My Favorite Movie of 2009

I know it's March, but I thought I would write a blog on two of my favorite movies of 2009. The one I want to start with is "Inglourious Basterds."

1.) "INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS"

"Inglourious Basterds" is about of a group of eight Jewish American Solders led by Lt. Aldo Raine to kill nazis. Once they are dead Lt. Aldo Raine was their heads scalped. The story is split up into Five chapters first centering on: The Nazi Hans Landa and his team of Nazis killing a Jewish family only to have one survivor escape their wrath. The second is centered on the Lt. Aldo Raine's Inglourious Basterds team and their killing nazi business. The third is centered on the survivor of the first chapter: Shosanna Dreyfus. She's older and now works at a movie theater, under a different name. Nazis want to talk to her about wanted to use her movie theater to screen a nazi propaganda film for Hitler called: "Nation's Pride." This gives her the idea to get her revenge on them by burning the theater down, using nitrate film. The fourth is centered on one of Lt. Aldo Raine's men infltrated the nazis only end in a mexican standoff. One of the survivors is a movie actress is Bridget von Hammersmark (played by Diane Kruger). She becomes part of Lt. Aldo Raine's team, to which they end up going to "Nation's Pride." The fifth chapter is the last chapter and is centered on Lt. Aldo Raine's men and Shosanna attending "Nation's Pride" and are about to kill the nazis. But under curtain circumstances things almost go wrong. Briget von Hammerersmark is killed by Hans Landa. Lt. Aldo Raine and one of his men get kidnapped by Hans Landa. They end up making a deal to end the war. Shosanna gets killed by Frederick Zoller (played by Danel Bruhl) but Frederick also is killed in process by Shosanna as well. But the theater does get blown up and the rest of the Lt. Aldo Raine's team kill Hitler and as many nazis as possible before getting blown up by their own bombs that they brought with them, which ends up killing everyone. In the end Lt. Aldo Raine and his last man killing one of Hans Landa's men and Lt. Aldo Raine cuts a swastika into Hans Landa's head, completing his masterpeace.

For me, this is by far one of Quentin Tarantino's well-designed, suspenseful, and well-written script. It took him over a decade to offically complete the script. Quentin once decribed it as his "Dirty Dozen" or "Gun of the Navarone." He started writing the script in 1998 but couldn't stop writing because he came up with too many ideas, and he didn't know at time how to complete the ending. So he held off the script in 2002 to make his Kill Bill movies in 2003-2004. Once he was done he went back to work on his "Inglourious Basterds" script. He trimmed it down and began shooting in 2007.

The casting is brilliant! The four of my favorite are Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine, Melanie Lauren as Shosanna Dreyfus, Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa, and a cameo by Rod Taylor as Winsted Churchill. Brad Pitt did wonderful, fantastic job as Lt. Aldo Raine. His character has mixture of intesity, dark-humor, and leadership. Only Quentin Tarantino could come up with a wonderful idea of cast Brad Pitt in this role. Melanie Lauren playing Shosanna Dreyfus is the real center of the story, giving the viewers a sense of sympathy for her because of the massacre of her whole family by Nazis and wanting to get revenge by inviting them to the movie theater she works at and burning it down with nitrate film. She kind of reminds a little bit of Uma Thurman's characther in Kill Bill only in World War 2. But the one performance that will definitely be remembers by viewers is Christoph Waltz as infamous Nazi Hans Landa. His performance hypnotizes you. Both Quentin's writing and Christoph's performance give the viewers a real sense of how evil Hans Landa. In the opening of the film when Hans is talking to Shosanna's dad comparing Jews to rats and squarrels will down in film history as one of best monologues in Quentin's movies. And lastly, I just want to give a shout out to Rod Taylor's performance as Winsted Churchill. Who ever thought Quentin Tarantino could get someone like Rod Taylor to play Winsted Churchill? That's amazing! And see Mike Myers in the same room with Rod Taylor is pure genius of Quentin. I give the movie 3 1/2 stars!

