Anticipating Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds"...

THIS THREAD WILL GO WELL

Oh, yeah - here's the second picture they've got on that page. Good lord, man:

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44558000/jpg/_44558765_quentin2_body1afp.jpg

"I'm not trying to be on the edge, I'm not trying to go against the grain or anything, I'm just telling my stories and I've been lucky enough to actually find an audience."

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44770000/jpg/_44770655_tarantino226_getty.jpg

http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u257/hash52/popeye.gif

Let me just ask a somewhat loaded question:

If all of the swords in Kill Bill were lightsabers instead - but nothing else were different - how would you feel?

-- Girolamo Savonarola, Friday, October 10, 2003 8:56 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

Come to think of it, he's looking pretty Richard Kiel in those pics!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/graphics/2006/11/20/bfkiel20.jpg

"modern, in-your-face" ________ is like Tarantino movie pitch Mad Libs

I would love to see Quentin Tarantino's Popeye.

"I'm not trying to be on the edge, I'm not trying to go against the grain or anything, I'm just telling my stories and I've been lucky enough to actually find an audience."

-- Tracer Hand

why is this being requoted?

Because it's one of the oldest interview clichés in the book? There's a whole thread dedicated to musicians' variations on this line on ILM.

He was speaking at the Provincetown Film Festival - where he received a special Filmmaker on the Edge award at the weekend, and was clearly pleased his script was all wrapped up.

I've been waiting a while for a WWII movie that doesn't look like a period piece, but I don't know if I'm too happy about Tarantino doing it.

I think there's a chance it'll be really fucking good, but I'm not holding my breath.

no, don't hold your breath, you'll fall over.

The Thin Red Line is good at not being a period piece.

looking forward to tropic thunder, this not so much

I guess Sam Fuller wasn't "in yr face" enough?

Kelly's Heroes, yo

i'm looking forward to this!

Just found the screenplay online...

Link?

he just finished it didn't he?

I found it here...

motherfucker cannot spell to save his life

sure is an illiterate mothefucker. so is PTA. enjoying it so far though.

apparently the title really is spelt "basterds"

yeah i don't get that as not even the orig was spelled that way

It's not going to be the original (piece of shit, I'd bet) anymore than Grindhouse was grindhouse.

Apparently "bastards" would keep it from being displayed on posters, marquees, etc., in places that have profanity regulations.

and if you believe that...

What rescued cult figures (a la Pam G, Forster, D Carradine) will be in this?

mike meyers

Cast

[edit]The Allies
[edit]The Basterds
Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine aka "Aldo the Apache"[24] , an illiterate hillbilly from the mountains of Tennessee, who puts together a team of eight Jewish-American soldiers. He bears a rope burn on his neck, which will never be mentioned in the film (the script hints that he might have survived a lynching). One of the film´s main protagonists: the character has been described as "a voluble, freewheeling outlaw" similar to Jules Winnfield from Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.[25] His first appearance in the film is a subtle homage to George Carlin's The Indian Sergeant routine.
Eli Roth as Sgt. Donnie Donowitz:[22], "a baseball bat-swinging Nazi hunter" who is known as "The Bear Jew" among Nazis.[26] Some of them seem to believe that Donowitz is in fact, a vengeful golem. It is rumored that the role was originally conceived for Adam Sandler, who was in talks with Tarantino before declining due to schedule conflicts with the film Funny People.
B. J. Novak as PFC Utivich aka "The Little One"[27]
Til Schweiger as Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz: A German-born psychopath recruited by Aldo Raine to kill Nazis.[28]
Samm Levine as PFC Hirschberg [29]
Omar Doom as PFC Ulmer [30]
Michael Bacall as Zimmerman[30]
Gedeon Burkhard as CPL. Wilhelm Wicki, an Austrian Jew [31]
Paul Rust as an unnamed Basterd[23]
[edit]The British
Michael Fassbender as Lt. Archie Hicox, a "snappy and handsome British Lieutenant" and movie buff. He is described in the script as a "young George Sanders type". One of the film´s main protagonists, albeit introduced later in the movie.
Mike Myers as Gen. Ed Fenech: A British "military mastermind" who provides a plot to kill Nazi leadership.[32]
Rod Taylor as Winston Churchill, the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom[23]
[edit]The Jews (Occupied French)
Mélanie Laurent as Shoshanna Dreyfus: A young Jewish girl on the run. One of the film´s main protoganists.[33]
Léa Seydoux as Young Shoshanna[34]
Cloris Leachman as Mrs. Himmelstein[23]
[edit]The Axis Powers
[edit]The Nazis
Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa: A charming yet sinister pipe-smoking Nazi officer nicknamed the "Jew Hunter" in reference to his keen ability to locate Jews hiding throughout France.[27] The primary antagonist of the film.
Daniel Brühl as Frederick Zoller, A German War Hero starring in Joseph Goebbels newest Propaganda Film[23]
August Diehl as Major Deiter Hellstrom[23]
Sönke Möhring as Private Butz[23]
Richard Sammel as Sgt. Werner Rachtman[23]
Sylvester Groth as Joseph Goebbels[23]
Martin Wuttke as Adolf Hitler[23]
[edit]Other Roles
Samuel L. Jackson as The Narrator[35]
Diane Kruger as Bridget von Hammersmark, a popular film star in Nazi Germany and a spy for the Allies.[27]
Julie Dreyfus as Francesca Mondino: Joseph Goebbel's mistress.[36]
Maggie Cheung as Madame Mimeux, a beautiful French woman who owns a cinema in Paris.[35][37]
Ludger Pistor as Wolfgang[23], a role Tarantino added specifically for him.
Christian Berkel as Eric, the Barkeeper[23]
Jacky Ido as Marcel, Shosanna´s beloved and a projectionist at Mimeux´s cinema[30]
Denis Menochet as Perrier LaPadite[30]
Jana Pallaske as an unconfirmed character[38]
Enzo G. Castellari has said that Tarantino "wrote him a small part in the script."[citation needed]

this sounds pretty awes imo

ya i am on the record as being psyched

Mike Myers as Gen. Ed Fenech: A British "military mastermind" who provides a plot to kill Nazi leadership.
Rod Taylor as Winston Churchill, the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Yeah, Rod Taylor as Churchill totally!

could be his most idiotic project yet.

max, name 3 Rod Taylor films.

Michael Fassbender is great in the forthcoming Hunger, starving to death as Bobby Sands.

i cant wait for this... even tho there is definitely a chance it will be total shit

Eli Roth as Sgt. Donnie Donowitz:[22], "a baseball bat-swinging Nazi hunter" who is known as "The Bear Jew" among Nazis.[26] Some of them seem to believe that Donowitz is in fact, a vengeful golem. It is rumored that the role was originally conceived for Adam Sandler, who was in talks with Tarantino before declining due to schedule conflicts with the film Funny People.

How many shirtless scenes do you think he'll strongarm Tarantino into letting him do?

lol am i not allowed to be psyched for this if i dont know who rod taylor is

god max, don't you know ANYTHING?

xp: YA GOT IT

Hell, I'm stuck after The Birds and The Time Machine.

the birds, time machine, inglourious basterds--thats three

zabriskie point, according to the internet.

dr morbius, name 3 samm levine films

hahaha

max, watching good old movies will lower the status of Tarantino's hommages to shitty old movies in your eyes and ultimately save you Big $$$.

forthcoming?

actually it would be cheaper to watch one tarantino movie than to watch the 30 or so old movies that influenced it

thus saving you Big $$$.

i hate movies actually i never watch them so..... sorry

xp: but not your soul.

only Tarsem movies?

"omar doom"?!

"Julie Dreyfus as Francesca Mondino: Joseph Goebbel's mistress.[36]"

Hahaha

Oh wait Julie Dreyfus isn't the lady from Seinfeld. Nevermind. It's not funny now.

once again: total travesty or greatest. movie. ever. no gray area.

It sounds pretty fun to me.

Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa: A charming yet sinister pipe-smoking Nazi officer nicknamed the "Jew Hunter" in reference to his keen ability to locate Jews hiding throughout France.[27] The primary antagonist of the film.

this could easily become the best hammy austrian villain performance since brandauer in never say never again.

http://i40.tinypic.com/15rxw80.jpg

i'm anticipating ryan from the office shooting nazis!

Holy cow does Pitt look like Brando there.

w/ a bit of Robert Ryan

and Faulkner!

& Eug O'Neill?

& Katherine Hepburn

click-through for HD

could be a pip, could be a pip.

man idk... pitt soulds really awkward delivering that last line

http://videogum.com/archives/trailer/inglorious-basterds-looks-terr_052171.html

This movie looks very bad.

i can't tell what it looks like. preview seems more like a threat than an enticement.

The whole thing looks like the U.S. in Iraq in 2003, nu-metal and all.

looks terrible. can't wait.

also am looking to the fowardly, but EZ on $$$. preview implies some way OTT strike-down-with-furious-vengeance porn. kinda creepy

Weird preview.

also am looking to the fowardly, but EZ on $$$. preview implies some way OTT strike-down-with-furious-vengeance porn. kinda creepy

― noticing the cloud come (contenderizer), Wednesday, February 11, 2009 11:36 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

uh have you seen the kill bill films?

yeah, i've seen the kill bill flicks, but that was more "i'm gonna kill these specific people who fucked me over", rather than let's just annihilate these people cuz they're the enemy. subtle but cruces. (and tho i dug the kill bills, i was kinda hoping QT'd turn the tables on the bride in #2, WR2 the clarity and nobility of her mission)

i dunno. maybe we're supposed to be at first gung-ho'd and then increasingly horrified/o_Ofied by BP's psycho pep talk. in which case, cool, cuz it's an interesting idea and that's definitely the effect it had on me

then again, i am crybaby lib wimp, so fuck do i know about war movies?

how do i shot germans?

thats more like it

not too horrified about a squad tasked with capping nazis tbh.

I think all the soldiers in this group are supposed to be Jewish, right? I think they have a pretty specific motivation for killing nazis.

horripilation due less to the idea of capping nazis (yay cool) than with making a crazy bloodthirsty "lets go butcher them foreign fucks!" war movie at this parteekular point in time. less egregious than it would have been in, say, 2004, but also less sensible

quentin tarantino in not giving a fuck about my political squeamishness shocker

yes, it's a jewish death squad featuring samm levine

i stopped reading the screenplay because I realised i was actually enjoying this and should wait until the film comes out. brad pitt has no charisma though.

But why it reminds me of dumb-headedness in Iraq and elsewhere is that idea that they raped and plundered, and so we're going to rape and plunder x10. Which worked as Hollywood when Connery said "He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue," but when it's military folks it's folks scalping in the name of the country they're defending, and look where that's gotten us.

We've been through eight years of the kids of WWII trying to act out these revenge fantasies, and it keeps this from being the right time for this kind of Hollywood fantasy to work.

And, I mean, I'm a big fan of Kill Bill and even the Hostel movies. And liked the screenplay for this one, too, when I read it last summer. But the preview, at least, taps against instead of tapping into some kind of collective fantasy circa 2009, is my prediction.

