Whoever wrote, "Success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan," obviously lived before the Internet was created. Nowadays, we're all too eager to find a fall guy -- either an individual or a group -- on whom failure can be blamed. The most recent example is Terminator Salvation. Our own Jessica Barnes suggested several culprits, including the Internet itself: "Terminator could be a good example of how filmmaking at 'gunpoint' never ends well. It's possible that the leaked ending forced WB's hand to create something different when in fact we should have just let McG do his thing with the original script."

Lane Brown at New York Magazine's Vulture blog takes that idea further, giving odds on four "massively anticipated" movies that will 'have their failure blamed on a director listening to people on the Internet.' Lane lists Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are, and Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables as the most likely suspects.

We're on a slippery slope here, because as a dedicated movie site written by hard-core film buffs, Cinematical is inclined to obsess over every little item on upcoming movies, freely offering our strong opinions way in advance, often prompting dozens of different opinions from readers. Personally, I see nothing wrong with filmmakers paying attention to what fans are saying. And if they choose to change their movies based on the opinions of an unruly mob of fanboys, that says more about them than it does about the Internet. What do you think? Should Internet fanboys continue to have their say? Or should we all shut up and wait for the movie to come out before saying anything?

The version of Inglourious Basterds that played to mixed reviews at Cannes won't be the version we see, for better or for worse. Quentin Tarantino is heading back into the editing bay next month, and giving the film an extra scene or two. (And nothing is harder to write about than a film you and the rest of the moviegoing world hasn't even seen, so bear with me here.)

The director admitted to Variety's Anne Thompson that he felt overfiddling had hurt Death Proof, so he deliberately put Basterds on a Cannes deadline -- but it was one that was so tight that he had to rush "a dripping-wet print" to the festival. As a result, Basterds was 19 minutes less than he needed to retain final cut.

So, he's adding footage back in. One is a scene that he filmed, but hasn't yet assembled that introduces the characters of Michael Fassbender and Diane Kruger's more thoroughly. For those of us who didn't get to see the film at its Cannes debut, that means little. But if you read the script, it comes before the La Louisiane sequence. However, if you're hoping to see Maggie Chung as Madame Mimieux, you'll be disappointed. The scenes between Mimieux and Melanie Laurent's Shoshanna Dreyfuss won't be restored as Tarantino feels they don't add to the narrative.

But the final edit might rest on audience approval. Tarantino's going to be doing some test screenings "outside of California" to see how the film plays to the people, and will fine tune it from there -- but hopefully not to the point of Death Proof fiddling ...

Nothing like a little war movie to bookend a day at the Cannes Film Festival. Lines began forming at the crack of dawn to see the first screening of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds this morning, and, still, many were shut out. (Erik Davis rounded up the first reactions from those who did manage to gain admittance.) Evening brought the glamour, as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie led a parade of celebrities down the fabled red carpet for the black-tie and gown gala presentation. As a cherry on top, Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell screened at midnight.

Films Sold. Amazingly -- or maybe not, when you consider all the free publicity it's already accrued -- Lars Von Trier's highly controversial and divisive Antichrist sold to IFC Films. The company says they will release the same version as the one screened in Cannes, according to indieWIRE. Specific release plans were not announced, but expect it this fall, in order to capitalize on the buzz. Also, I suggest a poster highlighting Willem Dafoe's previous, religiously-titled movie: "From The Last Temptation of Christ to ... Antichrist!"

Much less controversially, IFC also picked up Ken Loach's Looking for Eric, which the company describes as the director's "most accessible, crowd pleasing film." More details at indieWIRE.

Key Screenings. Competition: Alain Resnais' drama Wild Grass, starring Mathieu Amalric (the reviews so far, collected by David Hudson at IFC's The Daily, range from reserved to rave). Un Certain Regard: Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's supernatural-tinged drama Nymph (Todd Brown at Twitch reviews), Luc Mullet's Land of Madness. Directors' Fortnight: Axelle Ropert's The Wolberg Family (a small town mayor's obsession with his family), Ho Tzu Nyen's Here (a middle-aged man deals with life as a patient in a medical institution).

Depending on who you read today, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds was either a total win or a total bore (read our earlier review recap). The film, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival yesterday, wasn't as well received by critics as we might have hoped for -- and, instead, we have folks like The Guardian calling it a "turkey" and "Gott-awful," while Variety (who just recently released their official review) said this: "By turns surprising, nutty, windy, audacious and a bit caught up in its own cleverness, the picture is a completely distinctive piece of American pop art with a strong Euro flavor that's new for the director."

We get it: Some people liked it more than others, and it'll be interesting to see how (or if) Tarantino fine-tunes the film prior to its August release, especially if the Weinstein Co. is counting on this to be their big, squishy, box office teddy bear come late summer. In the meantime, though, you at home can now own the special coat Brad Pitt's character wears throughout the film. Not the actual coat, mind you, but the version of the coat that was specifically created for the film and for Pitt's Lieutenant Aldo Raine.

The coat comes from Belstaff, who also helped create the look for Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and it's "made from Belstaff's genuine Antique 10 wax cotton, known for its' strong and protective design against the elements." Additionally, "the distinguished sheepskin shawl collar adds to the comfort of the jacket and completes the look," so says the Belstaff website. Unfortunately, this sucker comes with a pretty hefty $1700 price tag ... though some would argue that having the chance to dress like Brad Pitt is priceless. Check out a larger image of the coat below.



