Review: 'Django Unchained'

Quentin Tarantino’s greatest exploration of human evil
Justin Craig
December 19, 2012
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/12/19/review-django-unchained-quentin-tarantinos-greatest-exploration-human-evil

NEW YORK –  “Django Unchained” is Quentin Tarantino’s greatest exploration of the human condition, from its idea of what is right to its heinous moments of evil. Continuing with the theme of revenge explored in "Inglorious Basterds," Tarantino blends the Spaghetti western genre with 70s Blaxploitation, creating an insane concoction of vengeance and thoughtfulness, tossing between the disgustingly funny and the most primal notion of violence. “Django” is a shocking and bold film with a huge heart and soul.

Unlike his other films, “Django” is linear and follows a single storyline, which makes this movie, more than his others, a completely satisfying experience. Tarantino lets us live with characters for the entirety of the movie (which is a long 165 minutes) rather than bouncing between different vignettes. Christoph Waltz is Dr. King Schultz, a doctor-turned bounty hunter, who purchases Django from slave traders with the intent on finding a pair of wanted slavers. Only Django knows what they look like, so Schultz needs him to identify them. Granted his freedom, Django accepts the offer and becomes an apprentice bounty hunter, though he and Schultz set their sights on the ultimate target, Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), the socialite plantation owner who purchased Django’s wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington).

Like “Inglorious Basterds,” Tarantino spends a decent portion of the film subjecting his protagonists, and the audience, to unspeakable horrors. With “Basterds” it was Waltz’s sadistic pleasure of executing Jews, here it’s the unconscionable treatment of slaves. While “Basterds” is a more visually violent film, “Django” primarily uses dialogue to convey the horrific treatment of African Americans, becoming a pressure cooker until the final bloody reel. While there are some gruesome visual moments depicting slavery, Tarantino really drives the point home with the excessive use of the ‘N-word’.

Tarantino lays on monologue after monologue, each more engrossing and entertaining than the previous, from Waltz’s lengthy and humorous diatribes justifying his kills to DiCaprio’s speeches about human cock fighting and slave ownership. Waltz most assuredly comes away from “Django” with the most lines spoken, and each piece of dialogue is meticulously written and delivered, enabling Waltz to deservedly soak up all the attention. Waltz hands-down gives one of the best performances of the year.

But Jamie Foxx is also riveting as Django, delivering a restrained, internalized performance. The power of Foxx’s acting lies in his subtle reactions to Waltz and DiCaprio. Though Django, in true Spaghetti western fashion, says little, his presence is undeniable in every scene. Waltz and DiCaprio may jabber on and on but Tarantino always keeps our eye on Foxx, whom unexpectedly at any given moment could strike out at his opponents. Between Tarantino’s crisp, tense dialogue and Foxx’s brooding, vengeful persona, “Django” is a master stroke of reserved suspense.

DiCaprio’s turn as a baddie is interesting. His Calvin Candie is weasely and unpredictable, like a spoiled child on the verge of a tantrum, though his tantrums would lead to certain bloodshed. This is the “Titanic” star’s most exciting performance, since it is unlike anything he has previously done, something that has come to be expected in a Tarantino film. This was a long time coming for DiCaprio.

The most surprising performance in “Django” comes from Samuel L. Jackson as Stephen, the head slave at Candie’s vast plantation, appropriately called Candyland. Jackson, under layers of makeup, is an aged, frighteningly broken man who dishes out brutal punishment to the slaves beneath him. Tarantino showcases quite a bit of evil in “Django,” but maybe none more powerful than Jackson’s Stephen. The character is a parrot atop Candie’s shoulder, feeding off his owner’s sadism and hatred. Watching Jackson slip out of his usual persona and become this chilling SOB is unexpected and most welcome.
Tarantino also unearths fossils Don Johnson and Dennis Christopher as baddies. Johnson delivers some uncomfortable laughs as he tries to get his ragtag Klan members, including Jonah Hill, to raid Django and Schultz. Also in a small role is the original Django, Franco Nero.

In typical Tarantino fashion, “Django” features a rip-roaring soundtrack with expected tunes by Spaghetti western maestro Ennio Morricone (who composed an original track for this film) as well as Luis Bacalov’s cult classic “Django” theme, plus pieces by Jerry Goldsmith, James Brown and Tupac, Brother Dege, John Legend and an original song by Rick Ross (“100 Black Coffins). Hearing Tarantino’s use of music is part of the experience of seeing one of his films. Not all the songs work out of their original context, but each piece leaves an indelible imprint on the film.

With “Django Unchained,” the “Pulp Fiction” director continues to play by his own rules and by doing so, further pushes cinema into new territory.

