After beholding a private screening of Brad Pitt’s new movie, “Inglourious Basterds,” I was surprised a week later when it debuted that my take on the film echoed a few vogue movie critics. Movie reviewing isn’t my forte, but this appraisal fuses with a compassionate southern twist.
Yes, evil supporting actor Christoph Waltz, who gets a Swastika carved into his forehead, deserves an Oscar, and unsurprisingly, Tennessee-native Quentin Tarantino’s sensationalism and personal demeanor still irritates me; I’m in that 5 percent who walked out on “Pulp Fiction.” This world needs less violence.
I wonder, will anyone else notice that Pitt’s Tennessee mountain-man character’s accent -- while leading a band of Allied Jewish commandos hunting German scalps in Nazi-occupied France -- seems to approach Tom Hanks doing Forest Gump? Pitt’s cool, but he needs to tweak his redneck.
Not exactly a family movie, there’s plenty of suspense with comic relief … but there’s nothing funny about it if you’re German. This WW II rewrite exacts Jewish revenge on the Nazis, and then some.
I trust that most Germans who had nothing to do with the Third Reich holocaust will see this movie as more gas on a fire they want, and deserve, to forget. Nobody should be incessantly reminded, blamed and throttled for mistakes committed by ancestors they don’t know.
For not letting the healing begin, I rate this flick G (Gross). Plus, members of the Third Reich are likely now too old to wobble into a theatre for the punishment they deserve. Is it time to move on yet?
The real story here, for me, is the Tennessee connection behind the scenes of this movie and how the 62nd Cannes Film Festival premiere turned the theme of this gory, bloody, 1000-people-bludgeoned-or-shot-to-death “thriller” into something uplifting and charitable.
Meet Marcie and Rogan Allen, a Nashville daughter-father team who attended the Cannes Film Festival last May and were the highest bidders in the auction of a private screening of this film. They won, and so did one of America’s premier health organizations.
Marcie owns Mac Presents (www.macpresents.com), a music sponsorship and activation company, while her dad’s company, Rogan Allen Builders, continues to transform Nashville’s skyline one I-beam at a time.
While attending the Cannes auction, Marcie, an auction rookie, and her dad were taken by the “Tennessee connection,” the 16 cast members on stage (including Mike Meyers), and the event’s MC Sharon Stone (especially Rogan!).
“Dad, this would be cool … nobody does this!” she said.
This wasn’t the first time a father caved into a daughter’s resolve. This perfect storm of emotion led these highest bidders to New York’s 72-seat Tribeca Screening Room and then to dinner at Cipriani Wall Street’s downtown ballroom for an amfAR fundraiser.
All proceeds benefited the premiere organization trying to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic through research. More than 33 million people have AIDS. Four of the seven most successful treatment regimens nearing a cure were inspired by amfAR.
At the spirited event, amfAR’s Gregory Boroff noted that “The Allen family demonstrated unprecedented generosity for an auction prize that wasn’t supposed to become a charity event.”
So, out of the inglorious Tarantino bloodshed, humanity defined.
