{"id":242845,"date":"2009-08-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-21T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/nazi-slaughter-provides-perfect-summer-thrill-by-scott-marks\/"},"modified":"2009-08-21T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-21T07:00:00","slug":"nazi-slaughter-provides-perfect-summer-thrill-by-scott-marks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/nazi-slaughter-provides-perfect-summer-thrill-by-scott-marks\/","title":{"rendered":"Nazi Slaughter Provides Perfect Summer Thrill By Scott Marks"},"content":{"rendered":"

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
\nWritten and Directed by Quentin Tarantino
\nStarring: Brad Pitt, M\u00e9lanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Diane Kruger, Eli Roth & Martin Wuttke<\/p>\n

Rating: 4.5 out of 5<\/p>\n

*** WARNING! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS***<\/p>\n

Nazi Slaughter Provides Perfect Summer Thrill
\npor Scott Marks<\/p>\n

Forget about machete-wielding monsters wearing William Shatner masks and other assorted psychopaths eager to take garden shears to Achilles tendons. There is no villain more frightening or worthy of audience hatred and contempt than the Nazi.<\/p>\n

Believe it or not, it was The Three Stooges, not Charlie Chaplin or Ernst Lubitsch, who first saw the satiric possibilities in Hitler\u2019s jackbooted apes. At the outset of World War II, before the reality of Hitler\u2019s ovens had spread, Hollywood depicted Nazis as goose-stepping stock buffoons. Once the truth became known, the idea of showing Nazis in anything but a reprehensible light was unthinkable. Tragedy + Time = Comedy, and it wasn\u2019t until Mel Brooks\u2019 \u201cThe Producers\u201d that movies were finally able to once again employ Nazis as comedic targets.<\/p>\n

\"bastards\"<\/a> Quentin Tarantino\u2019s \u201cInglourious Basterds\u201d could be the most Hitlerious movie of its kind since Mel had the audacity to set Hitler to music. It is also the first time that critical darling QT, a bit of a vainglorious bastard himself, has been able to set aside the in-jokes and his particular brand of pop culture babble to apply his knowledge of and passion for cinema to a coherent and wildly entertaining narrative.<\/p>\n

The film begins by cross-referencing two unlikely sources: \u201cThe Diary of Anne Frank\u201d and Sergio Leone. (The film could just as easily have been titled \u201cOnce Upon a Time in West Berlin.\u201d) Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz in the year\u2019s most ruthlessly engaging performance) travels to a remote German village to question a farmer once accused of harboring Jews. Landa convinces the farmer to confess and once the truth becomes clear, the Colonel, as any good Nazi killing machine must, air conditions the floorboards with a shower of bullets. Landa must have been off his game that day, for Shoshana (M\u00e9lanie Laurent) manages to escape.<\/p>\n

The young woman flees to Paris, changes her identity and opens up a movie theater which exhibits films by Leni Riefenstahl and G.W. Pabst, two of Der Fuhrer\u2019s favorite filmmakers. Meanwhile, in another part of the forest Lieutenant Aldo Ray… I mean Raine (Brad Pitt) is gathering together a group of Jewish American soldiers whose one goal is to bring back as many Nazi scalps as possible. Admittedly, the older I get the less appealing graphic on-screen violence becomes, but in the case of Nazis I\u2019ll be more than glad to make an exception.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t let the advertising fool you. He may get star billing, but Pitt only appears in a handful of scenes. While I didn\u2019t get why everyone was raving about his performance as the dim health club worker in \u201cBurn After Reading,\u201d Pitt\u2019s role as Tennessee born \u201cNatzy\u201d killer is a hoot and a half.<\/p>\n

Judging by the trailer, this looked like it was going to be one giant rip-off of Robert Aldrich\u2019s \u201cThe Dirty Dozen.\u201d It\u2019s not, but if there is one complaint to be leveled against the film it\u2019s that out of the six members of Raine\u2019s squad, only three are given anything to do. The rest seem to disappear into the background. Something tells me this will be rectified when the director\u2019s cut is released on DVD.<\/p>\n

The basterds eventually team with Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), a German actress\/double agent who helps the boys achieve their goal. Trapped in Shoshana\u2019s theater for the premier of Dr. Goebbels latest propaganda masterstroke, the team uses highly flammable nitrate film stock to fry Hitler and his henchmen. To the best of my knowledge there is only one other film, the unintentionally uproarious American propaganda picture \u201cHitler: Dead or Alive,\u201d that manages to kill Hitler before the final fade-out.<\/p>\n

The scenes in the theater are so precise and brilliantly executed that they almost brought a tear to my eye. Watching Tarantino film a reel change — the changeover bell, the cue mark, the projector beam switching from one booth porthole to the other — brought back cherished memories of bygone days before platters and multiplexes.<\/p>\n

With its graphic depiction of the slaughter of flesh-and-blood Nazis (as opposed to digitized giant toys or prawns), \u201cInglourious Basterds\u201d is my idea of a perfect summer thrill ride. It\u2019s officially safe for adults to return to the theater.<\/p>\n

Scott Marks was born and raised in some of the finest single screen movie theaters in Chicago. He moved to San Diego in 2000 and has never looked back. Scott authors the blog emulsioncompulsion.com and is co-host of KPBS-Radio’s Film Club of the Air. Please address any bouquets or brickbats to emulsioncompulsion@gmail.com.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino Starring: Brad Pitt, M\u00e9lanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Diane Kruger, Eli Roth & Martin Wuttke Rating: 4.5 out of 5 *** WARNING! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS*** Nazi Slaughter Provides Perfect Summer Thrill By Scott Marks Forget about machete-wielding monsters wearing William Shatner masks and other assorted psychopaths eager […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":242846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Nazi Slaughter Provides Perfect Summer Thrill By Scott Marks","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}