Diane Kruger almost didn’t win the part of German movie-star-turned- Mata-Hari Bridget von Hammersmark in Inglourious Basterds because Quentin Tarantino’s didn’t think she was German enough. He was familiar with her from National Treasure, Wicker Park and Troy, but assumed she was American and would have trouble with the German dialogue and accent.
“It’s a testament to my dialect coaches throughout the years,” says the actress, born Diane Heidkrüger thirty-four years ago in Algermissen, Germany. “They eventually convinced him I was actually German,” she says, but unfortunately Tarantino wanted Natasha Kinski for the role.
When Kinski backed out Kruger saw her chance. “I can be really obnoxious when I want something badly,” she says. For the audition she flew herself to Berlin and learned thirty pages of dialogue in German and in English. “I knew if I got my chance he couldn’t hire anyone else.”
The Berlin set of Inglourious Basterds was a long way from Algermissen. “I come from the middle of nowhere,” she says. “No one in my family knows anyone in the business.”
Her first taste of “the business” was at the Royal Ballet in London before an injury sidelined her dancing career. Returning to Germany she pursued modeling and became a top model. After starring in campaigns for Chanel and Giorgio Armani it was time for a change.
“You can only care so much about free clothes and posing. I wanted to be intellectually engaged.
At the suggestion of The Fifth Element filmmaker Luc Besson she left the runway to try acting. Working internationally—she’s fluent in three languages—she made an impression in a series of French films like Mon idole before Wolfgang Petersen cast her as Helen of Troy opposite Brad Pitt in the big budget epic Troy.
Admitting to being “inexperienced and completely overwhelmed” while making the movie, it nonetheless put her “on the map” in Hollywood. Soon she was starring opposite Nicolas Cage in National Treasure and its sequel while still finding time to make challenging films like Frankie and the Oscar nominated Joyeux Noël.
Inglourious Basterds is another jewel in her crown, but don’t expect her to return to that kind of role again anytime soon.
“Every movie has to be a different challenge,” she says. “I don’t want to play the same part that I’ve played in a different movie. I have to be scared of it to want to do it.”
The last words of “Inglourious Basterds”, the new film from director Quentin Tarantino, are “I think this just might be my masterpiece.” The words aren’t spoken by Tarantino (I’m not going to give away anything and tell you who says them), but they did flow from his pen and it isn’t hard to imagine him claiming them as a comment on his own work. After all he did spend more than a decade working on the script, so long, in fact that “The Irish Times” wrote that the film “has been predicted more often than the second coming of the Lord.” It’s meant to be the director’s magnum opus; a sprawling film that has been gestating inside him for years. I’d like to be able to report that it is his masterpiece, but it’s not, that’s the impossible to better “Pulp Fiction”, but it is as combustible a movie as will be released this year.
Borrowing the title from a little seen 1978 Enzo Castellari film, (the second word is spelled differently, inserting an “e” where the “a” usually sits), Tarantino has created a violent WWII fantasy that rewrites history.
The Basterds are a group of Jewish-American Allied soldiers led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). Think of them as the Dirty Half Dozen. Their mission is to hunt down, kill and scalp at least one hundred Nazis. The rare Nazi who escapes a nasty death at their hands—left alive to tell others of the Basterd’s ruthless tactics—is marked for life by a swastika carved deep into his forehead. Running parallel is a story thread about movie theatre proprietor Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a young Jewish woman, aching for revenge against SS colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) A.K.A. the Jew Hunter. In Tarantino’s bloodthirsty world it’s inevitable that Raine’s band of brothers, Shosanna and Col. Landa will cross paths.
The films of Quentin Tarantino deeply polarize people. For every person who quivers at the thought of a new film from the “Reservoir Dogs” director there is another who thinks his movies are too long, too self indulgent and too derivative. Despite those criticisms, fair or not, there is almost no argument that of all the brand name directors working today, Tarantino is the most audacious. His films are a singular vision and “Inglorious Basterds” is no exception.
It opens with an almost unbelievably tense scene, spanning the first twenty five minutes of the movie. It is a tour de force of razor’s edge filmmaking, sadistic and twisted, all without a drop of blood or a raised voice on display. It’s pure cinema, and as a set piece is the best filmmaking I’ve seen this year.
The opening sets a high standard and Tarantino does his best to live up to it, taking his time unfurling the story in chapter form. Unlike bombastic directors like Michael Bay, Tarantino understands the ebb and flow of the storyline. His movies don’t clobber you over the head with every frame, instead he calibrates the story to include deliberately paced scenes which create a sense of anticipation for the next crescendo of violence or plot.
The movie is, as I said, deliberately paced, but never feels slow. Tarantino weaves together the disparate storylines, and styles—everything from spaghetti westerns to 70’s exploitation and über violence—into one seamless package.
The bow on top of the package has to be the performance of the Austrian-born Christoph Waltz. As SS colonel Hans Landa he is pure evil; a slimy villain for the ages.
