By now, most Quentin Tarantino fans are aware of the connections interlaced throughout all of his films. John Travolta’s Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction is the brother of Michael Madsen’s Vic Vega in Reservoir Dogs, Harvey Keitel’s Mr. White worked with Alabama from True Romance, the plot basis for Kill Bill is described as the synopsis for a TV series in Pulp Fiction, etc.
Now the epiphany that Eli Roth’s character of Donny Donowitz aka “The Bear Jew” in Inglourious Basterds is the father of the movie producer Lee Donowitz in True Romance has inspired a truly mind-blowing theory that the rest of the films (chronologically speaking) in Tarantino’s filmography take place in a world where [Inglorious Basterds spoiler] World War II came to an end when Adolf Hitler was brutally murdered in a movie theater by the Basterds.
This initial connection was brought up in an article on Cracked, but a poster on Reddit (via David Chen’s Twitter) has more eloquently summed up what this means for Tarantino’s movieverse:
As it turns out, Donny Donowitz, ‘The Bear Jew’, is the father of movie producer Lee Donowitz from True Romance – which means that, in Tarantino’s universe, everybody grew up learning about how a bunch of commando Jews machine gunned Hitler to death in a burning movie theater, as opposed to quietly killing himself in a bunker. Because World War 2 ended in a movie theater, everybody lends greater significance to pop culture, hence why seemingly everybody has Abed-level knowledge of movies and TV. Likewise, because America won World War 2 in one concentrated act of hyperviolent slaughter, Americans as a whole are more desensitized to that sort of thing. Hence why Butch is unfazed by killing two people, Mr. White and Mr. Pink take a pragmatic approach to killing in their line of work, Esmerelda the cab driver is obsessed with death, etc. You can extrapolate this further when you realize that Tarantino’s movies are technically two universes – he’s gone on record as saying that Kill Bill and From Dusk ‘Til Dawn take place in a ‘movie movie universe’; that is, they’re movies that characters from the Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, and Death Proof universe would go to see in theaters. (Kill Bill, after all, is basically Fox Force Five, right on down to Mia Wallace playing the title role.) What immediately springs to mind about Kill Bill and From Dusk ‘Til Dawn? That they’re crazy violent, even by Tarantino standards. These are the movies produced in a world where America’s crowning victory was locking a bunch of people in a movie theater and blowing it to bits – and keep in mind, Lee Donowitz, son of one of the people on the suicide mission to kill Hitler, is a very successful movie producer. Basically, it turns every Tarantino movie into alternate reality sci fi. I love it so hard.
Holy pop art, Batman! Check out these specially made Ingloruious Basterds inspired posters.
A Studios Global’s Film Marketing Division has partnered with Upper Playground and The Weinstein Company to present“The Lost Art of Inglourious Basterds,” with the full blessing of Quentin Tarantino. On February 18th this week, the Upper Playground Gallery in Los Angeles will show off prints created especially for this event. Only six prints of each design will be created, and each one will be signed and numbered by Tarantino as well.
via Cinematical
Above you’ll find not a photo of Brad Pitt from Inglourious Basterds, but a doll made in his likeness. Spooky right?
(via fuckyeahbasterds)
IF ANYONE HAS A BRAIN.
Yeah right, not going to happen. What do you think this is, 1994?
shortskirtlongjacket:angelcondom:fuckyeahbjnovak:crabcakes:annahatesbananasinglouriousbasterds:jessicacowan:
Oh yes. Hahaha. WIN.
Slaughter by Billy Preston. From Inglourious Basterds. Used for the introduction to Til Schweiger’s character, Hugo Stiglitz.
Also, I just made the first 12 seconds of this my ringtone, hahaha…LOVE IT.
Me: Did you know they had an Inglourious Basterds premiere in Nashville? If I had known that I seriously would have gone.
Seth: How do you get in to a premiere?
Me: I don’t know, I guess you can buy tickets.
Seth: And if not, we could have come up with a scheme where I’m an Italian cameraman, and you’re my assistant.
My favorite people to see in the credits: Set decorator Sandy Wasco and her husband, production designer David Wasco.
Their work includes Inglourious Basterds, Kill Bill 1 and 2, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, Bottle Rocket, Reservoir Dogs, and more.
David Wasco also plays the guard in Rushmore who hands Max his shoelaces.
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
1. I’ve never quite understood why people want Quentin Tarantino to make “serious” movies, to take a step away from his own obsessions and be more, you know, normal. We don’t openly embrace directors like Tarantino anymore, someone with the absolute freedom to follow his fixations down the rabbit hole; we wonder what’s wrong with them, why they can’t get with the program already. What’s funny is that Tarantino does change with every film: He, with each output, finds a new tool in his not-inconsiderable belt and embraces it like a child who discovers he’s capable of a new trick. With Inglourious Basterds, he spins off in wild, random directions, and yet keeps everything on track. This is a man who is profoundly in control of his instrument.
