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Thread: Quentin Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

  1. #46
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    Much thanks for that. I'll check it out.

    Here's a quote from Eli Roth, from an interview Peter Howell did with him at Cannes on the deck of the Carlton Hotel, overlooking the French Riviera:

    Q: You also got to do some directing for the film. You did Nation's Pride, the Nazi Propaganda film that screens within Inglourious Basterds. How was that?

    ELI: I felt it was switching gears. It's so hard to come out of the state of psychosis and depression and anger I worked myself up into for that beating scene (as The Bear Jew). But actually doing Nation's Pride was the best thing. It forced me to stop. To make it, it had to be real...I want the Nazis rolling in their grave, thinking, "God, the movie that's the most-seen Nazi propaganda movie is directed by a Jew"
    "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd

  2. #47
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    And the best part of the interview, which I feel is the perspective people should take when watching Basterds:





    ELI: I felt like I had to be a Jewish Warrior. But this whole thing about kosher porn, although it's a Jewish fantasy, the more I think about it, it's a universal fantasy. Who wouldn't want to go back in time and kill evil and change the future to save millions? You think about it with September 11th, if we could go back and kill those hijackers who crashed those planes. It takes an artist like Tarantino to make a movie about fantasies like this, that don't have to abide by the rules of history.
    "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd

  3. #48
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    A Superb Movie I Didn't Like

    INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is a rare movie for me because I didn't like it, I found it distasteful, and it brutalized and trivialized an important historical period in our World. Nevertheless, Tarantino is at the top of his game with brilliant psychological scenes full of fascinating dialogue and acting that has been rarely brought to the screen in contemporary films. I found the ultimate dispostion of most of the characters, abit far-fetched and took away some of the conflicted satisfaction I found in watching THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963). The characters were captivating if not well-rounded personalities and as such created an stereotypical context that permitted the black and white ravaging slaughter that appeared on screen, unlike Steven Spielberg's SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993). The trailers also did a disservice to the actual nature of this film which I found compelling and the storyline was solid and edited well together. Overall, this is not the movie I wanted to see, but I have to admit that it was technically well done and deserves its laudatory comments for those who accept the brutality and the two-dimensional characters and conflicted outcomes of this movie.

  4. #49
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    I do not agree with any of this. [I am replying to Johann's last two posts, not tabuno's, which makes good sense, even though he takes a different stance on the movie than I have.] And the thinking Roth presents is confused. Revenge has nothing to do with changing the course of events, and as I cited earlier, people believe with some justification that revenge simply continues the cycle of violence. The phrase "kill evil' is thoughtless. "Kill the hijackers?" No, that is not a mentality I endorse, of "preventively" going around and killing people, on the theory that you are preventing them from doing something, as in US and Israeli drone attacks. However, in the case of that series of events, capturing the men and preventing their action would have certainly changed the course of history. But preemptively killing people is itself a form of terrorism.

    I don't think Eli Roth is the best advert for Tarantino or for this movie. It has been commented not without reason that the movies Roth has himself directed are terrible. (One would hope that as violent as Tarantino gets sometimes, he would never veer into HOSTEL or CABIN FEVER territory.) Various bloggers and some reviewers have said that as "the Bear Jew" Roth is terrible in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS too, but maybe it's hard to judge that role objectively. It's interesting though that Roth got to direct "Nation's Priide," the movie-within-a-movie Nazi propaganda film. Now how good that is, is another question. We don't really get to see very much of it (and i think that has been criticized). Whether it is a nice irony -- or another example of Tarantino-esque illogic -- that a Jew got to direct a Nazi propaganda film is still another question.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 08-23-2009 at 05:41 PM.

  5. #50
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    I have to admit that it was technically well done and deserves its laudatory comments for those who accept the brutality and the two-dimensional characters and conflicted outcomes of this movie. (tabuno)
    I went into the theater after having decided to forget the amorality and shallowness of Tarantino's cinema. I went into the theater to appreciate the film on purely cinematic terms, the way I was able to appreciate say... Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will or other morally dubious films like City of God. I went into the theater to appreciate the film as a sensory experience. I agree with you that the film is technically well done (did you have any doubts? It's "QT"). Making this film requires a certain chutzpah, no? I mean to use the word with both its positive and negative connotations. It's an affront, a provocation of sorts.
    On the other hand, I was simply not prepared for the longueurs. I don't remember KILL BILL feeling this drawn out. Not a typical response to a movie, not from me, to sit there thinking: "get the fucking thing over with!" chapter after chapter. Not of the set pieces compares to at least two from Kill Bill, in my opinion.

    he noted that the "houty-toity" film critics (I think he was referring specifically to opinons in Film Comment) have decided Jackie Brown is his best work and the rest of his oeuvre is irrelevant and to be avoided.
    Funny that just a few posts ago I wrote yesterday (or was it the day before?) that the only Tarantino movie I would rewatch (maybe) is JACKIE BROWN.

  6. #51
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    The Long Sequences Were the Best Part of the Movie

    Oddly enough, it was the "long sequences" with a lot of narrative and the psychological interplay that I found the most compelling of the movie, these were brilliant scenes with the characters playing a sophisticated cat and mouse that required serious acting performances and a great narrative script. I was immersed into the intense drama that was playing in the mind - and I wasn't ever interesting in getting the scene over with as much as savoring the anticipation of how it was going to turn out, my emotions on high alert, anxious with fear and hope.

  7. #52
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    I respect your opinion. For me, most of the time, the scenes induced boredom. Perhaps the lack of character dimensionality (I mean these characters were precisely who we thought they were) made me lose interest midway through some scenes.

