Odd Reaction to my Inglorious Basterd Review

Odd Reaction to my Inglorious Basterd Review

A couple of interesting things about my Inglorious Basterd review.

One of the places that I cross-post reviews to is CRZ's the-w message board, the heir to the very first message board that I first posted to and wrote for which indirectly led to me writing for the IWS. One of the neat features of the-w message board is the they track referrals that searched and found threads on the board. As an example here are the tracked referrals for my Inglorious Baterd review.

It is pretty natural to click on some of those Google searches to see what else they lead to, which lead me to discover two things:

1) On the message board of cinemablend.com a user named pauljeremiah basically copied my Inglorious Basterds review verbatim. Here is the cache of the page, since PJ has since erased his post once he was busted.

2) On a translation message board, a discussion sprang up about the pun that I identified in my review.

Inglorious Basterds
August 24, 2009 8:30 PM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: Michael Barnett

I saw the film the other day, enjoying it thoroughly.

Today I read this viewer review at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361748/usercomments and was wondering if any German or Italian speaking film-goers had noticed similar details which they could share.

Excerpt of the review:
Case in point, during the opening sequence the Nazi "Jew Hunter" SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christian Waltz) is interrogating French dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet). Landa suspects that LaPadite is hiding a family of Jews. While subtly pressuring LaPadite, Landa asks for a glass of milk. After greedily gulping it down, Landa compliments LaPadite on his daughters and his cows, "Mes compliments a vos filles et vos vaches." The thing of it is, in French "vache" means cow, but it is also a vulgar name for the vagina. If reprimanded for this vulgar pun, Landa could quite convincingly claim not to understand French well enough to have meant it that way, but Landa does mean it that way and he means it as a threat. And LaPadite understands his meaning all too well.

That is a really subtle piece of acting and word-play that many audiences would never catch, or at least they might understand the subtext without knowing the exact nature of the threat. The film is rich with that kind of detail. All of the French and English dialogue is chosen with that same attention to detail and while I can't swear to the German, I would suspect that it shows a similar level of craft.

Michael

Inglorious Basterds | ???
August 25, 2009 6:06 AM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: Sylvain Leray
Post title: ???

Michael Barnett wrote:

After greedily gulping it down, Landa compliments LaPadite on his daughters and his cows, "Mes compliments a vos filles et vos vaches." The thing of it is, in French "vache" means cow, but it is also a vulgar name for the vagina.

I don't know where you read or heard that, but to me it would be absolutely new !! I'm pretty sure that "vache" never had this meaning for anyone in France!
Please correct me if I'm wrong...

Inglorious Basterds | "Vache"
August 25, 2009 6:13 AM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: Lingua 5B
Post title: "Vache"

I haven't been aware of this reference for "vache" either. Anything to do with Canadian French perhaps? Or some contemporary slang?

Maybe you confused animals, it's supposed to be la chatte, not la vache.

:lol:

Inglorious Basterds | Landa's French
August 25, 2009 6:17 AM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: FarkasAndras
Post title: Landa's French

I don't know about that... it would be a strange pun to make and I don't think Landa, the eternal gentleman who purposefully left his men a good 20 metres from the house when he went in would get so direct and vulgar. Complimenting his beautiful wife & daughters is more than enough of a distant, veiled threat I think.
I don't speak French at all so I don't know if the pun works and I can't tell how good Landa's French is.

Talking about puns, does anyone know why they called the film Inglourious basterds? I find the title pointless and terrible, but maybe there is some sort of a meaning I just don't get.

Inglorious Basterds | Not in Canadian French either...
August 25, 2009 6:24 AM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: Marie-Claude Falardeau
Post title: Not in Canadian French either...

Nope, no such meaning in Canadian French either. It would be new to me as well ;)

Inglorious Basterds
August 25, 2009 7:42 AM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: Lingua 5B

FarkasAndras wrote:

Talking about puns, does anyone know why they called the film Inglourious basterds? I find the title pointless and terrible, but maybe there is some sort of a meaning I just don't get.