“Inglourious Basterds” won’t be for everyone, it’s too extreme for casual viewers, but the film lover in me is tickled that the heroine is a cinema owner who literally uses film to bring down the Third Reich. Love him or not, you can never accuse Tarantino of being boring.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Mo’Nique (Precious)
I think this is as close to a ‘gimme’ as you are going to get this year.
BEST SUPPPORTING ACTOR: Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)
Again, this is a category where the winner is rather obvious. I love how Christopher Plummer says ‘I am happy to be nominated,’ but Christoph Waltz takes this one.
BEST ACTRESS: Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia) or Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)
It’s a flip of the coin for me. I would like to see Meryl Streep win because I think she took Julia Child and turned her into an actual person rather than a caricature, but Sandra Bullock has been making amazing speeches. She took a movie that was deeply average and turned it into something that was Oscar-worthy.
BEST ACTOR: Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
He is Hollywood royalty. He has put in an unbelievable performance that has thrown vanity out the window.
BEST DIRECTOR: Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
This is a race between the first two: James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow, and I think Kathryn Bigelow is going to take this one.
BEST PICTURE: Avatar
It has been living at the very centre of popular culture since it came out, and not only has it made billions of dollars, but it has also changed the way Hollywood is doing business now.
Steve Gow
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Mo’Nique (Precious)
She really is a fantastic character in this movie. Great villain, which Hollywood really loves.
BEST SUPPPORTING ACTOR: Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)
The only chance that he won’t get it is that maybe some of the voters out there are sort of thinking that everyone else is going to vote for him so they kind of pick a secondary person.
BEST ACTRESS: Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia) or Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)
This is a really interesting category. Some might vote for Meryl, some for Sandra. And up the middle you might see someone like Carey Mulligan.
BEST ACTOR: Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
(The Academy) loves these kinds of roles where you see the star acting outside their element and a little grungy.
BEST DIRECTOR: Katherine Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
I think voters really like that there is that ex-husband factor as well in James Cameron (he and Bigelow were married) … I think they really want to see her sort of beat him.
BEST PICTURE: Avatar
Maybe it is my heart here, but I kind of hope The Hurt Locker wins.
An animated film, an Iraq war movie and one of the biggest blockbusters of all time were among the expanded list of 10 pictures nominated for Oscars Tuesday morning.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its Oscar nominees in Los Angeles, and the list included some favourites as well as a few surprises.
The list of best-picture nominees:
* Avatar
* The Blind Side
* District 9
* An Education
* The Hurt Locker
* Inglourious Basterds
* Precious
* A Serious Man
* Up
* Up in the Air
Canada AM film critic Richard Crouse said the best picture list, which included 10 films for the first time since 1943, was notable for what was not on it as much as for what was included.
“The movie that surprised me that wasn’t nominated in the top 10 for best picture was ‘Star Trek,'” Crouse told Canada AM Tuesday morning.
“And I only say that because when they first announced that they were going to expand the field to 10, everyone said that’s because they want to have ‘Star Trek’ in there. And ‘Star Trek’ was used as an exemplar of the kind of movies that were then going to get nominated.”
In what’s emerging as a showdown between ex-spouses, James Cameron’s “Avatar” is tied with “The Hurt Locker,” directed by his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow, for nine nominations each, including best director.
While “Avatar” has swept awards shows leading up to next month’s Oscars, Bigelow was named best director by the Directors Guild of America, long a harbinger for directing honours at the Academy Awards.
Bigelow is only the fourth female best-director nominee, following Sofia Coppola for 2003’s “Lost in Translation,” Jane Campion for 1993’s “The Piano,” and Lina Wertmuller for “Seven Beauties” in 1975.
Upon hearing the news of her nomination, Bigelow said she was gratified and humbled.
“It’s a huge, huge compliment to the entire cast and crew,” Bigelow said. “It was a very difficult shoot of heat and sun and windstorms and sandstorms and they had to unite crew from Lebanon and Israel.”
Joining Cameron and Bigelow in the directing category are Quentin Tarantino for “Inglourious Basterds,” Lee Daniels for “Precious” and Jason Reitman for “Up in the Air.”
Daniels is only the second African-American filmmaker to be nominated for best director. John Singleton received a nod in 1991 for “Boyz N the Hood.”
Daniels said Tuesday he was just as excited about his film’s nomination for best picture.
“After 82 years, it’s the first film nominated for best picture directed by an African-American,” Daniels said. “Isn’t that great? It’s so exciting.”
The nominees for best actress include emerging favourite Sandra Bullock for true-story football flick “The Blind Side.” Bullock won the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards for her role as a wealthy woman who helps a homeless teen, Michael Oher, who is now a star with the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens.
Bullock said winning is less important to her than the opportunity to meet her fellow nominees, actresses she greatly admires.
“You laugh at the absurdity of it all and how they pit women up against each other. We go, ‘Why are they making us out to be fighting when we’re just happy to share this moment?'” Bullock said. “The women I’ve met and gotten to know along the way have made me so happy for this business that didn’t really support women for a long time. It’s been really sweet. I feel really lucky to be working at this time.”
