You basterds!

Today I went to see Inglourious Basterds, and I actually really really liked it. I was never a huge Tarantino fan. Sure, I was mildly obsessed with Pulp Fiction as a teenager, but weren't we all? I know most of my classmates at the Yeshiva were. Every Friday night as we sat around the Shabbat table we used to mask the opening music from the movie as a harmless Shabbat song, while the rabbis were completely oblivious to what it was all about. I don't remember much about Reservoir Dogs, other than the "Like a Virgin" bit and how some dude gets his ear cut off. I've never seen Jackie Brown. I really like From Dusk till Dawn, but that one was directed by Robert Rodriguez (QT just wrote and starred in it). Death Proof was just OK, and it was completely overshadowed by the vastly superior Planet Terror. The first part of Kill Bill sort of blew my mind, but the second part was a bit of a let down, which ruined the whole thing for me. Mr. Tarantino needs a good editor by his side, which is true this time around too, if to a lesser degree. Basically it's two hours and a half of Jews killing Nazis, and it is simply a delight to behold, even if you're not a member of a certain chosen people. When Tarantino was here in Israel last week some reporters kept asking him weird questions about his attitude toward the Holocaust or whatever, but that was just dumb. Inglourious Basterds isn't a Holocaust movie, it's the opposite of a Holocaust movie. A bunch of American Jews led by Brad Pit running around Europe scalping Nazis, while a hot Jewish-French chick is planning to burn up an entire theater full of high ranking Nazi officials. This isn't about the suffering of the Jewish people, we've had quite enough of that, thank you very much. This isn't about belittling the memory of the Holocaust either, not by a long shot. This is a modern historical-revenge fantasy film, and it should be taken as just that. It is also a Quentin Tarantino film, so you can't really expect it to be much more than very cool, very campy fun. There really aren't enough WWII movies out there with some Bowie in the soundtrack. I want to kill some Nazis too! Let us all go out and kill a big stinkin' bunch of them!! Weeeeeee!!!

Mélanie Laurent. Cute, French and Jewish. Awesome!

I didn't realize that I was going to see a movie that is mostly in German and French, and I'm not really used to reading subtitles at the movies (I like to sit way too close to the screen for that) but the movie was enjoyable enough so that I didn't really mind. My German is crap, but I did notice how when this Nazi was trying to get this chick into his Nazimobile and the Hebrew subtitles said "Get in the car", what he was actually saying in German was "Get your ass in the car". Foreign languages are fun!

On the bus back home this little Asian-looking chick sat down next to me and started reading from a little manga book in what looked to me like Japanese. I thought that was very cool. Almost made me feel like I live in a normal country.