Tarantino Tales: Episode 7 - Inglourious Basterds

I have to admit that I only watched this edit because the fan editor kindly asked me to review it. 'Inglourious Basterds' happens to be one of my favorite films of all time, which already makes me cringe at the idea of messing with it. Also I don't really see the point of shortening a movie down to one hour just for the sake of it.

Nevertheless I enjoyed this different retelling of a familiar story. The audio-mix is truly outstanding, especially the way the music moves into the background (most notably in the first two acts). Nice title-animations in the beginning, and decent music replacements overall. I don't regard the replacements improvements, but I was rather amused with the song added to the bashing scene with the Bear-Jew haha. Well done. And being a fan of the Floyd I truly loved the finale, great idea and again a perfect soundmix. But like other reviewers already pointed out: some of the songs felt a bit unnecessary or even out of place.

Another thing I really liked was the omission of the overlong name-guessing scene in the basement - the only flaw in the masterpiece. I wonder if it wouldn't have been possible to insert a shot between she shot of the German lieutenant drinking and the subsequent shot saying that he's had enough - to solve the continuity error. Apart from that, all other cuts are flawlessly executed. There are a lot of big and short omissions, and I only noticed them because I know the original by heart.

My least favorite part of this cut is probably the lunch scene with Emanuelle and Landa. In the original, it's (another) brilliant scene, but it doesn't really work without the weight of the original opening scene. The short black-and-white flashback that substitutes it doesn't provide that weight, no matter how well that sequence is edited. It's simply too short to make a real impression. But than again, the goal of this edit was of course to do it all in 60 minutes, and there's a lot going on in the original movie to be condensed into such a narrow timeframe.

So despite this I did enjoy this cut for what it aims to achieve, and I think the fan editor made the most of it, despite all limitations of the conceptual goal.

A/V - Nothing to complain about, although I watched on my 1080 monitor with average headphones so I may not be the best judge.

V Editing - There were a few moments where I noticed a cut, but far and few between.

A Editing - I felt like most song placements were a bit off. They were often turned on and off or down (as though they were diegetic, but then sometimes not). They feel a little sporadic and randomly placed. Usually a film has a moment or two where a big music piece is placed over a montage or climatic scene, here its used frequently and not always at a fitting time. Loved the use of Psycho Killer though, the placement was perfect.

Narrative - I think for the most part it works but there were a few shortened scenes that were noticeably shorter and its hard to tell if that was because I am pretty familiar with the film or not.

Enjoyment - Overall it was a fun experiment that is obviously not trying to be a replacement for the film, but my biggest gripe is that as I watched I realized how much I wanted to just watch the original film because so many of the best scenes and moments are either shortened or completely gone. For example, the basement scene is shorted pretty substantially and as a result, the tension is somewhat deflated.

I really hope this review doesn't come off too harsh because I still think it works well as what the editor intended for it to be which is a tribute to Bowie in a bite-sized form of the original film.