All right. I can respect the appreciation of her ass more than I can adulation of the majority of her work.

I just like hot women. She normally doesn't do squat for me, but it was different tonight. I'll get over it, though, and go back to ogling European actresses. What else can I say? I'm a classy lady.

Ahahaha. Well, you know how I've been fawning over Chris Colfer for the past week or two.

He is indeed precious. And even though he's perfectly legal, me makes me feel old because he was born in 1990.

He makes me feel just a tadge old, but there are a lot of things that make me feel old for my age. I don't know. I have the life of a high school senior, not someone who graduated four years ago.

Everyone I know tells me I should've been alive in the '70s instead of now. There was also one time in high school when my teacher started talking about Mia Farrow and my classmates looked at her blankly and I piped up with how she was married to Frank Sinatra, etc.

And Erasure is playing on VH1 Classic.

God, yes. The seventies must have been infinitely superior to the bullshit that the 90s and 2000s have been. But at least we weren't born ten years earlier.

I have the worst obsession with the Italian film industry in the '70s. Many of '70s Hollywood films look and feel like the time period, but Italian films just wallow in it. And if you felt like your life sucked in America, you could just over to Italy and act in their schlock. SAG eventually cracked down on that, but it continued well into the '80s.

Abrupt topic change: what is that icon from?

Inglourious Basterds, particularly this scene:

The actor is August Diehl, he reminds me of a German Crispin Glover (may not be wholly accurate, but same level of strangely sexy). King Kong was apparently one of Hitler's favorite films (one of the other characters, Wicki, has Brigittie Helm on his forehead, who was the lead in Metropolis, another Hitler favorite).

(I haven't viewed the clip yet; I'm in the midst of an exercise session.)

I was unaware that Hitler admired Metropolis, but, upon examination of the thought, it seems like the sort of thing he would have liked-- not just because of the alleged antisemitic undertones, but because of all the grandiose iconography.

My favorite version of Metropolis is the Giorgio Moroder version from 1984, with color tinting, extra scene, and a soundtrack comprised of various '80s artists such as Queen and Adam Ant. Most Fritz Lang fans consider it blasphemous.

Hitler was a fan of most of Lang's films. I read somewhere that he wanted Peter Lorre to stay in Germany because he loved his performance in M and Lorre wrote him a letter stating that, "There's room for only one mass-murdering monster in this country."

I think I love August so much because he appeals to everything I found attractive as a teenager in the late '90s:

Aaahahaha! Witty. And, yes, Peter Lorre's performance in M was exceptional.

I have not seen that version if Metropolis though, obviously, I should.

I have the original vhs, though it's also available on laserdisc, bootleg dvd, and there are torrents available, too. Getting the rights to the music is holding it back from a legitimate release. It was a very personal project for Moroder as he has nothing but respect for the film, and despite what anyone would tell you these days, it was extremely well received by critics and film fans back in 1984. It also has the distinction of being the first vhs my dad ever watched.

I hope I can get ahold of it eventually. Can you list a few of the tracks used and the sequences they correspond to?

Sure thing, though I'm going from memory, as I've not watched it in a while:

The opening of film - Giorgio Moroder - Machines
Worker's city - Cycle V - Blood From A Stone
Maria and Freder meet - Pat Benatar - Here's My Heart
The Legend of Babel - Giorgio Moroder - The Legend of Babel
View of the city and introduction of Joh Fredersen - Jon Anderson (of Yes) - Cage of Freedom
The unveiling of robot Maria - Bonnie Tyler - Here She Comes
Maria dancing at Yoshiwara - Freddie Mercury - Love Kills
The workers revolt, robot Maria is burned - Loverboy - Destruction

I can't quite recall the scenes that include Billy Squier's One Your Own and Adam Ant's What's Going On at the moment. There's a user on youtube, metropolisredux, who has been working from the laserdisc and vhs to create a DVD quality bootleg:

I saw the film!

You're right, by the way. The "I must be King Kong" actor had a noticeable presence. He reminded me a bit of the ringleader murderer from Funny Games.

I like to think I'm never wrong. But seriously, August is wonderful and generally plays more intense roles, so I enjoyed seeing him loosen up a bit. I can see the Michael Pitt, comparison, too. August has played two English speaking parts, one of which, Mouth to Mouth, involved him going down on Ellen Page (why do I love telling people that?).

I love him and Daniel Brühl in Love In Thoughts, which is marketed as a gay romance between he and Daniel's characters, when it's actually the least gay part of the film:

Yay Stranglers! I may actually want to see this film now.