You typed one extra "u" ( the first one) in inglorious, or is that intended? BastErds is intentional isn't it?

I couldn't tell, as I haven't seen the movie. The title represents the entire film / broad context so it would be useful to know the film before discussing the title.

Other than that, what isn't clear in " inglorious basterds" ? the intentional misspelling of basterds has its sarcastic purpose.., and I presume it also serves the plot and general language style used in the film. Anything else? Personally, I find this phrasal and eclectic combination of a formal archaic word ( inglorious) and modern slang word ( basterds) quite entertaining.

Inglorious Basterds | Film title ...
August 25, 2009 8:45 AM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: savtrad
Post title: Film title ...

Here is an excerpt from an interview with Tarantino when asked why he chose to misspell the words in the title of the film:

'Inglourious Basterds' comes from long line of tricky, touchy titles

Quentin Tarantino isn't saying why he spelled the title of his Second World War adventure, "Inglourious Basterds," the way he did. The writer-director is enjoying having a little fun with his audience, similar to the way he credited himself and Uma Thurman, with whom he co-wrote the "Kill Bill" movies, by their initials Q and U.
"I'm never going to explain that," Tarantino said during a news conference in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where "Inglourious Basterds" premiered. "When you do an artistic flourish like that, to describe it, to explain it, would just . . . invalidate the whole stroke in the first place. (Artist Jean-Michel) Basquiat takes the letter L from a hotel room door and sticks it in his painting," he added. "If he describes why he did it, he might as well not have done it at all."

Inglorious Basterds | Characters
August 25, 2009 9:42 AM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: Lingua 5B
Post title: Characters

I have no clue about the movie, synopsis and characters other than what I've read in this thread. I haven't googled anything either.

As for the specific language in movies or drama in general, it can be used purposely to match the character. That said, I would say that kind of misspelling would match a mediocre Joe who can't spell and is uneducated, never read a book in his life, or maybe the mockery of such people. Shakespeare used that a lot, that is using various language forms for different characters.

It can also be a tool to attract media attention without any hidden meaning whatsoever. He may be testing the waters and the audience. People like to think there is a hidden mysterious meaning behind everything. And now he has all these journalists asking the question so he can say " I won't tell ya" ..
Hmmm...

Inglorious Basterds | Vaches
August 25, 2009 10:06 AM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: Michael Barnett
Post title: Vaches

When I saw the film I too was not aware of the "pun".

Reading the review, I wondered how much more of the film I had actually missed, which prompted my post.

Michael

Inglorious Basterds | Well
August 25, 2009 11:30 AM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: Sylvain Leray
Post title: Well

Michael Barnett wrote:

When I saw the film I too was not aware of the "pun".

Reading the review, I wondered how much more of the film I had actually missed, which prompted my post.

Michael

For this part you didn't miss anything - I'm 98% sure there is no such pun in French.

Inglorious Basterds | title
August 25, 2009 2:49 PM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: FarkasAndras
Post title: title

Lingua 5B wrote:

Other than that, what isn't clear in " inglorious basterds" ? the intentional misspelling of basterds has its sarcastic purpose.., and I presume it also serves the plot and general language style used in the film.

I just find it dumb and annoying. Yes, Brad Pitt's character and his men are not exactly the university professor types, so you could easily imagine them making that sort of a mistake - in fact, they do, I just found out that it is scratched into somebody's rifle stock. But that doesn't make it any less of a horrible title... and, although I'm not a native speaker, I can't really imagine anyone misspelling inglorious as inglourious.
Anyway, the rifle thing clears it up: it's just a "Look at me!" title that tries to be original or something, there is no pun or other reference... Bleh.
The film is very good, though. It's dark, cruel and bloody, but it is very good.
Inglorious Basterds | Well

Inglorious Basterds | For the sake of accuracy...
August 25, 2009 4:56 PM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: Nadejda Vega Cespedes
Post title: For the sake of accuracy...