(xpost - agree with what contender is saying about butchering foreign fucks)

they're nazis

anyway this looks entertaining

wolfenstein: the movie

man stfu this looks great

the kill bill trailers aren't spectacular either fwiw

What?!?! The trailer for KB1 was awesome.

this trailer looks good imo

Mike Myers as Gen. Ed Fenech: A British "military mastermind" who provides a plot to kill Nazi leadership.[33]

Eli Roth as Sgt. Donnie Donowitz:[23] "A baseball bat-swinging Nazi hunter" who is known as "The Bear Jew" among Nazis.[27] Some of them seem to believe that Donowitz is in fact, a vengeful golem.

Still sad that Elaine from Seinfeld isn't in this.

the trailer's look is subjective.
but more importantly, how's the script?
it's available on line i think and people say its bad.

people say a lot of shit

did you read it?

wtf @ reading scripts of films you haven't seen

a few pages, seemed good, but you can never really tell how shit will play onscreen. scripts are fundamentally just blueprints.

it kinda ruins the script-reading when you watch the movie 1st

plus also, scalpenstein: the movie

lol this movie is like a 13-year-old-me's fever dream

xpyeah you might as well just watch the movie then

i'm really looking forward to this

"wtf @ reading scripts of films you haven't seen"

Yeah only Momus does that shit.

anyway here is the script:

http://www.cineobscure.com/inglorious-bastards-script-sold-to-miramax/

MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

"The script has leaked, a script insiders are freaking out about. I’ve read it and cannot believe how good this is; better than Pulp Fiction ? I think so. When you get to the Chapter in Paris where it will be filmed in French New Wave Black and White, you won’t believe the mastery."

Amazing imagination!

Col Landa:
" i love rumors! facts can be so misleading,where rumors,true or false are often reveling"

trailer looks great, but I hafta admit, I have anti-nazi biases

unlike some people

http://rlv.zcache.com/i_d_g_i_i_don_t_get_it_shirt-p235533424893032205tdh0_210.jpg

i read the first act. it was preposterous. the trailer is lame but the whole idea is so ridiculously awesome that i am vv anticipatory.

read the first section. it reads like a damn good time, though super cliched (suprise you!) and more a pretitle intro than a proper chapitre. ten minutes onscreen? last chapter, which i didn't read, is called "revenge of the giant face".

reat the 1st chapter too."super cliched" is kinda otm.

teh first "trash" holocaust movie?

...or maybe the 2nd after that Tom Cruise new flick...

wonder if it will cause a controversy about the way of dealing with the subject, or,in 2009,after jonathan littel, everything is possible

bros its like a minute long trailer

they're nazis

But this is what I'm saying: telling a revenge story in 2009 where the heroes use anything at their disposal to torture and punish the enemy (Nazis, Al-Quaeda -- any human enemy) is going to be perceived differently than it would have been a few years ago. The idea that we treat them like bad dogs because they treat us like dogs is so 2003.

u know what would be rad, is if we refrained from talking abt the implications of this dam movie until weve all seen the whole dam thing

Yeah, I talking about the marketing of the movie in this preview as much as the movie itself. The screenplay didn't seem outdated like the preview does. Then again, the preview seems a little like the one I saw a dozen times for that Taratino biker movie last year.

re the cliche-ed-ness: that intro chapter's called "once upon a time...in nazi occupied france", which pretty clearly establishes what QT is going for right off the bat.

let me guess. . .

he's going for nazi occupied france. do i have that right?

fairy tale

wonder if it will cause a controversy about the way of dealing with the subject, or,in 2009,after jonathan littel, everything is possible

It can't be more offensive than the Reader.

having not seen it, what's the great sin of the reader?

anticipating Til Schweiger as Hugo Stiglitz

where is that Eric Rohmer hommage he promised about 15 years ago? NEVER GONNA HAPPEN.

teh first "trash" holocaust movie?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shewolf.jpg

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~julieann/lovecamp7.JPG

http://ventvox.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/sshell.jpg

First image should have been "Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS"

they're nazis

― John Hyman (misspelled intentionally) (omar little), Wednesday, February 11, 2009 7:07 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this should just be repasted after every post in this thread

Come to think of it, he's looking pretty Richard Kiel in those pics!

― Savannah Smiles, Tuesday, June 24, 2008 12:34 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

they're nazis

― John Hyman (misspelled intentionally) (omar little), Wednesday, February 11, 2009 7:07 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

> re the cliche-ed-ness: that intro chapter's called "once upon a time...in nazi occupied france", which pretty clearly establishes what QT is going for right off the bat.

Seen in the trailer with a Sergio Leone bloodsplatter no less.

That Tarantino! He always plays it close to the chest.

Full trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/weinstein/inglouriousbasterds/

so weird. can't wait.

The only thing in that trailer that does not bode 100% well is the august release date.

http://www.vanityfair.com/images/culture/2009/05/inglourious-basterds-0905-pp05.jpg

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/05/inglourious-basterds-portfolio200905

I don't get the Hugo Stiglitz reference upthread. Is he famous outside Mexico?

OH, there's a character named like that!

I thougth it was a reference to a B-movie actor with the same name.

Hoping Eli Roth doesn't get any speaking lines in this is probably too much to hope for, isn't it?

I might end up liking this but this is obviously nothing like the non-period-piece WWII movie I was hoping for upthread.

If nothing else I'd just like a WWII movie to acknowledge that in the 40's things were the same colors as they are now, the sun wasn't actually blue-greenish-grey.

^^^so true

I prefer to think the 40s looked like Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy

totally amazing series, btw

xxxx-post

Yes^

It's not even limited to period flicks either. About every other major release that isn't a comedy seems to be rocking that ugly-ass desaturated color bullshit. I guess it's like a lazy way of making your lame-ass action movie seem moody or stylized or something.

They even did it with that retarded-looking Death Race remake. Jesus, if ever a movie called for bright, gaudy, lurid, bloody color it would be a flick called Death Race.

yeah i think horror movies would be better served by the old-school bright red ketchup blood instead of the brown-black goo (which is also a result of the desaturation)

"yeah i think horror movies would be better served by the old-school bright red ketchup blood instead of the brown-black goo (which is also a result of the desaturation)"

totally otm. see old bava and argento movies.

Aldo Raine...Gen. Ed Fenech...Hugo Stiglitz = the usual Tarantino vampirism.

They're showing the original tonight in Portland as part of the Deep Red Film Fest.

Have we posted this one yet?

If nothing else I'd just like a WWII movie to acknowledge that in the 40's things were the same colors as they are now, the sun wasn't actually blue-greenish-grey.

Just from looking at the trailer it's pretty obvious that the point is to look like 1960s war movies rather than evoke the 1940s. Tarantino being Tarantino, in other words.

it's pretty obvious that the point is to look like 1960s war movies

which ones should i watch

Didn't realise the original of this was 1977 but I guess that plus The Dirty Dozen plus Where Eagles Dare plus The Great Escape look like the right vibe. Also maybe Force 10 from Navarone and Guns of Navarone,

"They're showing the original tonight"

Original is just a Dirty Dozen knock-off. A decent one, but nothing special.

Don't neglect "The Big Red One", Hoos.

Good call.

Dark of the Sun is a big QT favourite

Fred the Hammer is awesome in the original, and there's far more French Resistance action than one would have anticipated.

And I got a free tshirt from the DVD guys!

I was hoping Mike Myers was going to be Hitler

which ones should i watch

Kelly's Heroes!

http://danavenell.com/ODDBALLSAYSsilkscreen.jpg

come on come on come on

OST:

The Green Leaves of Summer
(d’après le film ALAMO)
De Dimitri Tiomkin,

The Verdict
(Dopo la condanna)
D’Ennio Morricone
Interprété par
Ennio Morricone

L’incontro con la figlia
D’Ennio Morricone

White Lightning
(Chanson principale du film LES BOOTLEGGERS)
De Charles Bernstein
Interprété par Charles Bernstein

Il mercenario (ripresa)
D’Ennio Morricone
Interprété par Ennio Morricone

Slaughter
De Billy Preston
Interprété par Billy Preston

Algeri: 1 novembre 1954
(LA BATAILLE D’ALGER)
D’Ennio Morricone,Gillo Pontecorvo
Interprété par Ennio Morricone,Gillo Pontecorvo

The Surrender
( La resa )
D’Ennio Morricone
Interprété par Ennio Morricone

One Silver Dollar
(Un Dollaro Bucato)
De Gianni Ferrio

Bath Attack
(d’après le film L’EMPRISE) (The Entity?)
De Charles Bernstein
Interprété par Charles Bernstein

Davon Geht Die
Welt Nicht Unter
De Bruno Balz,Michael Jary
Interprété par Zarah Leander

The Man With The Big Sombrero
De Phil Boutelje,Foster Carling
Interprété par Sam Shelton and the Michael Andrew Orchestra

Ich Wollt Ich
Waer Ein Huhn
De Hans-Fritz Beckmann, Peter Kreuder
Interprété par Lilian Harvey, Willy Fritsch, Paul Kemp

Cat People
(Putting Out The Fire)
De David Bowie, Giorgio Moroder

Mystic and Severe
D’Ennio Morricone
Interprété par Ennio Morricone

The Devil’s Rumble
(d’après le film DEVIL’S ANGELS)
De Mike Curb
Interprété par The Arrows

What I’d Say
Zulus
D’Elmer Bernstein

Un Amico
D’Ennio Morricone
Interprété parEnnio Morricone

Tiger Tank
De Lalo Schifrin

Eastern Condors
Rabbia e Tarantella
D’Ennio Morricone
Interprété par Ennio Morricone

ho hum, Bernstein, Schifrin, Morricone, Morricone, Morricone, MorricBOWIE WHA

Bradshaw DISS

I shouldn't be shocked by "boring" after Death Proof but it's still the last thing I wanted to hear

Mike D'Angelo (who usually likes if not loves QT) tweets:

Inglourious Basterds ('09 Tarantino): 60/B- What an odd little (yes, little) exercise in vicarious wish fulfillment. He's in 2nd gear here.

like everything since Jackie Brown

Yeah, yeah. The point I was making is that I think this is a pretty low grade from MDA (not having actually checked his archives).

that's a pretty HIGH grade from that dude in general

I wish all directors made second gear movies as good as Tarantino's last couple.

http://worldwide-web.com/JeffreyBabad/Simpsons/Milhouse/milhouse.gif

when are they gonna get to the FIREWORKS FACTORY? wahhhh

"wow these soldiers are totally in my face"

I might download that soundtrack.

that's a pretty HIGH grade from that dude in general

True. But then so is a 91 (unless it's a 19, which is the case for Antichrist).