How wonderful was the actor playing Hans Landa, by the way? Brilliant-- the kind of villain so many writers try unsuccessfully to make their villain into.

Doesn't German have a nice sound?

Any film with August is a sure bet - he's like Brad Dourif in a way, as no matter what the film is, he's worth watching.

He's been nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor, so there's been speculation he could get an Oscar nomination. I still want Mélanie to get a nomination because she was the heart and soul for me. Did you know that Leonardo DiCaprio was the original choice for Landa? I wouldn't mind him in the part, as long as he could pull off speaking 4 languages. Christoph Waltz, however, has 30 years worth of acting experience, primarily in television and he's so extremely modest about his talent that it's almost frustrating.

German really does sound beautiful, though I've never always thought that; I used to find it a bit too abrasive. In fact, I wasn't too sure what to make of IB because of its advertising campaign, so I talked one of my good friends (who is near fluent in German) to see it with me by using Daniel as a bargaining chip.

I'll also warn you now: A good part of the IB fandom, and especially Landa's fans, are creepers (and Nazi fetishists). But if you feel the need to read fic wherein Landa rapes Shosanna and plows Hellstrom, then you're in luck.

Did you know that Leonardo DiCaprio was the original choice for Landa?

Yes, but only because I read up on the film immediately after seeing it, as is my custom. I like DiCaprio, but the role was wrong for him, I think. I can only imagine his Landa as being like INTENSE... BROODING... STERN... INTENSE... BROODING. Part of what I loved about Waltz's performance was that he showed the character having fun with his job-- you can see why he does what he does the way he does it: because that's the way he does it best, because that's the way that's the most fun for him.

In fact, I wasn't too sure what to make of IB because of its advertising campaign

I'm not sure why I wanted to see it so badly; the trailers made it look like ACTION ACTION ACTION BRAD PITT ACTION HUMOR ACTION. In short, like a Guy Ritchie movie.

But if you feel the need to read fic wherein Landa rapes Shosanna and plows Hellstrom, then you're in luck.

Eeuh. Absolutely the fuck not. I'm still a bit upset about all the things that happened to Shosanna in the film; there's no way I want to read about yet more tragedy being heaped upon her.

I ended up spending so much time digging up nearly all of the information I could about the film and the parts of it that intrigued and moved me. So far, all of the best interviews with Tarantino come from film blogs and the Q&A sessions at showings in California and the Alamo Drafthouse, because the people asking the questions want to know more about the film than just asking about Brad Pitt and the Bear Jew like all the major publications have.

What I enjoyed about the acting was all of the subtlety and nuance (okay, so the Basterds themselves didn't quite have that); along with that, these characters are actually three-dimensional, not cliches. Tarantino wants the viewer to be able to see the film from different perspectives, which includes recognizing that Landa was a damn fine detective, and could even be likable. On my first viewing, I actually started to feel bad for him when he realized that Aldo wasn't sticking to the deal. But after that, I began feeling more and more resentment towards him for what he had done.

As Tarantino said, "With subtitles, strudel and everything how the fuck do you get the essence of this film across in a TV spot!"
The Japanese trailer is the best one I've seen that completely captures the essence of the film as best as a film trailer these days can: http://i-basterds.com/
Ultimately, it was seeing that brief glimpse of Shosanna covered in blood and sobbing that sold me, because if anything, I could at least see her story; I was more than pleasantly surprised to see that she was the main character.

The fandom is insane. I love Shosanna immensely and I nearly take it as a personal attack to see what Nazi-fetishists on the internet do to her. I should learn by now to not be surprised by what happens on the internet, but that will never happen.

A few errant thoughts:

I actually quite enjoyed Landa's eventual fate. When I first saw the whole swastika-on-the-forehead thing, I just thought, "Ehh, more torture-porn. Okay, great," but, for Landa, it was brilliant-- he could live, and he could profit greatly from hit deal, but he would never be able to become a hero-- he would suffer, and he would suffer because of the things he did wrong, not just because of poor circumstances. The disapproval of others would act like a surrogate conscience.

Also, I really liked the film's Goebbels. Goebbels is the only Nazi I'm particularly interested in, because he was such an unusual and self-contradictory character. While Hitler, for instance, was obviously blinded by all the sparkly rigamarole of the whole Nazi thing, Goebbels was clearly totally aware of what he was doing-- totally aware that he was spreading lies and killing innocent people, and unusually candid about it. But, at the same time, he obviously didn't see an issue with it. It's bizarre to think not only that such a person existed, but that they somehow were placed in the position of RUNNING A COUNTRY.