Fourthcoming: Inglourious Basterds

Discuss releases from Arrow and the films on them.

Moderator: yoloswegmaster

Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
Morbii
Joined: Sat Nov 27, 2004 3:38 am

Re: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

#526 Post by Morbii » Sun Jan 03, 2010 2:07 am

Napier wrote:After having two or three spins with the BD since I saw it in the theater, once.
Not to be an ass, but in all seriousness, how can you not recall if it was two times or three times? It seems like a mighty difference, time-wise (and probably in how much you can soak it in).

User avatar
Noiretirc
Joined: Tue Dec 09, 2008 6:04 pm
Location: VanIsle
Contact:

Re: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

#527 Post by Noiretirc » Sun Jan 03, 2010 2:58 am

Napier wrote:Christoph Waltz is nothing short of brilliant. His performance is pitch perfect.
I agree with you 100%. He is the real star of this film. I thought Pitt was a supporting actor really. How does the Academy define Supporting Actor, exactly?

Did anyone else find the ending of this to be quite weak though? A revenge fantasy takes many leaps of course, but the actions of Col Landa towards the end just deflated me. "He's not that stupid" I yelled.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

#528 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jan 03, 2010 10:35 am

Spoilers:

Well I watched the film last night. I thought it was interesting, better than Death Proof (no annoying reset button pushed on the characters after the first forty minutes, though the basement bar scene comes close) and even better than Kill Bill due to a relatively more complex take on revenge. I still had a number of issues with the film mainly because I agree with Mr Finch’s comments that the tendency towards parody defuses the tension and interest in the characters and vice versa but it wasn’t quite as bad as I had feared (I wonder though if you were meant to come out of it with an apocalyptic Dogville-styled 'kill 'em all and let God sort them out' hatred for humanity as a whole though? Everyone's tainted, dumb, corrupt or ineffectual, yet when they start becoming vaguely competent and organised things become even more disturbing)

I do feel that Tarantino is finally starting to get back in control of his speeches though. After Kill Bill pushed the portentous power that pop culture speeches could have as far as they could go and into absurdity (the “silly rabbit” exchange between Thurman and Liu and the comic book chat in the second film come most quickly to mind) and Death Proof took casual bar chatter to tedious extremes, “Inglowerious” (as I like to call it due to the number of shots of characters looking threateningly at each other) felt as if the speeches were being relatively more reigned in to service the story.

I especially liked the questions of sympathy, guilt, revenge and retribution (whether performed straight away or deferred) and reasonableness, as well as the role that ideology plays in an individual’s actions that the film plays with – the ‘evil’ characters are the most reasonable and down to earth just with a hideous but clearly defined agenda, while the ‘good’ characters are amoral psychos who care nothing about wishy-washy ideas of ‘apportioning blame’, instead just killing everyone.

There is also the sense that the higher up the ranks you go, the more parodical you become, just as your life becomes more intertwined and dependent on the continuance of the ideology you have allied yourself to rather than simply superficially subservient to it – so both Landa and Aldo (and the Mike Myers character) are more broadly played than the men they command, just as Hitler and Churchill are broader caricatures still (I do wonder if the introduction of the parody Churchill is meant to prepare the way for the assassination of Hitler at the end of the film, given that there were fears of assassination attempts on Churchill’s life? Which in itself raises the question of body doubles) I felt Mike Myers was pretty good in his cameo scene, although I couldn’t help being reminded of an uncanny resemblance to David Mitchell throughout!

I liked the way that the first speech in the farmhouse with Landa interrogating the farmer contrasts interestingly with the Basterds interrogating their German prisoners. Landa and the Sergeant seem more businesslike in their actions, accepting that death is a necessary part of war whether of others or their own. However the farmer and the Private left as the only survivor of the ambush are both irrevocably scarred by their encounters, one physically and the other mentally. These first two scenes seem to be the key to the idea of war marking a person by their actions that comes up again with the later swastika carvings and Bridget von Hammersmark – is it better to die a noble, uncomplicated death in a role determined for you by society or to collaborate and survive but have to live the rest of your life with the knowledge of your collaboration? The Sergeant prefers to have his head brutally bashed in, but isn’t that in a way preferable to selling out with the hope of saving yourself and instead having a permanent mark cut into your flesh to remind you of that betrayal – a symbol of a broken covenant that alienates you from acceptance by either side?

