Yeah, I am at William Jewell College now.
So far it's going really good. Baseball and classes started of good, and so on and on and on...
I know this is not really what people come to read Blogs for. If they come at all. But also, this is not what I want my Blog to be for. So... here we go!
I watched the Tarantino movie Inglourious Basterds the other day and I really loved it. It easily surpasses most of the other movies he has done. While I think it surpasses Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs as well, it doesn't really do it very easily, and probably it only surpasses them in my own little world of movie-rankings because by now I watched P. F. and R. D. too often.
Anyways... I decided to write a quick review with a special focus on how it handles German culture and the whole "Hollywood movies + German Nazis" problems. Cause, as most of you hopefully know/realized, most of the time this simple addition is solved to "= lets shoot some fucking Germans that are really stupid and evil."
Seriously, most of the times I feel like if you want to do a movie where a lot of people get shot and it's awesome to shoot them, either make them German Nazis or Zombies.
In his newest movie Inglourious Basterds Tarantino depicts Nazi Germany and it’s people with an amount of respect and detail that I wouldn’t have expected from him or any major Hollywood production. While I greatly despise the acts of the Nazi regime, I also despise the many shallow movie presentations of the German people, the reduction of German culture to angry sounding people that really need to be shot as fast and as numerous as possible.
Nazi Germany is a topic for itself and that every Nazi should have been stopped is out of the question. What impresses me so much about Tarantino’s most recent endeavour is that he manages to connect his well-know love for gore and violence with a great deal of atmosphere and respectful treatment of Germans. The movie is based on the premise of a group out to kill as many Nazis as possible, but at the same time it involves an enormous amount of German spoken language by an impressive selection of famous and great German actors.
It is very apparent throughout the whole movie that Tarantino and his crew put great effort and man-power into adjusting the script so it would involve German culture in a great amount, not to mention the flawless German that was scripted and consequently spoken. Little details like the way Germans show the number “3” compared to how Americans do it play essential roles in the movie.
All these factors adding up in the movie make not just a great movie, but also communicate a cultural responsibility and awareness that I have rarely experienced in any WW2/Nazi movies, especially ones coming from the U.S.
The movie is by no means primary or secondary a cultural work meant to establish tolerance and understanding, but between the lines (or the pictures/sound) one can clearly see how it can establish more distinctive and multi-faceted perceptions of (Nazi-) Germany.
If you guys want to know more about what is going on with me mail me, facebook me, studivz me, reply here, yell it off a mountain.
All the stuff that I don't really feel like posting here, are just things like moving out of my apartment, a light pulled hamstring, and cafeteria food. Not very intellectually intriguing or interesting to read for anyone but - probably - my parents. Although I doubt even they would be blown away by narratives about aforementioned events.
I want to leave you with the thought that I had about how - while I really liked I. B. (watch out, I feel a long tangent coming... oooohhh, here it comes:
isn't it funny how all Tarantino movies, directed by him, seem to be just two words? Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds. Awesome.) - it seems to me that Tarantino is unable to develop a deeper connection to characters?
I liked most of the characters in the movie a lot and they were really well played and everything. But when they died (which almost all of them in good Tarantino fashion did) I didn't really feel sad.
It really strikes me with I.B. a lot more than with other movies by him because I. B. is more about atmosphere, actors, and characters than about referencing older movies and being super awesome cool shooting people in the face yeah bitch.
If you feel like it, yell what you think off a mountain.
Leaving.
PPE (post-publishing-edit):
Oh yeah, I also made a new video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bt8isqQRiM
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