Marlowe (2022)

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day...

The Permanent Wave

or
A Tarantula on an Angel Food Cake

I have read everything by Raymond Chandler—the novels, the short-stories, the essays—and I've always loved his writing. His plots sometimes suffered, but the writing...the prose. The hysterical metaphors. There was a bemused humor behind the familial carnage that Chandler cranked out, and a jaded realization that behind every fortune there was some crime involved, and that, if you looked close enough, Tinsel-town was as rusty an old scow. What Chandler wrote was thrilling, even if the plots were mundane, with a depth of consciousness and virtue that a lot of pulp-writers couldn't be bothered with.  

 

Chandler wrote: “Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no integrity. Without integrity, there is nothing but production." Philip Marlowe, Chandler's private detecting knight in crusted armor could have easily said those words, but he wouldn't. Especially the "magic" part. Marlowe would be watching the hands and checking for wires, and be amused while he was doing it. Like his perpetual solo chess-games.

And I've written a lot about Chandler here: the movies—a lot of them—and I had a deep affection for the TV series out of Canadian TV and HBO decades ago, the ones that starred Powers Boothe as "Philip Marlowe, Private Eye." Marlowe's a good part and most people are good at playing him—Bogart, Powell, Mitchum, both Montgomery's, Garner—even Elliott Gould had a nice "take" on the character, although director Robert Altman seemed to think of Marlowe as an out-of-date fool—"Rip Van Marlowe", he called him. So, Marlowe is good for the most part.

But, you can get Chandler wrong. One has to merely look at Michael Winner's remake of The Big Sleep, with Mitchum (who came to the part late), for what "stands out like a tarantula on an angel food cake." The money for that production came from Lord Lew Grade, so (of course) it had to be set in England. Metaphorically speaking, it's the wrong side of the road. America—and Los Angeles, in particular—was young and finding its feet, exploding with development and cash (but no water) but (changing tenses here) with the rush of money comes an emotional adolescence, that one couldn't conceive of in "old money" families. Every family has a black sheep, or secret. But, there are usually structures in place to keep everything "in house." Marlowe's job was usually to roust the cattle after the proverbial barn-door was left negligently open.

Marlowe, the latest film with the character—titular because the source novel, "The Black-Eyed Blonde"* (written by John Banville under the nom de plume Benjamin Black) has a title that implies abuse—tries to evoke the period and the convoluted scenarios that Marlowe regularly skulked, but is a misfire in so many ways that one is just tempted to ash-can with the couple other bad adaptations that have rumbled down the boulevard over the years. And one should state the obvious first: Neeson is too old to be playing Marlowe. True, there is less stunt-work needed to be done, so it's more suitable for the actor's age, but Marlowe was a perpetual 37-45 in the books. Mitchum was too old to play him at 57 in Farewell, My Lovely. Neeson is 70. It makes the redundant smashing of a chair over an already out-cold sparring partner entertainingly apt, but this Marlowe is decades too old to be duking it out with thugs and peeping through people's windows. Marlowe would regularly have his bell rung in the books, but this is the first time I've ever worried about him breaking a hip. There's a difference between being world-weary and just-plain haggard.

And, yes, the film is financed by Irish firms for Irish artists—Neil Jordan directs—but Neeson is also too Irish to be playing Marlowe, his Americanisms slipping with "yer's" and dropped "g's" (although accents usually don't bother me). He wears a three-piece suit—which I can't imagine Marlowe doing unless it was a formal dinner—and (for cryin' out loud), he has a secretary in the office. Marlowe was too loan-wolfish and, more importantly, not that successful to afford one.

They got the louvers right...