Then there’s the restaurant scene speech where Shosanna is placed in the same position as the farmer was – having to make small talk with Landa. That speech introduces with the dessert the idea that food might be able to be used to give someone away, which of course does not pay off here but in the ‘fingers of Scotch’ scene in the basement bar.

The long bar scene is the one which introduces the theme of spying as muddying the ideological waters for an individual too much. In a way Bridget is too good at playing along with the Germans, which is why they keep insisting on pestering her with fatal consequences for everyone. There is also the first flicker of real hatred in the film as Wilhelm lets Bridget know that he detests her for her own betrayal. It is telling therefore that Bridget is the person who kills Wilhelm rather than Aldo or his men – an attempt to remove all traces of her guilt for taking a starring role in a badly botched production? Thereby making it ironic that the dropped shoe and Wilhelm’s adoring request of Bridget’s autograph earlier in the film (actors as inherent betrayers of the audience’s ideals of who they ‘really’ are based on the roles they play?), brings about her downfall.

The Basterds also treat her with contempt in vetinary hospital scene so, like Landa later on, Bridget is not likely to receive much sympathy from her new allies despite her collaboration. She anticipates Landa’s own betrayal, so it makes sense that he would be driven to get his hands dirty himself for the first time in order to brutally kill her – but that in itself is the beginning of his own downfall.

The speech between Landa and Raine in the darkened restaurant is where it becomes obvious, if it had not already in the first scene, that Landa is more about the power trip than the ideology – he does not care about who he is tracking down (the ‘Jew Hunter’ nickname has gone from a proud mark of a job well done in the farmhouse scene to a reductive burden by the time of the restaurant one), but that his role gives him status and influence. That is what is removed from him by the final action of the Basterds – they finally found someone appropriate to perform their mutilation on…and yet it still repulses.

Interestingly the Shosanna section is completely disconnected from all these futile machinations – there it is just purposeful, single-minded retribution. I liked the relationship forced on her by the Audie Murphy war hero type (with the down home decency contrasted with the mass murder he committed, albeit officially sanctioned mass murder as if that makes much difference to the dead) that complicates matters, though I did not particularly like the way this played out in the end as Frederick becomes petulant and potentially sexually violent in the projection room thereby allowing Shosanna to kill him without as much guilt compared to if he had remained charmingly naïve towards her throughout. Keeping Frederick sympathetic throughout the film would have highlighted the face to face killing she now had to perform rather than just lighting the touchpaper and standing back, as the necessity of the murder (to ensure the success of her own ideological revenge) would have to overcome any doubts. By being given that violent moment from Frederick (which compares to Landa’s attack on Bridget, though I feel that one is more motivated) she is now ‘allowed’ to kill him.

It would also have made the moment which follows particularly powerful as Shosanna sees Frederick’s image live on through the film before Frederick kills her. The two warriors have to be allowed to kill each other separately from the rest of the carnage after a significant duel (just as Landa and Bridget von Hammersmark have to have their own dualistic confrontation). She and Frederick are then married together in the splice from one to the other in the film itself, Shosanna contradicting Frederick but both of them espousing the ideology of death from beyond their own deaths. After the screen burns out their images truly become ghostly as they flicker on the air instead (however there is seems to be a cinema reference there that tempers the high drama, but more on that further on).

I would argue though that it isn’t just a neat cinephile joke that the nitrate cans are used to burn down the theatre – it is a familial retribution by Shosanna using all the tools her aunt and uncle left her to carry out their revenge on their behalf. She is able to herd the Germans into a confined space under a pretext and murder them mercilessly which of course brings up ideas of the gas chambers.

