Ticket for 10 PM showing at Grand Lake: $9.50.. Popcorn, lemonade, etc.: $14.50, Watching Eli Roth shoot off Hitler's face: $PRICELESS!

Okay, okay... So there might be a slight spoiler there in the title.. But only if you read the whole frakkin' thing..

I just got back from seeing Inglorious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino's latest and, dare-I-say-it, MASTERPIECE homage to seventies/early eighties war exploitation films. Watching the movie, I couldn't help but make comparisons to The Dirty Dozen, The Big Red One, even to some extent Full Metal Jacket and Dr. Strangelove. Tarantino has become a master at recreating films he loves in his own image, and it's a striking coup-de-grace here.

I rue Wednesday night with a passion. On Wednesday, the Castro Theater in SF had a preview screening of the film WITH QT IN PERSON... Sadly I didn't find out about it until the tickets were all gone, so I missed the experience. Ah well, no matter. I still got a mighty Wurlitzer performance and a front row seat at the Grand Lake.. And this does go towards my depriving-San-Francisco-of-nearby-tourist-money fund (more about this in a later rant regarding the SFMTA DPT and their BULLSHIT hearings procedure over disputed parking tickets.. Actually, I have a lot of ranting to do, and soon.. But I'm trying to stick to the flick for the moment).

So I can't help but feel an enormous sense of Jewboy pride, in a way.. I'd already been crowned as best Walter Sobchak in San Franciso (sic) at last month's Lebowskifest, and the angry Jewish warrior spirit has just been refueled by this awesome fucking flick. Hell, I didn't even know that was what this movie was about right up until last Saturday when I happened to watch the previous night's Real Time with Bill Maher. Bill's first guest was Brad Pitt who plays tough-as-petrified-dinosaur-shit Lieutenant Aldo Raine in the film. HBO presented his introductory scene in the film (used largely in the trailers for the film which I *had* already seen) in it's raw and uncut form. For some odd reason (hmm), all the trailers I'd seen for IB had Brad Pitt's line as "I need me eight soldiers. Eight Jewish American soldiers." Every trailer I'd seen up till that point was "Eight American soldiers"... Hmm.. So I guess even Bob and Harvey *Weinstein* figured the thought of Jews with GUNS might scare the shit out of the midwest..? Okay, so that irks me a bit, but c'est la vie..

So finally, REAL premise in mind, I started *truly* looking forward to seeing the flick. Eli Roth, known in his own right for having written and directed horror films such as Cabin Fever, Hostel, and Hostel 2 (not to mention the totally hilarious and awesome "Thanksgiving" fake horror trailer for Tarantino/Rodriguez's Grindhouse double bill) has become the Semitic Joe Piscopo for his role having bulked up 35 lbs of pure muscle to play Donny Donowitz (which already has some Tarantinites wondering if there's a connection to cokehead "Coming Home in a Body Bag" producer Lee Donowitz from the Tarantino-authored True Romance), also known to terrified Nazi soldiers as "The Jew Bear". He gets the opportunity to take out his Aryan-hatred Louisville-slugger style on at least one non-cooperative noncommissioned officer that we get to see in the flick.. As well as playing the character, from what I understand, Eli also directed the film-within-a-film that serves as the backdrop for IB's unfucking-spectaculo-ultraviolent-believable climax.

Okay... adrenaline winding down a little here... Can't sign off without mentioning a few other standout performances, of which there are MANY.. The character Hugo Stiglitz, former enlisted German soldier who turns on his own due to his Jewish heritage.. The almost-lovable "Jew Hunter" Col. Landa who is just so conniving and despicable, but carries it all off with a sort of Sherlock Holmes-Monk-Columbo-Hercule Poirot air.. Shosanna Dreyfuss/Emanuelle Mimieux who watched as her entire family was machine-gunned to death by Landa and his SS minions and gets the chance to take her revenge on a theater-full of Nazi high party members with a big pile of nitrate film.. Oh, speaking of which, was I the only person to notice QT's use of The Entity's ghost-raping music during that flashback sequence??

Anyway, there's so much going on.. Brad Pitt is fucking great.. I still haven't seen a lot of his "safer" performances (Thelma and Louise, Benjamin Button), but you have got to love this guy's crazy (Fight Club, Twelve Monkeys) and range (Snatch, Burn After Reading)..

Total props to uncredited vocal credits also have to go to both Samuel L. Jackson as the infrequent narrator and to Harvey Keitel in an OSS officer's radio voiceover role. And there's also the credited Zoe Bell for pulling off some major stunt sequences as well.. And kudos for having one of the shortest and most concise credits of a film in recent memory. Sometimes I feel a little weird hanging out for the full credits of the flicks I love, but it was a comfortably brief experience this time around..

And I really need to look up that Bowie song now...


Fuck, what a flick... go see it.

pt...
Ira...

PS: FUCK!!! I almost forgot... MAJOR damn props to Mike Myers for his cameo in this film. Apparently when asked about it on Wednesday, QT said he sees Mike Myers as the "Peter Sellers" of our time.. And I'm inclined to agree..

This almost (**ALMOST**) makes up for The Love Guru, Mike...

pt...