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The Rewatchables ·

Inglourious Basterds

year 2009decade 00sdirector Quentin Tarantinogenre Drama
host Chris Ryanhost Sean Fennesseyhost Mallory Rubin
All 15 categories

Most Rewatchable Scene · 28:23

The opening dairy farm sequence with Hans Landa

This is called one of the hardest picks the show has had: the movie is essentially five 20-to-30-minute scenes and holds three of a host's favorite scenes of the century. The nominees read out are the La Louisiane tavern with Fassbender, Kruger and Hellstrom; Landa at the dairy farm, the opening 20 minutes; Hickox meeting Fennec (as transcribed) and Churchill; Shoshana's strudel lunch with Goebbels and Landa, specifically her stifled cry when Landa leaves; and the Cat People scene of her putting on the makeup and the dress. Little Aldo is on the list, though his speech could be.

The introduction of the Bear Jew has to be on the list: Aldo's conversation with the German soldier, the bat knocking in the tunnel, the needle drop as Donnie Donowitz emerges, and the high laughter at the Boston accent, which is Eli Roth doing a Ted Williams impression; the hosts chant the Teddy ballgame and Lansdowne Street lines.

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie · 1:24:07

"Well, if this is it, old boy, I hope you don't mind if I go out speaking the kings"

Quotes are hard here for the same reason as scenes: the scenes are 20 minutes long and the quotes a paragraph long, people speaking pages of novelesque dialogue; one host grabbed few Landa lines because they are in German, while another has mostly Hans lines, having written the subtitles down in English rather than grabbing them off the internet, earning a 'Thanks, Dad'.

The film

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Directed by Quentin Tarantino · Drama

153 minutes

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Cast

Selected cast credits · Film reference

Brad Pitt Lieutenant Aldo Raine , nicknamed "Aldo the Apache" due to his guerilla tactics and trademark of scalping Germans he defeats, is the battle-hardened commanding officer of the Basterds. Raine is a coal miner and bootlegger from the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee , : 499 where he fought against the Ku Klux Klan . He survived a lynching and is a descendant of Jim Bridger and the Bridger family . He was a member of the Devil's Brigade where he was trained in guerrilla warfare .
Mélanie Laurent Shosanna Dreyfus , a 23-year-old : 90, 186 French Jewish cinema owner whose family was murdered by Landa's men when she was 20 years old. Shosanna manages to escape due to luck and Landa's decision to not pursue her. : 90–91 Most of The Bride 's attributes in Tarantino's Kill Bill come from Tarantino's original development of Shosanna for Inglourious Basterds , on which he started to work before Kill Bill . Originally Shosanna, whom Tarantino described as a Jewish Joan of Arc , was an assassin who had a list of Germans she would cross off as she killed them. However, Tarantino instead switched her character attributes over to The Bride, later redeveloping Shosanna into the version who appears in the film. : 22:00–24:00
Christoph Waltz Standartenführer Hans Landa , an eloquent, cultured, multilingual but deeply ruthless Austrian SS officer who becomes an enemy of both Shosanna and the Basterds.
Eli Roth Sergeant Donny Donowitz , also known as "The Bear Jew", a brooding member and second in command of the Basterds who executes Germans with his baseball bat. In Tarantino's screenplay Donowitz is likened to Joshua : 167 and his bat to the sword of Gideon . : 170 Roth channeled actor Tony Curtis for his portrayal per Tarantino's direction. Donny is the father of Tarantino-created film producer Lee Donowitz ( Saul Rubinek ) who appeared in True Romance (1993). Adam Sandler was originally given the part but had to turn down the role due to scheduling issues with Judd Apatow 's Funny People (2009).
Michael Fassbender Lieutenant Archie Hicox, a British commando and former film critic who assists the Basterds on their mission in France. Hicox was patterned after actor George Sanders . Simon Pegg was originally given the part but had to turn down the role due to scheduling issues with Steven Spielberg 's The Adventures of Tintin (2011).
Diane Kruger Bridget von Hammersmark, a German film star turned spy for the United Kingdom . Tarantino based Hammersmark on Hungarian actress Ilona Massey . For her portrayal of the character Kruger was inspired by German actress Hildegard Knef .
Daniel Brühl Fredrick Zoller, a German army sniper whose story is made into a propaganda film . Tarantino created Zoller as a Nazi version of Audie Murphy . : 11:00–13:00
Til Schweiger Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz, a former German army soldier who murdered numerous Gestapo officers and is recruited by the Basterds.
B. J. Novak Smithson "Little Man" Utivich, a short and slightly built member of the Basterds unit.
Gedeon Burkhard Corporal Wilhelm Wicki, the Austrian -born, deadpan-humored translator of the Basterds unit.
Jacky Ido Marcel, Shosanna's lover and the projectionist at the cinema
Omar Doom Omar Ulmer, a member of the Basterds unit
Samm Levine Hirschberg, a member of the Basterds unit
August Diehl Sturmbannführer Dieter Hellstrom, an intelligent German officer who is suspicious of Hicox.
Denis Ménochet Perrier LaPadite, a French farmer sheltering the Dreyfus family.
Sylvester Groth Joseph Goebbels
Martin Wuttke Adolf Hitler
Mike Myers General Ed Fenech, Hicox's superior officer.
Julie Dreyfus Francesca Mondino, Goebbels' French translator.
Richard Sammel Sergeant Rachtman
Alexander Fehling Master Sergeant Wilhelm
Rod Taylor Winston Churchill , who assists Fenech in briefing Hicox. This was Taylor's final film appearance before his death in 2015.
Sönke Möhring Private Butz
Paul Rust Andy Kagan, a member of the Basterds unit
Michael Bacall Michael Zimmerman, a member of the Basterds unit
Carlos Fidel Simon Sakowitz, a member of the Basterds unit
Ken Duken " Mata Hari " soldier
Christian Berkel Proprietor Eric
Léa Seydoux Charlotte LaPadite
Tina Rodriguez Julie LaPadite
Lena Friedrich Suzanne LaPadite
Jana Pallaske Babette
Rainer Bock General Schonherr, a member of the Oberkommando des Heeres
Michael Scheel General Frank, a member of the Oberkommando des Heeres
Hilmar Eichhorn Emil Jannings
Patrick Elias Jakob Dreyfus
Eva Löbau Miriam Dreyfus
Salvadore Brandt Bob Dreyfus
Jasper Linnewedel Amos Dreyfus
Volker Zack Michalowski " Edgar Wallace " soldier

Everything from the episode

In the order the hosts got to it. Open a row for the discussion.

