BIG HOLLYWOOD INTERVIEW: Quentin Tarantino, a Glorious ‘Basterd’

Editor’s Note: After the publication of this piece we made an internal discovery that this interview was not a one-on-one interview between our writer and Quentin Tarantino, and that some of the questions attributed to “Big Hollywood” were asked by other journalists in what was a roundtable interview.
 
Upon discovering this, we temporarily removed the piece from the site until all the facts were known and a proper correction could be added.

Quentin Tarantino exploded on the world film scene in 1992 with “Reservoir Dogs,” a brutally profane yet ingeniously plotted and often funny deconstruction of the heist-film genre. He took things to a whole other level in 1994 with “Pulp Fiction,” reviving the foundering careers of superstars John Travolta and Bruce Willis while launching the star careers of Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman while winning a Best Screenplay Oscar himself. 

Yet in the 15 years since that classic, Tarantino hasn’t been able to score quite as big an impact. 1997’s “Jackie Brown” made just $39 million, while the two “Kill Bill” films scored $70 million each yet were considered hyper-violent trifles compared to what he was really capable of. And he really bottomed out with 2007’s “Death Proof,” which made up half of “Grindhouse,” a three-hour homage to the trashy drive-in films of America’s past. Its 21st-century audience didn’t get the joke and largely ignored it, earning just $27 million at the US box office.  (more…)

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Tags: "Jackie Brown", "Reservoir Dogs", ("True Romance, DePalma, Diane Kruger
Posted Sep 27th 2009 at 6:54 am in Featured Story, Film, News | 22927869 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ckozlowski/2009/09/27/big-hollywood-interview-quentin-tarantino-a-glorious-basterd/BIG+HOLLYWOOD+INTERVIEW%3A+Quentin+Tarantino%2C+a+Glorious+%27Basterd%272009-09-27+13%3A54%3A36Carl+Kozlowski

What if Tarantino Had the ‘Basterds’ Take Taliban Scalps?

Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” has all the trappings of a Tarantino film – from the rich cinematography and soundtrack to the unpredictable action and character development. Tarantino has directed and written another effort that, as usual, is in a class of its own. 

“Basterds,” misspelled the way Brad Pitt’s moonshining Lt. Aldo Raine character carved it into his rifle, takes place in German-occupied France from 1941 to 1944.  Tarantino makes a point of specifying “Nazi-occupied France,” justifying to the film watcher the extreme measures needed to deal with this particular type of human evil.  That National Socialist German Workers’ Party membership never numbered more than about 20 percent of the adult German population is beside the point; the Nazi Party in the guise of Hitler (played by Martin Wuttke) controlled the Wehrmacht from the top.  

“Basterds” follows three characters.  ”Chapter 1″ introduces Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) a young Frenchwoman whose dairy farmer family is wiped out in 1941 by the Germans and Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), who directs the killing.  Landa is a member of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence service of the SS and the Nazi Party, who considers himself a detective asked by his government to find every last Jewish person in France.  In “Chapter 2″ we meet U.S. Army Lt. Aldo Raine. Raine’s crossed arrows insignia on his collar identifies him as a member of the First Special Service Force, a U.S.-Canadian commando force called the Devil’s Brigade.  Lt. Raine leads a small band of soldiers, all of whom happen to be Jewish, on a mission of retribution, mayhem and terror behind enemy lines, the goal: take 100 “Nazi scalps” each.  (more…)

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Tags: "Bodyguard of Lies", Anthony Cave Brown., brad pitt, Bush administration, Christoph Waltz
Posted Sep 1st 2009 at 1:22 pm in Featured Story, Film, Military, Politics | 21248677 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cdevore/2009/09/01/basterds/What+if+Tarantino+Had+the+%27Basterds%27+Take+Taliban+Scalps%3F2009-09-01+20%3A22%3A20Chuck+DeVore

‘Inglourious Basterds’ Review

Take a ruthless Nazi leader who can order the deaths of a Jewish family with the same dispassion with which he requests a glass of milk. Mix his story with that of a Jewish woman who flees the slaughter of her family only to grow up and discover an opportunity to kill Hitler himself. Add in a cocky American Lieutenant named Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) who leads a secret mission in which each of his men are ordered to scalp 100 Nazi, and you’ve got the combustible mix of lead characters who cross paths with explosive results in Oscar-winning writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, “Inglourious Basterds.” 

