Page 1405 – Bohemian | Sonoma & Napa Counties

Patriotic Gore

Movies

Richard von Busack

Aug 19, 2009

08.19.09

That Hitler—what a showman! Seems like every week there’s a new YouTube remix of Bruno Ganz having a Holstein over whatever. Quentin Tarantino’s no-doubt Oscar-winning Holocaust film Inglourious Basterds is almost as deliriously entertaining as a remixed Hitler tantrum.

This new film drips with movie love, and it’s not a cheat—the blazing finale is one of the ultimate Mad magazine “Scenes We’d Like to See.” The long, rich film showcases Tarantino’s sense of humor more than his appreciation for violence. The whole thing is held together by one boundless, if undifferentiated, appetite for paraphrasing movies.

Inglourious Basterds is the should-have-been true story of Operation Kino, the plot to destroy the Hitler gang through their own love for cinema. Participants in the top-secret plot, witting or otherwise, include sweetheart of the Reich Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger, never better), a mysterious Parisian movie-theater owner known as Emanuelle Mimieux but born Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) and a drawling British film critic turned commando, Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), the author of Twenty-Four Frame Da Vinci, a study of G. W. Pabst. Opposing these flawed heroes is the smiling-serpent villain Christoph Waltz as Hans “the Jew Hunter” Landa. Waltz’s thrilling loathsomeness is as pure as something you might see in a silent film.

The loose cannons knocking around this picture, turning up to cause mayhem during its five separate chapters, are the Basterds themselves. Brad Pitt’s Tennessee ridge-runner Lt. Aldo Raine leads a band of homicidal Jewish guerrillas. Each one is indebted to him for 100 Nazi scalps. More than ever, Tarantino shows a penchant for conversation over violence, for delicious anticipation rather than delivery.

Inglorious Basterds is a genuine art movie, right down to its subtitles and crimson and gold surfaces. Nothing is as rapt here as Tarantino’s swoon over a beautiful girl on a ladder, leaning on a block-wide, blazing theater marquee, polishing the letters spelling out the name of Henri-Georges Clouzot. Le Corbeau is showing during its first run.

The lady is distracted from her marquee work by the attention of a persistent, baby-faced German officer, Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl). Tentative romance and repulsion between the theater owner and the sniper continue to the film’s end.

Tarantino gloms on to all of our movie fantasies of the Satanic ornateness of the Third Reich. The evil is beautifully saturated and looks an inch thick. Even a standard poodle, belonging to Goebbels’ girlfriend, looks like it ought to be tried at Nuremberg. As the Basterds continue their outrages, Hitler foams in his lair, vowing reprisals and revenge: “Nein! Nein! I will hang them by their heels from the Eiffel Tower!”

Here in cinema form is an essay about Tarantino’s mutual fascination with and distaste for the war film. And even if he’s a voracious film watcher, he can tell the difference between the passionate but low-budget Samuel Fuller dramas of universal dehumanization and the boring-ass patriotic gore-opera represented by Zoller’s film Nation’s Pride, with its cascades of bullet shells and a beatific youthful sniper in his church tower. Wonder what Tarantino thinks of Michael Bay? In its depictions of the Nazi’s near-orgasmic reaction to the premiere of Nation’s Pride, this movie gives you a good guess.

Moreover, there seems to be some commentary here, disguised as strawberry-jam-covered strudel. The revival of World War II in movies and documentaries in the mid-1990s coincided with the Hitlerizing of Saddam—one Good War deserves another. When Bush ginned up the war on terror, his opponents were slurred as Chamberlainian sissies, sleepwalking toward a new Munich. Pumping up and satirizing the war movies that fueled so many daydreams of righteousness—that is subversiveness itself.

Tarantino’s ambiguity keeps this from being complete idiot-fodder. When the insane Raine works on his grisly signature—a bit of body manipulation with a Bowie knife—there’s a shudder discernible in the way Tarantino watches it. Remember the camera that turned away from the ear-cutting in Reservoir Dogs? The blank satisfied look Pitt’s Raine fills the screen in a final shot; Tarantino’s gaze isn’t quite as dispassionate. It’s not easy to get the high ground and take the low road at the same time, but Tarantino does it here.

‘Inglourious Basterds’ opens at select North Bay theaters on Friday, Aug. 21.

New and upcoming film releases.

Browse all movie reviews.

The Patriots

Music

David Sason

Aug 19, 2009

08.19.09

These days, superstar guest albums and cover records mean big business. Just look at Santana’s last few releases or Rod Stewart’s hugely successful Great American Songbook series. Some might think progressive country music legend Willie Nelson is just joining the fold with next week’s release of American Classic, but the redhead is anything but a stranger to the concept. Nelson all but invented the trend, most notably with his influential 1978 classic Stardust, an initially discouraged collection of popular standards that became one of his most successful albums ever.

While touted as an unofficial sequel to the Booker T. Jones&–produced Stardust, American Classic is more than anything a jazz album, even being released under the Blue Note Records moniker. From the opener “The Nearness of You,” popularized by Glenn Miller in 1938, Nelson fronts a gifted jazz group that includes lyrical pianist Joe Sample, and proves a charmingly limited vocalist à la late-era Billie Holiday. But Nelson’s voice is not grainy, remaining as clear, assured and unwavering despite his 76 years and his love for smoking weed.

Due to uniform tempo and instrumentation, the first half of the album is sadly lackluster, featuring limp renditions of the crooners “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” two songs that we’ve been beaten over the head with too much over the years. This problem alone makes American Classic an unworthy successor to Stardust, which at the time was a novel idea.