Hollywood Reporter very mixed: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i7ee3d207fbb1fda3adadf0ef9f8a94c6

Variety generally positive: http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=festivals&jump=review&reviewid=VE1117940323&cs=1&nid=2853

Onion AV Club also uses the phrase "second gear":

Tarantino’s long-awaited WWII epic turns out to be nothing like what I’d expected—a shambling mass of contradictions that’s likely to divide QT partisans like nothing since Jackie Brown. Conceptually, this is easily the strangest film he’s ever made, as well as the least commercially viable. Its multi-chapter (yet doggedly linear) narrative doesn’t really conform to any familiar war-movie prototype, least of all the Dirty Dozen-style killer-platoon template I’d assumed. Apart from Brad Pitt, whose role is no larger than anybody else’s, most of the sprawling ensemble cast ranges from little-known to who-dat? At least 75% of the movie’s nonstop dialogue is in subtitled French, German, or Italian. And the whole thing is a bizarrely touching exercise in vicarious wish-fulfillment, in which a Gentile filmmaker fashions an alternate history that allows the Jews to kick Hitler’s ass—literally, not metaphorically. Let’s just say that the Nuremberg Trials would not likely have been necessary in the parallel universe that Inglourious Basterds inhabits.
So far so intriguing, yes? Here’s the rub, though: In terms of its tone, its rhythms, its (sorry, I have to) mise-en-scène, its moment-to-moment creativity and imagination and inventiveness, this is far and away the most ordinary film Tarantino has ever made. Granted, individual scenes are longer and talkier than most filmmakers would dare—Basterds opens with a conversation between a French dairy farmer (Denis Menochet) and a Nazi “Jew hunter” (Christoph Waltz, in the film’s only truly memorable performance) that I clocked at about 25 minutes. But while Tarantino does a fine job of sustaining tension throughout this lengthy dialogue, the comparative whimper with which it ends makes it feel retroactively expository, even perfunctory. And that uncharacteristic lack of energy persists throughout, whether we’re watching Pitt and his Jewish terror squad threaten a German officer with death by Louisville Slugger or the British High Command (cameos by Michael Fassbender and a surprisingly restrained Mike Myers) work up a jolly-good plot to blow up the cinema where Hitler, Goebbels, and others plan to attend the premiere of a new propaganda film about a heroic sniper (Daniel Brühl). Tarantino deserves credit for holding my attention and interest for nearly three hours, but while I was never bored by Inglourious Basterds, I was never terribly excited by it, either. It was just kind of…there, stuck in second gear, functioning like the longest decent B-movie programmer of all time. (Death Proof, by contrast, is a brilliant avant-garde experiment cleverly disguised as a throwaway exploitation flick; its digressive talkathons have drive and purpose.) I admire the film’s fantasy-empowerment moxie, but it’s the first time QT has made a movie that I have no desire whatsoever to see again.

the opening scene (as far as i read) was pretty great on the page

Death Proof, ...; its digressive talkathons have drive and purpose.

No.

Yes.

yes

yes

Eh

Death Proof, by contrast, is a brilliant avant-garde experiment cleverly disguised as a throwaway exploitation flick

this is a pretty stupid sentence imo

Was the purpose to bore the shit out of me? Because purpose accomplished.

I love Death Proof more and more now that I can see it basically whenever I want on Starz On Demand.

take away the excruciating diner conversation between the second group of girls and death proof is A-okay in my book

I love Death Proof more and more now that I can see it basically whenever I want on Starz On Demand.

― Alex in SF, Wednesday, May 20, 2009 2:47 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

ha, so otm - shit is on all the time

For a while they were showing the complete Grindhouse which was nice cuz I could watch all the previews.

I always watch it just for the part where Kurt Russell looks at the camera before getting into the Deathmobile.

But man. That conversation in the car on the way to lunch with the conversation in the diner in the second half is way too long.

Anyway. Inglorious Bastards. Long conversations in France. This doesn't star Ethan Hawke, does it?

"I always watch it just for the part where Kurt Russell looks at the camera before getting into the Deathmobile."

that scene is endlessly great, definitely

the second half of the movie pales in comparison to the first for me tho, which is probably because the second group of girls is annoying

"I am NOT gonna fuck him!"

http://www.bestweekever.tv/bwe/images/2009/05/BRAD%20PITT%20TARANTINO.JPG

I always watch it just for the part where Kurt Russell looks at the camera before getting into the Deathmobile.

Far and away the best moment in the movie. That's sort of low praise, but -- on any measure -- it is a very savvy scene.

So pretty much everyone's going to know the ending to this one before they see it, if they read any reviews.

This does seem like a semi-interesting thematic shift for QT, and it doesn't look like it will focus on his usual grab-bag of obsessions and interests.

OTOH, it stars Brad Pitt, which lowers my interest in seeing it tenfold.

it's about the journey, eazy

Onion AV Club also uses the phrase "second gear":

Just for the record, those are also written by Mike D'A.

What a copycat.

it's still interesting that he uses the same phrase to describe the exact same movie - what does that say about tarantino

http://www.bestweekever.tv/bwe/images/2009/05/BRAD%20PITT%20TARANTINO.JPG
http://www.bestweekever.tv/bwe/images/2009/05/BRAD%20PITT%20TARANTINO.JPG
http://www.bestweekever.tv/bwe/images/2009/05/BRAD%20PITT%20TARANTINO.JPG

morereviews.

Ebert too

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v291/TheManthony/hitler.jpg

high five

Death Proof, by contrast, is a brilliant avant-garde experiment cleverly disguised as a throwaway exploitation flick; its digressive talkathons have drive and purpose.

re-added the original italicization for lolwtf the purpose to make qt jizz in his pants?

gah, didn't realize quoting inherently italicizes everything, anyhow as it reads in the av review

"Death Proof, by contrast, is a brilliant avant-garde experiment cleverly disguised as a throwaway exploitation flick; its digressive talkathons have drive and purpose."

drive

I'd hate to see Tarantino's third gear if Death Proof was second.

haha they shoot Hitler to death in this, must be that Star Trek "alternate timeline."

so long, tarantino, it was nice while it lasted:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/inglourious_basterds/

Well that could be an issue:

I've just learned that representatives for Inglorious Basterds have scheduled a phone call today with Universal Pictures to discuss The Weinstein Company's financial problems which are being splashed all over the media. Right now, everyone is still operating on the premise that TWC can come up with the $30 million or moreo marketing money budgeted for Inglorious Basterds. But that was before news came out that The Weinstein Company is on the brink (amid rumors the end could come in August) intensified by last week's bad news that TWC has hired a financial advisory firm to restructure. The deal for Inglorious Basterds had always been a 3-way financial partnership among Quentin Tarantino, The Weinstein Company, and Universal. But a worst case scenario was always considered by Quentin's people: What if TWC which has domestic didn't have the resources to market and/or release the movie? Universal has foreign. Would it pick up the North America as well?

i think i loved this

i know u did

i did :D

I want to see this for the mere curiosity of seeing what QT can do with a war flick

s1ocks!!! i'm so jealous

i bet it's violent xpost

I really enjoyed it as well. Mind you someone I knew walked out.

it's less violent than you might think actually

actually, no it's not

but at least 2/3rds of this movie is people chatting at wooden tables over drinks—a glass of milk, or a jug of wine, or whiskey

somehow this is the movie i'm most excited about this summer

well look at the competition

i mean in all honestly you couldn't really dream up a movie designed to appeal to me more than this—tough-as-nails jewish commandos scalping nazis, a beautiful jewish survivor who assumes a new identity and runs an art house theater in paris... a film critic turned war hero!

so that is what s1ocki want from a girl?

I mentioned this at the screening to a friend of mine - is this the only movie in history to feature a heroic film critic?

shyamalan could learn a thing or two

you know what this film reminded me of? bertrand tavernier's totally slept-on 2002 laissez-passer, set in the occupied french film industry.

I am v v much looking forward to this, Brad Pitt and all

brad pitt is weirdly pulling a bit of a brando godfather in this

pitt is often the best thing about the movies he's in

Pitt is a rampaging cartoon in this movie.

brad pitt is weirdly pulling a bit of a brando godfather in this

well he's definitely got the lantern jaw

Interview at the Atlantic with Tarantino:

I found myself sitting beside Quentin Tarantino’s pool in the Hollywood Hills, listening in wonder as the writer and director of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction diagnosed what he saw as the essential, maddening flaw of every Holocaust movie ever made.

“Holocaust movies always have Jews as victims,” he said, plainly exasperated by Hollywood’s lack of imagination. “We’ve seen that story before. I want to see something different. Let’s see Germans that are scared of Jews. Let’s not have everything build up to a big misery, let’s actually take the fun of action-movie cinema and apply it to this situation.”

Spielberg is too nice a Jewish boy to have a U.S. soldier tell a Gestapo officer, before shooting him, “Say auf Wiedersehen to your Nazi balls!”

Obv never seen Partisans of Vilna, has he.

uh xp. . . don't remember that dialogue in PoV.

so close, now. i'm kind of ridiculously excited for this.

between this and district 9 i'm gonna be in hog heaven the next two weeks

I am kinda really excited about this

Didn't really like this movie. Not enough character development of the 'basterds' for me and what there was was kinda lame. The movie could have also been like 15 minutes shorter.

Looking for character development in a Tarantino movie is like looking for logic in an Armond White review (of a Tarantino movie.)

(of an Armond Review)

Of an ILX thread.

i really wonder what it'll be like to see this movie again for me, i saw it under sorta dramatic circumstances and in a crazy mood

but again, this movie is custom-built for me, basically, so, i think i'll still dig it!!

the g/f wants to go see this and i was gonna dig in my heels and sit it out. but now i'm seeing District 9 while she's out of town and i might have to go to make up for it.

the newest trailer looks pretty awesome but it seems to give away what i suspect the ending to be. my fiancee is almost more excited for this than i am. i think she wants to take her dad to see it.

ya this is SUCH a chick flick xp

I'm forcing my wife to take me to this for my birthday.

you'd like my g/f dude - went to school for film and was semi-ostracized for, among other things, having Die Hard as her fav Christmas movie.

Well my beef was that you have a movie called inglorious basterds you might as well get to know who they are rather than focus on Brad Pitt hilariously mispronounce things for half the movie, imo.

They are Jews and they hate Nazis! What else do you know need to know for the purposes of the movie?

favorite color, idea of a romantic date, dick size... you know, the usuals

favorite idea of a romantic dick size

and colour.

Okay I agree that stuff should definitely have been included as intro text for each character.

(Cut) Dick in a Box

TV spots suggest this is the worst Naked Gun movie yet

pretty sure i'd side with the nazzies if i watched it

just like The Sound of Music!

rottentomatoes scored the reviews too negatively IMO.

I get the distinct impression that this guy from the Daily Mail has never seen a Tarantino film before:

"Not enough scalps in Quentin Tarantino's eagerly awaited Inglourious Basterds. While it's good and there are fun elements it's rather dialogue led than jam-packed with action."

haha

i never ever go to the movies but i am going to see this. i never thought i'd say this, but tarantino is one of the only people who can make me excited to go see a movie these days. (apparently luc besson feels the same way. i learned that after reading the qt profile in the new gq. it's a pretty funny article. he says he's gonna stop making movies when he's 60 cuz he doesn't want to go downhill like every other director or work for a paycheck. and he's still working on a book of film reviews.)

he's still working on a book of film reviews

ok i'm gonna see inglorious and all but THIS i'm excited for

he says what bugs him the most about reviews of his movies is that he knows more about film than most reviewers and that he's a better writer than most reviewers AND he's a better film critic than most reviewers. he's probably right. not much competition there.

yeah, i would buy that book in a heartbeat.

Luc Besson has a pretty high opinion of himself for someone who's never directed a film that I've been tempted to see.

(unless Tarantino is the subject of that post, scott? he can't even spell.)

oh shit sorry! yes the article was about tarantino! sorry, long day.

i dunno, as far as luc besson goes, i remember liking subway. and the big blue. wacky movies. and i loved leon. and as far as i'm concerned, anyone even remotely involved with the transporter series has earned my lifelong thanks.

so I see. (xp)

"Look," Tarantino says, "if you're a nice-guy artist, all you have to worry about is becoming boring at some point. But I'm not a nice-guy artist. When my movies come out, they draw a line in the sand."