 

The story (adapted by William Monahan, who hasn't done an improvement on anything except The Tender Bar) is not much: Clare Cavendish (Diane Kruger) is shown into Marlowe's office ("How private are you?") with a job that requires discretion: her lover Nico Pederson (François Arnaud) has disappeared and she wants to know what happened to him without alerting her jerk of a husband. Nico was doing some studio work, but also had a, shall we say, "importing business" as well, the likes of which involve local crime-boss Lou Hendricks (Alan Cumming), local "bordello" manager Floyd Hanson (Danny Huston), a well-connected studio-head (Mitchell Mullen), who just happens to be involved with star Dorothy Quincannon (Jessica Lange, who is doing a tremendous job at the start of her "Kate Hepburn" eccentricity-acting phase). To paraphrase the detective: So many relations, so few brains. You could figure things out, just by following the strings attached.

Any joys are few and far between: everybody smokes, the women all have shellaced permanent waves, and sometimes the location work done in Barcelona, Spain could make you believe they found some un-gentrified corner of Los Angeles—if you squinted through the bottom of a half-empty shot-glass, that is. It doesn't quite pencil and smacks of trying to stretch a budget until you hear it snap. That stuff's always trouble. And the dialog by everybody is too clever by-half. You want them to just talk without being so damned witty. There is a nice line of dialog as Cavendish exits Marlowe's office, "You're very perceptive and sensitive, Mr. Marlowe. I imagine it gives you trouble."

I imagine a better movie, maybe finding something a little closer to home, maybe with Ron Livingston or Kyle Chandler as Marlowe, and fewer Chinatown call-backs (although the movie-eye-make-up bit produced a snort out of me). I imagine a lot of things, but I can't imagine a duller version of Chandler—or Banville—than this one.

* "The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde" was the 37th episode of the Raymond Burr "Perry Mason" series, based on Earle Stanley Gardner's 25th book, published in November, 1944.

The 355

It's a Man's World—God Help Us (If She's Listening)

or

"We're Spies, Asshole!"

 

The reviews have not been kind to The 355, and the critics have teamed up around it like a circular firing squad. "Generic" says The Guardian. The L.A. Times says it "feels familiar and is a bit tired." The (London) Times calls it "lazy" and "box-ticking." Christy Lemire of Ebert.com criticized it for the clothes.*

 

Because it stars nice looking women and they should have been dressed more fashionably.

 

The Wikipedia article on it says Rotten Tomatoes reports it has an aggregate score of 4.4/10 (so it's the squishy green emoji). Cinemascore says audiences give it a B+ (which is better than average). I use that to illustrate the summary judgment despite the fact I hate aggregate web-sites, believing that metrics is the down-fall of Society, and that such sites do not promote critical thinking, and individuality. I think they work against people seeing movies, rather than promoting it. I give aggregate sites an "F" and don't visit them so their ads will get one less "little tingle." And one less reason for being.**

 

Add to that, I live on the west coast of the United States, but not in Los Angeles and certainly not in New York (it being on the east coast), so I don't entirely subscribe to the trope that "January is where movies go to die," seeing as I see a lot of good movies released outside of the Academy nominating window here. And I've seen my share of spy movies, action movies, and thrillers. The tendency for them to go over the the top now has only increased with the superhero genre—my eyes still hurt from the rolling they did watching Black Widow running up some scaffolding falling in space. It's tough to find a tough spy thriller anyone, or a smart one, or even a believable one, so many have come before spoiling the barrel.

 

But, the spy genre does teach one lesson: trust no one. The 355 extends that to movie critics.

Not that the film is without flaws. When an important member of a operative team is reported killed and the guy in charge says "I identified the body myself," I muttered "Well, I haven't seen the body..." and the exact nature of the computer drive—the McGuffin of the story—isn't made sufficiently clear other than it can hack into anything and "start World War III" and "set the world on fire" and people ooh and ahh over its elegance and sophistication. Until you drop it in the sink, that is. And just when I was thinking of calling this piece Everything Bond Does But in Heels" someone has to use 007's name in vain: "James Bond always ends up alone." (No, he doesn't—more times than not, he ends up in a boat!).

