Inglourious Basterds

[DraconianOne]

I know there's a lot of Tarantino hate on this board and I know this film has already stirred up controversy in another thread but fuck it.

Here's the trailer.

I'll probably go see it. Looks a damned site more entertaining than Death Proof was.

[stray]

Looks cool. Doesn't look very "Tarantino-esque", but that might be a plus for some people.


V8 engines and cute girls are always entertaining.

[Evil Elvis]

The script's been out for a while.  I read part of it; it's very "Tarantino-esque".  It didn't really inspire, but I'll probably go see it anyway.

[DraconianOne]

I liked the script. It flowed better than some of his other stuff (Jackie Brown & Death Proof in particular - True Romance to a lesser extent). He's a very visual writer but I think that's mostly because he only ever really writes for himself to direct.  Personally I found that it had a real energy and vitality that even the Natural Born Killers screenplay lacked and I think a lot of that came from it being so over the top. I really liked the protagonist Col. Landa as a character too. Part Major Strasser and part Colonel Dietrich by way of Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes.

[Cadaverine]

I thought the trailer was pretty slick.  But then, I've seen a lot of slick trailers for shitty movies.

It doesn't help that I have a retarded addiction to Brad Pitt films, so I will see this movie. I don't think I'll be disappointed.  Of course, I'm not going into it with any hoity-toity expectations.  I just wanna watch some Nazi's get shit-canned in a variety of gruesome ways. 

[HaemishM]

Death Proof sucked monkey ass swimming in moose piss from a chilled glass. This will likely do the same. I sure as fuck will wait for DVD if I see it at all.

[stray]

Death Proof sucked monkey ass

No. Not really.

[HaemishM]

Look, we have the Internet if we want to see long useless shots of hot girls frooging about. When I rent a DVD that does not have the words "Boob" in the title, I want a story that isn't retarded, dialogue that wasn't churned out of the ass of an overrated pretentious twat with delusions of auteurship, and a movie that's little more than wish fulfillment pr0n for masochists.

Seriously, the whole movie was a dedication to Tarantino's desire to get the shit kicked out of him by hot women. Just hire a bevy of hookers and be done with it.

[stray]

Look, we have the Internet if we want to see long useless shots of hot girls frooging about.

What the fuck are you talking about? It's not porn. It's a brutal crash scene. And it's a great intro to a realistically scary motherfucking villain. The guy even makes ducks terrifying. Turn that shit up too, for one. There's nothing better than hearing a muscle car revving up. Everything about the scene is well composed, the silhouette of the car coming up over the hill, the song.. If you can't see what a skilled director the guy is just from that scene, then you just don't want to. Your hate is at the point of willful irrationality, and you're just being a Tarantino hater for the sake of it. Might as well just write "Cunt" on your forehead while you're at it. 

[Xuri]

Death Proof was awesome. For real. No sarcasm.

[HaemishM]

You seem to have me confused with someone who doesn't know of what I speak. I never said Tarantino wasn't a competent director. I LOVED his early work. Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, even Jackie Brown - loved them all. Somewhere around Kill Bill, the motherfucker lost something. One, his dialogue got over wrought and torturous - all the natural bouncy fun of exchanges like the foot massage talk between Jules and Vincent became stilted, unnatural sounding attempts. The dialogue SOUNDS like he's trying SO HARD to be hip that it comes off phony. See Juno for similar problems.

Two, his personal fetishes became focal points. That clip you showed is TORTURE PRON to me. It's the juxtaposition of sexually charged characters who are then violently acted upon. And it isn't just the violence, it's the portrayal of that violence. The long slow flipping of the severed leg, the focus on the character's head being rolled over. It's over the top and unnecessary and its mindless repetition just makes it worse. Hostel had the same problem, at some point too much is too much and the message behind the violence is lost. Great, the shot may be framed and shot well. But that alone doesn't make it a good movie. In fact, I think he takes entirely too much of his shots from the material he is influence by, to the point of almost ripping off the source. He also tries to merge very specific styles of shots in ways that are very awkward - 70's TV style quick zooms next to very '90's flare moving shots. Instead of being innovative, it just comes off awkward and cheap.