16:03

Roger Ebert's review
In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 00:16:03Read transcript
  • Among the negative critics, Daniel Mendelsohn in Newsweek and David Denby in The New Yorker were harsh, but Roger Ebert loved the film and gave it four stars.
  • The 88% Rotten Tomatoes score is called both low for how good the movie is and not indicative of how passionately some people dislike it.
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28:23

Most Rewatchable Scene

The opening dairy farm sequence with Hans Landa

The opening dairy farm sequence with Hans Landa

In the discussion (23)
Approx. transcript time · 00:28:23Read transcript
  • This is called one of the hardest picks the show has had: the movie is essentially five 20-to-30-minute scenes and holds three of a host's favorite scenes of the century. The nominees read out are the La Louisiane tavern with Fassbender, Kruger and Hellstrom; Landa at the dairy farm, the opening 20 minutes; Hickox meeting Fennec (as transcribed) and Churchill; Shoshana's strudel lunch with Goebbels and Landa, specifically her stifled cry when Landa leaves; and the Cat People scene of her putting on the makeup and the dress. Little Aldo is on the list, though his speech could be.
  • The introduction of the Bear Jew has to be on the list: Aldo's conversation with the German soldier, the bat knocking in the tunnel, the needle drop as Donnie Donowitz emerges, and the high laughter at the Boston accent, which is Eli Roth doing a Ted Williams impression; the hosts chant the Teddy ballgame and Lansdowne Street lines.
  • Other nominees: the forehead-carving reveal in that sequence, the Bear Jew's first kill, the Stiglitz killing-spree montage with its heavy metal riff and Samuel L. Jackson voiceover, the Hans flip at the end with Aldo's bluffing and pursuit of vengeance and the 'just a chewing out' moment, the theater carnage, and the Gorlami scene introducing the three Italian compatriots to Landa with their Godfather hands, which lets the audience laugh after the weighty historical material.
  • The tavern scene is a host's favorite part along with the opening 20 minutes: essentially Tarantino making a Hitchcock movie, like Rope, one of the great bar scenes, with two thirds of it spent on the heads-up card game; a joke asks whether people in the 40s were smarter, and the answer is that it is a Tarantino invention in which every character is clever.
  • Hellstrom's King Kong theory is Tarantino's own, shared with Terry Gross on Fresh Air; the tension builds when the unseen Hellstrom stands up with his boot of beer, and the scene is a comedy of manners about how long they have to stay, a literal card game in which each side ups the ante until pistols are pointed at testicles, capped by the hand gesture for the scotches.
  • Fassbender's performance is called crazy: a man born in Germany, raised speaking German, moved to Ireland and learned English, playing an Englishman who learned German and affects an invented Pitzpaloo-esque (as transcribed) accent; he tried out for Landa five times and was heartbroken before being given Hickox, and this was the moment a host asked who that movie star was, after Hunger had made him look like the next Daniel Day Lewis (transcribed 'Dale and Dale Lewis'), with this suggesting the next James Bond.
  • Hickox talks like Trevor Howard and looks like Sean Connery, the smartest and most dashing man in the room but also a pretentious film critic who appreciates a good scotch; alcohol is deployed throughout the scene, from the boot of beer and the soldiers' schnapps for Maximilian's birth to the champagne and the scotch that gives the Englishman away.
  • The 'speaking the kings' line is a line a screenwriter waits his whole life for; Fassbender's affectation and manner change the second he does the hand, knowing it is over, and Hellstrom knows too, which is the point of the line that neither of them is getting out of the bar.
  • August Diehl as Dieter Hellstrom, called the most evil Nazi name ever heard, gives a hell of a performance going nose to nose with Fassbender; Bridget von Hammerschmark's (as transcribed) overconfidence in insisting they stay, when the soldiers knew before going downstairs that a meeting in a basement was insane, raises the question of whether the scene wants the audience to doubt her loyalty.
  • The answer offered is that the scene hammers home that these people had jobs before the war, a film critic and an actress rather than trained soldiers, so she might simply pick a bar whose bartender she knows; her operating-table line that it was either a trap or a terrible coincidence but not both reflects what probably happened thousands of times in the war.
  • The ticking-clock tension of the tavern is Hitchcockian, but it may not beat the opening 20 minutes: the lights go down, the Morricone music and the odd title fonts start, and the film opens like a spaghetti Western, building and building as someone comes up the road, with Lea Seydoux there, before a 20-minute conversation between the dairy farmer and Hans Landa that announces Waltz as an actor nobody had seen before.
  • The opening shot is almost exactly the opening shot of Unforgiven and the setup of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, both huge movies for Tarantino; the Morricone score is from The Big Gun Down and the opening signature (transcribed as 'Fira Lys') is Beethoven, the great Germanic composer arriving in a small village just like Landa. The sequence then becomes a Sherlock Holmes movie bookended by Westerns, with Shoshana running toward the horizon echoing The Searchers and John Wayne in the doorframe, even though Tarantino hates John Ford.
  • The doorframe says that Jews in Europe in the early 40s were always outsiders on the run, and frames a movie poster for what unfolds as she runs toward her cinema in Operation Kino; it is impossible to overrate what it meant that the film really speaks the languages of the time and place, with an actor who could act in French, German, English and Italian.
  • Landa asking to switch to English so the family under the floorboards would not understand was his plan all along; Waltz can be taken for granted now because he repeats the trick, but the modulation when he asks 'You're sheltering enemies of the state, are you not?' and drops the gregarious affectation reveals the heavy of the movie, the big bad rather than Hitler, in one of the most memorable introductions of an actor and a character.
  • The scene is simultaneously compelling and horrifying: the gregarious guest asking for a glass of milk and lighting his pipe, then the instant pivot into an incarnation of horror; the pan down to the Dreyfus family hiding below and back up to their eyes, people the audience just met whose stakes are instantly understood; then 'Au revoir Shoshana' and the 'boop' with the gun, suggesting that for Landa the pursuit is as gratifying as the catch and that her escape only entices him more.
  • Landa changes across the movie's three or four years: in 1941 he is a cookie full of arsenic, sweet outside and evil inside, proud of the Jew Hunter nickname, but by his talk with Aldo he claims to be an honorable man who does not control nicknames. One reading is that he is just saying what seals the deal rather than showing a change of conscience; another is that he has to stay elusive to keep an advantage, overpowering with Lepedit (as transcribed) and negotiating with Aldo while still in charge, which also shows the bureaucratic and clerical tyranny of the Germans, with the carrot that they would not harass the family anymore.
  • The Mike Myers scene is loved as a work of imagination: Rod Taylor coming out of retirement to play Winston Churchill, Myers as a military attache, the scotch in the globe, Fassbender talking about Pabst, Selznick and Louis B. Mayer, and the 'Down with Hitler. All the way down' toast; the last 10 years of Myers' career are called strange, but a star who no longer needs to make Austin Powers 4 can simply spend two days in a Tarantino movie and be part of it forever.
  • In the strudel lunch, 'wait for the cream' is good advice even though Hans is a monster, and the cigarette put out in the cream is called the biggest on-the-nose metaphor in the movie, the cookie with arsenic again.
  • Asked by name whether he likes strudel, the host cannot recall ever eating it, assumes it is pretty good, and is not really into a flaky pastry. — Chris Ryan
  • Melanie Laurent's eyes pop at her first bite of strudel, read as a character who has not had dessert in 10 years because of the life she was forced into; the counter is that she and Marcel could get strudel or the 1940s French Milk Duds at the cinema, but the moment reads as someone who never gets taken to nice lunches while being terrified, with pleasure and pain mixed together.
  • The quick moment when Hans orders her a glass of milk, as if to say he knows who she is, is one of the most tense in the film and sincerely scary; Laurent and Kruger are revelations up there with Waltz, Kruger previously known mainly as the beauty from Troi (as transcribed), and the earlier part of the sequence is strong too, with Goebbels and Shoshana talking through the French translator while Zoller tries to ingratiate both Goebbels and a woman who wants him dead, a schoolyard romance that is complex yet easy to understand.
  • The final call is a toss-up between the opening dairy farm sequence and the tavern, but the Hans introduction comes to mind first, so the dairy farm is the pick; the others agree, calling it one of the most searing scenes they have seen, with a last glaze of syrup for 'Teddy fucking ball game'.
  • Earlier, not wanting to jump ahead to most rewatchable scene, a host notes you could basically say the whole movie.
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50:56