Like Madonna and Spike Lee, he's proven that a good line of bullshit can take you far in America.

i am NOT, however, an ilxor who will go to bat for the fifth element. that movie bugged the hell out of me.

he's gonna stop making movies when he's 60 cuz he doesn't want to go downhill

http://www.robopocalypse.com/RAD/2008_02_07_tooLate.jpg

as a person tarantino has always struck me as a nightmare and just about as embarrassing as madonna when he opens his mouth. or when he tries to act! i can ignore this when i watch his movies. he's a freak. great art is often freak-derived.

he has said he wants 2 write novels once he turns 60~~i like QT but that will not go well

his most recent interview on kimmell was frightening imo. it was like he did it all on 1 breath

i'm a fan of kill bill and the grindhouse thing. i don't think he's gone downhill. his stuff makes most other american movies look like slow death by ennui. he's one of the only people who can keep me awake these days. him and whoever directs the next transporter movie.

I would take these declarations lightly. I recall around the time of Pulp Fiction he said he was going to do make his Eric Rohmer hommage soon, and Chris Rock beat him to that.

tarantino was weird on american idol. the only five minutes of the show i saw this season involved him giving advice to singers.

Being sort of ideologically anti-trash myself, I find his genuine love for and emulation of grindhouse fare to illustrate that 1) he likes a lot of indefensible shit and 2) he now appeals to people who don't like film much.

i'm amazed at how often he's allowed to use the n-word in his movies...like even in times where it isn't necessary for the character development. ("does my garage have a sign on it that says 'Dead N***** Storage'?)

here come the "Summarizing a director's entire career again" segment of the thread

sight + sound. that's all i care about. it's what i'm OBSESSED with. have no interest in politics, ideology, or talk of high & low.

dude why do you waste your time with movies then? you should be a tornado chaser or something.

the sight and sound of death proof was boring.

it works better if it's not preceded by planet terror and a bunch of hysterical trailers, though. After all that non-stop kinetic shit qt's masturbatory fantasies seem heinously chatty.

death proof was almost the least of his films but the peaks are dope as fuck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM4JFy7mPNk

i'm kinda more interested in seeing how this does at the box office than actually seeing it, last movie was not exactly a flop but "underperformed" as they say

do wonder what would happen to him if this bombs and/or the weinsteins go belly-up. without their protection he might have to take studio input or go low-budget.

i'm scared of tornados!

"without their protection he might have to take studio input or go low-budget."

you don't think someone else would offer to foot the bill for some future movie of his???

i like tarantino more when he is influenced by directors such as Godard,Kubrik,Scorsese etc..and less by trashy B movies as on his recent years movies.
also,he wrote much better dialogues in his first 3 movies.

low-budget flicks might actually impove his work ( Reservoir Dogs)
xpost

you don't think someone else would offer to foot the bill for some future movie of his???

I'm just saying they wouldn't give him carte blanche like the Weinsteins did, esp if this bombs and he's still pushing his talky trash fantasies

Grindhouse did $25 M domestically, that is a flop bordering on disaster. This thing tanking might be his salvation.

(Zeno otm, no more 4-hour foot fetish epics)

i dunno, if terrence malick and woody allen and the coens can have final cut so will tarantino.

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2007/GRNDH.php

Grindhouse's budget was rumored (see, e.g., Variety, 2/17/2007) to be approaching $100 million in the latter stages of its production. The Weinsteins gave a figure of $53 million prior to the movie's release (see Hollywood Reporter, 3/29/2007). We are using the latter figure.

well to be fair you've got two full movies and four wholly separate trailers to figure into that

it made sense that it tanked because 99% of america doesn't give a shit nor know what 'grindhouse' even means, but it's too bad b/c it was a blast to see in the theater w/a big, appreciate audience. i bet death proof plays better at home than it did in the theater, though, and planet terror is the reverse.

ok, i would call that a flop, didn't know it was so expensive. also would have figured bigger international b.o. (that saves people like woody, but again, he's cheap)

qt's track record re: budget vs. gross is pretty solid outside of grindhouse, actually, and you gotta figure DVD sales and other merchandising profits are relatively high. It's not that Hollywood would pistolwhip him as soon as he stepped outside of the weinstein bubble, but I can't imagine he'd ever have it that good again.

quite a drop from kill bill
http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/series/KillBill.php

Yeah, I'm pretty sure his DVD sales are HUGE. The college kids I see every day still talk about Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, et al.

yeah it's kind of why certain TV shows survive as well...something like '24' had mediocre ratings for several years at the beginning, but the DVD sales were through the roof.

The-Numbers has $30 M for Grindhouse DVDs, that doesn't seem huge.

i think we've established that grindhouse was a relative flop - according to this article kill bill vol.1 sold $40m in the first week.

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,611324,00.html

sorry, first day

here come the "Summarizing a director's entire career again" segment of the thread

― Indiana Morbs and the Curse of the Ivy League Chorister (Dr Morbius), Thursday, August 13, 2009 12:48 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

!!!

re: QT writing film reviews, he supposedly has a super long defense of Superman Returns that he's working on (can't remember if I've mentioned that on this thread or not).

I want to read QT's defense of Armond White.

super long defense of Superman Returns: wow, he's going to be the greatest critic ever TOO!

He'll be better than anyone on ILX, I'm pretty sure.

that's not fair. ilxors have to spend a lot of time remembering which medication to take and this necessarily takes time away from thoughts of a critical nature. lotsa great kittie jpgs though!!

Ilxor: home of kitten jpgs and extremely specific pop culture polls.

I've seen this and am getting tired of Tarantino's writing. I just wish he would direct a Mamet script.

The jaw with man attached has a good ear for how people talk and the two best scenes are the ones where people just sit around and talk (at the start on the farm and towards the end in a basement) but his melodrama and plotting is a bit tired and cartoonish. Mike Meyers plays an englishman, unfortunately.

My problem with Death Proof was the dialogue (except for scenes with Kurt Russell.) When people aren't talking, it's right up there with his best.

I'm hoping he's eventually (as "promised") make a Kill Bill 3 where Vivica Fox's daughter seeks to exact revenge on the Bride.

it's kind of funny/fitting that the most famous auteur of our day is always saying his films will be turned into franchises (vega brothers, kill bill sequels, him and pitt are supposedly considering adapting a swedish book trilogy). If I'm not mistaken he was threatening to adapt a bunch of elmore leonard books after jackie brown came out.

he also said something about a basterds prequel

we'll never see any of these projects, will we?

he definitely doesn't seem to have richard rodriguez's follow-through. you'd almost think he was making his backers happy by teasing them with this potential profit angle.

well tbh i never thought IBs would actually happen...

anyway, dude has always talked a lot and clearly always has a bunch of crazy ideas rattling around in his head that he can't keep in.. it's totally his MO

"he also said something about a basterds prequel"

he cut out a major sub-plot from his screenplay about black soldiers caught behind enemy lines (cuz it would have made the movie ten hours long) and he really liked it and he said if basterds is a hit that he wouldn't mind making this part into another movie.

why is it spelled "inglourious basterds"

as opposed to what

why is it spelled "inglourious basterds"

― （　´_ゝ˙） (Dr. Phil), Thursday, August 13, 2009 10:54 AM

as opposed to http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/sq/thumb/a/a9/Korn_logo.png/200px-Korn_logo.png

Might be a copyright/authorship issue, or just a google-ability issue, with Inglorious Bastards.

http://warmovieblog.com/uploads/IngloriousBastards1978.jpg

'When asked about the misspelled title, director Quentin Tarantino gave the following answer: "Here's the thing. I'm never going to explain that. You do an artistic flourish like that, and to explain it would just take the piss out of it and invalidate the whole stroke in the first place."'

it sounds like he's doing a horrible job of describing onanism, or something.

he already has explained it though, it was because the title of the original was mislabeled at the video store he was working at back in the day.

does a thread exist for rodriquez's ultra cheap lookin' kids' flicks?

for many years in britain, MANIAC w/ joe spinelli was banned as a 'video nasty' primarily cos of some pretty nasty tom savini scalping fx, so it was sort of a shock, yesterday, to see, in a big widescreen multiplex, equally nasty scalping shots in INGLORIOUS BASTERDS. i was surprised by the level of gore in the movie - people were especially wincing at the scene where brad pitt sticks his finger in diane kruger's bullet wound - and also by the weird lurches into nazi comedy (the absurd hitler, having his gigantic portrait painted, or the sudden cutaway to goebbels fucking his fruity french secretary). Quite often the whole thing reminded me of late period Russ Meyer, all cartoon characters, big sweaty faces, pulsing colours.

Hey, it's QT's favorite movies!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz4K-Rxx2Bk

Can't disagree with Battle Royale. The rest I can disagree with though.

should be a poll

Though it wouldn't be my top 20, I have to say I like most of his choices (of the ones that I've seen, which is v.nearly all), with the exception of Unbreakable. And I can't believe he did the Shyamalmadingdong 'gag'.

I'll be seeing "Inglourious ********" on Wednesday, I think.

Anything Else? Really? The Jason Biggs one? Better than (for example) Oldboy?

haha Anything Else is fucking horrible! of all the Woody Allen films to pick ...

"And I can't believe he did the Shyamalmadingdong 'gag'."

he's been reading my ilx threads.

Shakey Mo was QT all along!

Best of Tarantino's Top 20 Movies Since 1992

thanks so much, local megaplex in my burg in the middle for fucking nowhere, for declining to screen Inglorious Basterds and basically ruining my August

"of" fucking nowhere

"Here's the thing. I'm never going to explain that. You do an artistic flourish like that, and to explain it would just take the piss out of it and invalidate the whole stroke in the first place."'

he already has explained it though, it was because the title of the original was mislabeled at the video store he was working at back in the day.

You can understand why he's not repeating it, cuz that shit is DEEP

Landmark, Sundance, or another indie-ish theater chain should revive the art-house revival concept, but have a schedule of "guest curators."

come on, IG dvd! hopefully just in time for x-mas

this Denby line -- "pulled the film-archive door shut behind him" -- encapsulates my feelings during most of Kill Bill and the entirety of Death Proof:

Tarantino has gone past his usual practice of decorating his movies with homages to others. This time, he has pulled the film-archive door shut behind him—there’s hardly a flash of light indicating that the world exists outside the cinema except as the basis of a nutbrain fable...

Tarantino has become an embarrassment: his virtuosity as a maker of images has been overwhelmed by his inanity as an idiot de la cinémathèque. “Inglourious Basterds” is a hundred and fifty-two minutes long, but Tarantino’s fans will wait for the director’s cut, which no doubt shows Shirley Temple arriving at Treblinka with the Glenn Miller band and performing a special rendition of “Baby Take a Bow,” from the immortal 1934 movie of the same name, before she fetchingly leads the S.S. guards to the gas chamber.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2009/08/24/090824crci_cinema_denby

Tarantino’s fans will wait for the director’s cut, which no doubt shows Shirley Temple arriving at Treblinka with the Glenn Miller band and performing a special rendition of “Baby Take a Bow,” from the immortal 1934 movie of the same name, before she fetchingly leads the S.S. guards to the gas chamber.