Third, movies like Kill Bill and Death Proof are fine as homages to their inspirations, only they don't really add anything worthwhile to those inspirations. Kill Bill is an overlong, drawn out homage to kung fu movies. It's 30 minutes of story stretched to 3 hours and the padding isn't interesting or innovative, it's just silly. Death Proof at least was short, but even then, it was padded to hell and back. The whole girls get revenge scene was RETARDED. It stretched about 2 or 3 minutes longer than it needed to, which is why I put it in the masochist fantasy category. Tarantino likes feet and being dominated by women - that's great if he's paying a hooker, but for him to expect audiences to pay to watch his fetishes writ large on film is the ultimate in artistic hubris.

In short, fuck him. He has talent somewhere in there, he just needs a producer to kick a mudhole in his ass.

[stray]

Two, his personal fetishes became focal points. That clip you showed is TORTURE PRON to me. It's the juxtaposition of sexually charged characters who are then violently acted upon. And it isn't just the violence, it's the portrayal of that violence.

First of all, it's not torture. That was fast and furious, unlike torture.. and the movie carries out violence in very, very, very few scenes. Torture is slow, relentless, and steady, scene after scene. He isn't doing that. That this one scene is over the top is merely his tribute to gore (hence, why it's called "Grindhouse") -- and important to understand who Stuntman Mike is for later in the film. It's not pointless. He makes a solid point: That this motherfucker is evil on wheels. He doesn't prolong the violence, or keep selling the same point though. He just does this ONCE in the entire movie - Mike never does anything like it ever again - and no one needs to guess just how bad of a guy Mike is afterwards. It's enough to show how worried you should be that he starts stalking the second group of girls later in the film.

[HaemishM]

The DIRECTOR tortures the viewer with the violence. Is there really a need to see chick's face run over with a tire as the car flies over? NO, especially not after we've seen the goddamn leg flopping part. His insistence on repeating the act of violence from multiple angles is gratuitous - we don't need it to see how evil the fucker is. The very fact he kills 4 innocent sluts after having spoken to them is more than enough to illustrate that. It's the same problem with the girls' revenge scene - it drags on and on for no good reason.

[stray]

You called them sluts. Perhaps you are Stuntman Mike yourself. 


Anyways, yeah...again, fucking grindhouse tribute, dude. Stop taking it so seriously, like you're Freud or something. He's just paying some tribute to gore all in one scene, and it's enough to carry out a character synopsis without too much dallywagging. Kudos, I say. It's handled well. If you've made some arbitrary rule for yourself to have very few scenes of violence (as Tarantino tends to do to himself.. besides Kill Bill), but yet, are still trying to pay tribute to violent films.. Then do the same scene from different angles.

And really, that's always kind of been Tarantino's formula. Lots of meandering and smalltalk, and then boom, something shocking comes on screen. Whether it's brains exploding on the backseat of a car, or an ear getting cut off, or a cop fucking some dude in the ass. Here, he had to up the ante a bit since gore was expected -- but he does it in his own way.

Rodriguez takes a different route, and is a fuckton more violent, so I don't know why you're not complaining there. Rodriguez, in all of his films, never meanders. He throws everything and the kitchen sink at you, and lets you sort out what was good or not. His formula, applied to a gore tribute, ended up being fucking nuts. I mean, for heaven's sake, he even had a kid blow his brains out. Not to mention the many other grotesque headshots. Or puss squeezing shots. Or testicles in a jar.

[schild]

Having researched, watched all of and freaking examined the lot of Takashi Miike's work, Tarantino is nothing but a pale imitation of him. His theft of asian culture - AND I MEAN THEFT - is borderline plagiarism. Yea, he can write some snappy shit, but his best work to date is still his tiny bit of Four Rooms.

Rodriguez is at least somewhat original.

Of course none of this really matters since Miike is virtually unknown in America despite a cameo in Hostel.

Edit: Miike does torture, gore, and fantastically ridiculous violence unlike anyone in the US (and better than any of them).

[stray]

I think he got pretty popular with Ichi...


Honestly, I can't even watch his more violent movies. And it's not even just the violence. Just that many of his characters have some trait or quality about them that make me uncomfortable to even look at for too long.

[schild]

Honestly, I can't even watch his more violent movies. And it's not even just the violence. Just that many of his characters have some trait or quality about them that make me uncomfortable to even look at for too long.

Have you seen Audition?