[via TheAwesomer]

Quentin Tarantino's long-awaited WWII epic Inglourious Basterds premiered at the Cannes Film Festival mere hours ago, and so far critics seem to be finding the film entertaining, sure, if a tad too talkative. Would you expect anything less from the man? Here's a rundown of some early thoughts, and we've posted three new clips in between some of the quotes.

"Inglourious Basterds is great fun to watch, but the movie isn't entirely engaging. And it is defiantly an art film, not a calculatedly mainstream entertainment. Tarantino throws you out of the movie with titles, chapter headings, snatches of music. You don't jump into the world of the film in a participatory way; you watch it from a distance, appreciating the references and the masterful mise-en-scene. This is a film that will benefit from a second viewing. I can't wait to see it again." -- Anne Thompson, Variety

"The
 film is by no means terrible -- its running time of two hours and 32 minutes 
races by -- but those things we think of as being Tarantino-esque, the long
 stretches of wickedly funny dialogue, the humor in the violence and outsized 
characters strutting across the screen, are largely missing." Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter



"Forget what you think you know is such a cliché, but here it more than applies. Tarantino has made a career out of subverting expectations – this is the man who made a heist flick without a heist, after all – but he's outdone himself with Basterds. It's an action movie that has barely any action. The Basterds themselves, including Brad Pitt's Lt. Aldo Raine, are off-screen for long periods of time. And it takes wild liberties with history." -- Chris Hewitt, Empire

More quotes and clips after the jump ...

Click image below to enlarge poster

Cinematical has just received this exclusive character poster for Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, which is part of a set of other character posters that have arrived online over the past week. This particular one features French actress Mélanie Laurent, who plays Shosanna Dreyfus in the film -- a French-Jewish girl who fled to France under a new identity after witnessing her family's murder at the hands of Nazis. Now in France running a movie theater, she just may get a chance to exact her revenge when a group of German soldiers decide to stop in for a visit. To view the entire poster, click on the image below.



Laurent is joined by a cast that includes Brad Pitt, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, B.J. Novak, Mike Myers, Cloris Leachman and Samuel L. Jackson (who narrates) among others. Inglourious Basterds, which is easily one of my most anticipated films this summer, will premiere later this month at the Cannes Film Festival before arriving in theaters on August 21. Click below to check out the other character posters and more images from the film.

James Hyman is a DJ, turntablist and music supervisor who built a name for himself in Europe and around the world by creating a series of mash-up albums combining movie clips, dialogue quotes, and pop songs. Following the release of a James Bond/ 007 mix in June 2004, Hyman mounted his most ambitious project to date, a single-disc masterpiece entitled Pulp Mixin', a dizzying blend of Quentin Tarantino's dialogue and movie music set against the backdrop of the hottest pop music of the day. Not content to relegate his recording to a purely stereoscopic assault, Hyman recently announced that he is currently assembling a feature-length film that will make Tarantino's own genre mash-ups look as complicated as a kid combining two colors of play-doh.

Specifically, Hyman plans to use not only music videos and film clips from the samples he originally employed for his Pulp Mixin' CD, but throw in some new ones as well, and then dig up obscure performances from bands included on Tarantino's eclectic soundtracks in order to combine them all into a blitzkrieg mosaic of movie references and music cues. Provisionally titled the James Hyman / Quentin Tarantino Movie Mash-Up, you can check out the trailer after the jump.

Not many movie-going summers have had the good sense or fortune to formally kick themselves off with the likes of Hugh Jackman and his razor-sharp jazz hands, but as these are the times in which we live in, it's a clear indication that we're in for about eighteen weeks of spectacular spectaculars worth gulping down popcorn and guzzling down pop* with.

Eugene's already shone the spotlight on a fair amount of smaller titles worth your while, so our staff tried to keep the focus on that which we haven't seen, those spectacles for which we're most excited and least likely to text during. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: sit down and shut up, because these are the seven movies that we're fairly f**kin' pumped for.

(*Okay, I pretty much never call soda that, but you get the idea.)

Ah, the Croisette. I can feel the sun on my face, the wind in my hair, the gentle crash of the waves reverberating through my ear canal... oh, wait. None of that rings a bell, because I've never been to the Cannes Film Festival.

But those who have seem to love it, and with a lineup like this year's, it's not hard to see why. As we recently mentioned, the fest will open with Pixar's apparently awesome Up, and showcase the latest from Quentin Tarantino (Inglorious Basterds), Ang Lee (Taking Woodstock), Terry Gilliam (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus), Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon), Pedro Almodovar (Broken Embraces), Ken Loach (Looking for Eric), Lars von Trier (Antichrist), Alejandro Amenabar (Agora), Michel Gondry (L'epine dans le coeur) and Park Chan-wook (Thirst), among others.

Yes, there's more. Sundance hit Precious (formerly Push) will make an appearance, as will SXSW fave Drag Me to Hell (to see all those tuxes and gowns jolt from their seats might qualify as an entertainment all its own). The 62nd Festival will run from May 13th to the 24th, and Erik, Scott: you still totally have time to send me, and I still totally have time to get a tux, and to update my passport, and to learn French... Just think about it.