So much for the actual plot – what about the filmic references? This feels like the first time that a Tarantino film has referenced his own previous films as much as other films in general. The whole farmhouse scene, with the young girl hiding under the floorboards is reminiscent of the murder of O-Ren’s family in Kill Bill Vol. 1; the pop culture chat in the bar reminds both of the restaurant scene in Reservoir Dogs and the noodling wanderings between groups of characters at different tables in the first section of Death Proof; the basement bar shoot out is similar in escalation to Reservoir Dogs; the post-shootout standoff between Wilhelm and Bridget reminds of the significant meeting in Kill Bill between The Bride and another hitwoman in a hotel room who has just found out she is pregnant, which by letting her go is the trigger for The Bride’s own brutal treatment – though unfortunately for Wilhelm Tarantino appears less sympathetic to men who have children than he is with women; the lobby of Shoshana’s cinema feels laid out similarly to the Japanese club at the end of Kill Bill Vol 1, with the projection booth comings and goings situated in the same top right corner of the set as O-Ren’s private booth was in the earlier film, the same kind of double stairway with balcony that matches and the top down shot of Shosanna after she has gotten into her outfit of vengeance, while not as elaborate as the one in Kill Bill, seems to tie in the similar shot that follows the The Bride going to get changed into her Bruce Lee inspired jump suit; the foot fetish thing that Tarantino likes gets a disturbing workout in the Cinderella scene of trying the incriminating shoe on and then the focus on Bridget’s foot going limp as she is strangled by Landa; the restaurant scene with Landa making a deal with Raine seems similar to the scene between Butch and Marsellus in the club in Pulp Fiction; the famous star getting treated roughly runs from Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction through Jungle Julia in Death Proof to Bridget von Hammersmark here; and the final ultra violent scene perpetrated by the good guys on the bad guys which leaves a nasty taste in the mouth due to its dubious morality is also extremely reminiscent of the celebratory ending of Death Proof.

In terms of other films I thought the opening farmhouse scene similar to the massacre of the homesteaders in Once Upon A Time In The West - the scene which introduces Henry Fonda as the bad guy, and the top down shot at the end of Bowie's Cat People tune not only reminded me of the Kill Bill sequence as mentioned above but also started me thinking of De Palma’s films, most specifically Snake Eyes as the camera fluidly pans around the milling crowd at an important event where actors mingle with the public and important political figures, and where an assassination is to be attempted. However in the final inferno scene the De Palma film Inglourious most resembles is Carrie, as the panicing audience futilely attempts to break down the barred doors and escape the carnage, while Hitler gets one of the gratuitous gore shots inside the sequence to make his death more significant than everyone elses.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Mon Jun 28, 2010 2:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
AWA
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:32 pm
Location: Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Contact:

Re: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

#529 Post by AWA » Fri Jan 08, 2010 10:14 am

I watched this for the first time tonight and definitely don't have time to plow through 22 pages of text on this film, but as an amateur typographer I must say the horrible aesthetic choice of constantly switching to an uncountable number of different fonts (many of them hyper-pedestrian choices) was ***extremely*** annoying.

As for the movie - 3.5/5 for me.

User avatar
Noiretirc
Joined: Tue Dec 09, 2008 6:04 pm
Location: VanIsle
Contact:

Re: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

#530 Post by Noiretirc » Sat Jan 09, 2010 12:44 am

AWA wrote:I watched this for the first time tonight and definitely don't have time to plow through 22 pages of text on this film, but as an amateur typographer I must say the horrible aesthetic choice of constantly switching to an uncountable number of different fonts (many of them hyper-pedestrian choices) was ***extremely*** annoying.
Whut? I didn't even notice different fonts.

This film had me in stitches many times. Did anyone else find it hysterically funny? When Hitler praises Goebbels, Goebbels cries, while Hitler snickers again at the screen.....that moment had me absolutely rolling on the floor.

stroszeck
Joined: Tue Jun 07, 2005 10:42 pm

Re: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

#531 Post by stroszeck » Wed Jan 25, 2012 11:35 am

Just watched this one for the first time and thought it was a decent effort. So I go online and sift through some of the trivia stuff and learned that Tarantino apparently really wanted Natassja Kinski for the role that Diane Kruger eventually played, as the actress. Now the thing is, when I was growing up, I had a HUGE crush on Kinski after seeing her in Cat People and a couple other things. There's no mention online about why she didn't take the role, except that in spite of Tarantino flying down to Germany to meet with her a deal was not reached. Funny enough my favorite scene was the Putting out the Fire makeup scene which as any Cat People fan knows is the major track of that movie. Does anyone know why Kinski ended up not being in it? I always found her underrated and you'd think she's jump at the chance to end up in the spotlight again in such a high profile project.

