Entertainment For Lively Minds
And now Quentin wins the war
Posted by David Hepworth on 2 July 2009 - 12:09pm.
Apart from convincing a load of illiterates that they do know how to spell after all, Quentin Tarantino's new film "Inglourious Basterds" seems set to create a whole load of new myths about World War II.
* Special Forces were forever dropping squads of cool-looking chaps into occupied Europe just because they knew how cruel the Nazis could be
* The inability to speak the local languages was not a handicap at all but the wrong sort of haircut might have been
* Mel Brooks really did have Hitler down, didn't he?
- More from David Hepworth.
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On the strength of that...
this new meisterwerk from the great auteur Tarantino makes 'Rambo' look like 'Schindler's List'.
His reputation is built on quicksand... a director to whom subtlety is a dirty word.
I hate everything about that trailer... it is utter garbage.
"Kosher porn"
Already co-star Eli Roth's summary of it of a Jewish revenge fantasy.
OK, it is fiction. But it seems to me there is a line in any historical drama, beyond which your suspension of disbelief crumbles and you start to ask "What is this nonsense ?". Already this seems so preposterous that QT already seems to have gone way, way over the line and heading into middle distance.
On the other hand this was always going to be more like The Dirty Dozen than Schindler's List, and surely it is downright silly to expect any historical accuracy at all from a Tarantino flick. Still, if QT is placing fast and loose with the real horrors of WW2 for the sake of his latest creation then it might not just be the usual splurge of ultra-violence which may be making me feel queasy.
All that's true
The thing that offends me is he doesn't want to make a film about any of the many, more controversial wars in which his country has been engaged. He wants to go back to the war which, with the safety of 20/20 hindsight, can be characterised as Good-3, Evil - 0 (AET), and indulge in the fantasy of pretending it would all have been a bit more satisfactory if some cool guys had got to kill some Nazis a bit earlier. I've talked to too many teenagers who are content to describe the Second World War as being "about the Nazis and the Jews" to be relaxed about seeing more myths added to the ones that are already there.
What's next from Tarantino's giant brain?
'Bloodbath for Democracy' - the moving story of the US bringing good ol' US values to the people of Iraq, in which the massacre of a few hundred thousand innocent people is conveniently ignored?
He really is a prize pillock.
Does a piece..
of entertainment have to be an accurate representation of history? - can it not just be a load of mindless drivel that eats up two hours of our mundane lives - what's wrong with torturing Nazis anyway?
Only when large numbers of people
only get their history from such sources and when no mainstream Hollywood film ever notes the russian contribution to the second world war. But no entertainers don't have to be educators, except this all seems a bit shallow and willful as usual from QT.
Fewer and fewer old soldiers left
So fewer to complain when movies insult their memory. Or completely disregard it and make daft stuff up.
Seems he sees it as a spaghetti western, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglourious_Basterds .
Oh goody.
Guilty, but..
I think resembling Roger Federer is punishment enough for his crimes.
There's a touch...
of the Wayne Rooney in there too, I always thought.
Slightly more parochial but
didn't Mel Gibson do the same with Braveheart?
Now we have to contend with a new wave bunch of revisionist nationalists with even less understanding of Britain's history than ever before.
Pulp fiction
I would so like to reassure DH that we all know that all QT knows about the war is not any sort of historical record but instead is the schlock he read in comic books or the B-movies watched over in many years in that video shop, and that all sensible people will know better than to believe his new WW2 film is based on anything other than Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos.
I can't say I have meet the teenagers with the woeful historical outlook he mentions. On the other hand we have all met at least one individual who seems to have obtained his or her history from Dan Brown, Tom Clancy and Rambo. So his fears may have substance.
Heaven help us if there are Iraq War comic books out there. (Please don't tell me there are...)
I got all my history from
Warlord, Victor and Commando comics.
Union Jack Jackson rules !!!!
Also Kelly's Heroes was a classic wasn't it ?
have you seen they've republished
a holiday special edition of Battle action. My fave bit is that readers get a polaroid camera or wrist watch just for writing in and saying their grandad was in the blackwatch etc.
So then DH and crew how about it do I get Iphone for saying my great Uncle was a Dambuster.
my great Uncle Archie navigated Wellingtons
and was in the first bombing raid on Berlin.