...he said, "à votre famille et à vos vaches, je dis bravo."

Inglorious Basterds | The title
August 25, 2009 6:17 PM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: Michael Barnett
Post title: The title

FarkasAndras wrote:

Talking about puns, does anyone know why they called the film Inglourious basterds? I find the title pointless and terrible, but maybe there is some sort of a meaning I just don't get.

I think the spelling is pure whimsy.

The reference to the vache pun was the film reviewer's not mine. I thought that perhaps it was a French expression unfamiliar to Canadian francophones. On reflection and after discussion with one of my Quebecois patients, I think one might translate "vache" as "bitch", but not "vagina". In English, if one calls a woman a "cow" it means essentially that she is obese.

Inglorious Basterds | For the sake of accuracy 2
August 25, 2009 7:02 PM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: Özden Arıkan
Post title: For the sake of accuracy 2

Michael, you've misspelled the movie title in your thread title :-)

Inglorious Basterds | Wrong
August 25, 2009 7:22 PM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: Arnaud HERVE
Post title: Wrong

A whole thread for an assumption that was absolutely and completely wrong at the start.

Could the OP mention where he got the idea that "vaches" had that meaning? I would not be surprised if he was the only person in the world thinking that "vaches" has that meaning in French slang.

Inglorious Basterds | Title
August 25, 2009 9:27 PM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: Michael Barnett
Post title: Title

Özden Arıkan wrote:

Michael, you've misspelled the movie title in your thread title :-)

Are you referring to the incorrect spelling that was deliberate or the correct spelling which was a mistake? :-)

Michael

Inglorious Basterds | Cow = obese?????
August 26, 2009 3:33 AM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: Marie-Hélène Hayles
Post title: Cow = obese?????

Michael Barnett wrote:
In English, if one calls a woman a "cow" it means essentially that she is obese.

Since when, exactly? It certainly doesn't mean that in British English! It's more synonymous with bitch - I wouldn't associate it in any way at all with a reference to weight, unless used in combination with "fat". But even then it's not the "cow" bit of the insult that's referring to weight.

Anyway, to drag my post back on topic, here's a link to the Guardian critic's review of the film. I haven't seen it, but he didn't like it much, to put things mildly:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/aug/19/inglourious-basterds-review-brad-pitt-quentin-tarantino

Inglorious Basterds | Quel maledetto treno blindato (Enzo G. Castellari, 1978)
August 26, 2009 6:23 AM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: Michael J.W. Beijer
Post title: Quel maledetto treno blindato (Enzo G. Castellari, 1978)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076584/

Inglorious Basterds | To the correct spelling which was a mistake, of course :-)
August 26, 2009 9:39 AM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: Özden Arıkan
Post title: To the correct spelling which was a mistake, of course :-)

Michael Barnett wrote:

Özden Arıkan wrote:

Michael, you've misspelled the movie title in your thread title :-)

Are you referring to the incorrect spelling that was deliberate or the correct spelling which was a mistake? :-)

Michael

Admittedly, I realized it -the movie title- was "inglourious" only after seeing this thread, which, in turn, was one week later than making everybody laugh at me in the theatre with a comment like "Oh, Germans misspelled the 'bastard'" :D

Inglorious Basterds | Correct
August 26, 2009 9:40 AM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: Lawyer-Linguist
Post title: Correct

Marie-Hélène Hayles wrote:

Since when, exactly? It certainly doesn't mean that in British English! It's more synonymous with bitch - I wouldn't associate it in any way at all with a reference to weight, unless used in combination with "fat". But even then it's not the "cow" bit of the insult that's referring to weight.

