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Film review: Inglourious Basterds
BBC ^ | 05/20/09 | Emma Jones

Posted on 05/20/2009 6:48:30 AM PDT by Artemis Webb

Quentin Tarantino has made an eye-catching return to the Cannes Film Festival with Inglourious Basterds, an epic World War II movie set in Nazi-occupied France.

Tarantino swaps fact for pulp fiction in Inglourious Basterds, a comic revenge fantasy about Jewish freedom fighters bringing down the Nazis in 1944.

Brad Pitt plays Lieutenant Aldo Raine, the leader of a gang of Jewish-American soldiers operating in occupied France whose self-proclaimed mission is "to kill as many Nazis as possible".

They succeed in Tarantino's usual grisly-comic fashion, carving swastikas into the foreheads of any German soldier they do not scalp.

The plot culminates with an attempt to incinerate the Nazi high command - including Hitler, Goebbels and Goering - at a film premiere in Paris.

(snip)

This is not an American movie. Rather, it's Tarantino's homage to the European cinema he adores.

Indeed, there are so many scenes shot in French and German that an English-speaking audience will spend a lot of the film reading subtitles.

Some will wish there were a few more, just so they can understand Pitt's Tennessee-born, almost incomprehensible character.

Inglourious Basterds clocks in at nearly three hours, and its director could certainly have trimmed more of its flab.

This, and Pitt's character not getting the screen time he deserves, are the main disappointments.

It still can't touch Pulp Fiction, which won the Palme D'Or in 1994, but the reaction here at Cannes is that Quentin Tarantino has made a glorious, silly, blood-spattered return.

He is royalty at this festival - and as long as you can suspend disbelief and offence, he remains the king of trashy cinema.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Arts/Photography
KEYWORDS: inglouriousbasterds; movie; pitt; review
This review is typical of what I've read this morning. The main complaint being that the movie is too long though I also read it's probably going to be cut for American distribution.
1 posted on 05/20/2009 6:48:30 AM PDT by Artemis Webb
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To: Artemis Webb

2 posted on 05/20/2009 6:50:21 AM PDT by Artemis Webb (Increasingly mulling Newt.)
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To: Artemis Webb

From the previews, this looks like a pretty fun movie.
Here is a trailer.

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1210843929/


3 posted on 05/20/2009 6:51:16 AM PDT by mnehring
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To: mnehring
I really, really, really hate the way he said “Ten-HUT”
4 posted on 05/20/2009 6:59:56 AM PDT by PeteB570 (NRA - Life member and Black Rifle owner)
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To: Artemis Webb

I wonder if there are any scenes of Brad Pitt circumcising Nazis?


5 posted on 05/20/2009 7:02:35 AM PDT by MAD-AS-HELL (Hope and Change. Rhetoric embraced by the Insane - Obama, The Chump in Charge)
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To: MAD-AS-HELL
"I wonder if there are any scenes of Brad Pitt circumcising Nazis?

Maybe with a hatchet.

6 posted on 05/20/2009 7:05:21 AM PDT by Artemis Webb (Increasingly mulling Newt.)
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To: Artemis Webb

Looks like a good flick to me.


7 posted on 05/20/2009 7:07:50 AM PDT by cripplecreek (The poor bastards have us surrounded.)
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To: Artemis Webb
Nothing compares to the original. I remember when it ran on HBO around ‘82-83. I must have watched it 20 times. I just bought a DVD of the original from Amazon a few months ago and have already watched it 3 times.
8 posted on 05/20/2009 7:24:58 AM PDT by Niteranger68 (I am an extremist that was created by Butch Napolitano.)
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To: Artemis Webb

Sounds a lot like what we should be doing to the Muzzie Estremists....


9 posted on 05/20/2009 7:35:48 AM PDT by jakerobins
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To: Artemis Webb

Thanks very much for the post. I was hoping this movie was going to be big fun and it sounds like it doesn’t disappoint (though the one I’m really waiting for is “Kill Bill 3” in a decade or so).


10 posted on 05/20/2009 10:10:54 AM PDT by RedRover (DefendOurMarines.org | DefendOurTroops.org)
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To: Artemis Webb
He is royalty at this festival - and as long as you can suspend disbelief and offence, he remains the king of trashy cinema.

If you are going to "remake" the old films, using a multinational cast, then do it like the westerns and war films of old, let each country's release prints of the film be dubbed into the local language (while some characters are heard in their native tongues).

Is this supposed to be high art now? Kill Bill I could see in that light. Grindhouse certainly wasn't.

And those european productions weren't available "undubbed". Too many of the european locations in films couldn't be soundproofed and they were always overdubbed in post-production regardless of what language they spoke their lines in.

11 posted on 05/20/2009 10:15:08 AM PDT by a fool in paradise (If you like the Dept. of Motor Vehicles, the IRS, and the Post Office, you'll love govt Health Care)
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