The following analysis landed in my inbox this morning. Sunrise Tippeconnie, who recently shared his thoughts on Funny People with the candler blog, is a filmmaker and writer in Oklahoma City.

For me to respond to Basterds, I must first note my reaction of Death Proof, which over time feels more and more like it provides the most revelation about Tarantino and his relationship with the “cinema.” Death Proof describes a world where those that don’t fully comprehend the rules of “cinema” are eliminated (the women in the first half talk about high school movies, are surrounded by cinema clichés, but cannot make it to see the end of the film, while those with knowledge of film’s history and making survive through to “the end.” While Quentin the bartender, perhaps a more “true” image of Tarantino, is balanced out with a stumbling cinematic fake of a doppelgänger in Stunt Man Mike, a character that perhaps doesn’t know the trade of filmmaking quite so well as his stunt women targets (and perhaps also fakes his film credits list in hopes of trapping his next victims, a deadly misstep of cinematic naivety in a rule-enforced genre). So, as Death Proof provides cinematic knowledge as survival, Basterds shows another side of the coin, the results of survival through cinema’s naivety: the “Propaganda Film”. Read on…

Guest poster Sunrise Tippeconnie is a filmmaker currently living in Oklahoma City. He is an old friend of the candler blog who also dabbles in film criticism and history. You can read more of his work in Sooner Cinema: Oklahoma Goes to the Movies. We hope to see more of Sunrise on the candler blog in the future.

There are three questions that immediately come up about this picture. 1. Is it a “passing of the torch” film? 2. Is it film a masterpiece? 3. Is it funny?

Let’s answer the last question first. Funny People is exactly what the title suggests, it is about people, and not about being funny. To be direct, the film is funny but it is definitely not a [traditional] comedy. In fact the concept of the film being a comedy (specifically a crossbreed of two subgenres: the Adam Sandler and the Judd Apatow comedy) is a complex idea that reaches into anthropologic study in the vein of the Hal Ashby’s Being There. Sandler’s character George Simmons finds out in one of the first (and almost rushed) scenes at blank range that he has cancer. Comedy and death immediately call up another analysis of a comedic master: Chaplin in Monsiuer Verdoux (and we all know how the audience loved that film, despite it’s ranking as a masterpiece). Read on…