List of 82nd annual Academy Award nominations

http://oscars.movies.yahoo.com/news/376-list-of-82nd-annual-academy-award-nominations-ap

List of 82nd annual Academy Award nominations
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Associated Press

Complete list of 82nd Annual Academy Award nominations announced Tuesday:

1. Best Picture: "Avatar," "The Blind Side," "District 9," "An Education," "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious Basterds," "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire," "A Serious Man," "Up," "Up in the Air."

2. Actor: Jeff Bridges, "Crazy Heart"; George Clooney, "Up in the Air"; Colin Firth, "A Single Man"; Morgan Freeman, "Invictus"; Jeremy Renner, "The Hurt Locker."

3. Actress: Sandra Bullock, "The Blind Side"; Helen Mirren, "The Last Station"; Carey Mulligan, "An Education"; Gabourey Sidibe, "Precious: Based on the Novel `Push' by Sapphire"; Meryl Streep, "Julie & Julia."

4. Supporting Actor: Matt Damon, "Invictus"; Woody Harrelson, "The Messenger"; Christopher Plummer, "The Last Station"; Stanley Tucci, "The Lovely Bones"; Christoph Waltz, "Inglourious Basterds."

5. Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz, "Nine"; Vera Farmiga, "Up in the Air"; Maggie Gyllenhaal, "Crazy Heart"; Anna Kendrick, "Up in the Air"; Mo'Nique, "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire."

6. Directing: James Cameron, "Avatar"; Kathryn Bigelow, "The Hurt Locker"; Quentin Tarantino, "Inglourious Basterds"; Lee Daniels, "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire"; Jason Reitman, "Up in the Air."

7. Foreign Language Film: "Ajami," Israel; "El Secreto de Sus Ojos," Argentina; "The Milk of Sorrow," Peru; "Un Prophete," France; "The White Ribbon," Germany.

8. Adapted Screenplay: Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, "District 9"; Nick Hornby, "An Education"; Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche, "In the Loop"; Geoffrey Fletcher, "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire"; Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, "Up in the Air."

9. Original Screenplay: Mark Boal, "The Hurt Locker"; Quentin Tarantino, "Inglourious Basterds"; Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman, "The Messenger"; Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, "A Serious Man"; Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Tom McCarthy, "Up."

10. Animated Feature Film: "Coraline"; "Fantastic Mr. Fox"; "The Princess and the Frog"; "The Secret of Kells"; "Up."

11. Art Direction: "Avatar," "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," "Nine," "Sherlock Holmes," "The Young Victoria."

12. Cinematography: "Avatar," "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious Basterds," "The White Ribbon."

13. Sound Mixing: "Avatar," "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious Basterds," "Star Trek," "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen."

14. Sound Editing: "Avatar," "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious Basterds," "Star Trek," "Up."

15. Original Score: "Avatar," James Horner; "Fantastic Mr. Fox," Alexandre Desplat; "The Hurt Locker," Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders; "Sherlock Holmes," Hans Zimmer; "Up," Michael Giacchino.

16. Original Song: "Almost There" from "The Princess and the Frog," Randy Newman; "Down in New Orleans" from "The Princess and the Frog," Randy Newman; "Loin de Paname" from "Paris 36," Reinhardt Wagner and Frank Thomas; "Take It All" from "Nine," Maury Yeston; "The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)" from "Crazy Heart," Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett.

17. Costume: "Bright Star," "Coco Before Chanel," "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," "Nine," "The Young Victoria."

18. Documentary Feature: "Burma VJ," "The Cove," "Food, Inc." "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers," "Which Way Home."

19. Documentary (short subject): "China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province," "The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner," "The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant," "Music by Prudence," "Rabbit a la Berlin."

20. Film Editing: "Avatar," "District 9," "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious Basterds," "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire."

21. Makeup: "Il Divo," "Star Trek," "The Young Victoria."

22. Animated Short Film: "French Roast," "Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty," "The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)," "Logorama," "A Matter of Loaf and Death."

23. Live Action Short Film: "The Door," "Instead of Abracadabra," "Kavi," "Miracle Fish," "The New Tenants."

24. Visual Effects: "Avatar," "District 9," "Star Trek."

Oscars 2010: expect an open field

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8359404.stm

Monday, 30 November 2009
Oscars 2010: expect an open field
By Neil Smith
Entertainment reporter, BBC News

With three months to go before the Academy Awards are held in Los Angeles, early indications suggest it will be one of the most open races in years.

Actor Alec Baldwin will co-host next year's Oscar ceremony

Indeed, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences seems to have anticipated this by opening the best picture category up to 10 movies, as opposed to the usual five.

That is not the only change either. In order not to coincide with the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, the 2010 Oscars will take place a fortnight later than this year's were.