I should know, I've been called it on more than one occasion :-)

Inglorious Basterds | No "fat" needed
August 26, 2009 8:07 PM
Forum: Off topic
Topic: Inglorious Basterds
Poster: David Russi
Post title: No "fat" needed

Marie-Hélène Hayles wrote:
Michael Barnett wrote:
In English, if one calls a woman a "cow" it means essentially that she is obese.

Since when, exactly? It certainly doesn't mean that in British English! It's more synonymous with bitch - I wouldn't associate it in any way at all with a reference to weight, unless used in combination with "fat". But even then it's not the "cow" bit of the insult that's referring to weight.


No "fat" needed on the US side of the Atlantic:

Webster's
cow
2 : a person clumsy, ***obese***, coarse, or otherwise unpleasant; sometimes : PROSTITUTE

I do agree, however with the assessment given in the Guardian, this is a well acted but mediocre film, and though it did hold my attention, I left irritated at the hollowness of what I had just seen, not to mention the feeling (I don't know how to show this) that somehow American cultural attitudes of the present were being superimposed on German and French characters of 60+ years ago. And the "revenge of the Jews" argument just does not make sense to me...

An interesting discussion, although to me a little bewidering, since I have heard vache used as a slang for vagina in Montreal, Ottawa and in both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Here is my full response on that message board:

Hi

I'm the guy who wrote the review being quoted. The imdb review is an excerpt of my full review from my blog: http://llakor.blogspot.com/2009/07/fantasia-film-fest-review-inglorious.html

My background is that I am half-Acadian and half-Quebec Irish born in Quebec and raised in Montreal, the Quebec Laurentians, Ottawa, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

In all the places that I have lived "vache" has been a vulgar term for vagina in the French and Acadian communities. Typically around here vache is pronounced approximately "vaash" and the vag from vagin is pronounced "vaaje" so it is very close. (And around here in English vag ("vaj") is used as a verbal shorthand for vagina as well.)

***

I obviously can't speak for the French of France, just my own community.

But it's not like I was the only person that got the reference either. When I saw the film with 700 people at the sold-out Canadian premiere in Montreal to close out the Fantasia Film Festival that line was greeted with a half-groan, half-boo from the majority of the crowd - one of the reasons why it stuck with me. (Although when I was writing up the review at 2am that night I didn't quite get the quote right.)

There are some other references that pop out through the French, the most notable one that I can think of happens when Shosanna is sparring with Zoller outside her cinema and says that the French honour directors which references the fact that Tarantino has always been well-treated by the French especially at Cannes. There may very well be word-play hidden in the German, supposedly Tom Twyker helped with the German dialogue.

***

That whole opening sequence is built on the sub-text of rape and murder. LaPadite plays a shell game with his daughters, trying to keep them away from the Nazis, sending them into their home, then when forced to by Landa inviting Landa in alone with his daughters, then again when forced to sending his girls out to be alone with the Nazi soldiers. And for a gentleman, Landa rather deliberately leers at LaPadite's youngest daughter.

My recollection is that Landa has three soldiers and LaPadite has three daughters (no wife from what I remember) which would be a very deliberate mirror by Tarantino emphasized at the end when Landa goes to the door where the girls exited and loudly invites them back in - only they have been replaced by Landa's soldiers.

More Cubed Inglorious Basterds Math

Inglorious Basterds Math


Lieutenant Archie Hicox
British Commando, Author, Movie Critic, Expert on German Cinema

=


Private Percival 'Pinky' Pinkerton
Member of the Howling Commandos, served under Sergeant Nick Fury

+


Joseph Tura
Actor in Nazi Occupied Poland

+


Roald Dahl
WWII Pilot and Ace became a writer under the guidance of C.S. Forester (creator of Horatio Hornblower) and a spy under the supervision of William Stephenson (Intrepid)

More More Inglorious Basterd Math

Private Fredrick Zoller
Killed 200 Russian soldiers over 3 days by sniper fire.
Acted in Stolz der Nation - Pride of the Nation

=


Sergeant Alvin York
Killed 28 German soldiers, captured 32 machine-guns and 132 German soldiers.