But, what sets this one apart is an attitude of viciousness, physical and psychological. Most spy-action movies are exercises for (what Gustav Hasford in "The Short-Timers" called) "the phony tough and the crazy brave"—fan-boys who've never had their noses broken. It looks good with all the kick-boxing moves and quick editing, but it's all ballet, essentially, designed that the feints look close, but couldn't knock a cigar out of a mouth. This one has plenty of that, although the fights are kept to a lesser amount. The women of The 355 just shoot people. And then shoot them again.

The story involves five women from different countries' intelligence services: American CIA agent "Mace" Brown (Jessica Chastain), German GND agent Marie Schmitt (Diane Kruger), Briton Khadijah Adiyeme (Lupita Nyong'o) former MI6 agent, Colombian DNI psychologist Graciela Rivera (Penélope Cruz), and (eventually) Chinese MSS agent Lin Mi Sheng (Bingbing Fan). They're all after this super-drive that is being ponied about by a former drug cartel, now re-branding to concentrate on raw, naked power. Brown and Schmitt are the lone wolves, driven agents with prominent chips—the non-computer kind—on their shoulder holsters. Adiyeme got out of the game and is a tech security consultant with a stable home-life, and Rivera is the civilian, a PTSD specialist—brought in to bring in an operative from the field (physician, heal thyself)—who has a normal family life with a husband and two kids. It's her job to ask "What are you talking about?" when the strategizing starts to get technical.

These five women are operating in a world of men—both bad guys and purported good guys. It was The King's Man—a not-great movie with some "moments"—that pointed out that the best undercover agents are staff, usually made up of women and minorities, so these five are negotiating through the "man's world" by virtue of being overlooked...or being dismissed by allies and enemies alike ("Are you under control?" one of them asks. "No." is the reply. "Are you?" "No!" Of course, they're not) They all have "issues" which might seem less important if they were traits exhibited in "the boys," but these five are all trying to prove something. The result is they have little patience for negotiating, and they're brutal.

Take, for instance, when Brown and Schmitt—who have been seeking the same target from different sides—draw down on each other. Stalemate. Then, Schmitt gives the command to drop the weapon and starts a countdown. "5!" She starts. Then Brown takes it over before that second is up—"4!" Schmitt is even quicker in response with "3!" and you just know something bad is going to happen. Or when they've got a courier tied up and want information and give him the old cliche "You can do this the easy way or the hard way" and he refuses. One of them just shoots him in the leg, tells him she's deliberately hit his femoral artery and he's only got two minutes before he bleeds out. There's a tourniquet waiting if he agrees.

That's matched when the bad guys have the five at gun-point and, when they get stone-walled, bring up screens of the people closest to them, and then summarily shoot one after the other in the effort to get one of them—any of them—to crack. The film is tougher, more mean-spirited, and less contrived in setting up complications than just about any spy or action film that I've seen in a long time. You know the complaint about most spy movies—why don't they just shoot 'em—this is one that does that. But none of the participants in the critical "kill-box" for this film have mentioned it or given it any credit for it.

No. It's all about "the fashion."

* In the comments section of Lemire's review, nobody pointed this out. They were too concerned that women couldn't take out men in a fight because they weigh less. They hadn't seen the movie. Most of the fights dispense with "the manly art" because the women just shoot people in the head. Twice. For good measure. Jessica Chastain's character does have a fight...with one man...and it goes on and on and she's very bruised and bleeding after it. Bingbing Fan has a fight with four guys using the broken base of a free-standing lamp—she dispatches one while putting it through his neck.

