do, honestly.  He could've gotten tons of backlash from Jewish groups.

The part about Jews being driven to psychopathic bloodlust against any random Nazi is fine with me, honestly.  The part with the cinema-owner's grand plans to execute the top brass of the Nazi leadership as they appreciate their propaganda is specifically where it loses me.  There's no way I can keep interested in something that forced.

Hmm, sounds more like you had a problem with the execution than the idealogy. But still, even if you don't like how it plays out you can't really say it's "just a popcorn" flick. I mean I'm not particularly fond of Schindler's List myself, but I wouldn't venture to say it's just an empty blockbuster or anything like that.

[Ichirou]

Yeah, and whenever I tried to get them to actually proofread what the fuck they were writing or reconsider writing editorials on why Michael Bay is awesome and haters ftl they would act like I had e-leprosy or something. That site was (and still is, from what I've seen) such a piece of shit.

TBH, I figured you were working for them for the access you could get to festivals and interviews and shit.

[Cheebs]

ninteho, it's the fact that Tarantino is taking something that filmmakers do ALL THE TIME (rewrite history) and being completely blatant and out there about it.  I thought it was a pretty brave thing to do, honestly.  He could've gotten tons of backlash from Jewish groups.

The part about Jews being driven to psychopathic bloodlust against any random Nazi is fine with me, honestly.  The part with the cinema-owner's grand plans to execute the top brass of the Nazi leadership as they appreciate their propaganda is specifically where it loses me.  There's no way I can keep interested in something that forced.

Favorite scene from any movie last year
[youtube=560,345][/youtube]

[brawndolicious]

No I didn't like the idea of rewriting just about everything that had to do with Nazi ideology, leaders, and propaganda.  Those are actual real things that a normal person should not be fantasizing some alternate reality about.

[The Dark Shake 3000]

Yeah, and whenever I tried to get them to actually proofread what the fuck they were writing or reconsider writing editorials on why Michael Bay is awesome and haters ftl they would act like I had e-leprosy or something. That site was (and still is, from what I've seen) such a piece of shit.

TBH, I figured you were working for them for the access you could get to festivals and interviews and shit.

That's why I originally signed on, until I realized they really held no pull whatsoever. The most high profile interviews/access they got was from the folks behind Boondock Saints II  

[Cheebs]

No I didn't like the idea of rewriting just about everything that had to do with Nazi ideology, leaders, and propaganda.  Those are actual real things that a normal person should not be fantasizing some alternate reality about.

What is the point of movies if we have to remain 100% historically accurate? That's what docs are for. Raiders of the lost ark abused nazi history almost as much yet still was great.

Yeah, and whenever I tried to get them to actually proofread what the fuck they were writing or reconsider writing editorials on why Michael Bay is awesome and haters ftl they would act like I had e-leprosy or something. That site was (and still is, from what I've seen) such a piece of shit.

TBH, I figured you were working for them for the access you could get to festivals and interviews and shit.

It was me who pointed out the site to him and that they were looking for writers. My bad.  

[The Dark Shake 3000]

No I didn't like the idea of rewriting just about everything that had to do with Nazi ideology, leaders, and propaganda.  Those are actual real things that a normal person should not be fantasizing some alternate reality about.

So I take it you hate movies, then? Because that's basically what all movies do. Subvert and reimagine real things for entertainment value and (occasionally, and certainly in Basterds' case) as commentary.

[Ichirou]

No I didn't like the idea of rewriting just about everything that had to do with Nazi ideology, leaders, and propaganda.  Those are actual real things that a normal person should not be fantasizing some alternate reality about.

No offense, but that type of shit happens ALL THE TIME in movies, dude.  Multiple people get 'condensed' into one character, timelines are changed for dramatic effect, people are shown attending events they were never at IRL, etc., etc.

[Cheebs]

No I didn't like the idea of rewriting just about everything that had to do with Nazi ideology, leaders, and propaganda.  Those are actual real things that a normal person should not be fantasizing some alternate reality about.

So I take it you hate movies, then? Because that's basically what all movies do. Subvert and reimagine real things for entertainment value and (occasionally, and certainly in Basterds' case) as commentary.

A movie can turn hitler into a hero who secretly freed Jews for all I care, as long as it is good it doesn't matter if a movie shits on history/a religion/etc.

[Ichirou]

My mom actually mentioned how silly she thought it was that Hitler gets his head blown off at the end of Inglorious Bastards when that never happened IRL, until I mentioned to her how one of her favorite movies, Michael Collins, has a ton of historical inaccuracies/inventions.  Seriously, why is one thought of as a 'good' historical film while the other gets dismissed as "a popcorn flick."