I have ambiguous feelings on that distinction.
I got all my history...
from Blackadder. Pie shops figure prominently.
and I've since heard...
that The Flintstones is only partly based on fact.
Die Elefant died!
Don't feel too bad there chap - as I recall, that first raid on Berlin was done in riposte to Hitler's claim that no allied bomb would ever fall onto das kapital - he was so furious afterwards that he ordered the Luftwaffe to stop attacking RAF bases and instead hit civilian targets which gave the RAF the respite they needed to go on to win the Battle Of Britain.
However, the weird fact that I hope I am remembering correctly was that that very first raid on Berlin that your great uncle took part on killed precisely zero people but did in fact finish off the one elephant in the Berlin Zoo!
Regards,
Freaky Trigger
so to cheer
him up you're saying dear old werthers orginals munching pipe smoking grand pops killed Dumbo's mum!
Well it was a member
of Rommels Afrikacorps ... so a legitimate target surely.
aren't zoo elephants indian ?
that
would make a good name for an album
Actually Zoo Elephant would be a good name for a band
Victor used to run true stories of how soldiers won their medals
and, occasionally, a young boy would find his grandad being written about in his comic.
"Charley's War" in Battle Action (and your local library) was good history, apparently.
Iraq War Comics
Shooting War has had good reviews.
Tarantino has always made movies
about movies that's his bag. This one seems to be about the caper movies like dirty dozen not about real life.
Who needs Norman Mailer, Stephen Ambrose or AJP Taylor
when we have the good old Quentin
"It'll be epic and have my take of the sociological battlefield at that time with the racism and barbarism on all sides — the Nazi side, the American side, the black and Jewish soldiers and the French, because it all takes place in France"
J.J. Cale song
As covered by Eric Clapton (AKA "The Peruvian Muse Strikes Again").
Er, allegedly (although I imagine he's beyond caring, since those doing the alleging - on the record, even - have included David Carradine).
It's also good to see a trailer that boasts all the production values of an 'Allo 'Allo Christmas special.
He obviously chose to decline
Elim Klimov's invitation also.
It´s only a film..
..Did you really expect QT to make an impeccably researched docu-drama about WW2 in the vein of Band of Brothers ? Instead he´s throwing together some pastiche/parody/collage/carry-on a lá Dirty Dozen. Probably jolly good fun.
Besides QT has no duty to impart moral/historical lessons to people who only get their history from movies.
He should have thrown in some Zombies or Werewolves
ala Castle Wolfenstein. Even chuck in a Godzilla or Transformer or two...maybe a Cameo for a lesser Marvel Hero like Thor or Captain America. Why not?
Now ,that..
..I would watch
Quentin
prize wanker..please go away..
Has anyone ever seen...
Where Eagles Dare and Kellys Heroes? And other films of their kind?
All absolute bollocks but good fun. And JUST A MOVIE. All made up. Not based on anything remotely factual.
This looks to be the same (I think). So what's all the fuss?
Can't people just enjoy watching Nazis being slaughtered??
Not based on anything factual?
so the uniforms, equipment and time-period are merely a coincidence?
I thought that was why they made Star Wars.
Also the Wehrmacht and Nazis are two entirely seperate entities.
Has anyone seen the movie?
Aren't we all being a bit dismissive on the strength of a trailer?
I seem to remember wanting to see Lost in Transaltion on the basis of the trailer. In that case, the trailer was considerably better than the movie.
Judge for Yourself. Free tickets for your local Odeon
in today's Daily Star Sunday, page 22, 90 pence.
Do they have a voucher
that gives you back the 3 hours of your life you've inevitably wasted seeing it though?
Who cares? It's free!
Now that everyone who bought the paper has had a chance. You need to go to www.tellten.co.uk and input the code 152382. Choose your local Odeon, give them your details and print off your tickets for 6pm, Monday 17 August. Brad Pitt's in it: it's a date movie. There's also a chance that it might be, unintentionally, hysterically funny.
Bargepole had assumed
from his limited knowledge of the film, that it was intended to be an update of the 'Kelly's Heroes', 'Dirty Dozen' genre - nothing more, nothing less, and certainly not a depiction of actual events.