 

** Please notice my lack of links for those sites. You can find them on your own without my help.

Welcome to Marwen

The Island of Misfit Toys
or
The Wartime-Love-Child of G.I.Joe and Malibu Barbie

The story of Mark Hogancamp would be an interesting one, if it wasn't so goddamned tragic. An illustrator of some note, Hogancamp was also a blackout drunk who would have surely come to a bad end eventually...if he hadn't been savagely beaten by a bunch of punks at his favorite watering hole and left for dead. Found in the street in a coma by a bar worker, his injuries included severe head trauma and limited motor skills that only strenuous rehab allowed him to walk again. When he emerged from treatment, he was a changed man, completely—he could walk but he couldn't draw, his drinking urges were gone, and all of his memories were completely erased. All he remembered of the attack is the word "queer" (he had mentioned that he liked to wear women's shoes) and Tammy Wynette singing "Stand By Your Man" on the jukebox. 

And he had a crippling case of PTSD, that forced him to rarely venture away from his house.

He walled himself there, afraid to venture out unless it was on the safest of journeys—to the bar (where he worked odd jobs) and to the local hobby store, mostly. But, his creative urges never completely submerged. He couldn't draw anymore; he could barely sign his name. Instead, he began to make photographs—creating his own little world of World War II images, set in the mythical Belgian town of Marwen—"Mar" for his name and "Wen" for the bar-maid, Wendy, who found him broken in the street that night and saved his life.

Hogancamp's images are odd and powerful, moving between realism and fantasy—the details so scrupulous, the vehicles so weathered, that I've seen some passed around as actual war photographs on the internet* (because social media is so TRUTHFUL!**) with the protagonist—a flyer named Captain Hoagie who crashes into the town of Marwen, inhabited by strong, capable women who protect it, with the lone exception of Marwen's witch, the evil Dejah Thoris,*** as well as the parade of Nazi's who torment Hoagie, that he be saved by Marwen's women. Hogancamp's story was told in a 2010 documentary Marwencol, which made the rounds and garnered enough attention for Hogancamp's "art installation" that it threatens to interfere with his disability checks on which he depends.

Hogancamp's story (external and internal) is the basis of the new project of Robert Zemeckis, the director for whom reality never seems good enough, expanding his stories with extensive special effects, even choosing to abandon reality completely with films depending completely on motion capture, even extending to the lead performances of its expensive stars.

He starts out Welcome to Marwen, not by introducing Hogancamp (played in the film by Steve Carell, but by introducing his inner world as we watch Captain Hogie on a bombing raid high above Belgium. Pretty soon, the air is filled with flak and Hogie's plane is hit and starts losing control. As the wings catch fire, Hogie struggles to regain control and ultimately crashes in a shallow river. When he bails out, his shoes are on fire ("Goddamn flammable Army-issue boots!"), and after a jump in the mud puts it out, a peeling off of the soles reveals the his feet are segmented...like a doll's.

Hogie finds an overturned vehicle as he makes his way down a Belgian road. Inside the vehicle is a suitcase filled with "frilly under-things." And a pair of high heeled pumps. He puts them on and is satisfied ("Not bad. Not bad at all."). But, confronted by a group of Nazi officers, they get the drop on him and begin to mock him for wearing high-heels. They attack him, leaving a nasty scar across his face, but before they can kill him, five women pop up out of the grass, firing rifles riddling the Germans, who fall to the ground in frozen doll-like poses that defy gravity.

[CLICK] The plasticene look of the figures are revealed to be dolls being photographed by Mark with an old Pentax camera, perpetually smoking a Pall-Mall, talking to his figures, adjusting, making still-lives of the story in his head. When he's done, he tidies up his little town of Marwen that he's erected in his side-yard—then, he opens one of the false facades of Marwen on his house which serves as a hobbit-heighth entrance inside to his intricately decorated house, split between dimensions of life-size (like Mark) and 1/6th scale (like his figures). He drops his dead Nazi soldiers into a plastic Tupperware bin marked R.I.P. A good day's work.

He avoids calls from his lawyer, who wants him to appear at the sentencing of the creeps who assaulted him. He notes a new neighbor, Nicol (Leslie Mann) moving in across the street, and the arrival—then forced leaving—of her abusive ex-boyfriend, Kurt (Neil Jackson), then his Russian caregiver, Anna (Gwendoline Christie, and yes, she's one of the "women of Marwen") stops by with groceries and his subscription of anxiety med's—he takes one and goes to bed.