Bringing together his usual strengths as a director of intense performances from sterling casts, an amazing score pasted together from classic scores of past films, incredibly sharp and catchy dialogue and a warped time frame that that will throw viewers through a satisfying series of loops, Tarantino has easily made his best film since “Pulp Fiction.” Coming off a humiliating misfire with 2007’s “Death Proof,” which was half of the box-office disaster known as “Grindhouse,” Tarantino has admitted that he felt the need to double down on his strengths and prove that he was just as relevant and inventive as ever.  (more…)

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Tags: brad pitt, Christoph Waltz, Inglorious Basterds, Nazi, nazis
Posted Aug 18th 2009 at 8:55 am in Reviews | 207186111 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ckozlowski/2009/08/18/inglourious-basterds-review/%27Inglourious+Basterds%27+Review2009-08-18+15%3A55%3A03Carl+Kozlowski

Time to Fight the Power

Our political leaders need a quick block of instruction in the concept of the chain of command. It goes like this, in descending order of rank:

#1: Us Citizens.

#2: You elected officials.

I really prefer writing long pieces on why Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin and Johnny Rotten rule. It’s more fun to talk about how everything in popular culture that everyone else likes actually sucks, and I’m even going to provide some inspirational music selections below. But duty calls. Right now, a bunch of people whose salaries you and I pay and who work for us are telling us to shut up and do as we’re told.

That’s just not gonna happen. (more…)

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Tags: Ballad of the Green Berets, Congress, constitution, Elmer Bernstein, first amendment
Posted Aug 17th 2009 at 5:15 am in Entertainment, Politics | 20289472 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/kschlichter/2009/08/17/time-to-fight-the-power/Time+to+Fight+the+Power2009-08-17+12%3A15%3A40Kurt+Schlichter

A-holes and Insects – or Mother Nature Doesn’t Care If You’re a Good Liberal

Decades before George Clooney began using “Darfur” to swat away the unfashionable nuisance of “Iraq,” the hollow eyes and distended stomachs of starving Biafran children gave America’s impressionable “me generation” a reality check during commercial breaks.  Parents shook their heads and wrote checks.  “We have so much,” went the refrain.  “The world is so unfair.”

My pretty fourth-grade teacher, who taught us everything from math and history to a dash of entomology (study of insects), didn’t think so.  One day, unprompted, she told her class of 10-year-olds that she wasn’t really concerned about the Biafran babies because mass starvation was just nature’s way of controlling overpopulation.  (My parents were mortified.)

Margaret Sanger

Hard to fathom how, less than three decades after the Holocaust, any educated person could harbor such cold acceptance of the cruel suffering of fellow human beings - much less voice it (and to children, no less).  But whoever said the human race is on a one-way path to progress?

It’s widely assumed that, in every moment we’re alive, we’ve reached a new pinnacle – of modernity, experience, knowledge, enlightenment – that we always move forward, never back.  But what if we don’t?  What if we’re fated to make the same mistakes (disguised with innocuous new names) over and over again? (more…)

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Tags: Ahmadinejad, ants, Betty Friedan, Biafra, Census Bureau
Posted Jul 10th 2009 at 5:02 am in Featured Story, Politics, Religion | 164862210 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cwinecoff/2009/07/10/a-holes-and-insects-or-mother-nature-doesnt-care-how-liberal-you-are/A-holes+and+Insects+-+or+Mother+Nature+Doesn%27t+Care+If+You%27re+a+Good+Liberal2009-07-10+12%3A02%3A16Charles+Winecoff

The Stoning Of Team Hollywood

The crime is complete. Judgment has been passed. The killing stones are in hand. As per the harsh stoning penal code of Iran’s Islamist thugocracy (for however long that lasts) where the crime took place, my stones are not so big as to kill right away, not so small you can’t call them stones. And I’m winding up like Nolan Ryan. Feel free to pick up a stone of your own. But wait for it!

And let me make this perfectly clear, even if they do say Jehovah!

Sentence must be read before being carried out. And unlike Soraya M., the board members of the Asylum of Motion Picture Airheads and Stooges will deserve every rock that’s thrown their way. I also believe that, in light of events in Iran today, the following commentary will stand out in much starker prominence than it did when I first started reporting on them in early March, when Team Oscar first set off for the Unfriendly Skies of Islamist Iran. (more…)

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Tags: Academy of Motion Picture arts and Sciences, Ahmadinejad, Al Franken, Alireza Davudnejad, Ambush Bay
Posted Jun 19th 2009 at 5:45 pm in Entertainment, News, Politics | 1641062 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jtsimpson/2009/06/19/the-stoning-of-team-hollywood/The+Stoning+Of+Team+Hollywood2009-06-20+00%3A45%3A26John+T.+Simpson

One Critic’s Review of ‘Roxana: A True Story’

Now that ‘Roxana: A True Story’ has come to a most satisfying and happy conclusion for Roxana Saberi, her parents, myself and millions of others around the globe (a conclusion not always assured, and which looked very grim in some scenes), it is now time for Your Most Humble and Obedient Critic to give you the full skinny on ‘Roxana: A True Story.’

