A new international trailer has hit for Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, and the consensus from those who managed to catch a screening of the film back at Cannes is that, while the Weinsteins (or whoever cut this) managed to really make the flick look enticing and vintage Tarantino, it's still a complete misrepresentation of the actual film, which some say is quite boring. As Variety noted back in May, "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."

Great fun to watch? I'll take it! That's why I go to the movies in the first place -- and that's what I expect from Tarantino as a filmmaker. Watching one of his films is like going to Cold Stone Creamery and getting a pint of ice cream mixed with all kinds of ridiculous toppings; stuff you'd never expect to be on there to begin with. That's Tarantino, that's what I hope to get out of Basterds, and this piece of movie marketing actually has me excited to sit down and watch whatever final cut (be it two-and-a-half-hours or less) Tarantino and The Weinstein Co. manage to shove into theaters this August 21. Period. Exclamation mark. Smiley face.

Watch the trailer after the jump

I've never seen this mash-up before, and when I came across it on Buzzfeed earlier today it absolutely blew my mind to see how well this scene from The Muppets Take Manhattan matched up with the tipping scene from Reservoir Dogs. It's like the two were made for each other! (Plus there's just something about Muppets and foul-mouthedness that just cracks me up. Double plus: I haven't listened to this scene in awhile, and I forgot how much I loved it.) I think Quentin Tarantino should move on from Inglourious Basterds and write and direct a small film like Reservoir Dogs, with limited sets and powerful performances. But that's me. Meanwhile, the Muppets will soon return to the big screen, with Jason Segel currently hard at work developing a new film. Yay! Perhaps he and Tarantino should collaborate on something that resembles this ...

(Warning: This is the tipping scene from Reservoir Dogs, and as such there's a lot of nasty language that definitely makes this clip NSFW. Watch at your own risk.)

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 ...

Although it seems as if I've been hired exclusively to write articles about or concerning Tarantino-themed projects, I assure you it's merely a private obsession. That said, it feels necessary to announce that on August 25, 2009, Warner Home Video will release the Natural Born Killers Director's Cut on Blu-ray and DVD. The forthcoming set features a collection of all-new bonus materials and a 44-page booklet on the production and its cultural significance.

Perhaps even moreso than director Oliver Stone's theatrical version, The Director's Cut has something of a storied history; rather than the director's or extended cuts that DVD and Blu-ray producers churn out purely as a cash-in, this was in fact the original incarnation of the film that was truly Stone's vision, and was changed because the MPAA balked at the inclusion of some four minutes of material, including images such as a horrifically comic point of view shot through the bullet hole in a character's hand. On the other hand (no pun intended), it remains subjective which version is truly better than the other; once you've succumbed to the visual onslaught that Stone unleashes, it's tough to determine what additional impact such shots and sequences really effect.

The single disc Blu-ray will be available for the MSRP of $28.99, while the two-disc DVD set will retail for $20.97. Both sets will feature the following extras (located after the jump):

How soon is too soon for a hard sell? Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (sic) doesn't open in theaters in the US for three more months, but it will have its world premiere in competition at Cannes next week (May 20). Tarantino has been busy promoting it everywhere from American Idol, where he served last month as a guest "director," to the New York Times, where he mentioned in passing, "I have a half-written prequel ready to go if this movie's a smash."

That's a big "if." Will people turn out to see a funny -- and likely to be extremely violent -- World War II movie in the dog days of August, even with Brad Pitt? Inglourious Basterds takes place in "a Quentin period world," according to production designer David Wasco, in which "a band of Jewish-American soldiers [go] on a scalp-hunting revenge quest against the Nazis," as the NYT describes the plot. Reportedly, 70% of the dialogue will be in French and German with English subtitles. One of the actors playing a Nazi, Daniel Brühl, considers the film an out-and-out laugh fest: "If a comedy is intelligent and has depth, it's a very legitimate way to talk about Fascism in Nazi Germany."

But what about a prequel? "Once the Basterds get through with Europe," Tarantino says, "they could go to the South and do it to the Kluxers in the '50s. That's another story you could tell." Another possibility is a shelved subplot following "African-American soldiers stuck behind enemy lines." His first hurdle is getting past the notoriously prickly Cannes critical corps. The rest of us can pass judgment in August.

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.