What’s Aged the Best?

The World War II French Resistance atmosphere; Waltz's performance; the writing; the Morricone-sourced music; the 'wh...

The World War II French Resistance atmosphere; Waltz's performance; the writing; the Morricone-sourced music; the 'what do you hear?' exposition device; the nods to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; the actors switching between languages

In the discussion (5)
Approx. transcript time · 00:50:56Read transcript
  • The World War II French Resistance vibe: taverns, leather jackets, Melanie Laurent's high-waisted wide-legged pants with a cool sweater; a host loves Alan First (as transcribed) novels and the literature and film of the era, calling it capital-R romantic even if it was not as cool as the books make it seem, with no cell phones or Twitter.
  • A run of jokes about the Bear Jew building his brand without social media, going viral and having a jamming clout score, and a staff presentation on clout; then the list: World War II France and the Resistance atmosphere, Waltz's performance, the writing, which is timeless, and the music, timeless because it is largely from past Morricone soundtracks.
  • The 'what do you hear?' exposition technique, normally disliked, is seamless and effective here, letting the questioned character explain identity and purpose; it happens multiple times early in the movie, and spies always need to be asking for information.
  • Two homages to forthcoming work: Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France, the film's original title, is chapter one, and Pitt's one attempt at another persona is the Italian stuntman Enzo Gorlami, while he plays a stuntman in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; nobody goes up his own ass more than Tarantino, who has a shared universe without making a big deal of it.
  • The way the actors switch flawlessly between German, French, Italian and English, or intentionally fail to, has aged the best for one host.
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54:13

What’s Aged the Worst?

Eli Roth's feel for baseball; Fassbender being in only two scenes; the Cat People needle drop; the slow motion when F...

