Another question; I noticed, as you probably did, that Tarantino was recycling music from Kill Bill in scenes of Inglorious. From my standpoint, and aside from the fact that I actually love the music, I was confused, mostly because the music conjured images and feelings from Kill Bill and took away from what he was trying to do on screen. My question is why would he choose to reuse here and is this commonplace in his movies (and I haven’t realized yet) and does is have something to do with the speghetti-western elements he has going in both of these movies?

I didn’t like the film nearly as much as Paul. I think the five chapters can stand alone as five brilliant short films, but they don’t add up to much, primarily because of Tarantino’s overly simplistic story arch. Shosanna represents Tarantino’s dream girl: pulp fiction reading, film loving, director respecting, Nazi killing, blond, French intellectual. She’s the martyr of the story. She sacrifices herself to kill the Nazis and saves the Jewish people. Replace her with Jesus and the Nazis with the Romans and you have Tarantino’s revisionist version of the New Testament. The problem with her character is that we don’t really know who she is as a person outside of her plot motivations. I’m rather shocked that the man who made Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown has made this film where not a single character is a three-dimensional person, only a plot contrivance to push ahead to the final scene (hence my appreciation of the film on a individual chapter basis instead of the sum of its parts).

I suppose in the themes of the film, Shosanna represents the victim’s revenge as a counterpoint to the Basterds’ comparatively motiveless assault on the Nazis. Of course her act of vengeance would not work without the Basterds, whereas the Basterds’ explosives would work just fine without the theater burning down. In fact, it’s Hans Landa who has Aldo’s bomb placed in Hitler’s balcony, so without Landa, Shosanna would not have been able to kill Hitler. Of course she dies completely unaware of this. And That’s why you have hit the exact weakness of the film. The film as a whole is a beautiful shell, with interesting characters doing and saying interesting things, completely holding and absorbing our attention, but the questions of ‘why’ are not good ones to ask because the film will not allow for answers. The film, totally plot based, does not allow for deeper explorations of themes and motivations beneath the surface except for those that connect the dots from the beginning to the end.

I just got around to seeing the movie. Great stuff, but I’ve been bothered by Shosanna’s character; specifically I can’t seem to make sense of her purpose in the movie (besides the practicality) or her relationship with war-hero Zoller. Her character is truly tragic; from the first scene, to her restaurant encounter with Landa, to her death and inability to realize her well-deserved revenge. I understand how I’m suppose to feel about her but where does she fit in the big picture of this movie? Shed some light and help me make some sense of her character.

Self consciously wannabe clever dialogue? Yes.
Scenes that wander needlessly? You betcha.
Overly comical characters that lack the sense of menace Tarantino usually balances superbly with with, and comedic realism? Yes Yes Yes.

Brad Pitt is too famous for this movie. Every scene with Aldo I was like, “oh hey it’s brad pitt doing a funny accent.”

I wanted to like this movie. I really did. But it left me flat.

For the sake of argument, I like to pretend that Death Proof was intentionally over the top and goony, and I give QT a pass, it was a self indulgence. Not a great movie, but it was what it was and if QT had fun making it, good for him, he earned it.

With IB though I have to draw the line. This seemed like a movie with lots of interesting ideas that never really made it to daylight. Perhaps my beloved filmmaker bit off more than he could chew, perhaps he needed more focus. In any event, I was real disappointed by this movie and I hope it’s only a temporary loss of his fastball, and not a sign of things to come.

Yes, because if anything could have made this movie any better, it would certainly have been such bold antisemitic run-on sentences.

In fact, wouldn’t it have been nice if someone as witty as yourself had just penned the script entirely?

Say what you will about Tarantino, his movies (especially this one) are visually appealing and different than anything being made. Could he please made a sequel or prequel to this (I hear he has a lot of footage that was cut to shorten it and had a huge script he couldn’t completely use).