I mean, DAME Helen Mirren.  (Photo via Associated Press.  Joke via Oscar co-host, Steve Martin.) Very happy for Kat B and The Hurt Locker. Worst Award of the Evening -  The Best Cinematography Award to Avatar.  It should have gone to the great Robert Richardson (Inglourious Basterds), or if not to him, to Christian Berger who was ... read more »

In the midst of this blogospheric firestorm revolving around Inglourious Basterds, one relatively mild concession we can all make is that, for one reason or another, the movie (like all of Tarantino’s work) certainly inspires people to watch other movies. One old favorite I found myself attracted to after seeing it was The Dirty Dozen, ... read more »

It’s amazing to me that some fellow Jews who were so indignant about Sophie’s Choice (by which I mean the Styron novel — arguably his best — and not the hollow Pakula movie) can give Tarantino a free ride on this one, presumably under the theory that this boy should be allowed to enjoy every ... read more »

The amount of discussion generated by Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds demonstrates, if nothing else, that whether you like the film, hate it, or harbor mixed feelings about it, what Tarantino has created is some kind of movie. Unless you have been living in the proverbial cave – and I don’t mean Plato’s – you should ... read more »

…and I mean *everybody*… Jonathan Rosenbaum posted a rather damning blog entry on his website regarding QT’s “IB” that was subsequently picked up and scoffed at by a smattering of online critics. Rosenbaum responded to the hubbub over his equating “IB” with Holocaust denial in a postscript, reprinted here: Since many people have been asking ... read more »

Is Robert Richardson (born August 27, 1955) the greatest cinematographer working today? Consider the difference between Oliver Stone’s JFK and Nixon, both of which were photographed by Richardson, and Stone’s W., shot by someone else. The two former films have a gravitas and visual complexity, compared to which W. seems light-weight and disposable, notwithstanding Josh ... read more »

Of all the real-life German film personalities referred to in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, the most notorious – apart from Goebbels himself – is Leni Riefenstahl. Most viewers know Riefenstahl, if they know her at all, as the director of the infamous Nazi propaganda film, Triumph of the Will, or the classic sports documentary, Olympia. ... read more »

One of the many incidental pleasures of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is the reappearance after far too long an absence of the wonderful Rod Taylor. Taylor, who was born on January 11, 1930 in Sidney, Australia, has worked with some of cinema’s greatest auteurs – with George Stevens in Giant, playing memorable leads for George ... read more »