+


Audie Murphy
Destroyed 6 tanks, killed over 240 German soldiers.
Acted in The Red Badge of Courage and To Hell and Back

+


Major Erwin König, Head of the Wehrmacht Sniper School
Killed over 400 Allied soldiers.

Yet More Inglorious Basterds Math

Inglorious Basterds Math


Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz

=


Private Eric Koenig of the Howling Commandos.
Former Nazi Youth who defected to the Allies to fight under Sergeant Nick Fury.

+


Hans Beckert, notorious serial killer from Fritz Lang's masterpiece M.

Still More Inglorious Basterds Math

Inglorious Basterds Math


Shosanna Dreyfus

=


Mademoiselle Marie aka Anais Guillot, WWII French Resistance Fighter also Sgt. Rock's Lover.

+


Anne Frank

+


Joan of Arc

+


Pauline Kael, the incendiary New York Times film critic

*****

In DC Comics continuity, Mademoiselle Marie is a code-name for a series of female French spies and assassins. (It's a job description not a name.) In the Sergeant Rock comics, the Anais Guillot Mademoiselle Marie was Rock's lover. She also famously threatened to kill the Unknown Soldier once the war was over, but never carried out the threat because she died before the war ended.

(I could have used a real picture of Anne Frank, but it is the fictional version of Anne Frank that I mean not the real one. The version of Anne that we carry in our heads because of the books and plays and films. A character as fictional as Oliver Twist or Lucy Ricardo.)

She said, I’m tired of the war,
I want the kind of work I had before,
A wedding dress or something white
To wear upon my swollen appetite.
-Leonard Cohen, Joan of Arc

More Inglorious Basterds Math

Inglorious Basterds Math

Sergeant Donnie Donowitz aka "The Bear Jew"

=

Eli Roth, director of Cabin Fever, Hostel, Hostel - Part II and the Thanksgiving trailer from the Grindhouse double feature.

+

G.I. Joe Teddy Williams

+

The Baseball Furies street gang from Walter Hill's The Warriors

*****

Donnie Donowitz is very specifically a Boston Jew, so it might seem wrong to include the Yankee pinstripe wearing Baseball Furies in the equation, but the introduction of "the Bear Jew" seems to quote The Warriors quite directly with Donowitz unseen down a tunnel banging his bat off the walls, which to me is a quote of the Baseball Furies entrance in the Warriors (or at least the way that I remember that entrance, that they are heard before they are seen.)

I didn't even know that there was a Teddy Williams G.I. Joe until I found it on Google Images.

Inglorious Basterds Math

Inglorious Basterds Math

Lieutenant Aldo Raines

=

Major Reisman from The Dirty Dozen

+

Sergeant Nick Fury of the Howling Commandos (as drawn by Dick Ayers)

+

Little Sure Shot of Easy Company aka Louis Kiyahani, Apache sniper

+

Scalphunter aka Brian Savage aka Ke-Woh-No-Tay ('He Who Is Less Than Human')

Admittedly Scalphunter was raised by Kiowa where Aldo Raines is part Apache.

Some might ask why Nick Fury rather than Frank Rock. The difference is that Nick Fury's unit was used primarily for behind the lines type missions (like the Basterds) while Rock and Easy Company only ended up behind the lines because the line collapsed leaving Easy Company behind. Fury also has a moral flexibility that Rock lacks. Fury's Howlers were heavily involved with Wild Bill Donavan's OSS (in one story Reed Richards is introduced as an OSS agent). The Basterds are clearly working for the OSS.

The biggest difference is that Sergeant Nick Fury was invented by Jack Kirby, the King of Comics and is clearly more of a comic fantasy compared to Robert Kanigher's Sergeant Rock and Easy Company. Not that Rock couldn't have fantastic adventures, but Rock never fought the Red Skull or Baron Strucker either. The Iron Major like Rock was a bit larger than life, but he wasn't building and deploying death rays like Strucker and the Red Skull either.

