From the horse’s mouth: Inglourious Basterds

Interview with Quentin Tarantino on NPR

For me, it was the best flick of the year. I bladdered about it here a bit earlier. Sorry George, I watched none of your flicks this year. It is not your time yet.

Gears

In a dash of folly

… in a dash of folly, I mean, last minute folly, last night I went to see Tarantino’s newest flick “Inglourious Basterds.” The movie theatre was packed, and I got one of the last seats; here the folly, I like private screenings without the popcorn chewing crowds.

Pure genius, and my opinion is never humble. I mean, Tarantino is pure genius.

Let’s get things in perspective. I am badly missing home, and home is LA whether I like it or not, it is home, that is where my family lives, that is where my heart resides – in Tinseltown. I miss Paramount and Universal, DreamWorks and all the incredibly flaky, superficial and damn competitive air that one breathes in LA, smog and all. Each time that I land at LAX, the way it smells always hits me like… (no good analogy comes to mind, but home is close by). You draw your conclusion; I like disorder, rot, stink and all that makes humans such comedians.

You are either an admirer of Tarantino’s storytelling or you are not. Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and all the others are icons in the cinematographic nephrology. Nephrology – remember that the kidneys do filter body fluids, and in the grand anatomy of things have vital systemic functions. Cinematographic nephrology is about – obviously – the anthological selection of what few strips or bits you do want to watch. Not having seen Tarantino is a bit like not having read Shakespeare, that is, pretty dismal. Inglourious Basterds is a must see, and yes it might make you uncomfortable and yes some Jewish film critics are not going to like it, others will. I thought that LA Times blogger Patrick Goldstein (note this one is a journalist turned blogger) wrote a pretty decent commentary on the divide of opinions among Jewish critics.

Just the title of the movie ought to warn you that deprived of a sense of humour, you will suffer ingloriously in this visual narrative; neither of the two words are in the dictionary, yet we all get the twist. Something is off, there is a meta message; you may be required to think. It is not a movie for the simple minded, it is an approach to modernisation of history which appeals to my own very twisted logic. It is a twisted movie, and it is the first piece that I see that pierces through the armoured wall of political correctness when it comes to addressing issues that somewhere along the line get the label “Jewish.”