How the fuck would this be a bad thing?!

fuck denby. he's an idiot.

"there’s hardly a flash of light indicating that the world exists outside the cinema"

good. fuck the world too. go outside if you want the world. moron.

Landmark barely shows first-run 'art house'/indies around here, much less revival prints.

no, fuck retard "artists" who completely divorce art from life. xp

that denby review resonates strongly w/my feelings about qt.

btw what he practices these days is more contemptible cinemanerd wanking than "art."

"no, fuck retard "artists" who completely divorce art from life."

i just don't get the attitude at all. if denby had said: you know, i just don't care for cartoonish genre flicks. i like movies that resemble real life and life's concerns because i don't have much of an imagination and i don't really have much of a sense of humor. i'm more of a documentary slice-of-life kinda guy. basterds is too puerile and juvenile for me. i'm old and i go to bed early. i'll leave this one for the kids.

THAT i would respect.

this movie does not divorce art from life. at all. at. all.

I say this with extra emphasis because I've seen it.

herhehrh more like david dumby

this line from his review sums him up pretty good and shows why i have no time for him. hey, boring people need film critics too:

"The film is skillfully made, but it’s too silly to be enjoyed, even as a joke."

you might like this sample of denby's writing, scott

"For the most part, I stayed home in the apartment that I loved. And instead of going out, I entered in that summer of 1999 a dark and empty tunnel, an enclosure illuminated along the walls by a flash of naked men and women. I had discovered porn on the Internet. In the solitude of night, and in my little study at home, where mighty volumes of Plato, St. Augustine, Hegel, Montaigne, Nietzsche hardly my regular reading but a recent obsession loomed over the desk, the kneeling young women awkwardly turned their eyes to the camera. They often had long and beautiful hair that they must have laboriously cared for; they looked for approval not from their partners but from the camera, which I thought was the true object of their desire. They wanted to be seen. And the men, ugly and strong, sullen, tattooed some of them, thick-membered, concentrating on their erection and their orgasm, lest they lose either they were amateurs, not models, exercising the democratic art form of exhibitionism, with me as their willing audience. They all wanted to be seen, but I didn t want to be seen."

oof. he's a thick member all right.

I just saw Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro and I kind of associate the two films - they're both these distended, overambitious celebrations of cinema that I have a lot of admiration for, even if Coppola's movie is more obviously "personal."

How the fuck would this be a bad thing?!

I was going to say. Film this immediately!

ok, no doubt the Temple/Glenn Miller scene could work in the right hands.

"Engaged with real life" does not mean documentarylike, scott.

"The film is skillfully made, but it’s too silly to be enjoyed, even as a joke."

I'm guessing you'd have less of a problem if this was written about Spielberg's 1941? Things that are skillfully made can be too silly, and total shit.

are you planning on seeing this morbs?

I usually don't give a shit when people pre-judge movies - hell, I do it all the time - but it irks me in this case because a) it might actually be his best, b) none of the clips, trailers, etc. I've seen are at all representative of most of the film and c) the preliminary bitching / ego-bashing etc. are not nearly as interesting as talking about what's actually in the movie will be. xpost

btw glenn kenny is SO otm here (and this was published before the denby article iirc)

I can't think of a singly contemporary filmmaker who brings out the scolding third-grade teacher in so many cinephiles more than Quentin Tarantino does. Get thee to just about any film-enthusiast message board, or any comments thread to a post about Tarantino on any film blog, and you'll see any number of what we might call "Work Habits And Character" complaints, which all boil down to something like "While Quentin is a bright, clever, and sometimes resourceful student, he needs to focus more on the 'real world' and less on his own personal obsessions if he ever hopes to amount to something." Put another way: Quentin Tarantino could be a genuinely great filmmaker if only he could get over his puerile, annoying insistence on making Quentin Tarantino movies.

well that's ILE movie threads for ya simon, tbh i have never really understood that impulse to showily pre-dismiss a movie like it makes u seem smarter or something

agreed.

also, denby makes a ref. to "basterds" being "insensitive," which is point-missing of the highest order.

insensitive basterds is more like it!!!

^^^ should have been the last line of his review

s1ocki, I plan to see all his films on free library DVDs henceforth if at all. (I regret the wasted time spent this way on Death Proof)

my answer to GK would be yes, he should stop making movies.

glenn kenny otm!

of course, he's an ex-music critic.

denby reminds me of one of those old time art critics who rails against modern art cuz the artists don't paint people and recognizable scenes. so silly. and condemning a movie because its not respectful to history! hahahaha! that is some seriously uptight shit. There are plenty of boring movies that make sense and are believeable. why does EVERY movie have to make sense and be believable? he must have a hard time watching all that internet porn that he loves. "I find it quite unlikely that a young woman living alone would allow a pizza delivery man to take off his pants in her apartment because he was "hot". This seriously strains the believability of the scene."

dude, he's talking about trivializing Hitler by machine-gunning him in a pornlike revenge fantasy. And you've admitted you don't like anything but "pure sensation," as DD terms it, in films, so we have irreconcilable aesthetic criteria.

lol scott, you seriously need to develop 'the pornography critic' into a comic novel asap

it must be easy to have such identifiable aesthetic criteria that you can make your mind up in advance of (or instead of) actually seeing the movie! xp

q: is it fair that ppl who express that they aren't crazy abt a movie before its release always get jumped on?

not if they've actually seen it

denby reminds me of one of those old time art critics who rails against modern art cuz the artists don't paint people and recognizable scenes. so silly.

― scott seward, Wednesday, August 19, 2009 7:35 AM

This is totally OTM. He's been doing this for years and it still gets me foaming at the mouth that he is The New Yorker Film Writer.

I usually don't give a shit when people pre-judge movies - hell, I do it all the time - but it irks me in this case because a) it might actually be his best, b) none of the clips, trailers, etc. I've seen are at all representative of most of the film and c) the preliminary bitching / ego-bashing etc. are not nearly as interesting as talking about what's actually in the movie will be. xpost

Not that I have participated in this debate at all, but one of the reasons I negatively prejudged the movie is that I read the script a few months ago and thought it was really bad, and the trailer looked even worse. Add some of the seemingly-questionable casting decisions (Mike Myers, ugh), and it's hard to blame anyone for not being entirely excited.

That said, I've enjoyed every QT movie I've seen except for the middle 2/3 of Death Proof, so I'm willing to give this a chance.

irreconcilable aesthetic criteria

Hello, new screen name.

Addsion DeWitt, ladies & gents.

Not with me you're no Addison DeWitt, you're stiffing way up in class.

(j/k, you know you make these film threads work.)

they don't work. I hate myself.

*Morbz hug*

i'm not hugging that thing!

Maybe work wasn't the word I was looking for.

Just got back from seeing this. Damn, I really, really enjoyed it. For me, I'm thinking it may be his best since Jackie Brown. I think it might just have the edge over Kill Bill vol.1

big words, those are my favorite QT movies by far.

tbf I am on that immediate post-movie high. But, y'know, I enjoyed. More than I honestly thought I would.

and how do you feel about Mike Myers

he is really in the movie for about 4 minutes, playing it pretty straight

do you have a review up somewhere s1ocki...? in general I always appreciate yr informed opinion

thanks dude - no i don't, unfortunately i had to assign it to one of my guys as i was not available to do some interviews that day. still, my dude has a pretty good take. review up tomorrow.

"Not as many laughs as The Happening, plenty of blood. 3 1/2 stars!"

x-posts

Just back from this too - well, an hour ago. Also totally dug it, me more so than Mrs A but we agreed that the casting was very much otm - Christoph Waltz a clear stand-out, but Michael Fassbender amazing as well - from Hunger to Eden Lake to Basterds, that guy is srsly versatile.

hey, how was sam jackson as "the narrator"? no-one's said anything about him....

Unless the UK cut is different he gets about 1 minute of narration, so not much to judge by - was ok, I guess.

what about Harvey Keitel as 'dude on the phone'

and how do you feel about Mike Myers

Oh fucking hell, Mike Myers. Yeah, he was painful I admit. And Eli Roth was just inept. Otherwise the casting was great, I think.

http://www.montrealmirror.com/2009/082009/film2.html

Though at least Tarantino didn't cast himself in Eli's role of the Nazi-clobberin' Jew. Thank god he's grown out of that habit.

http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/1314690

I learned something after I did Jackie Brown—and don't get me wrong, I love Jackie Brown. But when it was all over—even when I was making it—the fact that it was just a little bit once removed made me a little bit disconnected from it. That's why I haven't done another adaptation since then.

So THERE's where he fucked up.

yeah, because QT really built his career on literary adaptations.

yeah, but JB is far and away his best film, so

the problem with his movies lately hasn't even been plot, anyway. It's been dialogue-- something that almost always needs to be tweaked when adapting a book.

I mean come on Quentin, "trix are for kids?"

I thought this exchange was more interesting tbh:

One of the huge lessons I learned is that these writer-directors come out, and their films are idiosyncratic—they have a special voice and those first two movies are like that. But it's hard work to go back to a blank page, to start from scratch every single, solitary time and make a great movie every time. There are exceptions. Woody Allen is one of them.

Not necessarily for the better.

I think he's in a renaissance, except for Melinda and Melinda. I loved Anything Else. But it's much easier [for a director] to say, "What scripts are out there?" Either they buy it and rewrite it, or they work with a writer. And they get more movies made. That's all well and good, but cut to 10 years down the pike, and all of a sudden, they don't have that voice anymore. They're sucking dick for the Man. I'm not interested in just doing a job or working with this actor just to work with them.

cuz it made me think, yeah who the fuck writes and directs their own movies after the first couple years of their careers anymore...?

Nora Ephron? Nancy Meyers?

Mick LaSalle gave this movie a little-guy-jumping-out-of-his-seat-while-applauding, and this troubles me because Mick LaSalle and I almost never agree about anything.

Joel and Ethan Coen?

(xxpost)

except for Melinda and Melinda.

Funny, since this one, if I remember right, was kind of acclaimed as Allen's return to darker comedy.

No way it got completely trashed. You are misremembering.

because QT really built his career on literary adaptations.

no, bcz his last 3 original scripts suggest that the first 2 may be the only good ones he'll ever write.

Good thing made some pretty good movies out of those scripts then.

Yeah, it's definitely become my given that QT the director far outpaces QT the screenwriter these days.

Just checked to make sure and M&M was 53% on rottentomaters.

Given the length of this movie, "outpaces" may be the wrong verb.

Ebert gave it M&M 3 1/2 stars. -- that's what I was thinking of.

(I saw it, but I don't remember a single thing about it, other than the basic conceit.)

no, bcz his last 3 original scripts suggest that the first 2 may be the only good ones he'll ever write.

― Indiana Morbs and the Curse of the Ivy League Chorister (Dr Morbius), Friday, August 21, 2009 2:33 AM (49 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it was all downhill after True Romance?

definitely a thread of "god, I can't write good scripts anymore" in that interview, though.

Ebert gave it M&M 3 1/2 stars. -- that's what I was thinking of.

― Q. Tarantino Presents: Popeye (Eazy), Friday, August 21, 2009 3:08 AM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

So about as good as Garfield 2, then?

it was all downhill after True Romance?

fuck trivia

yeah it's a pretty obscure indie film.

c'mon dude, he was obv talking about the movies qt directed

so i WILL be able to see this five minutes from my house after all. wife already bought tix for sunday matinee. will report back.