Quoted by Nikki Finke about Inglorious Basterds

I read Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily blog somewhat obsessively. After I saw Inglorious Basterds at Fantasia, I sent her a report and she quoted me in her blog. Here is what I sent her:

When Inglorious Basterds was announced as the closing film at Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival, tickets sold out in under an hour. I only got a ticket because the organizers gave away 15 tickets to Festival regulars and they recognized me from going to the Festival since it started in 1996.

The theatre holds 700 and they were not letting in people with media or VIP passes. (A handful of VIPs mainly ones from the Festival jury were there.) They also were collecting cellphones and cameras from people going in (they had announced that prior to the screening) and passing metal wands to make sure we were hanest about not bringing in devices.

Eli Roth presented the film and did a quick Q&A afterwards. (About 7 or 8 questions.) He told us that Quentin couldn't be there because he was in Berlin on the press tour and then sucked up to the crowd telling them that we were the perfect crowd for the film (which is probably also true) and that Quentin had insisted that we see the film. He said that it was a difficult film, a ballsy film, but a great film and told us, "If you like it, tell your friends, blog about it, Twitter about it, write about it on Facebook and imdb. If you don't like it, Shut the fuck up!" (That got a big laugh.)

He addressed stories about Tarantino recutting the film, saying that he had cut the version shown at Cannes in six weeks, that the version that they showed there had never been seen by a live audience and there were certain scenes that Tarantino didn't have time to cut that were added for the version that we saw and that certain scenes were tweaked after Cannes based on the reactions of the Cannes crowd, something that Tarantino had always planned to do.

Roth talked about being cast for the film, saying that Tarantino was impressed by his performance in Death Proof and that Tarantino didn't audition him for the role and told him over dinner that he got it, saying that he had auditioned a few other actors to see if there were anyone better out there. "He said that it was either me or Adam Sandler and if he couldn't get one of us, he would rewrite the part. He said that he really wanted a Boston Jew in the part of the Boston Jew." Of the character, called by the Nazis, "The Bear Jew" because he beats Nazis to death with a baseball bat, Roth said, "When I lived in Boston I kept a baseball bat in my car and I didn't play baseball, so I figure I have been auditioning for this part my whole life."

Roth also explained how he came to shoot the German propaganda film within a film, The Pride of Germany. "When Quentin cast me, I committed to being there for the entire shoot, but there are sequences of the film my character isn't in, so I told Quentin if he wanted me to shoot any second unit stuff to give me a camera. He told me that he didn't normally use a second unit, but he hadn't figured out the German propaganda film yet, so I could shoot that if I wanted. I grabbed Daniel [Brühl] and a camera. The first day, we did 65 shots. Quentin called me and said, 'We did twenty shots!' Yeah? We did 65 mother-fucker! We ended up doing 200 shots in 3 days. When Quentin saw the footage, he loved it and asked me to cut it together for him. It ended up being 5 and a half minutes. If you watched it on its own it would seem a little disjointed because it is meant to be excerpts from a longer film, but you will be able to watch the whole thing on the DVD." Roth also said that he did an audio commentary for the film with the actor who played Goebbels doing commentary in character, but he wasn't certain that it would make the DVD because they pushed the envelope a little.

At the end of the Q&A, Roth talked about his next project saying that he was working on a PG-13 scince-fiction action thriller and he was hoping to shoot it in such a way that he could slip in a gory horror film at the end of the shoot like a movie based on the Thanksgiving fake trailer done for Tarantino's Grindhouse double-feature. He joked about Thanksgiving, "If Peter Jackson could shoot all three Lord of the Rings movies in one shoot, I figure I can do 20 Thanksgiving films in one go, and then I could really piss off the Saw guys by catching them and passing them with my Thanksgiving movies. They will be releasing Saw 8 and I will be putting out Thanksgiving 10!"

