Review: Inglorious Basterds

Tarantino's latest offering Inglorious Basterds(sic) is an alternative history movie set in Nazi-occupied France and follows the stories of a Secret Service group called "The Basterds" led by Lt. Aldo Raine(Brad Pitt) a American jew from the south(he has one hell of an accent.), a nazi colonel(Christoph Waltz) and a Jewish-French woman(Melane Laurent).

The movie starts with one of the best single scenes I have ever seen., the Nazi colonel, Hans Landa , visits a French farmer suspected of hiding Jews. The tension it builds up is absolutely incredible, not only because of Tarantino's once again brilliant script(a large portion of which is in a foreign language) but also because of Christoph Waltz's amazing performance( for which he won an Oscar) in his portrayal of Hans Landa, an evil, charming and supremely intelligent Nazi colonel.

 Brad Pitt also delivers, in my opinion a strong performance, as Lt Aldo Raine, as with many characters in the movie such as Goebbels and Hitler he is a comedic character.(Yes, Hitler is a funny character)
The rest of the English Basterds unfortunately have somewhat weak acting imo.


Melanie Laurent plays the Jewish woman, she is the proprietor of a movie-house and through a nazi war hero love-interest she lands a film premier which Hitler attends.

She is the "heart" of the movie without which it would be too cold and gruesome.

A large portion of the movie is in German, French and a little Italian played by a European cast unfamiliar to Hollywood, and they really shine.

The plot is a bit fantastical but a great story nonetheless.


For this gruesome, evil and funny story I give 8.5/10

Pulp Fiction: A review

Tarantino's second film after Reservoir dogs is considered to be his greatest yet.

Judging this film by its porno-movie cover one immediately knows this is going to be a controversial film, and the brilliant, just-the-right-amount-of-twisted mind  of Quentin Tarantino does not disappoint.

The basic plot revolves around 2 mob hit men played by Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta, a gang leaders wife by Uma Thurman and a Boxer by Bruce Willis, spiritual transformation, loyalty, drugs and Quarter Pounders. We also have Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth and Quentin Tarantino playing minor roles.

The storyline of this movie is quite unique, it is in fact more like several movies rolled into one epic than a single movie. It is shot in a non-linear sequence, and is neatly demystified at the end.

The plot albeit good, is nothing without the strong dialogue and brilliant performances by the cast.
This is the most "Tarantino" movie you will find, the dialogue is humorous and down to earth, nobody captures the essence of dialogue quite like Tarantino.

It is a movie that has everything, yet is like no movie you'd have ever seen before.

Quite simply the epitomeof film noir.

Tarantinos masterpiece gets a 9.5/10






 

So I donated blood today

So I went for my 6th or 7th full blood donation today. It has been a while since I last donated( I think about 10 months to be precise because I was on roaccutane.) Let me talk about roaccutane a bit first......IT SUCKS!!!

Unless you have really serious acne(which I didn't) avoid at all cost. My dermatologist said that it has little to no side effects, but let me tell you this, you suffer! First of all your skin becomes the damn Sahara desert, and you itch EVERYWHERE, then your lips just start peeling off and they become sore(the dry lips were in my opinion the worst side-effect) and ugly. I swear I had some lower back pain triggered by it(never had it before and havent had it since), but I can' t be sure.

Well at least my skin is all pretty now.

But I digress.

So first blood donation in a while means I have to fill in that long-ass form all over again!

But got that out of the way, the sister who checked my BP/Pulse and Iron really irritated me because she was wearing a Balance Bracelet(Pseudo-scientific rubbish).

Fortunately I had a different sister bleed me.
Let me just say,no matter how many times you donate, that needle is scary, not that it' s very sore(it's not) but it's so damn big!! The sister had to dig around my arm because my vein was quote, "Running away from the needle" anyway eventually I was set and leaking blood.

This part is really nice because they bring you cookies and cool drink on a tray(What reason more do you need to donate??) and they brought me their quarterly filled with 10 year old cancer patients who need blood or they' re going to die, basically a trick to guilt you into donating again .