And yea, he really does create some true evil on screen.

Edit: (Cold, unfeeling evil at that)

[stray]

No, I've heard about it though.

[LK]

Brad Pitt is picking some real good roles to be in. I'll watch this.

[Musashi]

Yea, I just watched that trailer.  I hate Tarantino.  But I think I'm going to ignore that for this movie and go back to hating him after.

[DraconianOne]

This thread is pure gold. Keep it up guys. It's good stuff.

(No, that wouldn't even be in green even if we were still doing green.)

[Soln]

Honestly, I can't even watch his more violent movies. And it's not even just the violence. Just that many of his characters have some trait or quality about them that make me uncomfortable to even look at for too long.

Have you seen Audition?

And yea, he really does create some true evil on screen.

Edit: (Cold, unfeeling evil at that)

"Audition" is praised by people with PhD's in movie horror like Mark Kermode as one of the most scary and unique films every made.  It sounds terrifying, actually.

[HaemishM]

If you've made some arbitrary rule for yourself to have very few scenes of violence (as Tarantino tends to do to himself.. besides Kill Bill), but yet, are still trying to pay tribute to violent films..

It's got nothing to do with arbitrary rules about the number of scenes of violence, it's the sheer unnecessary OVERUSE of it. Good directors/writers know when enough is enough. Tarantino does not.

As for Rodriguez's take on Grindhouse, I haven't seen his yet. But he's a better filmmaker than Tarantino can ever dream of being. His worst movie (Mexico) was better than Grindhouse or Kill Bill. It suffered from being too long for too little - which is something I've complained about with Kill Bill.

[stray]

Man.. it's actually quite funny to me. He's really being pretty "less is more" here, and really tame as far as gory cinema goes. I'm not sure what standard you're trying to hold up to, but you have the wrong expectations if you think that's an overuse. It's like you were expecting to watch the Devil Wears Prada or something. You can say you like Rodriguez more if you want, I'm not going to hold that against you.. But if you come back here and start praising Planet Terror, I'm gonna call you a hypocrite.  Because Tarantino was definitely being the Ying to his Yang for Grindhouse. It would have been major sensory overload, and Quentin played gore down.

[HaemishM]

Flying flopping limbs and road-graded chins are hardly playing down the violence. You can have a car crash that shows NO BLOOD WHATSOEVER and it still be effective, and cringeworthy. Fuck's sake, I'm not arguing against the use of gore and violence in movies, I'm just saying motherfucker at his best takes it up about 2 notches more than needed and at his worst (Kill Bill) just flat out goes full retard.

[stray]

It's playing down the violence as far as a tribute to schlock slasher films goes. Like I asked before, what exactly do you expect? I mean, when you hear "grindhouse", you were supposed to expect a lot more gore.. something along those lines.. Yet, in the typical b slasher flick sense, it was pretty tame. But he still manages to satisfy even many gore fans and show his competence with just one scene -- in a movie where you're just basically hanging out with a bunch of girls. That's a hard thing to do!

And for non gore fans - The fact that he still manages to piss you off about it shows just what he can do with very little screen time. Mission accomplished, I guess?

You can call it extremely violent though all you want: It is extremely violent. But to say it doesn't have a point is you missing the point. You take it out or play it down, and the movie just becomes a thriller. Which is against the entire idea of his and Rodriguez' project here. They never intended to make thrillers, or even typical horror films.

[apocrypha]

Totally agree with Haemish here. Tarantino's most effective violent scene, for me, was the earcapitation of the cop in Reservoir Dogs, and what do you actually SEE in that scene? *Nothing*! The camera pans away during the act and that makes it 100 times more effective than anything in Kill Bill for instance.

In fact Reservoir Dogs is all like that - all you see is gallons of stage blood, almost no actual wounds or wounding. It's the most horrifically violent film without any actual violence in it.

I haven't seen Death Proof, mostly because I felt no desire to after Kill Bill. And I did enjoy Kill Bill, I thought they were good entertainment, but in a very shallow way - more like extended music videos than actual films really.

[dusematic]

Dude made a tribute to horror films.  I didn't like it.  But criticizing that movie for being too violent is absurd.  You can't judge the movie as anything but a horror movie.  That's all it was trying to be.

[Velorath]

You can have a car crash that shows NO BLOOD WHATSOEVER and it still be effective, and cringeworthy.