Eli Roth's feel for baseball; Fassbender being in only two scenes; the Cat People needle drop; the slow motion when Frederick shoots Shoshana

In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 00:54:13Read transcript
  • Eli Roth's feel for the game of baseball: not a bad swing, but he seems to have learned the baseball vocabulary phonetically with no grasp of who Teddy Williams was or where Lansdowne Street is, and he reads as a New Yorker rather than a Boston guy.
  • The clear winner or loser for one host is Fassbender being in only two scenes; he is such a dynamo that it feels misremembered, but he does not appear until the 50th minute and is in it for about 17 minutes, every second electric, and it is ballsy and disciplined of Tarantino to kill him off so soon after introducing him, though a host would watch 97 hours of him getting whiskey out of a globe and wishes the two would work together again, since Fassbender could use it.
  • Regardless of Donnie Donowitz's origins, Ted Williams in 1941 hit .406 with a .553 on-base and .737 slugging, an OPS of 1.287 (transcribed as 1287), in what is thought to be his last season before enlisting; Mike Trout can eat shit.
  • Asked by name for more, the host has little, is not interested in whether Quentin could have made the movie, and finds nothing that makes him want it to stop, but the Cat People scene is too anachronistic, with David Bowie's voice distracting in an otherwise consistent tone, even if the operatic, expressionistic German style it reaches for is understood. — Sean Fennessey
  • Bowie may connect to Pabst and the artistic flourishing of 1920s Germany before the Reich, with Bowie's 1970s Berlin period as an extension of that bohemian Germany, though that is admitted to be far-fetched; more likely Tarantino just thought it would be cool, which has to be accepted with every Tarantino choice, like the title spelling he said he would never explain, an homage to the 70s movie and a Basquiat-esque flourish.
  • The switch to slow motion when Frederick shoots Shoshana is one of the only pieces of filmmaking in the movie a host dislikes, cheesy and weird and a nod to a different kind of movie, among the literal dozens of homages in the film.
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58:24

Casting What-Ifs

Leonardo DiCaprio was to play Hans Landa; Michael Fassbender auditioned for Landa; Simon Pegg chose Tintin over Hicko...

Leonardo DiCaprio was to play Hans Landa; Michael Fassbender auditioned for Landa; Simon Pegg chose Tintin over Hickox; Adam Sandler was rumored for the Bear Jew; Nastassja Kinski turned down Bridget von Hammersmark; Tarantino nearly passed on Melanie Laurent as too famous; Brad Pitt accepted Aldo over rose at Chateau Miraval; an early iteration rumored Stallone, Willis and Schwarzenegger

In the discussion (9)
Approx. transcript time · 00:58:24Read transcript
  • Leonardo DiCaprio was supposed to play Hans Landa, which would have meant doing the movie in English since he could not have learned German and French in time, though the joke is that a guy who slept in a carved-out bear might have taught himself.
  • Michael Fassbender tried out for Landa a couple of times and was heartbroken, then got the call that he had Hickox at the expense of Simon Pegg, who chose Tintin instead, a sliding-doors moment the hosts call very tough since they love Pegg.
  • Adam Sandler was rumored to play the Bear Jew and would have nailed the Teddy Williams thing; Nastasha Kinski (as transcribed) was initially going to play Bridget but turned it down, so Kruger got the role, and Kinski, 10 or 15 years older, would have been more a Marlene Dietrich aging starlet; Kruger is so good in the movie.
  • This is a generation of actors who grew up on Tarantino: Fassbender and friends put on a stage version of Reservoir Dogs in Dublin, and Simon Pegg sat alone in a hotel room anguished over choosing between Spielberg's obvious blockbuster and Tarantino's World War II movie.
  • Tarantino struggled over casting Melanie Laurent because he thought she was too famous and wanted to discover someone new; she insisted she was not famous and convinced him.
  • Tarantino met Pitt at Chateau Miraval, where Pitt lived with Angelina Jolie, and they discussed Aldo over a night and five bottles of the estate's own Pink Floyd rose before he accepted, so the rose was a critical factor.
  • This was the first time Tarantino worked with an in-his-prime movie star rather than rediscovering an underappreciated asset, and everything since, Django, Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, has used stars in their sweet spot, so it may have been more of a risk for Tarantino than for Pitt; complicating things, the Weinstein Company produced and distributed the film, and Pitt, who had refused to work with Weinstein for years over Gwyneth Paltrow, did so because he wanted to work with Tarantino.
  • Possibly half-assed research rather than a casting what-if: an early iteration when Tarantino first conceived the project was rumored to include Sylvester Stallone as Aldo, Bruce Willis as Donnie Donowitz and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Hugo Stiglitz, which would make sense for a late-90s script.
  • Earlier, during the tavern discussion, Fassbender is said to have tried out for Landa five times, and a host wants to discuss in Casting What-Ifs how both careers would have gone with him as Landa.
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1:02:35

The Dion Waiters Award for Best Heat Check Performance

Eli Roth

Eli Roth

In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 01:02:35Read transcript
  • The award is tough this time: Eli Roth is up there; Fassbender may not count because he does a lot of screen time within a little; Mike Myers does not necessarily do a lot with a little; Rod Taylor as Churchill just says 'brief him'; all were great.
  • Alexander Felling (as transcribed) as Wilhelm, Maximilian's dad, carries a crucial moment and is very good; one pick is Eli Roth, Diehl as Hellstrom is floated as a possible vote, and another votes Roth while allowing you could go a couple of ways.
  • Sylvester Groth as Goebbels also does a lot with a little; a host has Roth winning another category later and bumps that category up next.
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1:03:42

The Ruffalo / Hanna / Rubinek / Partridge Overacting Award

Eli Roth

Eli Roth

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 01:03:42Read transcript
  • The award is named for Saul Rubinek's turn as the movie producer Lee Donowitz in True Romance, so Eli Roth not only overacts here but has to win, because he plays Lee Donowitz's father; the family relationships between Tarantino characters are saved for internet research, and Sylvester Groth's case is denied under the bylaws of the Rewatchables.
  • Every Roth line reading, like 'fuck a duck', is goofy, though the way Groth begins to weep in the theater after Hitler's praise of Nation's Pride has stuck with a host, and the two could flip-flop between the two acting awards.
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1:04:46

Half-Assed Internet Research

Hellstrom's King Kong theory is Tarantino's own from Fresh Air; the opening title card is Tarantino's handwriting; th...

