So that was the giveaway! I couldn’t follow the 3 part at all. I assumed he said “three” in english.
Overall I liked the film. I felt at times that the tension dragged too long.
There is a part of me that wishes Goebbles & Hitler met crueler fates, say if the 2 Basterds spent some time on them using their wealth of experience. Oh well.
Did you guys think the soundtrack was a little mediocre this time? He even used a song from Kill Bill.
? Diane Kruger’s character said exactly what it was when Brad Pitt was interrogating her after she got shot.
I know, and I recall her saying ‘3’ twice, but missed any hand gesture (?) or explanation.
Oh, and I don’t usually mind subtitles, but towards the theater scenes (Chapter 4?), people kept getting up for the bathroom and blocking the words. Especially the old guy who took forever to crab walk to his seat.
Which one was that? (The main songs I remember from Kill Bill were Nancy Sinatra’s Bang Bang, the 1234s, and that flute instrumental that was reminiscent of westerns.)
Il Mercenario (Reprisa) by Ennio Morricone.
Great song, just found it strange that he used it in two movies.
When I saw it, the whole theatre burst out in uproarious laughter during the baseball bat/scalping scene. It bothered me a great deal. Two guys behind me laughed out loud through every violent scene.
What’s up with that? Did that happen everywhere?
I haven’t watched a QT movie in a theatre since Pulp Fiction. Is “laughing through the violent bits” a standard QT audience ritual or what?
I took two 14 year olds and wondered if I had made a mistake about 20 minutes into the movie…but they really enjoyed the movie and we had a great discussion about it afterwards.
I’d guess that about 80% of parents would think it inappropriate but I think a mature kid who won’t be freaked by the really horrific violence would survive the ordeal OK.
Just had a “duh” moment - I hadn’t noticed the spelling of “Inglourious” before now, having been distracted by the “basterds”. (And being a questionable speller myself!)
Incidentally - I believe somewhere in the sub-titles, one of the Germans uses the word “bastards” and it is spelt in the sub-titles “basterds”. Had a chuckle at that!
Yeah it kind of is I guess. Some of the violent scenes were funny. It seemed like everybody found something to laugh about.
Well, these were Nazis after all who were getting scalped and bludgeoned.
I liked it quite a bit. The Landa character was awesome in his repulsiveness. I’d say he didn’t tumble to shoshanna in the restaurant. I loved the way, after the fire was roaring and the screen was gone, that you could she Shoshannas’ face in the smoke. A ghostly, Wizard of Oz sort of thing, but with Evil Laughter, bitchin’ effect.
I liked it, but I have to point out that it was basically two not-fully-developed films dovetailed together at the shared climax.
Movie A is Shoshanna’s tale. Movie B is the Basterds. Excepting the Climax scene the movies share, nobody from Movie A interacts with anybody from Movie B, except Landa. And even in the climax scene, the movies’ shared characters are basically just cameos. (Hitler, for instance)
Except for (or perhaps, in particular when) he pulls out that perfectly adorable pipe.
Yeah, I haven’t seen a gourd calabash pipe on screen for years.
Saw it today and loved it. Christoph Waltz is going to be big time Oscar fodder. Wonderful performance…just perfect. You LOATHE him, and scared the piss out of me.
One thing I loved is how much German there was, and how well spoken (diction) it was. I barely had to look at the subtitles for the German parts, which made me smile (I haven’t spoken German regularly in two years, since I moved from there, so it was cool to know I still could understand it well). Usually, the subtitles were very corrrect too (though sometimes a few phrases were different).
I liked the double plot on the theater, because, for me at least, I kept thinking that both plots would ruin each other, and allow both to fail. It added a lot of suspense for me.
Anyway, a little too violent at times (the swastika carving at the end made me turn my head, but closeups like that are always just a little to real for me), but overall, a great combination of suspense, action, comedy and darkness. Cool film.
A few things that annoyed me after:
Col Landa is very smart. He could have just claimed he was part of the German anti-hitler Resistance, instead of giving Pitt’s Lieutenant a reason to renege on the deal.
Why was Landa still a Colonel?
Why was the sniper private still a Private?
Promotion is not often based on war acts, though it is likely the private would have been promoted, though sometimes that can depend a lot on time in service. If the Germans stuck to time in grade restrictions, it is entirely possible to be stuck at private for a year or so. (In the US Army, there are similar time in grade requirements, though they can be waived after a certain point to shorten the requirement…If you’re wondering, I’m a former US Army Captain, so I have some insight into this). At least in the US Army, the leap from Colonel to Brigadier General is a HUGE jump. Many, many colonels never get that promotion. Even a highly praised guy like Landa would likely have to spend a significant amount of time as a colonel before being promoted. Do realize that Colonel (0-6) is a VERY high rank. In the US Army, they command brigades, which generally consist of between 2,000 and 6,000 men.
Well, no enlisted man ever won the the Knight’s Cross with oak leaves, swords, and diamonds, the lowest rank to do so was Colonel.
And Colonel Hans Landa was actually a Standartenführer (and the SD had different requirements for ranks), and certainly during WWII there was no time in grade requirements. Rommel went from Col to Generalfeldmarschall (***** General) in 5 years. Other went to Col just during the war. Hans Rudel started as a Cadet and went to Col in 7 years. Michael Wittmann went from Private to Captain in about the same time period.
I saw that and thought it was a nice touch too, but it did lead me to think I was going to see a Tarantino homage to '60s/'70s WWII films instead of… well, the film he made.
Ultimately I enjoyed it, but thought the tavern scene was well-made and acted but ultimately pointless (except to provide Col. Wellspoken German with a clue about the Basterds’ “contact”), and there was a lot of stuff in the movie that just seemed to be “padding”, for want of a better term.
The end- in which every high-ranking Nazi gets killed and Hitler gets machine-gunned- surprised and initially annoyed me, as I was sitting in the theatre thinking “WTF? That’s not even close to what happened!” but then I realised Inglorious Basterds is really the cinematic version of something like Return To Castle Wolfenstein.
The Nazis didn’t have Armoured Zombie Rocket Troops or Tesla Stormtroopers or Lesbian Vampire Assassins in WWII either, but we don’t say “That’s not real at all! That never happened!”, we go along for the ride and enjoy ourselves in the process.
So, as long as you accept Inglourious Basterds is an alternate-reality WWII escapist film and not a “serious” action movie, you’ll enjoy it a lot more.
And yeah, I wondered what happened to the other two Basterds, and who the Basterd with Aldo at the end was. But you expect that sort of thing in a Tarantino film, so you tend to just run with it and argue about it later with your friends at the pub. 