onedimension
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2008 4:35 pm

Re: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

#532 Post by onedimension » Sun Aug 26, 2012 10:24 pm

Finally saw this last night. It's hard to tell which is smarter, Tarantino or his imagination. QT is provocative and dumb, in terms of public profile, but the film seemed provocative and smart and really complex. What it captures about revenge is how it can lower the vengeful to the level of those who first wronged them. Disturbing, unmentioned parallels: yellow stars, tattoos, and one claim (maybe in this thread? I've ingested a lot of commentary) that the Nazis actually carved stars into the bodies of dead rabbis, alongside the IB's zest for forehead scarring; and leading Germans into a cinema under one pretense, only to be locked in and burned alive, rhymes uncomfortably with concentration camp methods of murdering Jews (isn't one definition of holocaust 'sacrifice by fire'?). The jerk response (as with torture), is that They Nazis, unlike the Jewish people, deserved it. But doesn't civilization separate itself with the belief that no one does?

The film's audacious at the very least, and I sympathize with the sense that its fantasy rewriting of history is immoral, maybe because it's so glib- if the Nazis can be defeated in the unconscious in 150 minutes, were they really that tough in the first place? The preferred attitude toward Nazism is that it was so terrible, we need to approach it with humility and dread to prevent ourselves from being seduced by anything like it again. IB shows how easily we're seduced by it, if the heroes and villains are reversed. I confess I found the whole film entertaining at first watch, not vulgar, and was initially gratified by some of the violence in the moment. That seductiveness is scary, because it shows nothing human is alien to us.

JMULL222
Joined: Tue Apr 13, 2010 8:58 pm

Re: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

#533 Post by JMULL222 » Mon Aug 27, 2012 12:05 am

Yeah, very much agreed with the above, well said. It still shocks me to this day that the majority of critics didn't seem to pick up on the fact that
SpoilerShow
Quentin overloads you with shots of overjoyed, excited Nazis watching a war movie
right before he pulls out his big audience-rousing central conceit. If that isn't turning on the audience and embracing (an admittedly fairly impersonal form of) self-criticism than I don't know what is.

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

#534 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jun 24, 2019 3:48 pm

Image

What good are eight playing cards??

User avatar
The Elegant Dandy Fop
Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2004 3:25 am
Location: Los Angeles, CA

Re: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

#535 Post by The Elegant Dandy Fop » Mon Jun 24, 2019 4:13 pm

Is it just a repacking of the original Blu-ray? I'd still love to see the Maggie Cheung scenes.

A small aside, but if anyone ever catches this as a midnight at the New Beverley Cinema in Los Angeles, it's secretly the Cannes cut. It's slightly different and features a few lines and alternative cuts not in the final version.

User avatar
mfunk9786
Under Chris' Protection
Joined: Fri May 16, 2008 4:43 pm
Location: Philadelphia, PA

Re: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

#536 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Jun 24, 2019 4:20 pm

Seems crazy in 2019 for a film like this to be repackaged without a UHD remaster!

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

#537 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jun 24, 2019 4:21 pm

mfunk and posts about UHD, name a more iconic duo
The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote:
Mon Jun 24, 2019 4:13 pm
Is it just a repacking of the original Blu-ray? I'd still love to see the Maggie Cheung scenes.
I think it's the same disc with new toys for boys included

User avatar
swo17
Bloodthirsty Butcher
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
Location: SLC, UT

Re: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

#538 Post by swo17 » Mon Jun 24, 2019 4:31 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Mon Jun 24, 2019 3:48 pm
What good are eight playing cards??
Tear out all 36 booklet pages, mix with the character cards and playing cards and bam, you've got a full deck

black&huge
Joined: Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:35 am

Re: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

#539 Post by black&huge » Tue Jun 25, 2019 2:58 am

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote:
Mon Jun 24, 2019 4:13 pm
Is it just a repacking of the original Blu-ray? I'd still love to see the Maggie Cheung scenes.

A small aside, but if anyone ever catches this as a midnight at the New Beverley Cinema in Los Angeles, it's secretly the Cannes cut. It's slightly different and features a few lines and alternative cuts not in the final version.
And Cloris Leachman in Donny's backstory scenes part of which can be glimpsed in the clapper girl montage special feature on the current dvd/blu.

