Inglourious Basterds

Kunniattomat paskiaiset / Ärelösa jävlar. US/DE (c) 2009 Visione Romantica. D+SC: Quentin Tarantino. DP: Robert Richardson - negative: 35 mm (Kodak Vision2 200T 5217, Vision3 500T 5219), anamorphic Panavision 2,35:1 - digital intermediate 2K. CAST: Brad Pitt (Lt. Aldo Raine), Mélanie Laurent (Shosanna Dreyfus), Christoph Waltz (Col. Hans Landa), Eli Roth (Sgt. Donny Donowitz), Michael Fassbender (Lt. Archie Hicox), Diane Kruger (Bridget von Hammersmark), Daniel Brühl (Pvt Fredrick Zoller), Til Schweiger (Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz), Gedeon Burkhard (Cpl. Wilhelm Wicki), Jacky Ido (Marcel), B.J. Novak (Pfc. Smithson Utivich), Omar Doom (Pfc. Omar Ulmer), August Diehl (Major Dieter Hellstrom), Denis Menochet (Perrier LaPadite), Sylvester Groth (Joseph Goebbels), Martin Wuttke (Adolf Hitler), Mike Myers (General Ed Fenech), Julie Dreyfus (Francesca Mondino). 156 min. Original in French, German, and English. Released in Finland by Finnkino, with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Timo Porri / Janne Staffans. Viewed at Cinema Bristol, Helsinki, 4 Sep 2009 (Finnish premiere day). - Although the film is reportedly based on a 2K digital intermediate, the print had a pleasant photochemical look except in the forest scenes. - I love Quentin Tarantino, but I have been disappointed with his films since Pulp Fiction because of their regressive development. - To be redeemed: the great cast - the complexity of Daniel Brühl's character: the Wehrmacht has made him a killer, yet one can sense the human being struggling to emerge from the uniform - the smiling, polite Gestapo officer created by Christoph Waltz certainly belongs to the great villains of film history - Brad Pitt has developed a new and strong blackly humoristic charisma in his roles for the Coen Brothers and Tarantino; in these roles he is at his best - Mélanie Laurent is dignified as Shoshanna Dreyfus, brutalized by the Holocaust. - The fascinating thing is Tarantino's meta-commentary of film history, which ranges from Ernst Lubitsch (To Be Or Not To Be) to European war exploitation cinema. It is fun, and maybe I'm wrong to expect more. - I hate the sadism of this film. I also hate the simple-minded revenge motif of this film. My initial reaction is also that this film does a terrible disservice to the Jews. - For the Finnish viewer it is striking to notice the swastika over Finland on Hitler's map of Europe. It is not right (Finland was never under Nazi rule), nor quite wrong (Finland was a partner in Operation Barbarossa).

Standard Operating Procedure

Standard Operating Procedure / Standard Operating Procedure. US (c) 2008 Sony Pictures Classics. EX: Robert Fernandez, Diane Weyermann. P: Julie Ahlberg, Errol Morris. D: Errol Morris. DP: Robert Chappell, Robert Richardson - shot on HDTV - color - 2,35:1 - print on 35mm film. M: Danny Elfman. 118 min. Released in Finland by Cinema Mondo with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Anitra Paukkula / Markus Karjalainen. Viewed at Kino Engel 1, 31 Oct 2008. - A fine and consistent digital intermediate look. - Powerful imagery helps approach the grim subject matter. Expressive Interrotron close-ups, music by Danny Elfman, sound design. The space of images, photographs, hundreds of them, being structured during the picture. "All the pictures seemed to line up". - Iraq War of 2003-. This is a journey into Abu Ghraib, beyond the sensational images of humiliation (including the sexual pyramid). We get to see them in context, and see them with different eyes. Some images look worse than what happened. But the worst things were never photographed in the first place. Mainly young and inexperienced soldiers were punished. - Saddam did a thousand times more horrible things, but the world had expected more from the US. - An important survey into the Abu Ghraib mess that has come to symbolise the US trouble in the Iraq War of 2003-. - Great, maybe too long?
Wikipedia: "The name "Interrotron" was coined by Morris's wife, who, according to Morris, "liked the name because it combined two important concepts — terror and interview." The device is similar to a teleprompter: Errol and his subject each sit facing a camera. The image of each person's face is then projected onto the lens of the other's camera. Instead of looking at a blank lens, then, both Morris and his subject are looking directly at a human face. Morris believes that the machine encourages monologue in the interview process, while also encouraging the interviewees to "express themselves to camera"."
Wikipedia: "Morris' practice of compensating his interview subjects has caused controversy, although it is not an unusual practice in documentary filmmaking, according to the producer Diane Weyermann, who also worked on An Inconvenient Truth. In a private interview during the Tribeca Film Festival, Morris said: "If I had not paid them, they would not be interviewed.""