Inglourious Basterds - reaction post and mini-picspam
I have three words to say about Inglourious Basterds. It. Was. AWESOME!!! I think I was sitting there, looking exactly like this, for almost the entire movie (and for similar reasons as well. What can I say, I love gore). It's a bit of an understatement to say that I had high expectations for this movie, and it certainly lived up to them. In fact, I'd go so far as to this is my favourite Tarantino movie ever.
In many ways, it is the classic Tarantion movie. The dialogue, which takes precedence over everything else, is superb, some of the shots are simply gorgeous, the characters are fully fleshed out and well-acted to boot (and yes, that includes Brad Pitt. Let's just say that this role played to his strengths of slightly psychotic, over the top scenery-chewing in the same way that his roles in Fight Club and 12 Monkeys did), it was bleakly funny and completely shocking, and the gore was just phenomenal. But there is something more to it, almost like you could see the 12 years it took to bring this script to the screen. It was definitely a labour of obsessive, geeky love, and I think the joy tht he must have felt when finally got around to shooting it is evident in the movie itself.
Also, the 12 years it took to write it really paid off in terms of the dialogue. It may not have been as inherently funny as Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction, but it felt more naturalistic because of it. Also, the ways he builds tension so thick you could cut it with a knife, just on the basis of conversations he had penned between characters, was far more suspenseful than the usual cues for tension, eg music of oncoming doom, unsubtle "some bad shit's going to go down" motifs, etc. I think I may be jealous of just how good his tension-building dialogue was.
Sure, history purists may object to the ending, but whose to say that, if a team of Nazi-killers like the Inglourious Basterds had been around during the Nazi occupation of France, something like this wouldn't have occurred? And yeah, the choice of music is anachronistic, but it used a David Bowie song, so I'm not complaining. It was just pure entertainment, the sort of movie made by a movie geek for people who love going to the movies.
And yeah, much like Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill series, I now have a new femme fatale to lust over - Melanie Laurent's character, Shosanna Dreyfus. So, just because she's made of unf, I made a miniscule picspam (I really can't wait to get my hands on the screencaps, because some of the shots of her were stunning):
In many ways, it is the classic Tarantion movie. The dialogue, which takes precedence over everything else, is superb, some of the shots are simply gorgeous, the characters are fully fleshed out and well-acted to boot (and yes, that includes Brad Pitt. Let's just say that this role played to his strengths of slightly psychotic, over the top scenery-chewing in the same way that his roles in Fight Club and 12 Monkeys did), it was bleakly funny and completely shocking, and the gore was just phenomenal. But there is something more to it, almost like you could see the 12 years it took to bring this script to the screen. It was definitely a labour of obsessive, geeky love, and I think the joy tht he must have felt when finally got around to shooting it is evident in the movie itself.
Also, the 12 years it took to write it really paid off in terms of the dialogue. It may not have been as inherently funny as Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction, but it felt more naturalistic because of it. Also, the ways he builds tension so thick you could cut it with a knife, just on the basis of conversations he had penned between characters, was far more suspenseful than the usual cues for tension, eg music of oncoming doom, unsubtle "some bad shit's going to go down" motifs, etc. I think I may be jealous of just how good his tension-building dialogue was.
Sure, history purists may object to the ending, but whose to say that, if a team of Nazi-killers like the Inglourious Basterds had been around during the Nazi occupation of France, something like this wouldn't have occurred? And yeah, the choice of music is anachronistic, but it used a David Bowie song, so I'm not complaining. It was just pure entertainment, the sort of movie made by a movie geek for people who love going to the movies.
And yeah, much like Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill series, I now have a new femme fatale to lust over - Melanie Laurent's character, Shosanna Dreyfus. So, just because she's made of unf, I made a miniscule picspam (I really can't wait to get my hands on the screencaps, because some of the shots of her were stunning):