It will also boast not one but two hosts, the comedian Steve Martin sharing the presenting duties with actor Alec Baldwin.

The 2010 Oscar nominations will not be announced until 2 February. Already, though, industry pundits are identifying potential runners, riders and also-rans.

Here, then, is a rundown of some of the stars, films and film-makers we may be hearing more of in the weeks and months ahead.

BEST PICTURE

You have to go all the way back to 1944 for the last time 10 movies were shortlisted for the best picture Oscar.

On that occasion Casablanca won the prize, picking up additional awards for its director and three screenwriters.

However, the decision to expand the field again is less to do with recognising more movies than with appealing to a wider audience.

The general perception is the Academy celebrates niche pictures aimed at an art-house crowd - a notion it hopes to challenge by adding more populist nominees to next year's line-up.

It is expected, for instance, that JJ Abrams's well-regarded Star Trek film will find a berth among this year's hopefuls.

James Cameron's ambitious 3D blockbuster Avatar may also feature, with some tipping District 9 - a science-fiction adventure about bug-like aliens who become refugees on Earth - as an outside bet.

Take away the District and you have another potential contender - Nine, the big-screen version of the Broadway musical inspired by Federico Fellini's 1963 Oscar-winner 8 1/2.

Director Rob Marshall has some previous in this department, having steered Chicago - another stage to screen transfer - to its best picture Oscar in 2003.

Clint Eastwood has become a regular fixture on Oscar night and is sure to be in contention again with the sport-based Invictus.

The drama - like District 9 - is set in South Africa and tells of how president Nelson Mandela united the country behind its World Cup-winning rugby team in 1995.

The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow's drama about three bomb disposal experts stationed in Iraq, is generating a lot of positive buzz.

Some optimistic pundits are also tipping another, rather different war movie as a best picture contender - Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino's flamboyant epic about commandos in Nazi-occupied France.

A safer bet might be Precious, the hard-hitting tale of a high school student coping with obesity, illiteracy, illegitimate pregnancy and sexual abuse.

No less gruelling is The Road, an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel that could muscle into the final 10.

McCarthy, you may recall, also penned No Country for Old Men, the book Joel and Ethan Coen adapted into an Oscar-winning hit.

The Coens are back this year with A Serious Man, a comedy drama based on their childhoods in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The Lovely Bones, Peter Jackson's adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel about a murdered child, is another book-inspired work that may make the shortlist.

And with Pixar's Up heavily tipped to win the best animated feature Oscar, some are expecting it to be in with a shout in the best picture category as well.

BEST ACTOR

For many years, Morgan Freeman battled to turn Nelson Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk To Freedom, into a film.

The fact he finally gets to play the South African icon in Invictus might therefore win him some consideration from the Academy's famously sentimental members.

Morgan Freeman is reunited with director Clint Eastwood in Invictus

George Clooney missed out on a best actor Oscar last year when Daniel Day-Lewis beat him to the coveted prize.

Their respective performances in romantic comedy Up in the Air and the aforementioned Nine opens up the possibility of a rematch.

Strangely enough, Viggo Mortensen was also nominated that year and may be so again for The Road.
Homegrown interest, meanwhile, is sure to focus on Colin Firth, considered a strong contender for his role as a grief-stricken gay academic in A Single Man.

Other possible nominees include Matt Damon, whose performances as an FBI whistle-blower in The Informant! and as South African rugby captain Francois Pienaar could conceivably see him cited in both the best actor and best supporting actor categories.

There is a chance Jeff Bridges might also make the cut for his role as a hard-drinking country music singer in Crazy Heart.

BEST ACTRESS

Last February Kate Winslet received this award for her portrayal as a former concentration camp guard in The Reader.

And early indications suggest Britain's best chances of Oscar success in 2010 will also be found in this hotly contested category.

Dame Helen Mirren, who received this award in 2007 for The Queen, is tipped to feature again for her role as Tolstoy's mercurial wife in The Last Station.

The smart money, though, is on newcomer Carey Mulligan, whose performance as a precocious 1960s schoolgirl in An Education has been tipped for glory on both sides of the Atlantic.

Australia's Abbie Cornish may also land a nomination for her role as John Keats's neighbour in the period drama Bright Star.

The endearingly full-figured Gabourey Sidibe, star of Precious, is another fresh talent who could be recognised.

Serial Oscar nominee Meryl Streep, meanwhile, will surely be up for an award for which she has been nominated a remarkable 12 times.

Will her next nod be for her portrayal of eccentric cookery guru Julia Child in Julie and Julia, however, or for her upcoming turn opposite Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin - yes, them again - in romantic comedy It's Complicated?