Tarantino mentioned he may just stop at Once... Upon... a... Time... in... Hollywood and forego a tenth feature. While it was probably heat of the moment part of me wishes he does do it because I have a feeling when he's all finished making new films he will start putting out a wealth of cut footage or a new cut of Basterds. I have read over the years how much footage did not make it in and this is my favorite of his so I'm most interested in seeing any sort of actual scrapped scenes.

User avatar
Finch
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:09 pm
Location: Edinburgh, UK

Re: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

#540 Post by Finch » Tue Jun 25, 2019 2:26 pm

I wouldn't put any stock into this. Soderbergh retired only to come back. I think if a story came calling that QT couldn't resist, he'd do a tenth, eleventh and twelveth feature. I'd like to see that original cut of the two Kill Bills spliced together.

Calvin
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2011 11:12 am

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#541 Post by Calvin » Sat Sep 07, 2019 2:45 pm

Apparently, The Prey has one of those poster postcards that reveals Arrow will be releasing, uhh, Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Goodness knows what they're going to do with it, unless they make it their first 4K release?

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#542 Post by domino harvey » Sat Sep 07, 2019 2:47 pm

That is rather surprising, more so that Universal let it go than that Arrow wanted it Maybe they’ve talked Tarantino into including the copious deleted scenes?

User avatar
swo17
Bloodthirsty Butcher
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
Location: SLC, UT

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#543 Post by swo17 » Sat Sep 07, 2019 2:53 pm

Is it possible the postcard is for the original Italian film and the recipient didn't realize there was a version other than Tarantino's?

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#544 Post by domino harvey » Sat Sep 07, 2019 2:57 pm

That poster does specify whose film it is, but as ever, I question how something like this isn’t supplemented with pictorial evidence considering every human online has the ability to do so

ianungstad
Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2005 9:20 pm

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#545 Post by ianungstad » Sat Sep 07, 2019 3:37 pm

I could see Tarantino using his clout with the studios to push for an Arrow release. Arrow puts out the Italian stuff he loves and he's praised and fawned over in the extras of probably more than half of the Arrow Video titles I've purchased. He seems like the kind of guy who's ego would appreciate that.

I'm sure that Del Toro made a few phone calls to Universal to make Crimson Peak happen. Universal seems willing to make these kind of concessions with big and/or fairly recent titles if the A-list director wants it.

User avatar
dwk
Joined: Sat Jun 12, 2010 6:10 pm

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#546 Post by dwk » Sat Sep 07, 2019 3:49 pm

Tarantino has never really taken an active role in the home video releases of his own films. So I can't really see him pushing for Universal to license Inglorious Basterds to Arrow.

Universal had a UHD scheduled for release in Spain in late October, but it has been delayed. Most likely this is a quick cash grab by Universal before releasing in on UHD a short time after Arrow releases their Blu-ray.

ianungstad
Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2005 9:20 pm

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#547 Post by ianungstad » Sat Sep 07, 2019 3:57 pm

Could very well be. I haven't paid that much attention to the chatter but there's been some un-supported rumors on the bluray.com forums that Arrow might also be doing Peter Jackson's The Frighteners with Universal using the transfer for their own UHD shortly after.

User avatar
Cash Flagg
Joined: Thu Jan 24, 2008 11:15 pm

Re: Fourthcoming: Inglourious Basterds

#548 Post by Cash Flagg » Sat Sep 07, 2019 6:41 pm

No Basterds in my Prey, but I did get a Slaughterhouse Five card.

User avatar
Ribs
Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2014 1:14 pm

Re: Fourthcoming: Inglourious Basterds

#549 Post by Ribs » Sat Sep 07, 2019 8:59 pm

My memory may be failing me, but don’t all the “new” postcard images appear on the back side of the card along with (mostly) old ones? Shouldn’t it be on there if so?

User avatar
Grand Wazoo
Joined: Thu Jun 21, 2007 2:23 pm

Re: Fourthcoming: Inglourious Basterds

#550 Post by Grand Wazoo » Sat Sep 07, 2019 9:30 pm

I had gotten Cruising and Robocop cards near the beginning of the year, but they also put some new images in the collages on the backside.

Post Reply