If anything, what Michael Collins does is more egregious since less people know about that part of Irish history so they'll take what's said in the movie as the gospel truth without seeing all the numerous little inaccuracies that constantly add up throughout the picture's running time.

[The Dark Shake 3000]

It seriously perplexes me how someone can hate on movies that take dramatic license and employ fictional elements in service of it's own idealogy. I honestly can't see how someone can claim to enjoy any movies with that sense of self-righteous mock anger.

[Cheebs]

John Travolta's movie about Bill Clinton, Primary Colors, changed a lot about what actually happened. I say we burn the motherfucker.

[The Dark Shake 3000]

Citizen Kane is supposedly about William Randal Hearst, but in this "movie" they changed his name and he's played by some dickhead named Orson Welles. What a crock of shit.

[Ichirou]

John Travolta's movie about Bill Clinton, Primary Colors, changed a lot about what actually happened. I say we burn the motherfucker.

They even changed Clinton's name! Those assholes!

[Ichirou]

I think this is the most I've posted in a movie thread since I came back to EB.

[Cheebs]

I think this is the most I've posted in a movie thread since I came back to EB.

Read pd's first post in the topic and you'll see why.

[Great Rumbler]

Yeah, I don't mind IB's historical inaccuracies because WWII is a subject that has been drawn from for 65 years and has been pounded into the American consciousness for at least as long. It's a thoroughly dissected subject. More than that, however, is how IB doesn't try to "trick" the audience into thinking that what it's portraying is the absolute truth [as with a movie like Pearl Harbor] and goes out of it's way to come right up to you and say "I know this isn't what happened, but...". It also does what it does to play with expectations. Did anyone honestly think that Hitler would buy it in the end? Be honest!

[The Dark Shake 3000]

Yeah, I don't mind IB's historical inaccuracies because WWII is a subject that has been drawn from for 65 years and has been pounded into the American consciousness for at least as long. It's a thoroughly dissected subject. More than that, however, is how IB doesn't try to "trick" the audience into thinking that what it's portraying is the absolute truth [as with a movie like Pearl Harbor] and goes out of it's way to come right up to you and say "I know this isn't what happened, but...". It also does what it does to play with expectations. Did anyone honestly think that Hitler would buy it in the end? Be honest!

I read the script before seeing it, but judging by the reactions around me like every time I saw it no one thought Tarantino would go all the way. Then again, it's fucking Tarantino. I'm surprised he didn't have Eli Roth strap the motherfucker to a chair and slowly slice his dick off while dancing to "Heart of Glass".

[Ichirou]

I read the script too.  I think it got leaked before filming even began.

[The Dark Shake 3000]

I read the script too.  I think it got leaked before filming even began.

It got leaked like the week Tarantino finished it, IIRC. I remember reading it before they had even announced Pitt was attached, when it was still just a rumor.

[brawndolicious]

No I didn't like the idea of rewriting just about everything that had to do with Nazi ideology, leaders, and propaganda.  Those are actual real things that a normal person should not be fantasizing some alternate reality about.

What is the point of movies if we have to remain 100% historically accurate? That's what docs are for. Raiders of the lost ark abused nazi history almost as much yet still was great.

I don't care if they rewrote some things in THIS movie to make the story flow better or be funny.  But the movie's goal is to make the viewer want revenge against the Nazi characters which doesn't work at all when you rewrite what actual Nazi's were like and what their propaganda techniques were like.  I can enjoy it as a popcorn flick but nothing more.

[Ichirou]

I want to rebut your argument, nintenho, but could you clarify this for me first - How did it rewrite what actual Nazis were like?  Do you mean personality-wise or what?

And Nazis were fairly famous for using films for propaganda purposes - Triumph of the Will, man.  Herr Goebbels was heavily involved in the film industry.

[The Dark Shake 3000]

No I didn't like the idea of rewriting just about everything that had to do with Nazi ideology, leaders, and propaganda.  Those are actual real things that a normal person should not be fantasizing some alternate reality about.

What is the point of movies if we have to remain 100% historically accurate? That's what docs are for. Raiders of the lost ark abused nazi history almost as much yet still was great.

I don't care if they rewrote some things in THIS movie to make the story flow better or be funny.  But the movie's goal is to make the viewer want revenge against the Nazi characters which doesn't work at all when you rewrite what actual Nazi's were like and what their propaganda techniques were like.  I can enjoy it as a popcorn flick but nothing more.