Was figuring to see this Sunday morning. My friend Tom, v. much a Tarantino aficionado, was disappointed. Among other thoughts:

"The first scene - and I may be wrong - seemed like a Nazi version of the opening scene of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and I am sure all the Morricone helped promote this in my head, but why the hell watch this when I can watch Lee Van Cleef pop a cap in someone's ass? There sure aint anybody in this movie nearly as interesting as Tuco and shit it ain't like the source material is lacking. It seemed half assed in a grand way, the opposite of Uwe Boll, if you will."

I read the puff piece for this in saturday's "Guardian" listings 'zine, and got annoyed at the usual list of look-at-me-im-a -fukign-1337-cineaste references - the title taken from some italian low-budget ww2 movie, the film-within-a-film referencing "Kolberg", this character's name referencing that actor, blablabla. Same MO as before, as well, I remember reading QT banging on about Uma Thurman's tracksuit being the same as one worn by Bruce Lee in some film or other NO_ONE CARES QUENTIN. I dunno why this shit annoys me so much, but it really puts me off wanting to see the film. Who gives a shit about any of that? I mean, did GW Pabst and Fritz Lang stuff their films with tedious hip reference points? Fuck no. I'll probably watch this when it's on TV, IF it's on TV when I'm down at my mother-in-law's place.

pabst and lang didnt have enough hip cinema to reference

also u really, really dont have to have any working knowledge of morricone/lang/ww2 films to enjoy this

i really, really dug this, by the way--but its definitely not going to convert anyone whos on the fence about tarantino

really

really

fuck trivia

This is not the Morbs I know from ILBaseball's trivia-related threads.

NO_ONE CARES QUENTIN

So what are you getting so het up about then? I don't know or care about the references in this, I must have missed about 90% of 'em. Still enjoyed the movie though.

I didn't read inside but I saw the guardian had a banner on the front page for a one star "yah boo sucks Quent" review. Haha. Sad.

Same MO as before, as well, I remember reading QT banging on about Uma Thurman's tracksuit being the same as one worn by Bruce Lee in some film or other NO_ONE CARES QUENTIN

that wasn't exactly an obscure reference, to me it was instantly recognizable and awesome (but i watched a lot of bruce lee movies as a kid)

Meantime if you just want to read the comic:

http://www.playboy.com/articles/inglourious-basterds/index.html

Yeah, I watched a bunch of Bruce Lee movies as a kid too, & fucking loved them all too, better than "Kill Bill" which I though was a snore.

I'm not getting het up DavidM! I just think dropping a bunch of references like that is a super lame way of promoting your shit.

there are a lot of reasons why people could dislike Kill Bill, but 'was a snore'??? really?

kill bill 1 is exactly what a snore isn't

xp

What can I say? It bored the piss out of me.

i came out of the theater feeling all hyped up like a little kid, i can't remember seeing any other movie in my 20s that had quite the same effect

pash otm

I just think dropping a bunch of references like that is a super lame way of promoting your shit.

Yeah but you know what he's like.

It's so nerdy & exuberant, I unfortunately sort of empathize w/ his obliviousness to other ppl's care-level (while cringing a little, e.g. his recent Letterman appearance - "Blue Angel! Leone!".... "so, uh, Brad Pitt, then"). I don't get the sense the reference-dropping is about being cooler-than-thou - he sometimes gets a little paid-dues defensive but I think he mostly just wants to share a bunch of stuff & probably in the least-cool blabby way possible.

"kill bill 1 is exactly what a snore isn't"

I still think the fight sequences are just okay, but I wasn't bored for the most part.

so is everyone on the internet complaining about this movie being violent and turning jews into nazis not see the same ending that i did

Everyone on the internet complaining hasn't seen the movie most likely.

i was srsly covering my face at the ending, nothing to do w/ gruesomeness or w/e but it is soooo QT-y a line, just aw damn he actually ended on ~that~ anyway i loved it

maybe i will see this tonight

ON W33D

this movie ruled

I mean yeah if you don't like QT you're not gonna like this but why are you seeing it if you don't?

I really liked this for a whole bunch of film nerd reasons (Same color palette as Melville used in "Army Of Shadows!" An old Hitchcock clip! That music's from 'Revolver'!!) as well as because it was just a lot of fun.

honestly can't wait to see this again

yeah same here

I liked this a lot. As a theater guy, I really loved how much of the movie is composed of these super-long one-room, dialogue-driven scenes -- more play-like than any other big movie I can think of. And those scenes really are perfectly writter -- I think the basement-bar segment is my favorite.

*MILD SPOILER*
How is it that Zoller goes up to the projection room after the theater has been locked?

I had very little intention of seeing this until abt 3 days ago, and up until 8 hours ago it was a pretty halfhearted intention. But my friend and I went to see it, and it was nice and all but was no "Kill Bill". I like Tarantino when he's embracing the kitsch with the pastiche; "IB" seems big on the pastiche but obv not so much on the kitsch (when compared to, say, "Kill Bill"). I certainly enjoyed it but wouldn't want to ever own it.

Eazy - I think the projection room was just upstairs of the auditorium, and still within the main part of the theater xp

didn't really like this too much, but am not a QT super fan - the Onion review from way up thread is largely OTM

I guess I didn't really realize before how QT relies on the same narrative tricks over and over again

WTF reviewers this was fantastic.

(Eazy - he was in the box. The main auditorium was the locked area.)

this was hilarious

Oh thanks - that makes sense.

BRAD Pitt, reformed pot smoker? The "Inglourious Basterds" star was on Bill Maher's show on Friday, and Maher recalled a party where Pitt rolled one perfect joint after another. "I'm an artist," Pitt said of his rolling skills. But Pitt said he no longer partakes of the weed, explaining it turns him "into a doughnut . . . I'm a dad now. You want to be alert." However, if Pitt really quit, it was within the last 13 months. "Basterds" director Quentin Tarantino told Howard Stern on Sirius Satellite Radio this week of his visit to Pitt in France last July, when Angelina Jolie was about to give birth to twins. As recounted by a Web site that logs Stern's show, Tarantino said: "Brad had this big brick of hash . . .

He said that Brad whipped out a knife and cut up a big sliver for him and the stuff was pretty good. He said that he asked for a pipe to go with it and Brad handed him a Coke can to use instead. Quentin said that would make for a great scene in a movie and he may have to use that."

I imagine QT could turn that into about six pages of dialogue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gGZAIFteAg

i haven't seen this movie yet but i swear david denby always manages to find the dumbest possible shit to say about any particular movie he happens to be reviewing. he blows.

ugh just now forced myself to read the Denby

he's so worked up to make his case for tarantino's (vs e.g. D Denby's i guess?) "moral callousness" that he ignores the structural significance of the scene he stakes his case on: if we knew one way or the other whether the character in question honored his word, we would have an expectation for how he might behave in a later scene where this might matter.

i really liked this movie!

yeah it was good. def better than Kill Bills 1 and 2 and Death Proof imo

hard to compare to the older ones though, kind of a different animal

scott, you hate movies.

I didn't love this movie, though it definitely had moments. Tarantino loves his chatty scenes, but they all seem like the same scene to me -- cinematic foreplay, basically -- and I don't think that the content of those scenes is always strong enough. In Pulp Fiction, it was fun; in Deathproof, it was tedious. Some of the scenes in this movie reminded me of the interminably slow parts of Deathproof.

That said, the last 20 minutes were demented and glorious.

i haven't seen this movie yet but i swear david denby always manages to find the dumbest possible shit to say about any particular movie he happens to be reviewing. he blows.

― horseshoe, Saturday, August 22, 2009 9:45 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the worst part about this is that they have poor richard brody blogging about the movie and saying 60000x more intelligent things about it while denby gets the in-print review (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/?xrail)

this is a guy who thought CRASH was "the strongest american movie since mystic river" btw

i mean, denby is the guy who thought crash was a masterpiece

Also, re Denby criticizing not knowing the outcome of a particular scene, it's Shoshanna's story (even if she doesn't understand everything that was said that day, word for word), and so of course she doesn't know how it turns out.

I don't think the extended scenes are "chatty" at all, any more than they are with a Pinter or Mamet script, or one of Shakespeare's longer scenes. Every line and beat has a intention. One reason American Buffalo and Glengarry are considered classics above his other plays is because of their continuity -- the extended scenes in this movie are cut of the same cloth as Glengarry. Nothing chatty about it; every syllable is precise (even if misspelled in the screenplay). There Will Be Blood had a few of this type of scene as well -- virtuoso drama without even moving the camera.

(Whereas my own paragraph is chatty.)

Tarantino loves his chatty scenes, but they all seem like the same scene to me -- cinematic foreplay, basically --

this is so OTM - Eazy, I don't think it's just the length of the scenes, but also the dialogic devices he uses - I haven't gone back and done a close reading of the screenplays but when you're watching them, there's sense of Tarantino-ness about them where you can sort of hear Tarantino the writer in the dialogue, overwhelming the characters almost, and that's what bugs me

It's so funny most reviews I've read of this are the reviewer complaining about how QT is pandering to all these obscure or cool film references, references which of course end up comprising a large portion of the word count and make it seem like the reviewer is the very kind of film snob they're trying to paint QT as.

I don't think the extended scenes are "chatty" at all, any more than they are with a Pinter or Mamet script, or one of Shakespeare's longer scenes. Every line and beat has a intention

OTM...and in this movie QT did an excellent job of using the dialogue to sustain tension.

Unlike, say Death Proof, which I enjoyed but where the dialogue in definitely felt masturbatory at times.

this is so OTM - Eazy, I don't think it's just the length of the scenes, but also the dialogic devices he uses - I haven't gone back and done a close reading of the screenplays but when you're watching them, there's sense of Tarantino-ness about them where you can sort of hear Tarantino the writer in the dialogue, overwhelming the characters almost, and that's what bugs me

― tony dayo (dyao), Sunday, August 23, 2009 10:21 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is probably true but im not sure what makes it different from any playwright or screenwriter with a recognizable "style"--mamet, say

lb - the first scene was very good w/r/t to tension, maybe because it was aping I mean paying homage to the standard WWII nazi-jew trope of Nazis rolling through idyllic countryside and fucking shit up - but after the whole tension-defusing reveal of the giant pipe and so forth, I found the rest of the tense scenes in the movie somewhat flat. maybe because after the introduction of the Basterds the claim to verisimilitude was completely given up (NB I walked into the movie knowing absolutely nothing about it other than it was QT) and there was a kind of dissonance between "OK this is supposed to be a WWII movie" and "OK this is a comic book onscreen" in a way that you didn't get with, say, Kill Bill, since you knew it was supposed to be a completely fantastical movie.

max - that's true, and I've never seen a Mamet production outside of Ronin so I can't use him as a comparison. but I feel that some are able to create different characters with their own identifiable tics and quirks which do enough to separate the character from the creator

i can see that as an objection to some of the writing in death proof, where almost all the characters are some version of tarantinos dream girl, but the characters in IB are all drawn so broadly--some of them seem to be made up entirely of tics and quirks and not much else--that i never really felt (the way i did during some scenes in death proof) that i was watching tarantino have a conversation with himself.

or are you saying that in a scene like, say, the meeting in the bar, the conversation isnt doing much to help define our characters? this is a fairly accurate criticism i think--in IB and maybe every QT movie since jackie brown he doesnt seem particularly interested in fleshing out characters as more than just "types," which can make their conversations (esp if youre not a big fan) come across as sort of... masturbatory

probably more closer to the second - good call on the "types", I felt during the movie I had seen a lot of these characters before. all of the IBs had that sort of badass coolness of Vince Vega and Jules Winnfield and the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. outside of Hans Landa I don't think any of the other characters really had any appreciable chunks of dialogue, and Landa, in his hyper-analyzing way, just kinda reminded me of QT & Steve Buscemi arguing about tipping in Reservoir Dogs.

also I never realized til now just how much QT relies on power differentials to build up tension - from Landa interrogating French dairy farmer, Aldo interrogating the German soldiers, Landa questioning Shoshanna, all very Vega and Jules in the apartment & Mr. Blonde and the cop. not to mention the Mexican standoffs!

