In Contention

Tag: Inglorious Bastards

  • Weinsteins promote Mélanie Laurent to lead

    Melanie Laurent in Inglourious BasterdsSome of you have already mentioned this in another thread, but The Weinstein Company, in their apparent wisdom, have decided to campaign “Inglourious Basterds” star Mélanie Laurent for Best Actress.

    Far be it from me to question the judgment of one of the greatest strategists in Oscar history, but … what?

    Laurent was, admittedly, a very dark horse in the supporting category, but as far as I can see, promoting her to lead reduces her nomination chances to nil — unless voters take the category decision into their own hands, as they did with Kate Winslet this year.

    Perhaps Weinstein is simply buying into the popular myth that Best Actress is a weakly contested category this year. But with only one slot seemingly up for grabs, and her compatriot (and fellow Weinstein Company property) Marion Cotillard muscling in on the race, the odds are firmly stacked against Laurent getting it.

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  • 8/17 Web Round-up

    (from left) Bob and Harvey Weinstein• Amid sticky financial days for The Weinstein Company, Harvey Weinstein tells you to “sit tight” and “don’t bet against” him and brother Bob. [New York Times]

    • It must be going around, because ditto Universal execs Mark Shmuger and David Linde. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Sharon Waxman is frustrated at the word-count of the Weinstein piece yielding little insight into the company’s financial woes. [The Wrap]

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  • 1/21 Oscarweb Round-up

    • Sasha Stone chimes in with her final predictions. [Awards Daily]

    • As do the guys at Vulture, who are remaining loyal to “WALL-E” to the end. [Vulture]

    • Meanwhile, T.L. Stanley finally gives up on “Doubt.” [Gold Rush]

    • The venerable David Thomson plays the “will be/should be” game, with some curiously disconnected predictions. (Lena Olin? Really?) [The Guardian]

    • Moving away from punditry, James Hansen just doesn’t think much of Canada’s foreign-language entry. [The Film Experience]

    • Still at Sundance, Jeff Wells kinda likes the new film from the insanely prolific Steven Soderbergh. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Tarantino is apparently rushing to finish “Inglourious Basterds” (sic). Take your time, QT. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • David Carr wonders whether Mickey Rourke’s imminent Oscar nomination will be enough to rescue the long-delayed “Killshot.” [The Carpetbagger]

    • Finally, EW continues their “Worst Snubs” countdown, and their picks are uniformly great. (Hell yes to Spacek, Murray and Leaud.) [Entertainment Weekly]

  • Is ‘Basterds’ [sic] developing the worst cast ever?

    Mike MyersThe on-going saga of Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Bastards” seems to be one fumble after another as far as I can tell.

    It makes you wonder why Brad Pitt would slum it in a screenplay this abysmal to begin with, but he’s finding himself on screen with Eli Roth of all people. Simon Pegg is a hell of a comedic commodity on some level, but he’s painfully out of place here.

    Meanwhile, B.J. Novak is a heck of a writer and pulls some stellar weight on NBC’s “The Office,” but he’s quite a distracting addition to the cast, while the rumors that Adam Sandler was on deck made me want to shoot myself in the face. Twice.

    And now I’m hearing that Mike Myers has been cast in this farce of an ensemble from the master of exploiting any and everything around him……eesh.

    Apparently this will be a small role — nothing major. Expect Variety to reveal that bit of info later this evening, FYI.

    (UPDATE, 6:00 p.m.: And on cue, the trade does just that. According to Michael Fleming, “Myers will play British Gen. Ed Fenech, a military mastermind who takes part in hatching a plot to wipe out Nazi leaders.”)

    Anyway, hey — who am I to say? Maybe this is the greatest blend of “talent” ever assembled and I’m just out to lunch. Maybe this will be a full-blown masterpiece of comedic absurdity. Maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt…

  • Funniest part of ‘Inglorious Bastards’ so far

    Poor Tarantino keeps mistaking “mein Fuhrer” for “mine Fuhrer,” in addition to all the other 4th grade-level typos.  Maybe Jeff Wells is right about the “borderline illiterate” thing.  But Vulture really should have included this follow-up gem of a retarded segment in their recent reaction to the Nazi scalps bit:

    Excerpt from Quentin Tarantino\'s Inglorious Bastards

    Gold for the gold, QT.  Oh, and Adolf Hitler (yes, that Adolf Hitler) is reading on the page like Kim Jong-il in “Team America.”

    Try to stay open minded…that’s what I have to keep telling myself.

  • Gawker to Tarantino: “Have some respect for yourself.”

    Quentin TarantinoMore often than not, I find Stu VanAirsdale to be a world class champ at blowing hot air.  But even I have to admit he’s writing exactly what I’m thinking with this open letter to Quentin Tarantino.

    The key excerpt, which sticks the landing:

    Meanwhile, in a move pulled unusually early from the dogeared Weinstein Textbook, the press is doing your fundraising for you. We’d give you Provincetown if not for the embarrassing leaks that followed this week, one after another — the kickdowns to Nikki Finke (“Quentin Tarantino is talking to Brad Pitt”!) and now this Inglorious Basterds [sic] script over at Vulture, itself the venerated “basterd” offspring of your insolvent patron’s public studio-shopping. Mission accomplished, we suppose, if overexposure is what you had in mind. The anonymous media saturation is supposed to come just before the release, not just before the money runs out.

  • Strangely…

    …I could honestly care less about “Inglorious Bastards.” I don’t care who is losing their shit over the screenplay. If Mr. Tarantino wants to show us something worth our time, I’m happy to be first in line. But enough of the foreplay.

  • Tarantino doubles up… again

    It’s difficult to get a grasp on what’s going on with Quentin Tarantino’s long-mooted WWII project, “Inglorious Bastards,” not least because QT seems somewhat hazy on the subject himself. Last month, he made this rather bold claim at Cannes: “If all goes well, I will be here … in 2009 with ‘Inglorious Bastards.’” (I’d question the hubris of his assuming that Cannes will have him, but hell, they accepted “Death Proof” into competition, so I can’t.)

    Now comes word that, in what’s becoming a familiar move for the director, the project will be released as two films, apparently because the story is too big for a single feature. Said story involves a group of war criminals fighting both Allied and Nazi forces on a journey to neutral Switzerland, which sounds do-able in one film to me, but what do I know? Meanwhile, the Vulture at New York Magazine is taking Tarantino’s assertions with a pinch of salt:

    That gives Tarantino about ten months to finish the scripts, find himself some actors — he now says previous mentions of Michael Madsen, Adam Sandler, Christopher Walken, and others were just “conversations” — and shoot and edit two movies. It’s possible, of course, but it’s also possible that this project is but a ball of yarn for Tarantino’s mischievous-kitten tendencies, and in a year, it will be a seven-part cartoon musical.

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