Hellstrom's King Kong theory is Tarantino's own from Fresh Air; the opening title card is Tarantino's handwriting; the screenplay sets Aldo's briefing in England and explains his neck scar as a survived lynching; Donny Donowitz is the father of True Romance's Lee Donowitz and Aldo is suggested as Floyd's great-grandfather; Eli Roth directed Nation's Pride; the marquee film is Clouzot's Le Corbeau; Zoller is based on Audie Murphy; Goebbels's Lilian Harvey tantrum reflects her 1939 flight from Germany; Landa's rat speech draws on The Eternal Jew; von Hammersmark is based partly on Zarah Leander; Tarantino said discovering Waltz gave him his movie; Hickox quotes Cole Porter and Villon

In the discussion (7)
Approx. transcript time · 01:04:46Read transcript
  • Hellstrom's King Kong theory is Tarantino's own from his Terry Gross interview, and the opening title card is in Tarantino's handwriting; the screenplay reveals that the 'I want my scalps' briefing takes place in England and that the ligature marks on Aldo's neck come from a survived lynching, a common punishment in the 20s and 30s, which also references Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
  • Lee Donowitz and Donnie Donowitz are related, and Aldo is assumed or suggested to be the great-grandfather of Floyd from True Romance; Eli Roth, the horror director of Hostel, directed Nation's Pride, the film within the film.
  • The movie Shoshana takes down off the marquee is Henri-Georges Clouseau's (as transcribed) Le Corbeau, a famous 40s French film with hidden anti-Nazi messages; the Audie Murphy basis for Zoller is a clever subversion of the American ideal of heroism applied to a German soldier.
  • Goebbels throws a tantrum at Francesca's mention of Lillian Harvey because Harvey fled Nazi Germany in 1939 after helping the Jewish choreographer Jens Keith escape to Switzerland; Landa's rats speech to the farmer is influenced by The Eternal Jew, an SS propaganda film made in Poland that depicted Jews as disease-spreading rats; Hammersmark is based somewhat on Zara Leander (as transcribed), a Swedish actress said to have been a Russian spy; this is less half-assed research than World War II history.
  • Tarantino has said that discovering Waltz gave him his movie, since he had come to fear the role was literally unplayable, and he was resistant to Leo speaking English with a German accent for two and a half hours.
  • Hickox is literate and literary: 'Paris when it sizzles' is a lyric from a Cole Porter song, and 'like the snows of yesteryear' comes from a Villon poem (attributed in the episode to Jacques Villon), heady stuff for a Tarantino movie that still feels true to the character.
  • Earlier, during the tavern discussion, a host borrows a piece of half-assed research: the King Kong scene is Tarantino's theory from Fresh Air, and his Top Gun theory would have been anachronistic.
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1:08:12

The Joey Pants “That Guy” Award

Hellstrom's driver, the actor who plays Egon Tiedemann in Dark; Rod Taylor as Churchill; Denis Menochet as the dairy ...

Hellstrom's driver, the actor who plays Egon Tiedemann in Dark; Rod Taylor as Churchill; Denis Menochet as the dairy farmer

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 01:08:12Read transcript
  • A niche pick: the assistant who drives Hellstrom to pick up Shoshana at the movie theater, who plays Egon Tiedemann in the show Dark, met with blank stares; it is observed that everybody who is a Joey Pants is also kind of famous, like Sam Levine (as transcribed), Paul Russ (as transcribed) and B.J. Novak, all recognizable.
  • All of the Basterds are also screenwriters, a Tarantino-esque flourish; Rod Taylor is that guy here because you cannot tell who he is; since Joey Pants is usually the guy sharing a title card with four others, Denis Menoshe (as transcribed), the dairy farmer, a French actor of note who turns up in Assassin's Creed with Fassbender, is nominated as a Joey Pants.
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1:09:59

Apex Mountain

Brad Pitt; Christoph Waltz; Diane Kruger; Melanie Laurent

Brad Pitt; Christoph Waltz; Diane Kruger; Melanie Laurent

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 01:09:59Read transcript
  • Mountains are a big thing in the movie, like Pits Paloo (as transcribed), which prompts the question of whether this is Tarantino's Apex Mountain.
  • Asked by name to define the category, the host first jokes about having broken his foot the day before and his new cast, then explains that Apex Mountain means a person at the peak of their powers both commercially and artistically. — Chris Ryan
  • One host says this cannot be Tarantino's Apex Mountain: he won the screenplay Oscar at about 29 after Pulp Fiction, was the toast of Hollywood, could have done anything and made Jackie Brown; whether this is his best movie is a different question.
  • Tarantino has three phases: Dogs, Fiction and Brown as Elmore Leonard underworld movies; Kill Bill and Grindhouse as martial-arts exploitation raised to an art-house level; and Basterds, Django, Hateful Eight and Hollywood as alternate history heavily influenced by Westerns. A host has a sentimental attachment to phase one, which taught him pop culture, likes phase two less, and finds it remarkable that in 2019 people still turn out for two-and-a-half-hour talky films like the roadshow Hateful Eight.
  • Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a TBD, possibly a phase four or a continuation or throwback. Asked by name for a big Tarantino conversation, the host says she loves Tarantino, that this is her favorite Tarantino movie, that she really loves Django and Pulp Fiction, and that this is the one she thinks about, craves and enjoys the most. — Mallory Rubin
  • It might be Apex Mountain for Pitt: shouted out as the last half century's most beautiful person, a very weird guy with extraordinary taste who works with interesting people and never gets credit, the character actor trapped in a leading man's body; the run-up is Ocean's 13, The Assassination of Jesse James, Burn After Reading, Benjamin Button and this in a row, all different performances for great directors in movies that cannot happen without him.
  • Not all were hits, Jesse James was famously a bomb though remembered by some as maybe the best movie of the century; afterward he does The Tree of Life, Moneyball, World War Z, Killing Them Softly, 12 Years a Slave and The Counselor and produces good work, but this period feels like the most significant of his career since his 90s breakthrough.
  • The hosts are split on Tarantino, one no, one arguably yes and a third no, prompting the joke that nobody understands Apex Mountain; Pitt, Waltz, Kruger and Laurent are all yes, and B.J. Novak is a no because The Office is his apex, when the residuals hit.
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1:14:54

Picking Nits

Operation Kino is not a subtle code name; Nazi security at the premiere is lax with a mountain of nitrate film and vi...