The music to "Inglourious Basterds" is innovative. Quentin Tarantino originally wanted Ennio Morricone to compose the soundtrack for the film but never could because he was working on another project called: "Baaria." Quentin ended up using eight of Ennio's tracks for the film. My personal favorite is the end credits song: "Rabbia e Tarantella."

The DVD special features on disk one include: Extended Scenes; Nation's Pride - A film within a film. On disk two special features include: Roundtable Discussion with Quentin Tarantino; Brad Pitt; and Elvis Mitchell; The Making of Nation's Pride; Quentin's Camera Angel.

2.) "WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE"

"Where the Wild Things Are" is about a little boy named Max. He has a very lonely life. His mom is too busy. His dad doesn't live with them anymore. And his sister is too social in her friends lives to hang out with him. At the begining of the movie, he's building an igloo and see his sister and her friend across the street. Max gets the idea to throw snow balls at them, but when he does all of his sister's friends charge him with snowballs. Max runs away in delight knowing that they're paying attention to him. He jumps in his igloo but all of his sister's friends end up wrecking his igloo. One of them ends up jumps on top of the igloo, causing it to colapse on top of Max. Max's sister's friends end up leaving. When Max gets out from the colapsed snow he's angry and ends up going to his sister's room and destorying it. Max's mom comes home and Max tell her what happened. They end up cleaning his sister's room. At dinner time, Max come to the dinner table with his wolf custume on; like from the book, and ends up making mischief. His mom gets angry and Max bites her on the shoulder, to which Max feels bad but ends up running from home. He runs through an opening in a gate and goes into some woods to find a small boat. He climbs into the boat and sails away, not knowing where he's going. He sails for a couple of days; until, in the middle of the night, he sees an island, and see some fire at the top of it. When he get to the island he follows where the fire is to find The Wild Things. One of the Wild Things: Carol (played by James Gandolfini) is destorying their homes because one othe Wild Things: KW (played by Lauren Ambrose) is gone, so he's wrecking everything. As the other Wild Things Alexander (played by Paul Dano), Douglas (played by Chris Cooper), Ira (played by Forest Whitaker), and his girlfriend: Judith (played by Catherine O'Hara) try to calm Carol, Max decides to help out by trying to destroy the Wild Things' homes. The Wild Things are shocked and confused by this small boy. Max was about to destroy one of the their homes when see another Wild Thing called the Bull (played by Michael Berry, Jr.). The Bull looks at Max, furiously. Carol ends up taking a liking to Max while the others end up getting angry at Max for helping. They are about to eat him until Max screams: "Be still!" They all stop and Max tries to convice them he comes from another land with magical powers and is also King. This stops the Wild Things for eating him, and they start liking the idea of having a king. KW ends up returning from her friends: Bob and Terry. Carol crowns Max, and Max declares a Wild Rumpus. Max and Wild Things play together, until they dog pile each other and fall asleep. When Max wakes up he's in Carol's arms. Carol is taking Max to show him something. They go to Carol's hideout where he build a model of play where only the things you want to happen would happen. Max gets the idea to build this place. He gathers all his Wild Things to build a giant fort. Once they are done, Judith and Max end up getting into a fight over who Max favors the most. KW splits it up the fight and tells Max to come with her. KW wants to show Max her friends Bob and Terry so they can help Max's troubles. Once they get to the beach Max sees two owls flying the sky, only to see KW hit them with rocks, causing them to fall to the ground. Once KW grabs the owls she entroduces them as Bob and Terry. Max doesn't understandt them because they're owls but apparently KW can understands them. She gets the idea of bring them back to the fort. But once they return Carol gets angry that KW brought Bob and Terry to the fort and takes it out on Max. So Max has to come up with a way to make the Wild Things have fun. So he comes up with idea of having a dirt clod fight. Max, Carol, KW, and Douglas are the good guys while Ira, Judith, Alexander, and the Bull are the bad guys. But when Douglas hits Alexander he gets angry and quits the game. Judith and Ira try to calm him when Max hit Judith in the eye. The fight continues but starts to get a little to real. When Carol is hit he's on the ground. Max and Douglas jump over him, while KW jumps off of Carol's head, which enrages him. Carol and KW start to fight. Once Carol and Douglas leave, she tell Max she's going to leave for good. At night, in the middle of the woods, the Wild Things begin to not trust Max as their King. Once they leave Max is all alone. In the morning, Max enters to fort to find Alexander sitting alone. The two talk and Alexander figures out Max isn't a real king. Alexander tells Max he doesn't care if he's king, but not to let Carol find out. The next day, Max wants to build a secret room for himself but Carol gets angry and leaves because he wanted the fort to not have secret room. Later that night, Carol gathers Max and the rest of the Wild Things and tells them to rip down the fort because it's all wrong. Carol gets angry and tell Max he's a bad king, but Douglas tells Carol he isn't a king. He was only king because they wished he was king. Carol is enraged and tries to eat Max. When Carol is chasing Max through the woods, Max runs into KW. She stick him in her stomach to hid him. When Carol find KW he gets angry that KW is hiding him and she tell him he's out of control. Carol storms off, and KW and Max have a conversation about Carol. KW is frustrated at Carol's temper. Max tell her he's just scared. Once KW takes Max out her mouth he tell her he's going home the next day. The next day, Max goes to Carol's hideout only find that it's been destroyed by Carol. So Max make a little heart shape out of sticks and put a "C" for Carol in the middle. He leaves to get the boat ready for home. When Max passes the Bull he tells Max to tell everyone back home good things about them. Max says goodbye to Ira, Judith, and Alexander. He walks away, with KW and Douglas, and gets the boat ready. When he gets in KW tell him not go she says to him: "I'll eat up, I love you so." And the two hug. Carol returns to his hideout to find the heart with the "C" in the middle that Max made for him. Carol starts to cry, knowing he made a huge mistake. He starts running to beach to find Max. When Max is sailing off, he sees Carol running to him. When Carol runs into the water he stops and looks at Max with tears and regret in his eyes. Max looks at him with compassion. Carol then begins to howling with a whimper tone to it. Max, quietly, howls back at him; that's when the rest of the Wild Things howl back at Max. And that's the last time he sees them. When he returns home his mom is so happy to him. The two hug. Max and his mom then sit at the kitchen table. Max is eating cake and his mom is sitting at the table looking at Max, nodding off to sleep. Max stares at her and smiles.

This adaptation of the children's book: "Where the Wild Things Are" is one of the best adaptations ever. Spike Jonze did a wonderful job writing (along with Dave Eggers) and directing this movie. I was a little surpised this wasn't nominated for a oscar. To take a short children's book like this and make it into a movie is wonderous because they could've butchered it up and turn into another unoriginal fairy tell about Max journeying to island, meeting the Wild Things, and they have save the island from an evil wild thing, Max learns a typical lesson in teamwork. But they didn't. Spike Jonze made the movie more edgy, innovative, and critical to how Max is feeling emotionally, because that's what the Wild Things represent; what is going on inside of Max.

I love the behind the scenes of this movie. There is a making of book and it is spectacular! When they got the voices for the movie, Spike had all the Wild Thing Actors to wear microphone on their head with bandanas around them. He then put them in a sound a soundroom with different props and allowed the actors to go wild. Spike filmed them so when he's actually filming he could show the costume actors how to physically perform. Once that was all done the filmakers animated the facial expressions to make it more life-like, and then they added the voices of the actors, which only it more realistic. What love out of the movie is the relationship between Max and Wild Things. To me, that's what the heart of this movie is about.

The music to "Where the Wild Things Are" is impressive and different. Spike hired Karen O and the Kids to make original songs for the movie. One of the songs: "All is Love" got a grammy nomination.

The DVD special features include: A series of "Where the Wild Things Are" Shorts by Lance Bangs.