Tarantino vs. the Coen Brothers

NSFW!

Inglorious Basterds Film Clapper Outtakes

Laughing Squid explains:

Contributing to Batserds’ growing aura of cult status is the above DVD special feature comprised of Italian clapboard operator Geraldine Brezca who does hilarious, foul-mouthed, and wonderfully sharp scene calls just before clapping for “action.”

Typically when a scene number is called the clapboard operator will follow the English alphabet, and each film set will have their own variation such as using names in alphabetic order, or the International Radio Operator Alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.). Not Brezca, “the Clapper Loader and Tarantino’s Camera Angel.” She’s been working with Tarantino over the course of several films and has her own style — which as you’ll see, tends to either shock or compel the actors, or both. After the second viewing, we think there is a method to her madness, even if you think that shouting “Dario Argento” or “Scene 34 Blowjob!” at actors seems random.

Actors and Directors in Vanity Fair

I got my Vanity Fair in the mail today, and here are three of my favorite pictures from the photo series of actors and directors:

 

 

Quentin Tarantino in bizarre Japanese commercial

No classy Japanese whisky ads for Quentin. No, he has to do a bizarre kung fu talking DOG speaker for your cellphone ad. A speaker shaped like a dog. Yeah.

Google Wave Cinema: Pulp Fiction (NSFW!)

Google Wave is "a personal communication and collaboration tool" announced by Google earlier this year.  The name was inspired by the Firefly television series in which a Wave is an electronic communication (often consisting of a video call or video message).

 There's also an example using a scene from Good Will Hunting.

Before They Were Basterds

Scarecrow Video, which must be an incredible independent video store in Seattle, has compiled a list of movie references in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. They are still working on the list, but they are up to 149 movies so far. I told you this was a movie about movies! For instance, Les Vampires is on the list because the poster for the film is in Shoshanna's office. Here's another weird reference -- who would have thought Disney?!

Disney Treasures: On The Front Lines
This collection of rarely seen WWII era Disney animation is absolutely incredible. Be sure to watch Der Fuehrer’s Face (originally titled Donald Duck in Nutzi Land) where Donald has a nightmare about living under Nazi rule and Education For Death, possibly the darkest film ever produced by Disney.

They've compiled the list not just from films that Tarantino has mentioned in interviews, and all the films he used for soundtrack music, but films that are similar to scenes in the movie. Carrie is a favorite horror film of Tarantino's, the fiery end of Basterds certainly evokes the ending of that film as well.

I knew I was missing a lot of movie references while watching it, but holy moley! I learned a lot by reading through the references listed.

Hat tip: Rope of Silicon

Tarantino On There Will Be Blood

This is really interesting. Tarantino talks about the friendly rivalry he has with Paul Thomas Anderson. He says that Anderson making the masterpiece that is There Will Be Blood spurred him to "bring up his game" and make Inglourious Basterds.

I also like his comments on Daniel Day Lewis and the broken leg his character had in the beginning. I felt the same way about that long journey he must have made into town -- and how fascinating it was that Anderson didn't feel the need to show any of it. From Daniel Day Lewis' performance, you could just picture in your mind that he did it.

Inglourious Basterds - Mini-review

I saw Inglourious Basterds earlier this week, and I've just been letting it sink in. I think I need to see it again because there is so much going on, that I know I didn't catch it all.

First off, it's an excellent film -- and also a lot of fun. From the trailers and many commercials, you know the set up. Brad Pitt's Aldo Raine leads a group of American Jews in Nazi occupied France looking for Nazi scalps. The Germans call them the "Basterds". Horror director Eli Roth plays one of the "basterds" who is known as the Bear Jew, and his choice of weapon is a baseball bat.

What you haven't seen in the commercials is the character of Col. Landa, "The Jew Hunter," sent to find all the hidden Jews left in France. Landa is played by Christoph Waltz, an actor known for TV work in Germany, who won the best actor award at Cannes for this role. Waltz is simply amazing as Landa. Waltz, a German, also speaks French and English fluently. Tarantino said he despaired of finding a German actor for this role, as they couldn't speak the English parts well enough. He told NPR's Fresh Air, "What I write is a kind of poetry, and I needed someone who could speak my English lines like poetry." As Waltz auditioned with the first scene of the movie, minutes in, Tarantino knew he had found his Landa. It's a tour de force performance, and I hope earns him a nomination for supporting actor for this film. He charms, and also has just this lethal edge to him the entire time. Watching him eat streudel and fussing with a cigarette in one scene, you're fascinated, and terrified for the other character he's questioning. He simply owns every scene he's in, including those with Brad Pitt.

Ah, Brad Pitt as Aldo Raines. He just chews up his part as the Southern boy leader of this band of basterds. Total fun to see him in this part - "And I want my scalps!" I also loved Michael Fassbender as Hilcox, a former film critic (!) sent on a spy mission to pose as a German officer. He explains his accent away to some Germans by saying he was in the movie, Die weiße Hölle vom Piz Palü, (The White Hell of Piz Palu) a movie about a mountain disaster in the Alps. I actually looked up clips from that movie on YouTube, and notably, it's a silent film! Michael Fassbender is very funny in this movie, and it's great to see him have a chance to show a sense of humor for once.