Operation Kino is not a subtle code name; Nazi security at the premiere is lax with a mountain of nitrate film and visible dynamite; Hickox calls Pabst German when he is Austrian; Wilhelm's table cannot hear the switch to English; Bridget leaves her shoe and a signed napkin behind; the developer is threatened on top of flammable film; the 'Hans out of a million' line; Hitler fetching his own gum; Shoshana's filmed message is in English

In the discussion (12)
Approx. transcript time · 01:14:54Read transcript
  • One host has no nits; another opens with a big one: Kino is the German word for movie theater, so Operation Kino is not a subtle code name for a mission anyone overhearing could figure out; OPSEC for the Nazis is not high order, with everybody important put in a theater the size of the Bowery Ballroom guarded by little more than Wanda, where any Italian filmmaker can walk in off the street.
  • Rewatching, a host was briefly confused about why Landa let the two Italians into the theater, having forgotten that he purposefully allows them to bring the dynamite in to take care of the Nazi command; the nit is that his decision is already made, though his following through on killing Bridget in the interrogation delays the realization until his exchange with Aldo.
  • What about everybody else in the security unit: there is a mountain-sized pile of flammable film and literal dynamite around people's legs, visible to the naked eye on the stairs, which prompts a John Hamm (as transcribed) joke and a reprimand for having dick on the brain.
  • Two explanations offered: it is the end of the war and the Nazis have checked out, their famous rigor fallen away, or the movie is bad; the hosts take the first, since you cannot get 90 minutes into a rewatch and decide the movie is bad because the Germans lacked security.
  • Hickox is said to have been writing a book on G.W. Pabst, whom he calls German, but Pabst is Austrian, just like Hitler, and he still got the cosign from Fennec (as transcribed) and Churchill despite the error; when fact checkers at the Ringer make mistakes, the response is 'there's the door' and a photo of John Hamm (as transcribed) to go.
  • Wilhelm's table at the Maximilian birthday celebration cannot hear the next table and is not suspicious at the switch to English, even though the scene's tension rests on the others in the room being mortal peril; the party freely conducts a sensitive conversation and the neighbors hear none of it, and things go awry only because Hellstrom enters after they yell at Wilhelm and because of the strange accent; Wilhelm's drunkenness is perfect, like hitting peach schnapps at a high school party.
  • Without wanting to be insensitive about being shot in the leg, a host objects that Bridget, in agony and terror, leaves behind not only her high-fashion footwear but a napkin bearing her kiss and signature; the defenses are that this is just movies, she is not a trained agent who knows how to clean a scene, and Aldo needed to get out of Dodge rather than sweep the room.
  • The Landa-as-Sherlock-Holmes affectation of pipe, hat and uniform is loved, but is it Sherlock Holmes if her name is literally on the napkin; maybe he is not as smart as he thinks, and the modern version is sending a tweet instead of a DM, like the Ray Allen tweet he said was hacked; she should have signed BVH; Landa's clout score and self-edited wiki page are joked about.
  • The nitrate film is extremely flammable, yet Shoshana and Marcel throw the developer onto what is basically a bomb to convince him and threaten to put an axe in his skull; the 'Hans out of a million' line (as transcribed) does not make sense; and a host cannot shake Hitler having to get up in the middle of the movie to get his own gum when nobody will fetch it for him.
  • Teased by name that the Hitler gum complaint will be the social pull-quote for the episode, the host answers that this is a category of the podcast and she is taking the mission seriously. — Mallory Rubin
  • It is odd that Shoshana's message in the film is in English given how little of the movie is; it is a filmic flourish and an obvious homage to The Wizard of Oz, her face created in light through the smoke, and English makes the movie's most critical sentiment easiest for the intended audience, with the victory over Germany seen as the victory of the English-speaking West; whether it also says Americans are the best filmmakers is doubted, since Tarantino might favor the Italians or the Japanese, and the movie is about how we define ourselves.
  • Earlier, during internet research, a host saves one item for picking nits while another admits to having no nits to pick at all.
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1:24:07

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie

"Well, if this is it, old boy, I hope you don't mind if I go out speaking the kings"; "That's a bingo"; "The reason t...

"Well, if this is it, old boy, I hope you don't mind if I go out speaking the kings"; "That's a bingo"; "The reason the Fuhrer has brought me off my Alps in Austria and placed me in French cow country today is because it does occur to me. Because I'm aware what tremendous feats human beings are capable of once they abandon dignity"; "I love rumors. Facts can be so misleading where rumors, true or false, are often revealing"; "Cousin business is a booming"; "You know something, Udovich? I think this just might be my masterpiece"

