“Awww, the last Tarantino on the list. Only a couple left til this bad boy blog business is bagged. I know I was trying to go as chronological as possible, but I prolly should have switched this with the next RR movie on the list, to keep it a bit more even. Whatevs.
This is one of those rare movies that I love more with each subsequent viewing. It was just this shy of making my favorites list but I’m pretty sure that when I finally get around to updating the list, this will make the cut. I’ve got this on my iPod, and its my usual on the go movie of choice.
The cast is just amazing. When I first saw this, the draw was Brad Pitt as Lt Aldo Raine. You can see how much fun he has with this larger than life character. Word on the street is that he’d stay in character at all times on set, so Tarantino would often have conversations with Aldo. I’d love to see a whole movie about just him. There’s so many questions. So many possibilities. Continuing down the line of Basterds, Til Schweiger is an unsung hero. I recognized him right away from SLC Punk where he was a different kind of crazy, but still likely to fly off the handle at a moment’s notice. And then there’s Michael Fassbender. I hadn’t paid much attention to him until he started blowing up in later films, but the man is truly fantastic here. So suave and calculated. It’s no wonder this was a launchpad for his career. But my favorite Basterd would hafta be the Bear Jew, Eli Roth. I wont go into too much about him now, but lets just say that if my ExpDel plans work out right, you’re gonna be hearing me talk A LOT more about him in a few weeks…
But the Basterds would be nothing without a bad guy, and that there is the illustrious Christoph Waltz in performance that won him an incredibly well deserved Academy Award. Hans Landa is a complicated and intriguing character that he pulls off with elegance and grace. That alone would have put him well in the lead for the statue. But then add in the fact that he fluently speaks not one, not two, not three, but FOUR languages in the flick, yeah game over. Thanks for playing.
Something I’ve recently come to love about Quentin Tarantino is that he writes some fantastic female characters. His films are pretty guy heavy, but the girls more than pull their own weight. Here we’ve got two bad ass babes. Mélanie Laurent’s Shosanna Dreyfus has to be one of my favorite flick chicks. So strong and tough and independant. Cool under pressure. Totally ruthless. And Diane Kruger’s Bridget von Hammersmark is another beauty with bite. Absolutely captivating when she’s on screen. I wish I could be one of these dames.
I remember my first impression of this movie was that it felt like any other Tarantino movie, but with Nazis! I mean that in the best possible way. The same vibe (music, film, characters, blood, dialgoue) as anything else he’s done, just in a whole new different setting. And I love every minute of it. Looks like he’s getting comfortable with exploring the past, as we’ve got Django Unchained to look forward to in a couple months. I’m excited.”