Quentin talks soundtrack

It's those power differentials that distinguish characters in Mamet's plays, more than type differences, and it's true in Basterds, too. Landa never says something just because it's on his mind, or because he's had some thoughts about something and wants to riff on it a bit -- it's part of why this movie seemed tighter to me than Pulp Fiction and Dogs, which did have those long observational-comedy monologues. (There Will Be Blood is another example of a talky movie in which no one talks without purpose -- even if they talk "just because they're lonely" or "just because they're friends," the scene is about what the characters want and how it's manifested in their words and actions.)

T. called Jackie Brown and Death Proof "hanging out movies," the kind where he wants viewers to want to "hang out" with these characters every few years by watching it, and I'd say those ones are chatty, in the sense that there sometimes isn't a specific purpose beyond the riffs but that they're meant to be a spectacle in themselves.

just got home from seeing this in bumfuck, pa, and all i can say right now is

THAT. WAS. AWESOME.

BEST. SINCE. PULP. FICTION.

more thoughts next week when i have time

crits hating on this are idiots, or just not tarantino stans

seriously, this movie flew by for me, i didn't think it was awkward or badly structured AT ALL

this owned

also lol at myers cameo

SPOILER

lol at the idea of suave, unfadable 007 uk secret agent types

only thing that worries me is that the theatre where i saw this was only 1/4 or 1/5 full

i hope this is doing better, elsewhere

why would that worry u

i dont give a fuqqqqq if this does well

***SPOILER ALERT***

Good film. I wouldn't rate it nearly as high as Pulp Fiction or Jackie Brown, but it was very enjoyable. I delighted in the wanton destruction of Nazis at the end. Loved the very last scene. Perfect ending for the film. This dude in the front of theatre was howling in laughter at Landa's "marking."

sucks that grindhouse didn't do well though.

xp

this owned

― a narwhal done gored my sister nell (cankles), Sunday, August 23, 2009 2:19 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i thought the long scenes - in the farmhouse & bar - were absolutely fantastic

brad pitt was amazing as well - so in command of the character

altho i was disappointed that there wasn't as much background on the basterds - the tangent scene explaining the origin of the one guy was so awesome that i kinda wish they had maybe cut down on some of the other stuff so they could've devoted more time to the background of the basterds (esp because he made all the basterd actors come up with backstories for their characters)

also mike meyers sounded EXACTLY like dr evil

yeah I could have watched another hour or so of basterds kicking ass. Disappointed neal schweiber did not get a single line - his serious souldier face was awesome! But this did indeed own.

my gf was convinced the first guy to get scalped was quentin himself, and I think eli roth put himself into the nation's pride movie.

it was a dummy modeled after quentin, I read somewhere

Eli Roth directed the Nation's Pride bits.

(Oh, "put himself in," so you know that already)

i thought we got just enough of the basterds. too much more would have been overkill.

this owned

― a narwhal done gored my sister nell (cankles), Sunday, August 23, 2009 2:19 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

― can i ox (J0rdan S.), Sunday, August 23, 2009 9:12 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i thought we got just enough of the basterds. too much more would have been overkill.

I dunno I was a little surprised that it was like 25% the war and 75% the movie premier / Paris stuff

but whatever, it was a pretty sweet movie

"altho i was disappointed that there wasn't as much background on the basterds - the tangent scene explaining the origin of the one guy was so awesome that i kinda wish they had maybe cut down on some of the other stuff so they could've devoted more time to the background of the basterds"

maybe the dvd version will include that kinda stuff? i hope so.

Cloris Leachman cut out, so I ain't going.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2009/06/cloris_leachman.html

i think it was in the gq piece where tarantino said that he had so much material for this that he could have done a bizarro-version of band of brothers. it would be cool if some cable station let him do this for real. i would love more basterds stories. origin stories. landa stories. he could get other people to direct/write episodes. i'm sure you could find someone just as cool to play pitt's part on t.v. (maybe not someone as cool to play landa though!)

Landa's "I love rumors!" might have gotten the biggest laugh when i saw the movie. I think that's what he said. in the farmhouse. that look on his face was priceless.

hope he wins an oscar for that role. so great. and really great writing for his character. even if you didn't like the rest of the movie, you would have to like that performance.

have you seen any other movies this year?

play nice boys.

I am! I'm just curious about scott's ability to recognize the year's Best Supporting Actor when he admits to disliking all contemporary movies except Tarantino's.

(that said, everything I've read about Waltz's performance suggests it's the kind of accomplished hamming that is traditionally classified as primo Oscarbait)

Landa kinda reminded me of Steve Carell...

I thought Pitt was pretty bad - but I have an inability to distinguish Pitt from his characters, i.e. all his characters feel like "Brad Pitt plays...Rusty Ryan!" instead of just "Rusty Ryan." I have the same problem with Tom Cruise.

it's great hamming! it's wonderful hamming. he has fun with it. i love fun.

x-post

i know what you mean about pitt. i have the same problem with leo and depp. they just remind me of kids playing dress up.

though pitt is actually visibly aging. that's in his favor. maybe by the time he is 60 he'll be able to play a real live human being.

'pitt was pretty bad' = u r pretty crazy

i liked him in the movie. i generally don't have a problem with him. or leo or depp.

i would love more basterds stories. origin stories.

from Morbs' CLoris Leachman link it sounds like they shot some of that. I was wondering why Hugo Stiglitz was the only one who got the big comic-book superhero subtitle treatment

What happens in the scene?
I’m an old Jewish woman in Brooklyn — we shot it in Berlin, but it’s supposed to be in Brooklyn — and I open the door and this young man [Eli Roth] is standing there and he asks me to sign his bat. He’s heard about these Germans, what they’re doing to Jews and he asks, “Is there anybody who’s been affected by the Nazis?” and I look at him and start signing my sister’s name. And you know that they’re just going to take the bat and just kill some Nazis.

not subtitle. whatever that was. supertitle. giant logo.

'Hugo Stiglitz' logo font = one of the best moments

(that said, everything I've read about Waltz's performance suggests it's the kind of accomplished hamming that is traditionally classified as primo Oscarbait)

― Indiana Morbs and the Curse of the Ivy League Chorister (Dr Morbius), Monday, 24 August 2009 01:30 (38 minutes ago) Permalink

for fuck's sake you really do hate movies, don't you? i mean is there any reason you prefer reading people dismiss them and nodding along than actually bothering to see the stuff you spend so many hours shitting on?

yeah gotta lol @ morbs chastising someone else for supposedly hating contemporary movies

'Hugo Stiglitz' logo font = one of the best moments

― iatee, Sunday, August 23, 2009 8:42 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

imo it would've been cool if there was a moment like this for all the basterds with a funny & cool little 45 second/1 min scene about the important ones

yeah I was hoping for that too. reallllly wouldn't minded if this movie were an hour longer.

it felt to me like that 'hugo stalitz' moment & the parts in the theatre where he pointed out in writing the important members of the nazi's were... i dont wanna say concessions to his QT-ness since it's such a singular style but they almost seemed like a reminder that could've scrolled across the bottom of the screen that said "This movie was written and directed by Quentin Tarantino"

they seemed sort of half assed - like there should've been font moments for all the basterds and not just one, or he should've labeled all of the nazi guys, not just two

well, he is one of those people who films a five hour movie and then has to make it into something 3 hours or less. he probably did do the logo thing for all of them.

Christoph Waltz 's performance was great (somehow both subtle and overblown), as were the first 20 minutes. Unfortunately, then I had to sit there for another 2+ hours with only small moments of Landa to break the tedium.

I think I liked that opening so much that I was disappointed that the rest of the movie seemed so disconnected from that feeling and style. Solid C+, mainly for Waltz.

this was totally OTT and great and fun, but: i hope tarantino reels it in a bit with whatever he does next. i love bits like the stiglitz thing, and non-period music and the like, but QT seems his best, to me, when he's being more restrained. like in the opening scene. still clearly an homage of some kind (it seemed like it was shot and staged deliberately like a western, farmer sending the girls inside, all squinting over the sprawling landscape at a fast approaching posse), but playing within a tighter set of formal rules? i mean i like switching to anime and throwing in filmic asides, but i still think tarantino goes from being cool A+ entertainment to being damn this guy is great when he stays concentrated for longer periods of time.

somehow both subtle and overblown

^^^ i mean this is the whole thing, really, with tarantino.

I hope he does the opposite, tbh

yeah i think kill bill is by far his best movie - love every scene in that

that's sort of the thing, maybe? is that he's an amazing direct of ~scenes~

he's got this jaymc.xls of 'awesome scenes where dude ...' that he can rifle through and pantomine/rethink/reimagine/whatever (this is not a bad thing), and i think he's better when the scenes are longer, and hang together stylistically (however mutant that style might be).

i mean, pretty sure the chaptering in both KB and IG is a device to let him make five short movies instead of one long one

i just think he's one of those guys who has a hundred ideas and then he has to pick ten to make a movie around. this is always gonna result in a shaggy less than seamless whole. but the parts are cool enough that i don't really care.

i know this is C- boring criticism, but tarantino seems to make movies that he wishes had already been made, by someone else, for him to be a huge fan of. they all seem to be iterations of wouldn't it be cool if there was a movie about... bong hittery with other movie dork buddies. so you get earlier movies with a smaller set of genre deviations, otherwise holding pretty closely to a focused idea of a movie, with less tics. whereas his latest three are shaggier for sure, probably because he's been given license to go wild with best idea for most kickass kungfu revenge movie, check it ok, the girl's an ASSASSIN, and she's on this TEAM with these other girl assassins and

~doobs~

wouldn't that be cool????

and this is a bad thing why exactly???

LOS ANGELES — Whew: “Inglourious Basterds,” the risky Quentin Tarantino picture that the struggling Weinstein Company badly needed to be a hit, sold a stout $37.6 million in tickets over the weekend.
The better-than-expected total was easily enough to make this R-rated film No. 1 at the weekend box office, according to Hollywood.com, which tracks results. The figures also strongly validate the ability of Brad Pitt to open a movie, even in a summer when other big-star vehicles have not been clicking with audiences. The Weinstein Company, led by Harvey Weinstein, built the marketing campaign for the film largely around Mr. Pitt (who appears in only about half of the film).

tarantino seems to make movies that he wishes had already been made, by someone else, for him to be a huge fan of.

this is basically a perfect one sentence summary of why he's great

yes, A+ crit

its not a bad thing!

but playing within a tighter set of formal rules?