This is his day, but his nights are restless, plagued by PTSD nightmares that he's being strafed by those five Nazi's (who we'll see resemble the creeps who beat him up) while Hogie and the women defend themselves at the Marwen pub, "The Ruined Stocking."

On good days, he'll load up his army into their jeep for a long stroll down the street—the better to give the jeep a weathered look—to do some work at the bar where he was attacked, cleaning up, working in the kitchen, check in with Carlala (Eiza González, another of the women), then visit the hobby store where he finds his figures and their fashions, under the guidance of Roberta (Merritt Wever), who is fond of him and encourages his artwork, helping to set up a gallery showing in New York.

Zemeckis' movie veers between Hogancamp's reality and fantasy life, which creates a dramatic tension between the mock-heroic brio of the dolls and the fragile, damaged reality that he lives in the day-to-day. The two wage war with his psychological well-being and it bleeds over into the movie, as well. The tonal shift is the biggest issue with Welcome to Marwen (although it's probably the reason Zemeckis was drawn to the project in the first place, working with scenarist Caroline Thompson, who wrote Edward Scissorhands, The Addams Family, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride).

"To the women of Marwen"—they drink alcohol; he drinks coffee.

Carell's Hogancamp is such a troubled, docile figure that you get a severe disconnect with the fast-paced, occasionally goofy rambunctiousness that the doll-fantasy sequences evoke. You wonder how Carell's Hogancamp can keep these weird hyper goings-on in his head without exploding or going nuclear. Mentally, those sequences veer into "fight" mode, but his actions in the real world are of the "flight" variety, and, although it tries to come up with a scenario where the two can be resolved, it doesn't really work, not to any degree of satisfaction. At the end, Hogancamp appears far more courageous and risk-taking, but how he gets there is inexplicable.

His relationship with neighbor Nicol is also troublesome. Yes, Hogancamp is damaged. Yes, he is barely under control and (mostly) harmless to anyone but himself. But, the way his fantasies influence his reality—especially, in regards to her—makes him pursue a course that falls into "stalker" mode, making him, in the big picture, little better than the "Kurt" character he loathes...and fears. It is that aspect of the story that is the biggest failure of the film—one sees Hogancamp's motivations, but he has no real conflict other than with the differences between his fantasy reality and his true reality, essentially creating drama in his real life to match his fantasies, not unlike a lovesick and clueless suitor. If one has any sympathy for her, Carell's Hogancamp appears dangerous and unsympathetic, which tests the audience's resolve. Ultimately, the "Nicol" character serves no good purpose other than as an excuse for some exposition that gives us a little more explanation of what's going on in Hogancamp's head besides doll-fights.

I haven't seen Marwencol (the trailer is below), but I'm sensing that, without the dizzying, dizzy doll-sequences, the documentary gives more insight into his mind-set than including all the sequences with play-sets.

For a movie to truly work, it needs to communicate below the surface-level. In the case of Welcome to Marwen, it does not show us what it's like to walk around in somebody's army-boots...or fashionable pumps.

The Heroes of Marwen—the fantasy versions

* This top image is the one I saw posted on Facebook that was posted as a meme.

** sarcasm alert

*** For those familiar with the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs, you will recognize the name "Dejah Thoris" as belonging to the Princess of Mars from Burroughs' "Barsoom" stories.

Inglourious Basterds

Written at the time of the film's release...