American Classic doesn’t heat up until the surprisingly charming Norah Jones duet “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” which far outshines the Rod Stewart and Dolly Parton version from a few years back. It’s playful and sexy (despite the obvious May-December romance implications), and you can actually hear Nelson smiling throughout. Their two voices’ odd yet compelling chemistry makes further collaboration a good idea.

A sultry “Angel Eyes” keeps the excellence going, truly sounding like a lost Stardust outtake, and leads into a delicious “Since I Fell for You,” featuring Jim Cox’s bluesy organ and fantastic harmonica punctuating each vocal line, courtesy of longtime Nelson player Mickey Raphael. A jazzy update of “Always on My Mind” ends the record strongly with a wink and a subtle suggestion that the perennial road warrior is still fucking up in the same ways.

Nelson’s sincerity and palpable reverence for the craft of others has always kept his stylistic experiments free of gimmickry, from the reggae album Countryman to last year’s Two Men with the Blues with Wynton Marsalis. But here his choice of songs and the market’s inundation with the idea ultimately diminish the record’s potential for enjoyment as a whole.

Another guy who is no stranger to marijuana is Jamaican dancehall superstar Sean Paul, who returns this week with Imperial Blaze, his follow-up to 2005’s massively successful Trinity. While his last album comprised nonstop aggressive club bangers, Sean Paul finally branches out across the 20 tracks, making Blaze his most eclectic so far. Case in point is the ballad “Pepperpot,” which opens with shimmering acoustic guitar chords and features his sweetest singing to date.

The unrequited love in the lyrics is new ground for Sean Paul, a sign of maturation that reappears in “Straight from the Heart,” a tribute to his mother. This hip-hop cliché (well done here in a traditional rock-steady reggae beat) is no surprise. Throughout the long and storied partnership of reggae and American rap (next up in the highly anticipated Nas and Damian “Junior Gong” Marley collaborative album), Sean Paul has merged these forms more than anyone, to the point of being completely accepted by hip-hop radio. And despite his patriotic decision to have Jamaican dancehall producers helm the album, the songs utilize too many overused American production conventions, including the familiar throbbing, blaring keyboard accompaniment on hot dance track “Press It Up” and the much-maligned Auto-Tune on “Bruk Out.”

While the first single “So Fine” is not nearly as immediately catchy as past hits “Get Busy” or “Temperature,” Sean Paul’s wide appeal and lucid patois delivery make him a sure thing commercially. Time will tell if he’ll continue to blaze an artistic trail as well.

Stoner Food 101

Dining

Gretchen Giles

Aug 19, 2009

08.19.09

Preparing your student for college entails so many handy lists just waiting to be crossed off, everything so tidy and organized that even the weepiest mother can wave goodbye through mascara-soaked lids knowing that her beloved has the requisite amount of shower shoes, extra-long sheets, antifungal cream and other glories of young adulthood. She can feel smugly confident that her progeny will thrive because most colleges require dorm dwellers to buy into that mythic feedbag, the Dining Plan.

What Mom doesn’t yet know is that her student will rarely make it to the dining hall. He’ll sleep through breakfast, she’ll forget lunch and no one remembers dinner until 11pm. Instead of the fresh salads and Korean food made-to-order that the dining hall might provide, her scholar is mostly eating ramen, bagels and other wheat products ably gummed by babies.

Of course, the 21st-century student can turn to YouTube to learn more about eating in the dorm room, which is evidently never done sober and which is where “Punk Ass Chef” comes ambling in. In four short minutes, PAC will show your student how to make a “stoner banger” by spearing a hotdog and resting it on an open gas flame while quickly mixing up a “sauce” from yellow mustard and jam. Take a handful of those stale potato chips inevitably nearby, smash them and pour the sauce and charred dog on top, naturally prompting the question, just how stoned do you have to be?

Jelly is a trope for PAC, his “sticky booty burger” featuring ground beef, peanut butter and the miracle of pectin-addled fruit. Don’t forget to add garlic powder and salt. PAC fan FeedRosie reports, “I made this for lunch today before class. At first I thought that this would be awful, but it was actually pretty fuckin’ delicious. The garlic and the salt were real important.”

Real important. Weepy moms may want to stay away from YouTube entirely, preferring not to know the plethora of stoner cooking how-to’s bursting from its unstemmed sides. “Cooking for Stoners” begins with cinnamon Pop-Tarts and adds peanut butter, Nutella, chocolate syrup and a final dollop of peanut butter ice cream in case the lowly legume has been underrepresented. “Just smear it all on,” our teen chef slowly advises. “It doesn’t have to look good. It’s gonna taste good, I promise.” Shudder.

“Stoner Food” demonstrates the “french fry pancake,” in which french fries are simply dumped onto a plate and covered in syrup. “Seasoned 2 Stoned” rifles his buddy’s cabinets to produce an appetizer of graham crackers slathered with cream cheese, Nutella—Nutella! who knew?—peanut butter and jelly. “Basically,” he opines, looking unsteadily at the camera, “if you don’t know how to spread shit you like on a graham cracker, you’re too dumb to be in school.”

Take that advice as a mantra, Mom. Look forward to winter break and just turn off that ‘Tube.

Quick dining snapshots by Bohemian staffers.

Winery news and reviews.

Food-related comings and goings, openings and closings, and other essays for those who love the kitchen and what it produces.

Recipes for food that you can actually make.