*****

Eli Roth's first film Cabin Fever played at Fantasia in 2003 and got a really big reaction then, so that was probably why he was so happy to show us the film. It may have been playing to the audience to tell us that we were the perfect crowd for the film, but playing the film in Montreal, an international city where practically the entire audience speaks French and many also speak German, really helps in a film that features a lot of French and German since the French characters speak mostly French and the German characters speak mostly German. There were certainly jokes that the Montreal audience got that few other audiences would even notice. An early example saw the Nazi "Jew Hunter" Colonel Hans Landa (played by Christian Waltz) make a really dirty pun about the French dairy farmer's three daughters. Most Non-French audiences would probably understand that Landa was implying that he would have the daughters raped, the Montreal audience caught the overt threat and groaned/booed the pun and threat.

And that was true for the entire film as the sell-out audience laughed at every joke, cheered for the Basterds and booed the Nazis. At the end, the audience gave the film a thunderous ovation, about half the crowd standing to do so, During the opening credits, the crowd gave large ovations to Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth and Mike Myers. (Of course at Fantasia ovations have to be taken with a grain of salt. We're a quirky bunch. To keep the Hollywood types humble, the guy who routinely gets the loudest ovation at each and every screening (and yes at this one) is Daniel the Fantasia volunteer who sets up the mikes and turns out the lights for the screening.) I don't know if it was true that Quentin Tarantino did insist that this film had to play at Fantasia, but whoever insisted it was certainly a smart choice and the perfect audience for this film.

It doesn't hurt that Fantasia is a genre Festival, although it has had amazingly ecletic programming since the Festival started in 1996. They sold over 90, 000 tickets this year and while films like Inglorious Basterds sell out, you are just as likely to see a massive crowd for a gay Korean romantic comedy like Antique. Before Inglorious Basterds, they announced the winners for a variety of prizes with the most honored (and applauded) films being Love Exposure (a four hour Japanese art film), Breathless (Korean action/drama) and The Children (UK horror).

My review of the film is up on my blog, http://llakor.blogspot.com/2009/07/fantasia-film-fest-review-inglorious.html and I loved it, but it certainly didn't hurt that I saw it with a great crowd, that I got in free and that I undertood all the French jokes. I don't know how middle America will react to an action comedy with so little English. It helps the film's authenticity, and it is a brave artistic choice, but it might hurt ticket sales. Hopefully, it can have the same success as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Fantasia in Montreal was the perfect audience for this film, but can they build on that audience? I certainly hope so.

Fantasia Film Fest Review: Inglorious Basterds

Inglorious Basterds (2009) imdb​ Fantasia
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Written by Quentin Tarantino
(according to imdb Tom Tykwer helped with the German.)

When they announced that Inglorious Basterds would be the closing film for Montreal's 2009 Fantasia Film Festival, tickets sold out within an hour of going on sale. The only reason that I was able to see the film is that organizers of Fantasia were concerned that tickets sold so fast that people who had been supporting the Festival for years were being excluded. They gave out 15 free tickets semi-randomly and since I have been going to Fantasia since the first festival back in 1996, I was given one of the lucky tickets. So, yeah, Fantasia is AWESOME.

Eli Roth came to the screening and got a hero's welcome. (Eli premiered his first film Cabin Fever at Fantasia in 2003 to a great reaction.) He watched the film with us and then answered questions afterwards.

Among the tidbits: Tarantino edited together Inglorious Basterds in six weeks to make its Cannes' debut. There were scenes that he wasn't able to cut in time to add to the film for its debut which we got to see. Tarantino also tweaked some other scenes based on reactions at Cannes, something that he had always intended to do once he showed the film to a live audience for the first time.