"Yaknow sumpin,' Utivich? Thyis Maht Be Mah Masterpyiece"

I run hot and cold on Quentin Tarantino. What most people consider his classics—Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bill, I find one-off regurgitations of other people's films with gear-grating pop-culture references to con the kids. But I did like the Bruce Willis half of Pulp Fiction (written with Roger Avary) and think the world of his jazzing-up of Jackie Brown. I was even surprised at how much I enjoyed Tarantino's half of Grindhouse, Death Proof. Tarantino's slavish devotion to matching other directors' techniques, combined with his lack of focus as a screen-writer (we went through four interminable hours of Kill Bill to get a lecture on comic-books?) have made his regard as a cinemaster seem like "The Emperor's New Clothes" to me.* Combine that with his reputation as a media-whore, who rarely says anything of much value,** explains why I'm always on the fence on QT. One film at a time, Sweet Jesus.

But I know a great movie when I see one, and Inglourious Basterds*** is a great war film, adventure story, spy story and movie-movie. Tarantino's influences are just as obvious, but more than ever, he puts his own sensibility to it, showing a superb command of the camera, composition, and direction in service to an interesting wish-fulfillment of a World War II story, and a paean to the unholy grip of cinema and its power to blow you away.

It's "Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France" (your first clue that you're not going to see a by-the-book WWII movie), and Tarantino begins a long prologue-like scene between a dairy farmer and the chief reason for seeing the movie, Christoph Waltz as SS Col. Hans Landa. Waltz's Landa is solicitous, polite, self-satisfied and more than a bit theatrical. That he is well-versed in languages and their subtleties is beyond question. He has a nickname (a lot of characters have nick-names and noms de guerre, few of which they like)—"The Jew Hunter"—and he has come to this farm-house to ask the farmer if he knows what became of a Jewish family who was known to be living in the sector (their current whereabouts unknown). It is a long, excruciatingly tense scene of false cordiality, heavily dependent on dialogue and subtleties of expression on which Tarantino, unable to fall back on street-language and bursts of giddy technique, maintains an iron grip.**** It's extraordinarily well-done and follows the negative contrast of Tarantino-movie-rhythms that dominates the film: a whole lot of talkin' punctuated by a brief manic explosion of violence, like a rubber band being constantly tightened until it snaps.

This episode sets up the Big Duel in the film—between Landa and Jewish refugee Shoshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent, very good in a multi-faceted role), who escapes to occupied Paris and is now running a movie theater, inherited from her aunt. Between the "chapter" showing us this and the opening, there is an introductory chapter to "The Basterds," a group of Jewish mercenaries dropped into France before D-Day as a "wet-ops" team. Their modus operandi is to scare the Nazis by destroying platoons through any means necessary (including clubbing them to death), then sweating information from the last one standing (and quaking). Led by Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt, doing a subtle turn as an unsub-tle comic-relief movie-star hero: "We're not in the prisoner-takin' business," he says at one point, "We're in the Nazi-killin' business. And, cousin', business is a'boomin'"), nicknamed "The Apache" for the way his troop mutilates the Nazi corpses to send a message, scalping the dead ones, and carving a large swastika into the fore-heads of the live ones, branding them for life.

By now, it's apparent that the level of violence in Inglourious Basterds is pretty high—brief, but high. The most violent of the Basterds is Sgt. Donny Donowitz—"The Bear Jew"—the one with the baseball bat, and he's appropriately played by Eli Roth, director of the "Hostel" movies, one of the new sub-genre of horror films known as "torture porn." "Watchin' Donny beat Nazis is as close as we get to goin' to the movies," says Raines to Donowitz's next victim, setting up the major theme of the film. The violence is sometimes excruciating, but the major set-pieces are filmed with quick, intricate cuts and with an overall unsentimental sensibility. Tarantino spares no feelings and good guys get killed with the bad guys early and often and surprisingly.

"The Basterds," being in their unique position behind enemy lines, are recruited to help the British with "Operation: Kino," as explained by General Ed Fenech (Mike Myers, doing his own version of "Basil Exposition"*****) to Lt. Archie Hickox (Michael Fassbender, the epitome of fussy), a former film-critic and intelligence officer in charge of the operation (Winston Churchill, supervises the briefing, as portrayed by Rod Taylor (!!)). But as with most espionage stories, the best laid plans...sometimes require a last-minute re-write.