When you're doing an homage to Grindhouse and exploitation films, that would kinda be missing the point.

[stray]

Totally agree with Haemish here. Tarantino's most effective violent scene, for me, was the earcapitation of the cop in Reservoir Dogs, and what do you actually SEE in that scene? *Nothing*! The camera pans away during the act and that makes it 100 times more effective than anything in Kill Bill for instance.

In fact Reservoir Dogs is all like that - all you see is gallons of stage blood, almost no actual wounds or wounding. It's the most horrifically violent film without any actual violence in it.

I haven't seen Death Proof, mostly because I felt no desire to after Kill Bill. And I did enjoy Kill Bill, I thought they were good entertainment, but in a very shallow way - more like extended music videos than actual films really.

I've been trying to avoid talking about Kill Bill, and wanted Death Proof to be talked about on it's own terms. Haemish has confused matters, as if they're the same thing - but I ignored those parts of his posts. Yet, now someone is buying into it, and saying they "agree" with him even though they haven't even seen Death Proof. I didn't think that was going to happen, but now that it has, here's my two cents..

Death Proof is a small genre movie. While Kill Bill might as well be a 4 hour documentary about "all of the things Quentin likes" or some shit. Far bigger, broad, far more disjointed, and far more self-indulgent. Yeah, he gets gory with the Crazy 88 shit - but it's stylistically done. The blood squirting is somewhat campy, and mimicking things like Lone Wolf and Cub. Besides that, why anyone is taking the violence of a 6 foot blonde in a Bruce Lee jumpsuit fighting a Gordon Liu led army of Japanese motorcycle school kids wearing Kato masks, with samurai swords and maces, set to RZA and a Flying Guillotine soundtrack is beyond me. "WAAH!! The violence is too much!" Bring on the blood, I say. I don't think anything can be subdued at that point. 

Anyhow, Death Proof gore is not in the same category. The violence there is realistic and minimal. Besides all this, he shifts in different modes within Kill Bill, so it's not like it's all like the Crazy 88 stuff. He also tries to invoke fright in very indirect/non-gory ways by doing the live burial thing, or bringing animals (snakes) into the picture. Among other shit. Kill Bill isn't easily categorized as any one thing, and secondly, Death Proof shouldn't be categorized along as something like it.

Or in short, and to point out the obvious: It's a different movie.

[Murgos]

Death Proof and Kill Bill are not anywhere near each other stylistically.

For one thing, Death Proof was good.

[apocrypha]

Or in short, and to point out the obvious: It's a different movie.

Alright, fair enough. I shall endeavor to watch Death Proof. My agreement with Haemish was an agreement that Tarantino seemed to me, at the point of KB, to be over-using graphic violence without need and that he had already shown earlier that violent scenes could be more effective without the graphicness.

[HaemishM]

"WAAH!! The violence is too much!" Bring on the blood, I say. I don't think anything can be subdued at that point. 

It isn't just that it's too much (though it is). It's too much AND IT LOOKS STUPID, in both movies. I'll give you that in a grindhouse tribute, perhaps he needs to go over the top. But that doesn't mean he needs to go full stupid. The Crazy 88's shit, stupid. It's Monty Python taking the piss on Sam Peckinpaw. In Death Proof, it's overkill as well. It goes on for what 30 seconds? Just like the girls' revenge scene at the end where they beat on Kurt Russell for minutes - it's like a Carrot Top skit. At some point, it passes the threshold of making sense and making the point and into the realm of overly self-referntial parody. It's the difference between Naked Gun and Epic Movie. One is intelligent and just right on the line, the other is throwing every thing and the kitchen sink at the screen in case something is funny, diminishing every part of the movie because it doesn't know when to quit.

Or, as I said before, full retard.

[stray]

You're really losing me here now. I don't think I've ever even seen a Carrot Top skit. I thought he was a prop comedian?

[veredus]

I kind of felt that was the whole point of the violence in Kill Bill. Over the top to the point it was cartoon violence with blood. I thought it was a very fun movie. If you don't like it great but that doesn't mean it's too much. Kind of missing the point by saying it's too much. As for Death Proof, haven't seen it as I don't like the more realistic blood and gore but hearing it's only really the one scene I may check it out then.