  8. #53
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    Ars longa, vita brevis?

    Both of your are right. That's why I said the sequences are excruciaing, but also note that it is in his long set pieces that Tarantino excels. You can't really say that the scene between The Bride and Snake Charmer does not have longeurs; it's replete with them. Actually the basement cantina smoking-out sequence in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is more truly suspenseful, because it is electric with the tension of the resistance agent, Hicox, struggling to maintain his cover. In the Charlie Rose interview, Tarantino spoke of haveing been accused of his films not having suspense,and making a conscious effort to creat suspense in this one. But his greatest strength is also his greatest weakness. His free-flowing dialogue is where his genius emerges, but it can also weigh like a dead weight on any and all viewers who are not in on the game, who do not see the fun of it. I do not think that boredom is a sure indication of failure. Boredom may simply mean that you are not on the wavelength. Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA certainly had enormous longeurs when it first was watched in theaters. But then he was rewareded at Cannes for developing "a new cinematic language." And he had.

  9. #54
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    BOX OFFICE MOJO - NEWS BULLETIN
    Sunday, August 23, 2009

    'Inglourious Basterds' opened with a bang atop the weekend box office. Grossing an estimated $37.6 million, it hit the high end for World War 2 movies and for late August, and it delivered Quentin Tarantino’s biggest debut...

    Brandon Gray Reports:
    http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2611&p=l.htm
    Looks like Harvey and Bob have a good one, and I can see now the trailer with Brad Pitt presenting a men-on-a-mission theme was shrewdly chosen to draw in the audience. DISTRICT 9 was also reported holding well for its genre.

  10. #55
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    I thought the "longeurs" (french for long scene?) were quite savory, not boring at all. But I can see how someone would be bored.

    Tabuno: "emotions on high alert"- great turn of phrase there.
    That's what I get out of every Tarantino film.
    That's actually what I want out of every film, but so few directors are able to pull it off.

    I think the final sequence in the movie theatre with Hitler and Goebbels is absolutely awesome. The celluloid piled up and ignited, the ending just DESTROYS. Loved it. Totally enthralling for me. Made the movie.
    "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd

  11. #56
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    Actually, (I had to look it up, thanks a lot Oscar) the definition is: a long, boring, tedious and usually tawdry or vulgar passage. (meretricious).

    I think you used this word on me once before, as I recall... hoity-toity indeed! (which by the way, means to be pretentious or to put on airs)
    Colige suspectos semper habitos

  12. #57
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    If I may put in my two cents, "longueurs," hoity-toity though it may be, is still a perfectly good word. In French its first meaning is simply "length." It's #two meaning is "long, boring passages."

    People differ on whether I.B has them. I say the two big set pieces feel excrusiatingly long at times, but they are not really boring, because they are consciously and successfully suspenseful. The Guardian (UK) review, which is really nasty, says "Longeurs abound." But another UK website, "The List," which has a QT interview, says the opposite:
    Tarantino’s efforts have paid off. Clocking in at just shy of two-and-a-half hours and showcasing a series of extended set-pieces, Inglourious Basterds nevertheless feels tightly packed. Intertwining three storylines knotted together by a plot to assassinate high command of the Third Reich at the premiere of a Nazi propaganda film at a cinema in occupied Paris, Tarantino’s latest has none of the indulgent longeurs that occasionally deflated Bills 1 and 2, nor does it suffer from the (admittedly purposely) uneven pacing that virtually ground his half of Grindhouse to a halt. In terms of style, tone and the punch it packs, Inglourious Basterds is closer to Tarantino’s more cohesive earlier films, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, which is doubly surprising given its prolonged scrappy development.
    I thought, maybe Rex Reed would pan the movie, but he does not:
    Like all Quentin Tarantino movies, Inglourious Basterds is exasperating, absurd, cruel, cynical, sneeringly arrogant, racist, elitist, naïvely derivative and viciously funny. It is also one whale of a rigorous entertainment.. . . .Facetious, and sprawling over two and a half hours, the film is often unintentionally hilarious but, I hastily add, never tedious. . . .I had a helluva time watching Inglourious Basterds. It’s as frenzied as a dog in heat. Mr. Tarantino lacks nuance, but he’s an erratic, awkward and often brilliant filmmaker. In time, he might even become a mature one.
    If you say the "Longueurs were quite savory," as Johann does, they you're saying, as I would, that some moments feel excruciatingly drawn out, but they're so suspenseful that it's a good pain.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 08-24-2009 at 06:22 PM.

  13. #58
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    Here's some comments from a film blog in French. One person wrote:
    Mais ce n'est pas la longueur des scenes que j'ai trouve' ce film nul, au contraire, cela intensifie le suspense mais les nombreux anachronismes presents dans le film. = But it's not the length of the scenes that made me find this movie worthless, on the contrary, that intensified the suspense but the numerous anachronisms in the film...
    Another post:
    malgre' quelques longueurs, je ne me suis pas ennuyee'...= Despite some longueurs, I wasn't bored.
    That shows both the #1 and #2 meanings of "longueur."
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 08-25-2009 at 08:58 AM.

  14. #59
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    Websters:

    lon·gueur (lông gûrÆ, long-; Fr. lôN gŒRÆ), n., pl. -gueurs (-gûrzÆ; Fr. -gŒRÆ).
    a long and boring passage in a literary work, drama, musical composition, or the like: The longueurs in this book make it almost unreadable.
    [1815–25; < F: lit., length]
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  15. #60
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    The Slate's Review - Brilliant and Reprehensible

    I came across Dana Steven's review from The Slate that captures my views of this film:

    The Slate Review .

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