Who ever thought that the Boomers would kill the youth culture? They’ve managed to.

It’s all old-aged melodrama now. Reality doesn’t apply to Boomers. They will not get old.

Shhh…don’t tell them, but they’re old.

I don’t necessarily mind that people are reassessing their activity level and what it means to be old.

Still, the self-indulgence of these folks is grating. Perpetual adolescence by an entire generation is lame.

P.S. Where was Jack Nicholson?

Also, why the Grammy’s were better than the Oscars.

And a pre-review review:

And for those of you who think I’m hijacking John Hawkin’s righteous right wing rantings, consider this payback for all the ranking hot girl pieces he’s done.

Edward Cullen is teh hawt. That is all.

My guests include Tabitha Hale, John Hawkins, Lorie Byrd and Steve Schippert of Threatswatch. It’s a fun podcast–full of information you won’t get anywhere else.

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When Melissa isn’t on the radio, you can find her at melissaclouthier.com and on Twitter. Her username is MelissaTweets.

While Rosenthal makes compelling arguments and may well be correct about Tarantino’s motives, I would suggest that Tarantino was too smart by half, then. Consider the barroom scene. Repeatedly, the Americans and their fighters expressed frustration at being stuck in an underground bar because it is stupid strategically in a fight. They feared being double-crossed. Here is what Rosenthal says:

This is especially true of a long central scene that takes place in a basement bar in occupied France. The scene is entirely built around a German parlor game in which each participant is required to guess the identity of a real person or fictive character whose name has been written on a card and stuck to his or her forehead.

Well, that game is one I myself have played as an unwashed American. We called it Polish Poker growing up–a politically incorrect allusion to a source of a version of the game, I suspect. At any rate, it was the Brit who botched the hand signal and also the Brit who enjoyed his drink courageously before his death–stiff upper lip and all that. It was also the American, who, at the end of the bloodbath, out maneuvered the German soldier who mowed down anyone left alive, including, it looked like, his own compatriots. It was a gory mess that ended as the American feared.

Another point of concern was portraying the German enlisted “hero” as regretful. Rosenthal says:
“They include not only the jovial enlisted men in the barroom scene, but also, for instance, a celebrated and lovelorn sharpshooter who openly regrets his military exploits.” While he did seem a little sickened by his actions, he was certainly still portrayed as evil. In the very next scene, when his advances are rebuffed by Shoshanna, he threatens rape or worse saying “no one denies me” and then, after being shot by her, shoots her in cold blood when she shows concern for him. It is the Jew, as symbolized by Shoshanna, who hasn’t lost her humanity. The German is portrayed as having none. While this might validate the modern Germans’ thinly disguised anti-semitism by seeing her shot dead, it certainly doesn’t portray the German perspective in a positive light. To the contrary, the Germans are portrayed as vicious, anti-semitic, heartless, yes cunning, killers of women and children–from the first scene until the climactic end.

There is no question Tarantino indulged in a facile portrayal of Americans. Bumbling in, direct action, hicky accents, etc. But still, the Americans and the good guys won. For all the German ostensible heroics, they are still portrayed as losers. They are losers who go up in a ball of flames. They are losers who are branded as losers on their swastika carved forehead.

The suicide bomber reference was also not lost on me. Tarantino, as I wrote in my other review, is hardly courageous. In fact, like his comrades, he’s a product of Hollywood’s amorality. He won’t name current tyrants. He has to go back to World War II to find blood thirsty villains. That is why I suggested substituting an Islamofascist for every Nazi killed.

As to the bloody gore: No, I didn’t enjoy seeing a guy’s head bashed in. In fact, I covered my eyes at the over-the-top gruesome parts and there were many. It was a Tarantino film after all. The blood lust is a caricature and silly. Still, it was satisfying to see the bad guys come to such an ignoble end. It would have been a wonderful thing had World War II ended in such a glorious way. Unfortunately, Hitler got the satisfaction of controlling his own death. At least, historians can fantasize about a better end.

Did Tarantino make an anti-semitic film? Was he trying to portray Germans sympathetically? Perhaps. Americans aren’t stupid. They’ll catch the way Americans are portrayed. They’ll see the suicide bomber reference for the inversion it is. They might miss the underlying German fears of Jew revenge. Or, if they get it, they understand the Jews motive, even as most Jews have lived among their German brethren peacefully without recompense. It is, after all, a fantasy.

