Cinema is the weapon of mass destruction in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. On its surface the film is a war movie about a group of Jewish-American soldiers performing an apache resistance of the Nazis in the later days of World War II. The eponymous group is led by Lt. Aldo Raine (played by Brad Pitt). The goal of he and his men is to kill and scalp every Nazi that comes in their way.
It’s impossible to discuss the film without divulging the ending in which the heads of the Third Reich, including Hitler himself, are gathered together in a movie theatre burned alive, shot to death, and blown to smithereens. Tarantino’s brazen historical revisionism garnered strong controversy and criticism, with the critic Jonathan Rosenbaum going as far as to say that the film “seems morally akin to Holocaust denial…Insofar as [the Holocaust] becomes a movie convention — by...
It’s impossible to discuss the film without divulging the ending in which the heads of the Third Reich, including Hitler himself, are gathered together in a movie theatre burned alive, shot to death, and blown to smithereens. Tarantino’s brazen historical revisionism garnered strong controversy and criticism, with the critic Jonathan Rosenbaum going as far as to say that the film “seems morally akin to Holocaust denial…Insofar as [the Holocaust] becomes a movie convention — by...
- 1/24/2013
- by Cristian Duran
- Obsessed with Film
Catch up with the last seven days in the world of film
The big story
First it was an earth-shattering moment in the history of cinema, then it turned out to be, well, a mistake. Early box office reporting from China suggested that the first-weekend returns for the sci-fi blockbuster Looper, starring Joseph Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis, were going to be higher that for the film's debut in the Us.
That would mean a tectonic shift in the international film business: north America would no longer be the be-all and end-all, and China's emerging financial muscle on the world stage would be confirmed.
That's that, we all thought - goodbye Hollywood, hooray for Chinawood. Only it turned out to be a big steaming pile of wrongness. Apparently local officials - perhaps not as conversant with the intricacies of boxofficemojo.com as we thought – got dollars and yuan mixed up.
The big story
First it was an earth-shattering moment in the history of cinema, then it turned out to be, well, a mistake. Early box office reporting from China suggested that the first-weekend returns for the sci-fi blockbuster Looper, starring Joseph Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis, were going to be higher that for the film's debut in the Us.
That would mean a tectonic shift in the international film business: north America would no longer be the be-all and end-all, and China's emerging financial muscle on the world stage would be confirmed.
That's that, we all thought - goodbye Hollywood, hooray for Chinawood. Only it turned out to be a big steaming pile of wrongness. Apparently local officials - perhaps not as conversant with the intricacies of boxofficemojo.com as we thought – got dollars and yuan mixed up.
- 10/4/2012
- The Guardian - Film News
When the first batch of Sight & Sound’s top films of all time arrived, it was likely pored over and dissected by every cinephile that got their hands on it. While that only included the top 50, they’ve now released the entire list, including every single vote, and now the discussion can truly kick off. Surveying 846 critics for their top 10 films of all-time, resulted in a total of 2,045 films and certainly many peculiar picks.
The list includes films as recently as The Tree of Life (nearly cracking the top 100), This is Not a Film, Melancholia, Hugo We Need to Talk About Kevin, David Fincher‘s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and even The Artist, and there’s also some unexpected mentions for films such as Marie Antoinette, In Bruges, Office Space, Dune, Gran Torino and They Live but we’ve rounded up the most curious. Most importantly, this list...
The list includes films as recently as The Tree of Life (nearly cracking the top 100), This is Not a Film, Melancholia, Hugo We Need to Talk About Kevin, David Fincher‘s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and even The Artist, and there’s also some unexpected mentions for films such as Marie Antoinette, In Bruges, Office Space, Dune, Gran Torino and They Live but we’ve rounded up the most curious. Most importantly, this list...