Roth also explained how he came to shoot the German propaganda film within a film, The Pride of Germany. "When Quentin cast me, I committed to being there for the entire shoot, but there are sequences of the film my character isn't in, so I told Quentin if he wanted me to shoot any second unit stuff to give me a camera. He told me that he didn't normally use a second unit, but he hadn't figured out the German propaganda film yet, so I could shoot that if I wanted. I grabbed Daniel [Brühl] and a camera. The first day, we did 65 shots. Quentin called me and said, 'We did twenty shots!' Yeah? We did 65 mother-fucker! We ended up doing 200 shots in 3 days. When Quentin saw the footage, he loved it and asked me to cut it together for him. It ended up being 5 and a half minutes. If you watched it on its own it would seem a little disjointed because it is meant to be excerpts from a longer film, but you will be able to watch the whole thing on the DVD."

Two caveats about any opinions that I give about Inglorious Basterds. First, I saw it for free when I had resigned myself to not seeing it for a while, so I was in a great mood. Second, the perfect way to see this movie is with 700 excited rowdy genre fans, laughing at every joke and cheering most of the violence. It doesn't hurt that virtually all 700 fans understood French and a fair number spoke German, benefitting from Quentin's desire to have characters speak their own language for the sake of authenticity.

Inglorious Basterds is a dark and violent comic fantasy, gloriously so. Built on the framework of The Dirty Dozen, Inglorious Basterds ditches the elongated training sequences of The Dirty Dozen to plunge into the action right away. In the process, Tarantino fixes one of The Dirty Dozen's major flaws by giving the bad guys screen time to remind us just how bad the Nazis were. The Nazis with the most screen time end up becoming the most completely human characters in the film, which ironically makes them even worse monsters.

Bu ditching the training sequences, Tarantino is also able to give us a picture of the entire war, showing us not only British, American and German soldiers, but also giving us glimpses into the world of French and German civilians, both collaborators and Resistance.

It goes without saying that any Tarantino film is going to have fantastic dialogue, but when Tarantino made the decision to have the French characters speak French and the Germans speak German, beyond adding a level of authenticity, Tarantino also somehow ensured that his dialogue in French was as sharp and funny and clever as his English dialogue.

Case in point, during the opening sequence the Nazi "Jew Hunter" SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christian Waltz) is interrogating French dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet). Landa suspects that LaPadite is hiding a family of Jews. While subtly pressuring LaPadite, Landa asks for a glass of milk. After greedily gulping it down, Landa compliments LaPadite on his daughters and his cows, "Mes compliments a vos filles et vos vaches." The thing of it is, in French "vache" means cow, but it is also a vulgar name for the vagina. If reprimanded for this vulgar pun, Landa could quite convincingly claim not to understand French well enough to have meant it that way, but Landa does mean it that way and he means it as a threat. And LaPadite understands his meaning all too well.

As proz.com's message board pointed out to me Landa's actual quote was: "à votre famille et à vos vaches, je dis bravo." which doesn't really change the pun.

That is a really subtle piece of acting and word-play that many audiences would never catch, or at least they might understand the subtext without knowing the exact nature of the threat. The film is rich with that kind of detail. All of the French and English dialogue is chosen with that same attention to detail and while I can't swear to the German, I would suspect that it shows a similar level of craft.

Inglorious Basterds opens with the phrase, "Once Upon a Time... in Nazi-Occupied France." Personally, this reminds me of the opening of every Asterix book and movie, another comic fantasy in a war-torn occupied France. Like Asterix, Inglorious Basterds is howlingly funny in places, although the film also turns darkly serious.

In its more serious moments, Inglorious Basterds reminds us that the first casualties of war are compassion and the ability to relax, as in almost every elongated sequence of the film, Tarantino finds a new way to build cruel tension to almost unbearable levels.

Tarantino also reminds us that film is dangerous, even inflammable and that its power deserves respect.

If you can see this film as I did in a packed theatre filled with knowledgeable fans who get every joke, than you will see this masterful film the way that it was meant to be seen. If you are not that lucky, all that you will see is a great, great film that delivers a darkly funny punch.