Morning Awesome

I don’t think any other movie trailer in history has produced such cognitive dissonance in my frontal film-processing lobes. Well, maybe the first time I saw Tom Cruise as Lestat. That gave me seizures. And also Tom Cruise as a one-eyed Nazi. Massive paralysis, there.But Tarantino doing a World War II movie? With Brad Pitt as a scarred-necked hillbilly shitkicker? And isn’t one of those Basterds the Temp from The Office? Seriously, my circuitry is overloading.Now, granted, one of the greatest filmed treatises on the Horrors of War™ has got to be the Saga of the Watch, also a Tarantino production, but that had the advantage of being brief and entirely narrated by Christopher Walken.I’m afraid this simply won’t do.

Technically, it’s Inglourious (with an extra u there) Basterds

Pfft.Brad Pitt has done some pretty good acting. This looks less like that and more like him being Brad Pitt. I’m sure he’s done that accent before…maybe in Kalifornia (a great bit of acting).But still…no one does violence as well as Quentin. This is not a war movie…this is Force Ten from Navarone meets Hostel.Dismemberment, decapitation and disembowelment – the three D’s. All that and snappy dialogue. What more do you want?Too bad it’s not a contemporary film. I can come up with a rather lengthy list of cameo roles. I’d pay cash money and see it on the big screen if they were carving up Ann Coulter.

Elvis, I disagree my dear sir.Tarantino is smarter than you. He is smarter than– … Well, Tarantino knows what he is doing.Relax.Didn’t you guys tell me that during my Obama-doubting days… which have never really ceased? “Relax”… even though Rahm Emanuel obviously has no idea what the hell he is doing, and the new treasury secretary comes off as a white Alberto Gonzalez…But yeah, I have much more faith in QT.

Hey, thanks, MG! I didn’t realize Tarantino was smarter than me, so that helps me tremendously. I suppose being stupider than the filmmaker is what makes me a good audience for his wildly overrated twaddle.My point vis-a-vis Cognitive Dissonance is this, Mr. The MG: Tarantino’s brand of splatter and gore is cartoonish, over-the-top, and outrageous in its disregard for human life and any sort of reality; which is precisely what makes it bearable.Reservoir Dogs is a ludicrous string of calamities and set pieces that thrills even as you laugh off the absurdity of its plot and the Mexican Stand-Offs that finally put everyone out of their misery. Without that laughter it would be a grueling mess. Same with Pulp Fiction: You know, almost immediately, that this is a movie so self-aware and self-congratulatory, so Ain’t-I-Cool winky and smirky, that when its wildly violent scenes play out you laugh rather than vomit into your popcorn. When Vincent Vega blows that kid’s head off in the backseat of the car, nearly everyone in the theater laughs. That’s fairly psychotic territory, don’t you think?Grindhouse is more proof of this absurdist pudding. Surely no one took a nanosecond of that film seriously, and as such it was some of the most popcorn-chomping fun I had at the theater that year. Loved it.But now we’re talking Tarantino sensibilities all over a movie about real events, an actual war, with actual consequences and historical context? Can I expect Tarantinoesque splatterplex film-making in scenes depicting Nazi cruelty to Jews? Schindler’s List was almost unbearable in that respect, but that was Spielberg’s point. Same with Saving Private Ryan; you were supposed to come out of that movie feeling like you’d just been donkeypunched in the ghoulies.So my cognitive dissonance flows from two choices here: One, I get the standard Tarantino splatter and gore and comically histrionic violence in a World War II movie and I’m somehow expected to laugh it off a’la Dogs, or Two, he plays it seriously and I’m even more confused. The preview plays both ways; Pitt seems to be eating some scenery, and certainly the violently splattery title cards indicate some cartoon gore. But the subject matter is inherently serious, and grave.So: Cognitive Dissonance.Also, MG: suck it.

“Reservoir Dogs is a ludicrous string of calamities and set pieces that thrills even as you laugh off the absurdity of its plot and the Mexican Stand-Offs that finally put everyone out of their misery. Without that laughter it would be a grueling mess. Same with Pulp Fiction: You know, almost immediately, that this is a movie so self-aware and self-congratulatory, so Ain’t-I-Cool winky and smirky, that when its wildly violent scenes play out you laugh rather than vomit into your popcorn.”Wow…. Just. Wow.