Ultimately, all the parties converge onto one spot—that cinema in Paris that becomes the center-piece of "Operation: Kino" (or what's left of it), and in a confluence of hidden allies and enemies and dramatic cross-purposes the film reaches a stunning crescendo, a "Götterdämmerung" that would have made Fritz Lang proud. This is all done with a careful precision, a precise plotting, and some superb directions and mis-directions on the part of the director, with the photographic wizardry of Robert Richardson and a soundtrack laden with bravado 60's film-music from the likes of Charles and Elmer Bernstein, Ennio Morricone, and pointed contributions from Billy Preston and David Bowie.

But...but...what the movie comes down to is a movie about movies, which seems a bit puerile, and a bit soon in Tarantino's career to have the medium eating its own tail for subject matter. Sure, he loves the movies. That's always been clear. But the movies he loves are about something...not just that they're great movies. Howard Hawks took his arctic explorers, and air-mail pilots, and posse's and rhino-hunters, and they became metaphors for movie-making and of how disparate groups of talented people unite in a cause, but I can't remember a film he made about movie-makers that wasn't about something else. Here, Tarantino's rough-hewn coalitions band together, and it's about...what a great thing movies are. As a celebration of the cine-mah, it's an orgiastically great success, and I think its his best film.

but...but...

Can we say something more next time? Can we light up the screen to say something more than movies light up the screen? Can we have less fireworks, and more of a reason to have them?

And so I remain on the fence, hoping for the future.

One film at a time, Sweet Jesus.

* Miramax put out a DVD of ChunKing Express as part of its "Quentin Tarantino Presents" series. Frankly, Kar Wai Wong should be presenting HIM.

** I had to turn off an interview with Charlie Rose, as Tarantino spouted out writerly cliches on his prowess as a writer ("First I come up with the characters and they write themselves!") I see, that's why, with a war going on—that we don't see—everybody's as movie-obsessed as QT in Inglourious Basterds. I'd better stop or I'll talk myself out of loving this film, because in the final analysis, it's the movie that matters, not the slob who made it.

*** I'll bet you any money the title is mis-spelled like that to differentiate it from the original The Inglorious Bastards (or Quel maledetto treno blindato, roughly a 1978 "Spaghetti-War" film by Enzo G. Castellari starring Bo Svenson, who cameo's in Eli Roth's Nazi film-within-a-film in Tarantino's movie), Fred Williamson, and Ian Bannen, but on a metaphorical level, it shows a total disregard for the rules, which sets up it's "How I'd Win the War" scenario, belying History. Isn't that what most movies "based on a true story" do? Isn't that the job of the fiction writer?

**** There's a nod to one of my favorite shots in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West where Charles Bronson takes 30 seconds or so to relax a smile from his face in tight close-up. Tarantino doesn't copy it exactly, but there's a nod to it.

***** A late-night thought (one which might piss off folks who take Tarantino SOO seriously, but it feels like a "natural"): Myers and Tarantino both suffer from "lazy-eye writing" where it's thought that if you just recall something from a past movie and reference it that that is all that's sufficient for it to "play"—which is why the Myers' "Austin Powers" series is so weak. Tarantino has had a running feud with EON Productions in "the Press" over whose idea it was to make a film of "Casino Royale" (Answer: original author Ian Fleming)—and a balding Tarantino-like henchman named "Elvis" appeared in the Bond movie, Quantum of Solace—why not put Tarantino at the helm of the next Powers-fest (which has been talked about since...well, since the last one). Tarantino would have a giddy field-day with it, the genre, and the chance to gnaw on the red meat that is the Bond movies. It would easily be the best entry of the series. Only problem: during filming, the set would be like walking into a daily cage-match, where two prima donnas walk in and only one can emerge.