The room was scattered with various posters, one with the breakdown of the various blood groups, and apparently my blood group, AB Negative, is the rarest one there is(less than 1% of the population).....Fuck yeah!

Anyway, losing 500ml of blood(Yes, I use the metric system, get over it) goes by surprisingly quickly and you don't feel too different afterwards. I went straight from the donation centre to a maths class.


So I feel good about myself today :D

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Reservoir Dogs : A review

I'll first say that I am a big Quentin Tarantino fan, so my expectations for Reservoir Dogs were very high,, even it being his first film(Not counting Natural Born Killers).

Knowing his movies I knew that the success of the film depended entirely on the vast dialog - the non-dialog  scenes bloody and gory and well done, do however take a backseat.

As soon as Quentin(terrible actor as he is) complete his "Like a Virgin" speech right in the beginning of the film, I knew I wouldn't be disappointed.

The basic premise of the story is this - Six thieves who don' t know each other take part in a failed jewel heist.
Once they arrive back at their rendezvous point, a police mole is suspected and from there onwards it's a cacophony of panic and mistrust.

All the characters in this film are great, each with his own backstory and unique personality. A real tip of the hat goes to Harvey Keitel(Mr. White) who I think is the heart of the film. An antihero if I have ever seen one!

In order not to spoil the movie I will not tell you who the cop is, but a great performance from the actor that played him too, his naivete is evident throughout the film(He calls a mob boss a nice guy), and he eventually succumbs to the "criminal mentality".

Steve Buscemi also gave a strong performance with Mr. Pink, a likeable fellow in a sadistic kind of way.

Humour ,albeit of dark, isn't lacking either in Tarantino's dialog.

It is racist, gory and morally dubious but,all in all a great movie that shows a glimpse of Tarantino's genius shown in his masterpiece Pulp Fiction.

I give it a solid 9/10, my only qualm is that it ended so quickly.

Movie list

I consider myself a bit of a movie buff, but to my great shame there are some movies that I haven't watched, that I really should.

Here is my list of movies I wrote up beginning of this year that I want to watch *soon*. In no particular order.

Fight Club
Requiem for a dream -check [Not everybody's cup of tea but as good movie, with a brilliant performance by Ellen Burstyn] 
Clerks
Caddyshack
The Big Lebowski
Blade runner
Matrix (Seen it before but want to watch it again)
The Godfather
The silence of the lambs
Eternal Sunshine of a spotless mind
Donnie Darko
Kill Bill series
Trainspotting
Reservoir Dogs
Scarface
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Ed Wood
Se7en - check [Average, doesn't deserve to be on this list] :'(
Dead Poets Society
A Beautiful mind
Lord of the rings series (Seen it before but want to watch it again)
No Country for old men
The Hurt locker
The Deer hunter
2001; A space odyssey


*ADDED*
Equlibrium





Loved  Inglorious Basterds and Pulp Fiction so I have high hopes for Kill Bill and Reservoir Dogs.

What movies would you recommend me adding to the list? 

My PC

I've decided to post my PC specs. I was on a very limited budget but I think i did well for myself.
I started this build over 2 years ago so some component will already be old.

CPU: Intel Core2Duo E8400 overclocked to 3.6Ghz (motherboard limits my overclock)
Motherboard : Went real budget here with a Gigabyte GA G31 MX S2
Graphics Card: Club3D AMD HD5770 OC edition 128bit memory bus is a bit of a let down but really awesome graphics card for those on a budget.
RAM : 2gigs of DDR2(cant remember brand)....2gigs is a bit too little nowadays!!
Hard Drives : 1 x Seagate 160Gb + 1 x Seagate 250Gb....also too little nowadays!!
Case: Cooler Master Mistique - Black
PSU : 600W generic
Sony 19" Flat screen
Wireless logitech mouse(rechargeable batteries a must!!!!)


And that' s pretty much it, I will keep this rig for at least another year before my next upgrade.
By next year I will need a new motherboard and CPU(expecting some great stuff from both AMD and Intel this year) and at least 4gigs of RAM and a 1 terabyte hard drive.

What do you guys think?