More thoughts on Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds was among the many movies I missed during my time away from the daily reviewing grind. I finally caught up with it on DVD (review here), but as usual I’ve got a few more thoughts to share.

1. Eli Roth may be the absolute worst screen actor I’ve ever seen. I Know QT likes casting his buddies, some of whom can actually deliver. And yet: wow. All Roth really had to do here was bash a dude’s skull with a baseball bat and not make us cringe. Mission half accomplished.

2. Basterds is QT’s talkiest effort outside of Kill Bill 2. But in between films he seems to have learned how to pace the yakking. The opening scene with Waltz is a keeper, but I actually prefer the tavern sequence in the middle of the film. The tension comes from multiple directions and ends up being far more complex. Great stuff.

3. Oddly enough enough I would have enjoyed Basterds more without the actual Basterds. So you get a bunch of rogue Jews who like to scalp Nazis (and one who swings a mean Louisville Slugger). Kind of a funny idea. And that’s about all it is. Is there supposed to be something righteous about gruesomely annihilating faceless Nazis? Nazis are bad. I get it. But I can’t remember a recent film with such hollow sadism. Then again, Eli Roth is in it.

Things I learned from watching Dumbo

Just watched Dumbo for a Disney story I’m working on.

I learned a lot:

The stork delivers babies to all the good animal boys and girls

Crows talk a little like Amos and Andy

The right kind of booze will make you hallucinate psychedelic patterns and pink elephants (Disney animators must have been into some serious ish back in the day)

Female elephants are horrible gossips

Clowns are evil

Back in business

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away – or at least about a year ago in Cambridge, MA – I decided I needed a mental scratch pad to keep me writing while I was away on fellowship.

That was then. This is now. I’m a working drone again, which means no more fantasy life of auditing classes at Harvard and getting paid to not work for a year. (Seriously. They didn’t want us to work. At all). It was damn nice while it lasted.

The job? I can’t complain. I get to write about film and books. Sure newspapers are dying but hey, it’s taking a while. In Ticket parlance, I like my gig. The question is whether I’ll still want to blog while I’m back to writing for a living and trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

Please join me as I find out. Now let’s see if I still remember how to save a post…