Archive for category Marginalia
Inglourious Basterds (or film qua film)
Posted by Michael Opperman in Film, Marginalia on September 11, 2009
Have to say that Tarantino’s newest flick is a romp through post-war Italian, French, German, American cinema. Callouts to the spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone (including font treatment in opening credits and the splash of introduction for character Hugo Stiglitz), the BRD Trilogy of Fassbinder (Shosanna in shadow is haunted by the shots of Maria Braun), not to mention the 1978 movie of the same name by Italian director Castellari. Nods to The Searchers, Good Bad & Ugly, Clouzot, Goddard, Metropolis (big face in last chapter). Wickedly entertaining & morally problematic. Because Tarantino also renders a strange fantasy dimension where the Nazis are comically close to topple by less than a dozen saboteurs, where revenge strategies and dehumanizing violence can be used effectively against a precarious paper regime.
We Always Let One Live
Posted by Michael Opperman in Marginalia on December 5, 2008
We always let one live, to tell of the terrible fate which befell the others…