What sane, moral person can’t understand the desire to avenge their family, culture and people nearly being blotted out? Americans get it generally. And so do Germans. The Germans know how they’d feel if the roles were reversed and that’s why they’re afraid even after all these years. And the Jews have been models of restraint and forgiveness. I’m not sure I could do the same.

Tarantino has some messages for everyone though and they aren’t politically correct. First the trailer. Here are some of the lessons from the movie:

1. Enhanced Interrogation works: The reason William Wallace from Braveheart fame was so remarkable was because he didn’t break. Nearly everyone, eventually breaks. When one gets a bad guy to spill the beans, good guys get saved. It ain’t pretty. But sleep deprivation, psychological discomfort, and in Tarantino’s case, a public head bashing are very effective means of extracting information.

2. There are bad guys. Now, in this politically correct world, only the Nazis may be used as bad guys. Don’t mention the barbary of Native Americans or current slave traders, or Hugo Chavez. Hell, don’t mention the barbaric acts of actual barbarians–the Barbary pirates. These days, the only acceptable bad guy is of German extraction. Anyone who is labeled “bad” is labeled Hitlerian. For fun though, when you go see the movie, just put an Islamist in the place of the Nazi. Every time. Just imagine a freedom hating terrorist biting it hard. It’s profoundly satisfying. If Tarantino were really that edgy, he’d have chosen a more relevant bad guy, but in these times, naming evil is passé.

The movie wins points artistically. The dialogue amusing. Among the blood, guts and nonsense, the story pushes forward with anxiety-producing anticipation.

What made me love the movie most, though, didn’t occur on the screen. The packed theater that made my vengeance-loving heart glad.

So, Americans still hate villains. Americans still want evil doers to pay. After years of mushy, morally ambivalent tripe like Crash, a movie comes out that’s pure good and evil. Well, not so pure. Because war isn’t pure. It’s messy, bad things happen, good people die and sometimes the best soldiers are just this side of normal. Righteous vengeance though, is satisfying. People want evil, innocent-killing psychos to pay–preferably with their lives.

Primal? Uncivilized? It’s pretty to think so. More like, normal people recognize that tolerating evil encourages evil. You know, like the Iranians who repeatedly raped a young boy who defied the Iranian leadership during the protests. That evil.

So, while I’m still waiting for Quentin Tarantino to show some real courage and portray the monstrosity that is Islamofascism–the psychotic Muslim element who carry around Mein Kempf for moral encouragement–I’ll take what I can get. And right now, a movie where the bad guys get incinerated is profoundly satisfying.

It’s nice to see the good guys win. It’s nice to see the bad guys suffer and die. I’m hoping that Inglourious Bastards starts a trend. Now, to choose a more timely enemy.

P.S. Brad Pitt is hot. And the way he says “Nazis” makes me smile. I’m saying it that way from now on. Nat-zees.

P.P.S. This is why I feel no shame about vengeance fantasies. There is no death painful enough to balance the inhumanity of what some evil bastards will do in the name of their despicable cause.

The moral equivalence crowd can shove their sanctimony up their collective ass. There are people right now who loved seeing Americans die in the World Trade Center. They relished it and still do. The Lockerbie bomber, Al Qaeda, the Taliban all glory in their death cult. No reasoning, no gentleness will change their black souls. Just as Nazis felt justified in their abject cruelty, so do the Islamofascists who carry out their modern mission of freedom killing violence.

The only solution? Kill the killers.

After reading Rachel’s post, I’m going to screw up my courage and go visit the site of the Twin Towers. Even though just typing this post makes me angry enough to cry at the injustice, I will see it. And when I go to Germany, I’ll do that heinous visit, too.

There is a reason America continues to fight this pesky foe. It’s us or them. Let it be them.

UPDATED AGAIN:

Actual, real live Inglourious Basterds courtesy Winston Churchill. I love him even more:

Some were in the Brigade – a unit set up by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1944, made up of more than 6,000 volunteers. He said: “It seems to me indeed appropriate that a special unit of the race which has suffered indescribable treatment from the Nazis should be represented in a distinct formation among the forces gathered for their final overthrow”.

The following year, the Brigade was in the front line for the Allies’ final push against the Nazi menace and worked with the rest of the British Army in the immediate aftermath of the war.

Official orders dictated that any Nazis captured should be interrogated, not executed. But the revenge squads within Brigade ranks had other ideas.