Or, by its Hollywood acronym, RATS. Funny. I actually found that startling contraction fitting, not for Roxana (not hardly), but for all of the major black hats and clueless morons who populated this nerve-wracking Thugocracy Studios production, which had civilized people everywhere both riveted and outraged in its most grueling and suspenseful moments.

Not to mention for Roxana and her parents. But before we get to heroes and villains, let us look at the story to date with all its dramatic twists and underpinnings, many with significant international implications. Just like a good Hitchcock drama should. And I caught ‘em all!

By pure happenstance, Your Most Humble Critic and Boy Reporter was already hot on the job covering Iran (unlike some people) and hammering AMPAS for their tea and finger-cookie soirees with these guys, when I saw what Iran was pulling with Roxana and called it for what it was: a hostage crisis. And on the same day HRW called it the same in a press release on March 13th, which I didn’t find out until the 19th thanks to our on-the-ball Vein Stream Media. (more…)

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Tags: -1, abc, Academy of Motion Picture arts and Sciences, Ahmadinejad, al qaeda
Posted May 13th 2009 at 8:13 am in Entertainment, Politics | 132142One Commenthttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jtsimpson/2009/05/13/one-critics-review-of-roxana-a-true-story/One+Critic%27s+Review+of+%27Roxana%3A+A+True+Story%272009-05-13+15%3A13%3A00John+T.+Simpson

The Forgotten ‘Battleground’

Lest we forget, we are at war. 

Men and women at this very moment are fighting for their lives and for the lives of those they took an oath to protect and defend. 

There have been some recent films about war and what it means for the “average Joe” to be at war. A few of these are receiving deserving accolades for their realism. No, not the realism of blood and guts spilled, which is what war is, of course, but the realism of human behavior in adverse conditions, or as Hemingway put it, grace under pressure. This is the human condition that we all face, in one form or another, each and every day of our lives. Of course, most of us can face our pressures, make our decisions, get through our daily angst without wondering if a shell is going to go off five feet away, having the vehicle we’re riding in targeted for destruction or being exposed to combinations of chemicals not even named yet. No, we don’t have that extra worry. But some out there do.  (more…)

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Tags: 101st airborne, american, battle of the bulge, battleground, classic
Posted Mar 17th 2009 at 3:34 pm in Entertainment, Military | 8234256 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/smann/2009/03/17/the-forgotten-battleground/The+Forgotten+%27Battleground%272009-03-17+22%3A34%3A52Schizoid+Mann

We’ve Heard The Arguments For Stem Cell Research Before

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Tags: and a comment about stem cell research, Hitler, Nazi, Obama, Pajamas TV
Posted Mar 10th 2009 at 7:04 am in Politics, Video | 7675059 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/arachel/2009/03/10/quick-update/We%27ve+Heard+The+Arguments+For+Stem+Cell+Research+Before2009-03-10+14%3A04%3A24Alfonzo+Rachel

Confessions of a Recovering Anti-Semite

Whenever someone asks me if I’m religious, I always say I’m Jewish by osmosis.  Back in Manhattan, my mother was known to order in Chinese food seven nights a week - even for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner.  For an Anglo-centric WASP worshipper who idolized Jackie O, she was very Mama Rose.

But there was always that awkward moment when she had to give the Chinese restaurant our name over the phone: “Winecoff.  W-I-N-E-C-O-F-F.  And it’s not Jewish.”

Orson Welles “The Stranger”

People usually just assumed we were Jewish.  Sometimes they even refused to believe it when we said we weren’t – “Oh, come on.  You’re kidding, right?” – which made me mad.  But this was New York City, and we were surrounded, outnumbered.

We were supposed to be Episcopalian – or as my mom occasionally put it, Protestant.  I had no idea what that meant.  We never “protested” anything.  We never took communion at the landmark church we went to now and then.  My mother, who was really more of a frustrated pagan, thought the symbolic eating the body/drinking the blood of Christ was akin to cannibalism. (more…)

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Tags: "fitna", 9/11, Ahmadinejad, Alain Resnais, Anne Frank
Posted Feb 20th 2009 at 1:37 pm in News, Politics | 4822264 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cwinecoff/2009/02/20/confessions-of-a-recovering-anti-semite/Confessions+of+a+Recovering+Anti-Semite2009-02-20+21%3A37%3A15Charles+Winecoff