Joining her in the category are Helen Mirren as Leo Tolsoy’s wife in “The Last Station,” Carey Mulligan as a rebellious teen in “An Education,” Gabourey Sidibe as a teen mother and abuse victim in “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” and Meryl Streep as chef Julia Child in “Julie & Julia.”
Mirren said she was “very happy and honoured” to learn of her nomination. Mulligan said hearing the news was “like a really good, friendly punch in the stomach.”
Favourite Jeff Bridges, also a Golden Globe and SAG winner, heads up the best actor category for “Crazy Heart,” in which he plays a down-on-his-luck country singer trying to turn his life around.
Also nominated for best actor are George Clooney as a company hatchet-man in “Up in the Air,” Colin Firth as a gay professor grieving his dead lover in “A Single Man,” Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in “Invictus,” and Jeremy Renner as a bomb defusing expert in Iraq in “The Hurt Locker.”
Los Angeles Times film critic Pete Hammond said Bridges is “by far the front-runner here.”
“He’s a veteran, he’s 60 years old, people love him in the industry and they think he’s due and this is a terrific performance,” Hammond told Canada AM. “So look for him over George Clooney in the final race.”
Despite being a long shot in the best actor category, Freeman, who was in Rome when the nominees were announced, pointed out that it is his fifth nomination, “and I’m more proud of that than all the rest of it I think.”
Comedienne Mo’Nique appears poised to add to her award haul for her blistering turn as an abusive mother in “Precious.” She is joined in the best supporting actress category by Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick for “Up in the Air,” Penelope Cruz for “Nine,” and Maggie Gyllenhaal for “Crazy Heart.”
Matt Damon in “Invictus,” Woody Harrelson in “The Messenger,” Christopher Plummer in “The Last Station,” Stanley Tucci in “The Lovely Bones,” and Christoph Waltz in “Inglourious Basterds,” make up the best supporting actor category.
The 82nd annual Academy Awards will be handed out March 7 at Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre, and will air on CTV.
New Oscar producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic promise a livelier, more fun show than years past.
After Hugh Jackman livened up last year’s show with song-and-dance numbers, humour will likely be the order of the day for co-hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin.
While television ratings for the show have sagged in recent years, the presence of the highest-grossing film of all time in so many categories will likely draw in viewers.
Ratings peaked 12 years ago when Cameron’s “Titanic” nabbed 11 nominations. “Avatar” has since surpassed “Titanic” as the number one film of all time at the box office, with $2 billion in revenues worldwide.
Earlier this year Quentin Tarantino’s unconventional war film Inglourious Basterds played fast and loose with historical facts and raked in over $100 million US at the box office.
Now is looking for the same kind of success with his offbeat look at modern warfare, The Men Who Stare at Goats. These films join the list of quirky genres like military sci fi, war comedies and musicals like M*A*S*H and South Pacific and even Nazi zombie films, that use war as a backdrop for the main story.
Most war movies focus on men but 1944’s musical comedy Rosie the Riveter is a lighthearted romp about the women who stayed behind, doing shift work at munitions factories.
Better known in the all-singing-all-dancing war field is South Pacific. Inspired by James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, the film’s love story is set amid the conflict in the Pacific islands between American and Japanese soldiers. Buoyed by the popularity of songs like Some Enchanted Evening, South Pacific ran for almost five years at the Dominion Theatre in London.
Five for Hell is a cockeyed look at American GIs during the Second World War. The story of infiltrating enemy lines to steal documents that could end the war is by-the-book, but the film certainly isn’t.
It’s probably the only war film to feature miniature trampolines as tools to storm a Nazi base, a scene, one critic wrote, that resembles “a glorious circus act.” Rent it for the trampolines; watch it for Klaus Kinski’s portrayal of the evil Nazi officer.
Speaking of evil Nazis how about Dead Snow, a Norwegian flick about Nazi zombies? Love the advertising tagline: “Ein! Zwei! Die!”
Even stranger than undead Nazis is the Nazisploitation subgenre. There are, alarmingly, lots of these films, but the most famous is Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. Filmed on the set of Hogan’s Heroes this is one polarizing movie. Fans of 1970s exploitation fare love the lurid storyline about Commandant Ilsa’s vicious attempts to prove that women can withstand more pain than men.
Most people don’t. One writer said, “Despite a lot of competition, this is perhaps the most poisonous thing passing itself off as a movie that I’ve ever seen.”
And finally, more traditional than Ilsa or Dead Snow, but still on the fringe, is La Grande Illusion, a 1937 French film starring Erich von Stroheim, often credited as the first anti-war movie.
Diane Kruger almost didn’t win the part of German movie-star-turned- Mata-Hari Bridget von Hammersmark in Inglourious Basterds because Quentin Tarantino’s didn’t think she was German enough. He was familiar with her from National Treasure, Wicker Park and Troy, but assumed she was American and would have trouble with the German dialogue and accent.