Go read the whole thing to get an idea of how the Nazi hunters exacted justice.

By the way, to the liberals out there: Was World War II a revenge fantasy? Because technically, the European theater wasn’t “our” war. I mean Germans didn’t attack us. And that war cost a lot of money. And hell, we still have troops stationed in Europe. I mean, it’s like totally a waste, ya know?

I do not regret that America took the war to the terrorist murderers. A sense of moral outrage should determine foreign policy. Barack Obama’s bland indifference to the people of Iran is telling. Should we go to war there? That can be disputed. But what cannot be disputed is that Iran is a totalitarian, fascist regime that wants to exterminate a whole race of people. IT IS EVIL. To not be affronted by their disgusting philosophy and actions is to show indifference to innocent, freedom-loving people.

The left resisted efforts to get involved in WWII. They didn’t want to see the atrocities of Japan, Germany and Italy, especially, because it didn’t fit their never ending selfish narrative.

Either freedom or tyranny is on the march. It is never static. And freedom must be bought or lost.

UPDATED:

The U.S. declared war on Japan December 8, 1941 in direct response to being attacked. Revenge? The next day, Germany declared war on the U.S. FDR offered monetary support to the British, stepping away from neutrality before this. However, one could argue that going to Europe was taking the fight to the enemy. Perhaps America should have simply played defense. It was not as though Germans were storming Manhattan en masse.

Also, for the “brown people” straw man argument: By defending the Iranian people against their psycho tyrant, I’m suggesting defending “brown people”. What did the war in Iraq become, if not a defense of brown people against Saddam Hussein and his sons and minions? What was the war against Iraq to begin with but a defense of the brown people in Kuwait?

Good grief. There’s evil people of every color. That racism card, though, that trumps everything.

UPDATED AGAIN:

In praise of the Bear Jew:

An old friend just attended the wedding of Eli Lake’s younger brother. I wrote my friend:

Do me a favor, really. Shake Eli’s hand and say thanks to the “Bear Jew” from another Brooklyn Jew, me. He did it Brooklyn style, the way I grew up. Some may have f**ked with me, but none came away unhurt, and never did again.

My old friend sent me this email:

Bruce,
I read your email to Eli and his parents- they all loved it and
that led to the handshake pictured here.

Also, I wrote a follow-up review of Inglourious Basterds here.

So here is one of those on-line polls that is not at all valid and clearly swamped by Kos kids (because they have no jobs and can goof around like this all day). So, if you’re not too busy going to see An American Carol–you are going to see this, right?

vote:

You need to do both, really. It’s what everyone is doing.

H/T Newsbusters

Oy vey. The movie was a kill joy. Where to begin? It was nice to see Chris O’Donnell again. He’s aged well. There, I said something nice. That’s over.

The director needs a good whuppin’. Patricia Rozema seemed, uh, conflicted. Comedy? Mystery? Drama? The movie lurched from slapstick to weepy churlishness in the span of a minute. The pacing was weird. It seemed like they ran out of time at the end to do some decent editing.

Maybe the problem is the screenplay. The script was ridiculous. Set in 1934, the “throws” of the Great Depression. Children should know how hard life can be. They just NEED to know at age 8 that fathers who feel they can’t feed their families will likely abandon them because of their pride–not that there’s anything wrong with that. Kids need to know the definition of “Hobo”. They need to know that Hobos are good people who get blamed for shit because their poor due to no fault of their own. Hobos were once like you and me and rich white people are lucky. And bankers are mean, evil people. Scratch that. Let’s keep this simple: writers, editors, men, garden party ladies, everyone but Hobos are evil. Americans, except for Americans without jobs, are evil. Have I said evil enough, because I don’t think I’ve driven the point home. So, I’ll just add this: Life is unfair and it’s whitey’s fault.

But you already knew that. Do you need to spend $12/person averaging ticket and food prices to hear that message beaten like a drum over the most miserable score you’ve ever heard? I’ll answer that for you: no you do not. Worse, do you need your children indoctrinated on your dime (you’re already stuck with public school) with this drivel? That would be called a leading question. I think you know the answer.

In short, I hate this movie ideologically, artistically, and every other way. Just proves that you can’t throw a bunch of great actors together and come out with a good movie. The story, editing, score, everything about the movie stunk.

Don’t waste your time or money.

1/2 star out of 4 stars