(no subject)

[raincitygirl]

So, um, I watched a Quentin Tarantino movie last night. Or, to be totally accurate, I watched the first 37 minutes of a Quentin Tarantino movie before getting bored and switching it off. It's not like I've set out to *avoid* Tarantino movies in the past, I just never happened to watch one. After 37 minutes of "Inglourious Basterds" I'm pretty sure I won't be watching any more Tarantino movies. Actually, the first 10 minutes weren't bad at all. It only got ludicrous with the introduction of Brad Pitt and his battalion swashbuckling around behind enemy lines with improbable amounts of ammo and food. Since I've actually read some non-fiction (emphasis on NON-fiction) about resistance movements in Europe during WWII, I was probably not the target audience for this movie. Oh well, it was only a $2 rental.

I watched some football on the weekend, and found myself with my heart in my mouth when Sian Massey had to make a tough call. Massey is a British P.E. teacher who's the first female match official to work the Premier League. The commentators couldn't quite figure out if she was a linesman, a lineswoman, or a linesperson. Anyway, I'm watching this match Saturday, she flags a goal offside, and the commentators can't tell until they've watched the replay whether she got the call right or not. Which as it happens, she did. And I'm thinking, "Oh shit, oh shit, if it's not offside people are going to say women shouldn't be refs."

And it occurs to me that sooner or later Massey is going to make a bad call. Doesn't matter if she's twice as good at her job as any of the male candidates she beat out (which she probably is, to be a trailblazer like that). Statistically speaking, she will make a bad call someday. At which point certain people will no doubt decide to be enormous assholes and declare her unfit to blow the whistle. And not only her, but declare that this whole daffy experiment with female refs is a failure because one ref with internal genitalia made one bad call. And then I will need to throw cushions at the TV and eat my body weight in chocolate. I'm telling you, I would not want to be Massey for anything.

Comments

[thatyourefuse]

Inglourious Basterds makes a lot more sense once you realize it's not a movie about war, it's a movie about war movies. But, yeah, I entirely see where it gets on a lot of people's nerves.

[raincitygirl]

That actually makes a lot of sense. I mean, I was just bewildered by it, but if I were into war movies as a genre, I'd probably get it. I think the last war movie I saw before this one was Saving Private Ryan, and I only sat through all of that because it was my brother's birthday. He *does* like war movies, and probably gets the conventions Inglourious Basterds is presumably skewering.

I feel better now. I was totally lost, thinking, "But I *know* people who like Tarantino movies. Intelligent people! What the hell am I missing?"

[jesuswasbatman]

I think Inglorious Basterds is really not for people who haven't seen other Tarantino movies, as I think a huge amount of it is Tarantino doing thought experiments about violence on screen and people who judge him for using it.

[thatyourefuse]

*nod*

Yeah, I think it's really more about the pop-mythology of WWII (not just movies -- I'm fairly sure there's a decent amount of comic book in there as well, &c.) than it is about anything to do with the actual war. The first section is a: unspeakably brilliant and b: a bit misleading; the rest of the movie's not even on nodding terms with realism.

Which of course opens up a debate over whether this is something Tarantino ought to have been doing, and I can see both sides of that, but I'm fairly sure that is what he's doing.

And I can take or leave the Brad Pitt parts, personally, but Melanie Laurent is goddamn amazing.