That's not the movie's goal. You still seem to think Tarantino was just making a simple revenge movie, when the rest of us have already told you what's really going on. Inglourious Basterds is a commentary about movies more than anything else, and for that alone I can't help but admire what Tarantino was going for.

[Ichirou]

TBH, you could say that about most of Tarantino's movies, but I think what nintenho is perplexed about is the fact that it was done in such a different matter than we'd become accustomed to (i.e., taking complete scenes and sequences from other movies and repurposing them).

[The Dark Shake 3000]

Eh, Basterds took it in a far, far more epic direction than anything he's done before. Those are more informed by movies than necessarily commenting on them, I think.

[Ichirou]

Point taken.

[Powerslave]

The best thing about Inglorious Basterds was without a doubt Hans Landa. What an amazing performance

[brawndolicious]

I want to rebut your argument, nintenho, but could you clarify this for me first - How did it rewrite what actual Nazis were like?  Do you mean personality-wise or what?
And Nazis were fairly famous for using films for propaganda purposes - Triumph of the Will, man.  Herr Goebbels was heavily involved in the film industry.

It doesn't really try to show any spectrum of emotions and beliefs to the characters.  Their all meant to serve a role to the alternate reality.  Basically yes, their personalities are not really anything like real human beings.

German propaganda was a very serious, important operation to anybody who spends time reading up on it and so it wouldn't make sense to really rewrite or even include it in the movie unless you were keeping fairly close to how it's normally portrayed.  IB basically says it was just the bad guys' pornography.

That's not the movie's goal. You still seem to think Tarantino was just making a simple revenge movie, when the rest of us have already told you what's really going on. Inglourious Basterds is a commentary about movies more than anything else, and for that alone I can't help but admire what Tarantino was going for.

Can't really buy that when every character shows sadistic undertones and is barely given enough screentime in 2.5 hours of alternate history.  If it was a much more focused and even movie, then you might have a point but all the self-referential commentary and violence don't add up to much when they're so random.  It feels too shallow to even be considered as exploiting other WW2 movie stereotypes.  Maybe if you're evaluating it on paper, before even going to the theater, then it seems like the parts should add up to more than just a revenge-flick but it doesn't deliver on that goal when actually watching the movie.

[Eric P]

just finished Vampyres, the 1974 sapphic vampire film.  it started off horrible but then got better and better until they ran out of money and forgot to put a real ending in.

very fun.

edit: there's an interview piece w/ the actresses and they've aged quite well

[The Dark Shake 3000]

That's a personal opinion, nintenho. That doesn't mean the film is a shallow popcorn movie, just that you didn't connect with (or misinterpreted) what the film was going for.

[brawndolicious]

popcorn flick.

[The Dark Shake 3000]

<<Something here about the unstoppable force and the unmovable object>>

[AdmiralViscen]

Inglourious Basterds is fucking awesome. I'd watch it again right now. Maybe I will.

[WrikaWrek]

The girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Pretty good "detective" movie. All starts with the disappearance of a girl 40 years ago! Recommend it if you like these kind of movies, like the Zodiac and shit.

[The Dark Shake 3000]

The girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Pretty good "detective" movie. All starts with the disappearance of a girl 40 years ago! Recommend it if you like these kind of movies, like the Zodiac and shit.

Have you read the novel? I picked it up after tons of people raved about it and it was such a boring mess I stopped slogging through it about halfway (it's long as fuck too, so it's not like I didn't give it a chance).

[WrikaWrek]

The girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Pretty good "detective" movie. All starts with the disappearance of a girl 40 years ago! Recommend it if you like these kind of movies, like the Zodiac and shit.

Have you read the novel? I picked it up after tons of people raved about it and it was such a boring mess I stopped slogging through it about halfway (it's long as fuck too, so it's not like I didn't give it a chance).

No. Don't think it was even released over here. Movie isn't boring at all though!

[Ichirou]

<<Something here about the unstoppable force and the unmovable object>>

Yeah, that's why I never argue films with nintenho.

[Cheebs]

Girl with the dragon tattoo is coming to my local art house in a week or so, I really wanna see it. David Fincher is doing the American remake, apparently starring Carey Mulligan. That should be interesting.

[Ichirou]

For serious?  Color me interested in the remake now.  Fincher remaking this is akin to Scorsese remaking Infernal Affairs.  I have no doubt the American version will end up being the superior one, unlike with the whole Let The Right One In debacle.

[Solo]

I didnt come over here from GAF, past the dredges of Mupepe's forum, and jump out of a fucking aer-o-plane to teach am nintendo lessons in humanity.