In the discussion (10)
Approx. transcript time · 01:24:07Read transcript
  • Quotes are hard here for the same reason as scenes: the scenes are 20 minutes long and the quotes a paragraph long, people speaking pages of novelesque dialogue; one host grabbed few Landa lines because they are in German, while another has mostly Hans lines, having written the subtitles down in English rather than grabbing them off the internet, earning a 'Thanks, Dad'.
  • Aldo's 'We got a German here who wants to die for his country. Oblige him!' and the prisoner-taking speech ending 'cousin business is a booming' are performed and called incredible; 'if this is it, old boy, I hope you don't mind if I go out speaking the kings' is an all-timer, and 'that's a bingo' is delivered in a way that is so funny.
  • One host's favorite this time is Landa's speech to the farmer about the places it would never occur to a hawk to hide and why the Fuhrer brought him off his Alps to French cow country, because he is aware of what humans are capable of once they abandon dignity: essentially every war movie, a man who lives exactly where people are pushed past their boundaries, supremely unnerving in the delivery.
  • Two more Hans lines from the same conversation: 'I love rumors. Facts can be so misleading where rumors, true or false, are often revealing', followed gleefully by what rumors the farmer has heard regarding the Dreyfuses, and 'interesting as the thought may be, it makes not one bit of difference to how you feel'; in a movie where propaganda is prominent, this is its expertly executed fake news moment.
  • Many of the great lines are exchanges, like the whole encounter between Landa and Aldo, a series of heaters between the two smartest people in the movie, though Shoshana may be the smartest: 'what's that English saying about shoes and feet' answered with 'looks like the shoe's on the other foot', and the sauerkraut sandwich and 'sniper's delight' speech, delivered with Pitt's elocutionary choices for a one-quarter Apache Tennessee mountain man, descendant of Jim Berger (as transcribed).
  • Hitler's hysterical 'who and what is a private butt' is offered, with a tease about being pro-Hitler denied; 'I'm French. We respect directors in our country' is a perfect meta line; Hickox's special rung in hell for people who waste good scotch is very true.
  • Bridget's reply that she does not like mountains but likes smoking, drinking and ordering in restaurants is a host's own life; the Landa and Udovich (as transcribed) exchange about nicknames, the 'little man' and 'not circus midget little' is great humor laced into the ending.
  • Landa's 'we simply aren't operating on the level of mutual respect I assumed' to Aldo, delivered as if sincerely hurt, and the final 'You know something, Udovich? I think this just might be my masterpiece' before the cut to black, one of Tarantino's famed bang endings.
  • Some negative reviews keyed on the masterpiece line as Tarantino judging his own work, but a host thinks he was right; respect for Manohla Dargis notwithstanding, calling the movie boring is confounding, and nothing in 2009 was better, with Avatar and Up in the Air the comparisons.
  • A line of criticism nominated for best quote: Christopher Hitchens compared the film to sitting in the dark having a great pot of warm piss emptied slowly over your head, per Wikipedia; the hosts joke about reviving that style for Captain Marvel, with one reserving melodramatic rants for Jets, Metz and Nicks content (as transcribed).
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1:32:33

Sequel, Prequel, Limited Series, or All-Black Remake

Yes, as a 10-episode series, if Tarantino writes and directs it

Yes, as a 10-episode series, if Tarantino writes and directs it

In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 01:32:33Read transcript
  • It would work as long as Tarantino writes and directs; asked whether it would have a lead character or be anthological, a host thinks it expands into the larger body of material he got rid of and played around with, more Hickox, more Basterds, Mussolini in the mix since Aldo went through Sicily, and the Italian cinema connection.
  • Enzo Castellari, director of the original Inglorious Bastards, appears in the movie, and Bo Svensson (as transcribed), the star of the original, appears in Nation's Pride; Svensson is Scandinavian rather than Italian.
  • Earlier, the middle of the movie with the tavern and Operation Kino is said to be able to stand as its own movie; asked whether it could be a 10-part Netflix series, the answer is by all means, with a 10-part Hickox or Shoshana series both wanted.
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1:33:09

Probably Unanswerable Questions

Does Landa recognize Shoshana at the strudel lunch? Is he already plotting against the Nazi high command when he lets...

Does Landa recognize Shoshana at the strudel lunch? Is he already plotting against the Nazi high command when he lets her go? How did Shoshana come to own the cinema? Why does she stay in France instead of leaving Europe?

In the discussion (4)
Approx. transcript time · 01:33:09Read transcript
  • The most persistent question: when Landa has strudel with Shoshana and forgets the last thing he was going to say, are we meant to feel he recognizes her or senses he has met her before; the milk order is read as the tell, and the 'au revoir' at the farm as a sign he does not care whether he catches her because he always has her in his talons.
  • Does he fail to catch her because he is already orchestrating his own scheme to kill the Nazi high command at the premiere, ten steps ahead; it is hard to apply historical precedent to an alternate history, but he does raise not wanting to face a Jewish tribunal, many Nazis fled to South America, and a Jordan Peele show about that is coming to Amazon; the 'one more thing' moment may just keep her in an eternal state of fear.
  • How did Shoshana come to own the cinema within four years while assuming the identity of Emmanuel; she may be telling the truth about an aunt and uncle who left it to her, and reportedly Maggie Chung (as transcribed) was cast as the aunt and shot flashback sequences that were cut, as were Cloris Leachman's scenes, with Isabelle Hubert (as transcribed) the first choice for Madame Mimou (as transcribed) before scheduling conflicts.
  • Documentation of who owned what was harder then; if the theater really came from her family, why would she think it safe to stay somewhere connected to her, when the safest thing would be to leave Europe; the answer offered is that, like Landa plotting against the Germans, she is plotting too, not hiding but changing the marquee letters and living daily life under a different identity.
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1:36:44

Who Won the Movie?