- 8/16/2012
- by jpraup@gmail.com (thefilmstage.com)
- The Film Stage
Homemade tributes to Hollywood classics turn blockbusters into folk cinema. The studios can't decide whether they are terrified or charmed by the trend
Princess Leia is in a tight spot. Grand Moff Tarkin has informed her of her impending execution and the activation of the Death Star. Our heroine is defiant: "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers!" Only it's not Carrie Fisher on screen but a grandmother in a white bathrobe and brown ear-muffs, standing in a front room, reading from a cue card. She's awfully cute. She's also a harbinger of the end of Hollywood as we know it.
This senior Leia appears in Star Wars Uncut, a shot-by-shot remake in which a legion of amateurs recreated George Lucas's feature one 15-second chunk at a time, in styles ranging from lo-fi home movie to psychedelic animation and drag pastiche.
Princess Leia is in a tight spot. Grand Moff Tarkin has informed her of her impending execution and the activation of the Death Star. Our heroine is defiant: "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers!" Only it's not Carrie Fisher on screen but a grandmother in a white bathrobe and brown ear-muffs, standing in a front room, reading from a cue card. She's awfully cute. She's also a harbinger of the end of Hollywood as we know it.
This senior Leia appears in Star Wars Uncut, a shot-by-shot remake in which a legion of amateurs recreated George Lucas's feature one 15-second chunk at a time, in styles ranging from lo-fi home movie to psychedelic animation and drag pastiche.
- 7/5/2012
- by Ben Walters
- The Guardian - Film News
Ridley Scott's latest sci-fi adventure has launched a thousand theories from bloggers, film fans and even James Franco. The film's co-writer Damon Lindelof has been dropping some heavy hints
"Muddled" and "confused" are two words that seem to be ubiquitous in even the positive reviews for Prometheus, Ridley Scott's first venture into science fiction in more than three decades. Now that the film has been out for a couple of weeks in the UK, and made its debut at the weekend in the Us, bloggers (including my colleague Ben Walters), fans and other assorted people with rather too much time on their hands have been delving into the film's mysteries to offer up their own explanations.
**Major Spoilers Ahead**
Why did the nasty black goo affect different members of the Prometheus crew in different ways? What was David the android up to? Why did the engineers turn on...
"Muddled" and "confused" are two words that seem to be ubiquitous in even the positive reviews for Prometheus, Ridley Scott's first venture into science fiction in more than three decades. Now that the film has been out for a couple of weeks in the UK, and made its debut at the weekend in the Us, bloggers (including my colleague Ben Walters), fans and other assorted people with rather too much time on their hands have been delving into the film's mysteries to offer up their own explanations.
**Major Spoilers Ahead**
Why did the nasty black goo affect different members of the Prometheus crew in different ways? What was David the android up to? Why did the engineers turn on...
- 6/13/2012
- by Ben Child
- The Guardian - Film News
Ridley Scott's return to the Alien universe has left a lot of people scratching their heads. It's up to Ben Walters to set off on an exploratory voyage into the film's great unknowns
A voyage into the unknown that conjures more questions than it answers … That's what we were told to expect from Ridley Scott's long-awaited sort-of-Alien-prequel Prometheus, with a script by Lost writer Damon Lindelof. We thought they were talking about the characters' journey into the depths of space to meet the extraterrestrial originators of life on earth. It turned out, though, to refer to us poor lugs in the audience, stumbling out into the night scratching our heads. Here we try to untangle some of the film's more prominent puzzlers. Spoilers abound, of course, and we're frankly as stumped as you - so do chip in in the comments …
1. What's going on in the prologue?...
A voyage into the unknown that conjures more questions than it answers … That's what we were told to expect from Ridley Scott's long-awaited sort-of-Alien-prequel Prometheus, with a script by Lost writer Damon Lindelof. We thought they were talking about the characters' journey into the depths of space to meet the extraterrestrial originators of life on earth. It turned out, though, to refer to us poor lugs in the audience, stumbling out into the night scratching our heads. Here we try to untangle some of the film's more prominent puzzlers. Spoilers abound, of course, and we're frankly as stumped as you - so do chip in in the comments …
1. What's going on in the prologue?...
- 6/8/2012
- by Ben Walters
- The Guardian - Film News
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