2. The movie is European in style, but not tone. It’s like Woody Allen’s recent jaunts across the pond; Tarantino might be driving from the passenger seat, but the sensibility is rock-jawed John Wayne American. The Yank characters feel more comfortably Tarantino; the Euros feel like the video-store geek staring at Truffaut films and imagining how cool it would be to live like that. What’s intriguing is how much more his heart seems to be in the scenes not involving the Basterds. This is Tarantino pushing himself, and it’s thrilling to watch. It’s almost charming, to watch him draw from Renoir and Resnais (and Truffaut, of course) in the same way he once lustily pilfered from chop-socky schlock. (I say that with love.) He has always been an obsessive catalogist of film history, but he’s painting here with a brush I didn’t know he possessed. (Though obviously, I should have.) A simple scene of Melanie Laurent smoking in a cafe is shot with the erotic fervor Tarantino usually reserves for feet.
3. Tarantino, as usual, is drawing from countless different influences, but, amusingly enough, this whole orgy of Anglo fetishism feels most cut from the Hitchcock cloth. His lengthy swaths of dialogue have always lingered menace under the surface, but he ratchets it up into something ungodly here. The opening scene, with the sinister, cockeyed Col. Hans Landa interrogating a French farmer he suspects (no, knows) is hiding Jews in his cellar, sets the tone, but the real set piece comes later with an endless game of verbal chess between undercover Allied spies, a German actress working against the Nazis, some drunk SS soldiers and one wary and terrifying SS officer who senses something’s up but can’t quite tell. Tarantino keeps finding ways to tighten the vice in a way even Hitchcock couldn’t have: You’ll want to scream. But not with delight. Tarantino is after something else here. He’s filtering faded horrors through his special cartoonish lens to dig to the initial evil beneath it all. All of Tarantino’s films, for all their supposedly glib polish, are serious; even when something is flip and Pop-ish, you never feel Tarantino sees that way. He’s not kidding; this ain’t funny to him. That he attaches this unique Tarantino deceptive sincerity to something with the import and weight of World War II and the Holocaust is breathtakingly audacious. That he pulls it off requires a demented magic.
4. Even those who are wary of Tarantino can’t deny his gift for casting, but he might have outdone himself here with Christoph Waltz, who plays the venal savant Nazi “detective.” Nazi Officer As Charming, Twisted Personification Of Evil is almost a trope at this point, but Waltz and Tarantino attack it in a weird perpendicular angle. Col. Landa is a thoroughly bizarre character, a tiny little man in boots who doesn’t even pretend to understand his own depravity, nor does he care to. He has no idea what he’s capable of doing next, and neither does the film; his unpredictability and cunning is established in the first scene and sets the tone. He, and the movie, could go anywhere. And they do. Tarantino’s casting is dead perfect across the board: Laurent has the most expressive, constantly calculating eyes as the vengeful Shosanna, Michael Fassbinder has a dashing Cary Grant quality, but darker, as a film buff British secret agent and, yeah, I even adored Brad Pitt’s ridiculous but sardonic Lt. Aldo Raine, the leader of the Basterds. He’s having fun with the role … but he grounds it in the real world. He’s a perfect foil for Col. Landa, because, frankly, he could give too shits about his cunning and unpredictability. He’s just here to kill some Nazis.
5. I cannot possibly fathom what Tarantino is going to do next. I’m not sure he knows. Look at what he’s done here: He’s fashioned a rousing entertainment; he’s pursued his personal preoccupations; he’s paid homage to an oft-forgotten age of cinema; he’s made a global film with simple, clear insights into national character; he’s forced us look at much-malingered monstrocities with new eyes; he’s satisified our lust for a revenge fantasy; he’s painted characters we find ourselves shocked to care about; he’s left our jaws dropped at what he would even dare to try. There is absolutely no one like him. I think he’s capable of anything. It’s almost too much power for one filmmaker to have.
GRADE: A.
| — | Eli Roth, A.V. Club interview (via palahniukandchocolate). This makes no sense, but whatever gets you into the moment Eli Roth, whatever gets you into the moment. |
were nearly incinerated filming the fire sequence in the theater. During tests the flame temperatures reached 400 degrees centigrade, and during the take the set burned out of control and the temperature of the ceiling above them reached 1,200 degrees centigrade (2,000 degrees fahrenheit.) Quentin Tarantino was seated on a crane operating the camera in a fireproof suit, and none of them wanted to back down and ruin the shot. Fire marshalls said that another fifteen seconds of filming and the steel structure would have collapsed, incinerating the actors. Roth and Doom were treated for minor burns.
Ruthless. Also, fuckyeahjewishmen.
