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Friday, February 12, 2010


Inglourious Basterds

Just saw this film recently (yes, I'm way behind when in comes to movies), and I'm really wondering why so many people are so "bravo!", "excellent!", and all that about this movie. Me... not so much.

Okay, so from here I'll be assuming you've seen the film so you'll know what I'm talking about.

Some parts were brilliant, especially the opening scene. Very tense, and you can really feel the emotion from the characters. One other scene that was executed well was the bar scene where the spies were trying to avoid an incident with the German soldiers. Very Tarantino (which means it's talky), but again, the tension was built up excellently.

What really bothered me with this movie is that the titular characters, the Inglourious Basterds, were not really important to the film at all. You could remove them from the movie and it would have made little difference. The main plot about the orphaned Shoshanna's revenge on the Nazis would have been sufficient to carry the movie, even without the Inglourious Basterds involvement, which really doesn't involve them as the movie went along. It just so happened they had the same goals in the end. And even if the Basterds weren't there in the climactic scene, Shoshanna's revenge would have still killed Hitler and the Nazis.

Come to think of it, if they just jettisoned the Basterds altogether, and made it a simple tale about Shoshanna's revenge plot, I guess I would have liked this movie much better.

2 comments:

Ed said...

I got bored. Maybe because you're right, lots of talking. Why it made me bored really was reading the subtitles. I hate reading especially when you want to SEE the pictures. It's not like comics where you can go back and see it again. Well, rewinding doesn't work that way.

Anyway, I like the stitching of the chapters where you wait what will happen with the Basterds and the plan in the theatre.

But the entire movie for me was boring. Not my movie. :)

TheCoolCanadian said...

Reno:

This is what I have been saying about Tarantino even from day one when so many people went ga-ga (with apologies to Lady Gaga), with his films: THEY ARE OVER RATED!

I have been telling people to watch old ANDY WARHOL produced films (Mostly directed by Paul Morissey), and they will realize that Tarantino isn't that original after all. The one obvious thing that the Warhol films will show us are composed of the following:

• "actors, keep talkin'. When you get tired, we'll change the scene"

• "Let's do the scene as violent as we can"

• "Let's make sure to show what people do not expect in a scene"

• "Let side to where most people would be revolted"

All these elements, including the techniques used in Tarantino's films are all Warholian. But, I'm still waiting for him to be as daring as Warhol, and Paul Morrisey, by showing ACTUAL INTEVENOUS DRUG USE in his films! I dare him to do a scene like in FLESH and HEAT, where actor Joe Dallesandro was 90% nude and high in the entire films and several scenes showing him injecting drugs into his vein.

Nope, I've never been a Tarantino fan and will never be. I'll stick to the classic, to the one and only true pioneer, Andy Warhol.