Quentin Tarantino or Christoph Waltz

Quentin Tarantino or Christoph Waltz

In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 01:36:44Read transcript
  • Lea Seydoux is joked, Waltz is offered, and the reply is that there is nothing to overthink: it is Quentin Tarantino, who was in the dark at this point; the third wave of American revisionist Westerns starts with this movie, it revivified his ability to raise money and attract movie stars, and it does both things Tarantino movies do, discovering new talent and spotlighting great talent.
  • Recalling the show's Social Network conversation about the best movie of the last decade, a host puts this in the best-of-the-century conversation and cannot see how the sole author of it is not the winner; another is tending toward Tarantino because that is what leapt off the screen this time.
  • A counterpoint is that this is a moment where the film's reception at the time, when many people did not feel that way, is hard to ignore, even though it made money and remains his second highest grosser; Tarantino himself said Waltz gave him his movie, and it is hard to imagine the film being what it is without Waltz, the only person who could do what he did, with the joke of DiCaprio doing a Blood Diamond South African accent as Landa.
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More from the conversation

The host introduces the film as perhaps the most controversial pick the show has had in dividing critics, a movie that contains multitudes and the hardest one he has had to wrap his mind around, approachable through Tarantino, through its movie stars, through its real-world and historical implications, and through its food and fine details.
Approx. transcript time · 00:02:36Read transcript
Asked first for big-picture feelings, the host says rewatching has him questioning whether this is the best Tarantino movie despite Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill; two and a half hours feels like 10 minutes, and he loves its mix of action, comedy, stardom and historical reimagining, which he does not find offensive, and the guts of spending almost 10 years to finish something this ambitious.
Approx. transcript time · 00:03:57Read transcript
A host reads Tarantino as viewing the film as the culmination of what he had worked toward for 10 years; Eli Roth described Grindhouse as a party that was received poorly, though a host would still rewatch it, and watching Tarantino make Basterds as like watching a general conduct an army.
Approx. transcript time · 00:05:08Read transcript
Asked for her feelings, the host answers with her favorite line, 'That's a bingo!', calls the film thrilling from start to finish, says it feels like it takes place in the span of a moment despite its complexity and the years that pass, that it rewards repeat viewing as much as any movie, and that its chapters work as standalone masterpieces that are inextricable from each other.
Approx. transcript time · 00:05:40Read transcript
The structure is two dueling plots to kill Hitler in the same movie theater, the Shoshana plot and the Basterds plot, told in brilliantly staged set pieces; the plot going hazy is a sign of a great movie. It is more linear than earlier Tarantino, drawn from Men on a Mission World War II films like The Dirty Dozen, The Big Red One and The Guns of Navarone, shot like a widescreen Technicolor Western, with chapters including Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France, Operation Kino and Revenge of the Giant Face.
Approx. transcript time · 00:06:54Read transcript
The film is the crowning achievement of Tarantino as a dialogue writer even though only about 30% is in English and the references are visual or historical, to G.W. Pabst and Lenny Riefenstahl (as transcribed) or to Italian horror directors in character names; J. Hoberman quoted Andrew Sarris on the Bud Boddicker (as transcribed) Western as a floating poker game of people bluffing for their lives, which is what this movie is: a war fought through conversation and translation, with Waltz recalling Tarantino giving him line notes in German he could not speak.
Approx. transcript time · 00:08:38Read transcript
Aldo is the one character incapable of changing persona, the heart of the movie to Landa's brain, with Pitt overplaying every line reading in a perfectly movie-star way; Waltz was the discovery and won the Oscar while a lot of the reviews were not very positive and cited him as the one great achievement, but after 10 years of Waltz playing one over-performative note, Pitt's choices get more interesting on each viewing. Landa and Aldo mirror each other, brought from the Alps and the Smoky Mountains to destroy the other side, embodying the American frontiersman and the Reich's clean-lunged Alpine self-image.
Approx. transcript time · 00:11:17Read transcript
The critical dissension: Manohla Dargis found it boring, Jonathan Rosenbaum compared Tarantino to Sarah Palin and the film to Holocaust denial, Mendelsohn and Denby were harsh; the movie gets better the further it gets from that anxiety, as a fantasy that many found cathartic, and Hitler already knows the war is lost, making the Paris premiere a performative last gasp the critics did not reckon with.
Approx. transcript time · 00:15:28Read transcript
Objections included Mendelsohn's point about turning Jews into Nazis and the cartoonish, popcorn depiction of the Holocaust; Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in The Atlantic that a Jewish director could not have made it. One host says they are Jewish with grandparents who survived the Holocaust; another describes grandfathers who liberated camps for the Red Cross and flew bombers for England, and the difference between this and Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan, which crowned the golden generation.
Approx. transcript time · 00:17:44Read transcript
Tarantino is in the third phase of his career, expressing historical rage through fantasy, rage as wish fulfillment; Hollywood was already myth-making during the war, as Mark Harris's Five Came Back documents with Capra and Huston, and Zoller is based on Audie Murphy, whose own life became a 1950s movie before he starred in Westerns; everyone can make a movie and reimagine history, though the Holocaust makes the question fraught.
Approx. transcript time · 00:20:37Read transcript
The film imagines art waging war on the barbarians, with Shoshana believing film could save the world; 'I'm French. We respect directors in our country' is the iconic meta line; it is also a bang-on fun movie, the most fun Tarantino set inside the most complex moment of the 20th century.
Approx. transcript time · 00:23:06Read transcript
Release stats: out August 21, 2009 after a Cannes premiere, $320 million worldwide and a comeback after a wandering post-Kill Bill period of a CSI episode, acting for Takashi Miike and Grindhouse with Robert Rodriguez; Tarantino had talked publicly about the project since about 2001, with Killer Crow (as transcribed) his related idea about Black soldiers; eight Oscar nominations, Sally Menke's last edit for him, a Best Picture field won by The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow over Tarantino for director, and Waltz the only win.
Approx. transcript time · 00:24:18Read transcript
Sign-off thanks Sean Fennessey, Mallory and Craig, and the next episode is teased as another Tarantino movie, Reservoir Dogs.
Approx. transcript time · 01:39:02Read transcript