I was hoping for this too

i guess i'd just like him to make another movie that hangs as well as a complete whole, tonally and everything, as JB. 10 year old nazi revenge scripts are dope and all, but i'm way more impressed by smaller gestures and slower pacing. again, the other stuff is awesome, but QT being subtle reveals more talent, imo

or just make a 3 hour movie comprised entirely of unrelated shorts (assuming Grindhouse doesn't already count as that)

s1ocki, go to hell or send me $12, I KNOW THE FUCKER'S NOT FOR ME anymore, ok?

from nyt review:

"But too often in “Inglourious Basterds” the filmmaking falls short. Mr. Tarantino is a great writer and director of individual scenes, though he can have trouble putting those together, a difficulty that has sometimes been obscured by the clever temporal kinks in his earlier work. He has also turned into a bad editor of his own material (his nominal editor, as usual, is Sally Menke) and seems unwilling or incapable of telling his A material from his B. The conversations in “Inglourious Basterds” are often repetitive and overlong and they rarely sing, in part because the period setting doesn’t allow him to raid his vast pop-cultural storehouse."

This was a pretty tight set of formal rules: the Landa storyline, the Shoshanna storyline, the Basterds storyline, the Brits storyline, and bringing them all togher in a single event. If you think you can do it better, I'd love to read your screenplay.

xxpost and you're on this thread just to remind yourself of why, yeah?

I KNOW THE FUCKER'S NOT FOR ME anymore, ok?

if only you would use this same logic when it came to which threads you clicked on

xp

Oh, and the Nazi's storyline, of course. It's like the biggest Mexican standoff in history, is all.

yeah gotta lol @ morbs chastising someone else for supposedly hating contemporary movies

"Man, I hope this guy wins an Oscar even tho I can't stand other movies and have no idea what his competition might be like"

s1ocki, go to hell or send me $12, I KNOW THE FUCKER'S NOT FOR ME anymore, ok?

― Indiana Morbs and the Curse of the Ivy League Chorister (Dr Morbius), Monday, August 24, 2009 12:06 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

seriously then why spend so much effin' time bitching and moaning about it.. if you HAD seen it and didn't like it i could see why you'd want to hang around and talk about it and argue your POV but as it stands... why

nah i get you, i'm just saying

xp

i don't care what the competition is like. fuck the oscars. i just want that guy to win a prize of some sort!

x-post

maybe the swastika is really real and that's his prize ;)

it is a bit rich for morbs to chastise u for not seeing movies before making sweeping judgments tho xp

he won best actor at cannes, and he's european...so that probably matters a lot to him...

oh, okay then! nevermind about the oscars. that's good enough.

okay this movie is awesome

s1ocki, go to hell or send me $12, I KNOW THE FUCKER'S NOT FOR ME anymore, ok?

― Indiana Morbs and the Curse of the Ivy League Chorister (Dr Morbius), Monday, August 24, 2009 12:06 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

then you should quit wasting your time posting in threads about him.

Have you ever paused to think about how fucking weird it is that you continually post in threads about movies you haven't seen/won't see?

I don't do this continually. Every time there's an "anticipation" movie thread, fucking everybody does this.
Bye.

He's reviving that grand old role: Momus On The Kill Bill Thread. His act needs work though. He needs to go back and study the master some more.

the dude who played the nazi colonel was great in four languages (btw loved the natural & realistic use of multiple languages in this)

the guy who played hans owned so hard btw

*pulls out a gigantic fucking alpenhorn pipe*

i'm sure there was no significance but that huge-ass pipe really reminded me of a

http://levinejudaica.com/catalog/images/shofar.jpg

i'm reviving my own role from the kill bill thread apparently:

ha ha!! that guy's review is funny. when did they let my granny start writing for newspapers. sigh, i was really kinda let down by the lack of blood and limbs in the climactic scene. but it was still pretty cool. not peter jackson chopping-zombies-down-with-a-lawnmower cool, but cool nonetheless.if people don't like exuberant over-the-top action movies that's fine. they sound like humourless scolds when they write reviews like that though. i liked the one radio review i heard by a guy who writes for Slate. he quoted david denby's hand-wringing review in the new yorker where he says: "i felt nothing. no joy, no anger...blah, blah" and this guy went on to say: "well, i felt something. I felt glee!" that about sums it up for me! so lock me up already.
― scott seward, Monday, October 13, 2003 2:32 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark

i liked it a lot! it was really fun. i kept thinking of oliver stone for some reason. that comic booky/natural born killers/heightened/operatic/bloody/black and white/animation/cameras everywhere kinda feel, i guess. i suppose it would be too easy to call critics of kill bill fun-haters, huh? i can't help but feel that american critics are toothless grandmas what with that whole "it's the most violent/bloodiest movie ever" tag it gave the film. it's not either of those things. but it's still really good anyway.
― scott seward, Saturday, October 11, 2003 10:36 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark

i'm nothing if not consistent. in my hatred for david denby. and love of spectacle. poor david denby.

i can't help but feel that american critics are toothless grandmas what with that whole "it's the most violent/bloodiest movie ever" tag it gave the film. it's not either of those things. but it's still really good anyway.
― scott seward, Saturday, October 11, 2003 10:36 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark

ok i know i'm like 6 years late here but KB was indisputably the most violent hollywood production ever imo

(btw loved the natural & realistic use of multiple languages in this)

yeah choice of language played a huge role in this movie - countless scenes were built around it. (this also made it more realistic than 95% of hollywood movies set in europe.)

ok i know i'm like 6 years late here but KB was indisputably the most violent hollywood production ever imo

― a narwhal done gored my sister nell (cankles), Monday, August 24, 2009 5:12 AM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nah, it's very much disputable. Scarface and Natural Born Killers have arguments, for starters.

no they dont (owned)

I don't do this continually. Every time there's an "anticipation" movie thread, fucking everybody does this.
Bye.

― Indiana Morbs and the Curse of the Ivy League Chorister (Dr Morbius), Monday, August 24, 2009 4:58 AM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

as far as I can tell, you post in every film thread on ILX, whether you have seen the film or not.

Saving Private Ryan is more violent.

no

3 times as many deaths, way less cartoonishness= more violent

body count is not the most reliable metric for 'violence' in most film, imo

nothing in saving private ryan is as gruesome as when gogo yubari gets violently murdered by the spiked ball

gogo is murdered by a piece of a chair with a nail in going into her head iirc

or when daryl hannah gets her d*mn eye gouged out

yeah but all those deaths are cartoonish (not that I have any idea what it would look like IRL) or filmed cartoonishly

Starship Troopers has KB beat IMO

or when daryl hannah gets her d*mn eye gouged out

― a narwhal done gored my sister nell (cankles), Monday, August 24, 2009 6:12 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that's in kill bill 2. You'd have to be crazy to argue kill bill 2 is the most violent film ever.

the most jarring act of violence in all of tarantino's movies, imo, is in jackie brown, and it's definitely more disturbing in context than seeing a gi mowed on the beach in a movie that i completely expected to show gis on beaches, getting mown

gogo is murdered by a piece of a chair with a nail in going into her head iirc

― the people vs peer gynt (goole), Monday, August 24, 2009 1:11 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah whoops - otm tho

i mean i'm otm

yeah but all those deaths are cartoonish (not that I have any idea what it would look like IRL) or filmed cartoonishly

― tony dayo (dyao), Monday, August 24, 2009 6:14 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the blood geysers were cartoonish, come on. Only place I've seen blood geysers like that is in the Evil Dead movies and Samurai Showdown II.

the most jarring act of violence in all of tarantino's movies, imo, is in jackie brown, and it's definitely more disturbing in context than seeing a gi mowed on the beach in a movie that i completely expected to show gis on beaches, getting mown

― crabRCISE (gbx), Monday, August 24, 2009 6:16 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I would say the ear scene in Reservoir Dogs is still the most violent thing he's come up with. Madsen picking up the ear and talking into it is wild stuff.

i'm a little creeped out by this conversation but i can think of about half a dozen things off the top of my head that are "worse" or "more violent" than that (gogo's death), from spr.

xp

Wikipedia says even Wes Craven walked out on the ear cutting scene back in the day xp

i was talking about kb 1 and 2 like they were one movie.

You'd have to be crazy to argue kill bill 2 is the most violent film ever.

GOOD THING I NEVER SAID THAT U FUCKEN CUMBEARD

if I had a young kid I would rather have them watch Kill Bill (which is basically a comic book) than Saving Private Ryan (which attempts to be a realistic movie = the violence is more affecting)

but they aren't one movie

liked how the young nazi soldier at the end of the basement tavern scene either spoke such good english or was so familiar with QT films that he could immediately discuss the finer points of Mexican standoffs with Aldo Raine

yeah the fact that Reservoir Dogs plays it straight w/r/t realism makes the ear cutting scene more traumatic xxp

liked how the young nazi soldier at the end of the basement tavern scene either spoke such good english or was so familiar with QT films that he could immediately discuss the finer points of Mexican standoffs with Aldo Raine

― jerk store (hmmmm), Monday, August 24, 2009 1:23 AM (5 seconds ago) Bookmark

haha this was weird yeah

the distinction between cartoon/'comic book' violence and more realistic violence is irrelevent to this discussion

u jorts-sharting aspie rubes

http://images.blackheartgoldpants.com/images/admin/secmexicanstandoff.JPG

basterds was good i thought. the non-period music bugged me a bit, as did a few of the other "meta" touches, like the arrows pointing to famous nazis at the premiere. Overall though I enjoyed it, though I did not buy the ending w/r/t Landa's character; couldn't really see that guy doing what he did, though at least Aldo took advantage of the situation. I also had a brief moment of confusion re: the placement of TNT in the theater--the two basterds leave their seats, but I must have missed them actually stashing the dynamite.

the distinction between cartoon/'comic book' violence and more realistic violence is irrelevent to this discussion

u jorts-sharting aspie rubes

― a narwhal done gored my sister nell (cankles), Monday, August 24, 2009 6:26 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

so the nature of the violence is out, and the body count is out.... what counts then?

how gruesome is the violence

i think what landa did was a bit tenuous, but it made sense - i mean, i think in general anyone that high up in the nazi regime would be dedicated to the cause and would've continued murdering jews even if they saw a tribunal on the horizaon - but he does go out of his way to make himself seem like someone who is just in it for the 'thrill of the hunt' or w/e and doesn't actually hate jews all that much - i guess you could even extrapolate it out in your mind to believe that landa was a 'great detective' who was hired out by the nazis because you were either for or against them & then ascended in the ranks - that said he's still despicable, but i think his character throughout the film is set up so that his 'foresight' there at the end is believable

i'm really just objecting to dismissing the violence in KB as cartoonish, as if that somehow means it can't still be really brutal and horrible (because it is all of those things)

the only thing i didn't get re: landa is why he let that jew broad live in the beginning. he was just like WHOOPSY DAISY and decided not to shoot her? did the gun jam or something?

"jew broad"

i'm really just objecting to dismissing the violence in KB as cartoonish, as if that somehow means it can't still be really brutal and horrible (because it is all of those things)

― a narwhal done gored my sister nell (cankles), Monday, August 24, 2009 6:38 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink