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Friday October 16, 2009

Lancelot Links—Idi i Smotri

  • That shot of Eli Roth (SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS) emptying his machine gun into Hitler's face at the end of Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Bastards" reminded me, in a way, of the ending of "Idi i Smotri" ("Come and See") (1985), a Soviet-era World War II drama about a kid caught in the Russian countryside during the Nazi invasion, which I'd seen numerous times while volunteering for Ben Milgrom's University Film Society at the University of Minnesota in the mid-1980s. I assumed I was the only one to make this connection. Of course not.
  • "Idi i Smotri" is, according to Time Out London, the best movie ever made about World War II. Their whole list is worth checking out. Start with 50-41 ("Stalingrad," "The Last Metro," "Empire of the Sun"), continue to 40-31 ("The Pianist," "Letters from Iwo Jima," "Downfall"), then 30-21 ("The Great Escape," "Mephisto," "Night and Fog," "Casablanca," Schindler's List"), 20-11 ("Saving Private Ryan," "Bridge on the River Kwai," "Army of Shadows," "The Dirty Dozen") and 10-2 ("Rome, Open City," "Cross of Iron," "The Thin Red Line"). The point isn't to find out where you invevitably disagree with Time Out London, but to find movies, particularly British movies, worth watching. I don't think I've seen half the movies here.
  • I came across Time Out London's list via the Scarecrow video site, which has its own list of movies that possibly influenced "Inglourious Bastards." Everyone in Seattle knows Scarecrow as the place to get the video no one else has.
  • And I showed up on the Scarecrow site in the first place looking for the documentary "From Hollywood to Hanoi" (which, oops, they don't have), and which my friend Andy Engelson got to see in Hanoi at the Hanoi Cinematheque. Read about his experience here.
  • And that's how we careen the pinball.
Posted at 07:54 AM on Friday October 16, 2009 in category Movies