There are so many movie references that fly by in this movie. It's a movie about movies, from the Spaghetti Western music used, to the movie theater that plays a prominent part in the plot. I actually laughed out loud at one point because of the music Tarantino chose to use -- David Bowie's "Putting out Fire (with Gasoline)" from Cat People! I have to say, it made sense at that point of the film, but it was just crazy, too. Brad Pitt's character has a noose scar that is never ever explained in the film, but is yet another film reference to a Clint Eastwood western.

I read this great review of Inglourious Basterds on Spoutblog before I saw the film, and I kept thinking about what Karina Longworth had pointed out. This is a film about propaganda and rumors.

The film’s guiding spirit is encapsulated in an exclamation by Landa in the first scene: “I love rumors! Facts can be so misleading.” Tarantino has made a movie about World War II filtered through rumor — verbally-transmitted urban legends, to be precise. There is no casual conversation in Inglourious Basterds; virtually every scene involves an interrogation and a chance for someone to brag about and/or live up to their reputation. Conscious of the world they live in — ie, not Hitlers, not ours, but Tarantino’s — characters on both sides of the divide take an active role in their own myth-making, to make sure that word gets out as to who they are and why they are to be feared, and everyone takes great pride in knowing that word is getting around. The film’s most oft repeated phrase is “What have you heard?”

Longworth saw the film at Cannes, and hated it, and then she watched it again and gained a new appreciation for Tarantino's film.

Tarantino has made a WWII fable, and we're tipped off to this by the beginning, "Once upon a time, in occupied France..." He's made his own revenge fantasy and rewritten history, but it's not just about that. There are layers and layers here, and it's going to take multiple viewings for me to puzzle them out. I won't say much more, because it's just fun to watch the plot lay out. Since it's Quentin Tarantino, you're never quite sure just what's going to happen next, but you know that you'll have a great time watching it.

Four stars, and I urge you to see it in a theater so you can experience it with an audience. Didn't August used to be the dumping ground for bad films? Certainly not this year! I hope we see Christoph Waltz again come Awards season -- and in more films to come. What a treasure Quentin has unearthed!

Inglourious Basterds NEW TRAILER!

Lots of Brad, but only the quickest glimpse of Michael Fassbender.

August 8th release date!

Michael Fassbender speaks about Inglourious Basterds

The Times has a great interview with Michael Fassbender, fresh off his success at the BAFTAS for Hunger. Hunger comes out on DVD in the UK this month, and will be released at the end of March in the US.

Hunger, he says, as we slip into a nearby café, has “changed things hugely. Now I can get into rooms early when projects are starting up”. In recent months he has been mentioned as Heathcliffe in a new film of Wuthering Heights and in the Dennis Waterman role, opposite Ray Winstone, in a movie version of The Sweeney. But the most exciting is Inglourious Basterds (sic), Tarantino’s Second World War tale of a suicide squad sent to kill as many Nazis as they can.

Filming ended in December and Fassbender had a blast playing a British commando who teams up with Brad Pitt’s homicidal Yanks. His character, Lt Archie Hicox, was based, Tarantino told him, on a young George Sanders. “So I got out all the original Saints and Sanders films. It’s a very particular way of speaking, affected accent and mannerisms. I just really went to town and found quite a lot of humour in it, I hope.” Pitt certainly thought so. “In our first scene together I started doing my character and he started laughing.” He smiles. “He was very supportive.”

Read the rest here.

The name George Sanders didn't immediately bring a voice to mind, but we've all heard him -- he was Shere Kahn the tiger in Jungle Book. I thought Michael might be one of the Germans, which his background, but I'm relieved he'll have a hopefully bigger part as the British commander. Can't wait to see what "going to town with it" means! Here's another example of George Sanders on Youtube.

Inglourious Basterds ET Trailer

And I want my scalps!!

Tarantino's Nazis - Do you have what it takes?

Caroline Winter reports from Berlin for The Daily Beast on all the Germans lining up to be blown up and brutally killed in Quentin Taratino's Inglorious Basterds.

What does it take to become a Quentin Tarantino Nazi? First, it helps if you're naturally blond. And as 6,000 Germans who came out for the September casting call found out, a nasty sneer doesn’t hurt, either.

Both Jens and Jan are over 6 feet and have boyish good looks. They’re 100 percent German and look it—that is to say, they blend into the German male landscape. The problem is that both have dark hair and, more important, they’re just not sinister enough to play Germans. After having their portraits taken, both were turned down by an apologetic casting agent. “She told us that we look too friendly,” said Kage, laughing. “They wanted people who the audience would like seeing killed.”

But why, you might ask, would anyone want to play a Nazi extra? The measly five-euros-per-hour stipend isn’t much of an incentive. The Tarantino Nazi wannabes I met were all liberal Berliners who don't usually act in movies and who have no fondness whatsoever for the Third Reich. In fact, some claimed that the main attraction in this case is the fact that they will be gruesomely killed, Tarantino-style, by Jewish-Americans.

“Sure, you’re a Nazi—but you know that, in the end, you're going to get your head hacked off,” said a friend of Kage’s who managed to get cast and thus spoke with me anonymously. “That was definitely part of why I wanted to do this.”

Read the whole article here.

Quentin teaches the spit take

Quentin Tarantino teaches his actors, including Michael Fassbender, the proper way to spit out your drink on the set of Inglorious Basterds! Is the first one Brad Pitt?

Can't embed, so watch it here on Youtube
Hat tip: We Are Movie Geeks

Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds

First set pic of Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds. No idea why Quentin Tarantino has changed the title spelling.

Michael Fassbender talks about Inglorious Bastards

Enjoy some gorgeous new pics of Michael Fassbender from the festival circuit promoting Hunger, which is getting Oscar buzz and RAVES! Two recent interviews reveal that Michael's career may be about to explode:

“Instead of auditions now I go to lunches. Everyone takes me out and wants a piece of what they perceive to be the ‘Michael Fassbender Product’ that could make money in the next year. That’s what they hear. That’s pretty cool, having that power,” the sexy and mischievously smiley Irish actor told indieWIRE.

IGN: How was it meeting Tarantino for the first time?

Fassbender: It was amazing, fantastic. He’s a film enthusiast. I love that you can mention any film to him, and he doesn’t only know the f**king film, he’ll quote sections of the film to you, I love that, I’m a film geek, too.

IGN: Tarantino loves Italian B-movies. Is this anything like the Enzo G. Castellari-directed 1978 Italian WWII movie Inglorious Bastards (Quel maledetto treno blindato)?

Fassbender: I haven’t seen the original to be honest. I don’t know, this plot is very much in a Quentin Tarantino-style. The dialogue; the rapid sort of response between characters.

IGN: Who do you play?

Fassbender: I play Hicox, Lt. Hicox, who is an English guy who posing as a German soldier.

IGN: What happens to him?

Fassbender: I can’t tell you that, Jesus Christ.

IGN: Tarantino is well known for changing the script on set, are you prepared for the dialogue to change, or to do some serious ad-libbing?

Fassbender: Look, I always think my job is to tell a story. The character within a script is to tell a story, I’m just going to make sure that my German is good, because he might want to drift off the script, just like you said, so I have to make sure that I’m prepared enough on the German. I prepare in a very disciplined fashion, in terms of the script. I work on it, over and over again, until I’m sick of it, and then I work on it a couple of other times, so I just prepare for getting it on the page and then I relax.

IGN: Do you think that acting in a Tarantino film will be something that changes your career?

Fassbender: I just want to keep working and working with interesting people. He’s definitely up there at the top of the list in terms of interesting directors, but I just want to keep on getting the chance to work and learn.

If I can't have Simon Pegg, I'm ecstatic for Michael Fassbender

Simon Pegg pulled out of Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards, citing scheduling difficulties since Quentin wants to start filming this fall. I was very sad to hear that news, as Simon is one of my favorites. Hot Fuzz? Shaun of the Dead? He rules!

But this morning, I get this news which has me doing cartwheels. Variety Reports:

Teutonic thesp Michael Fassbender is in final negotiations to join the cast of Quentin Tarantino’s "Inglorious Bastards."

Simon Pegg had been in talks for the role (Lt. Archie Hicox), but was forced to ankle after what he described on his website as "insurmountable scheduling difficulties."

Brad Pitt has signed on for the lead role as a Tennessee hillbilly who assembles a team of eight Jewish-American soldiers to take on the Nazis. Also on board are Mike Myers and Eli Roth. Tarantino is courting Nastassja Kinski, David Krumholtz and B.J. Novak.

Role would arguably be the highest-profile yet for Fassbender, who has begun to draw comparisons to Daniel Day-Lewis for his intense dedication to his work. Thesp emaciated himself to play Sands in the latter stages of his hunger strike.

Fassbender is also attached to play the iconic role of Heathcliff in "Wuthering Heights."

Whoo Hoo!! This is fantastic news for Michael (and me)!

Mike Myers is also cast in Inglorious Bastards. Here's hoping he won't ruin it!

Brad Pitt to star in Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards

Brad Pitt officially has gone inglorious.The actor has joined the cast of Quentin Tarantino's "Inglorious Bastards," signing on to play Lt. Aldo Raine, the head of the Jewish resistance in the writer/director's World War II film.
Additionally, British actor Simon Pegg ("Hot Fuzz") is in discussions to join the cast. Pitt's character is a Southern rebel who leads a band of eight Jewish American soldiers as they exact vengeance on Nazis in German-occupied France.

Quentin has been working on this script for YEARS. It will be fun to see Brad in a Quentin movie! Simon Pegg is one of my favorites, and he will be a riot in a Quentin film. Hot Fuzz is one of my favorite movies ever!