Making the unfunny funny

Film: “Inglourious Basterds”

Making the unfunny funny
But better if you don’t see this as a film about the Holocaust
Aug 27th 2009
From The Economist print edition

IT WAS bold of Quentin Tarantino and his producer, Harvey Weinstein, to pre-screen their brutal, wisecracking, revisionist war film at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. In “Inglourious Basterds” the Jews have the last laugh on Hitler—but so bloodthirstily that one might wonder whether the director is trying to say that anyone who enjoys seeing Nazis die horribly en masse is morally no better than they were.

It is a safe bet that the master of post-modern cinematic irony intended nothing so simplistic as this. But what, then, did he intend?

Technically, this film is at least as good as any that Mr Tarantino has made, and richer than any of them in incongruous humour, cinematic insider references and graphic violence. A hit squad of American Jewish soldiers and a French Jewess living in Paris converge in a pair of outlandish plots to kill the Nazi high command. The camera stays firmly in focus during scenes of extraordinarily explicit bloodletting. Yet this reviewer found it impossible not to enjoy them.

This is partly because the film is, at one level, just a good old revenge fantasy, an echo of the superhero comic-book genre. But it is also because Mr Tarantino, although he kills off goodies as well as baddies, works hard to efface sympathy for all of them. Only once do truly innocent people die, and they do so off-camera. For the rest, his characters are either psychotics, such as the charming and chilling SS colonel (played by the superb Christoph Waltz) and the engaging but equally crazy American officer (Brad Pitt); or cartoon cut-outs such as a suave British agent and a Jewish baseball slugger; or good folk, such as the Jewess and the German who loves her, who are twisted by war into maniacs.

Mr Tarantino may be trying to prove that he, the acknowledged king of detoxified death porn, can make murder fun even in one of the unfunniest chapters in human history. This is a hollow achievement if it depends on keeping the audience entertained but disengaged. Indeed, the nub of many of the negative reviews is that, faced with the Holocaust, Mr Tarantino avoids tricky moral issues.

But perhaps that is to misunderstand this film. Maybe it is not a movie about the Holocaust but a sophisticated piece of self-mockery. The blood-drenched climactic scene, which takes place in a cinema showing another gory war movie, rather supports that view. If it is right “Inglourious Basterds” is a glorious success—just not one worth taking seriously.

Tarantino Movie An Homage To Beloved Tarantino

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/next_tarantino_movie_an_homage_to

Next Tarantino Movie An Homage To Beloved Tarantino Movies Of Director's Youth
September 7, 2009 Issue 45•37

MADRID — While attending a European press junket Monday for his film Inglourious Basterds, director Quentin Tarantino announced that his next project, Jack Rabbit Slim, will go into production this fall, and will be an homage to his favorite director and screenwriter of all time: Quentin Tarantino.

"I've been a Tarantino fan for as long as I can remember," said Tarantino, who repeatedly referred to his hero as "The Master." "Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown—those movies were basically my film school. I mean, the ability to take a genre or a subgenre, embrace it to its core, and then blow it up and make it your own is something that has to be admired."

"We're talking about the quintessential writer-director of our time," Tarantino added.

A self-described "Tarantino geek," Tarantino said Jack Rabbit Slim was conceived as a tribute to his idol, and is deeply influenced by Tarantino's blaxsploitation movies of the late 1990s, Tarantino's classic multi-volume kung fu pictures, and the grindhouse films of the late 2000s that Tarantino made famous.

Tarantino has already cast the once-popular actor Eric Roberts to play Slim, in a role director believes will resurrect Roberts' career.

The film will reportedly feature elements and techniques lifted directly from Tarantino's past works, including numerous point-of-view shots from car trunks, and references to Tarantino's favorite cult films, My Best Friend's Birthday and From Dusk Till Dawn.

In one sequence Tarantino called "distinctly Tarantino-esque," Slim delivers an unexpectedly poetic monologue on cheeseburgers while dancing to an Ennio Morricone instrumental with a drug-addled Uma Thurman. And in the film's stunning climax, Slim remembers his training with a martial arts expert in China and then exacts revenge on the film's antagonists: a Nazi colonel, a Hollywood stuntman, and a Los Angeles syndicate of 88 yakuza warriors.

As an homage to Tarantino, Tarantino said he also plans to give the famed director a minor role in the film.

"If nothing else, I hope Jack Rabbit Slim makes moviegoers want to go back and explore the complete filmography of this great, great American artist," Tarantino said. "I really can't think of another living director who has made as large a contribution to the evolution of world cinema, and I feel it is my duty as a filmmaker to remind people of that."

Added Tarantino, "God, I love Quentin Tarantino."

The filmmaker, who became more and more excited when talking about the films of Quentin Tarantino, admitted that he has an autographed Reservoir Dogs poster signed by the director hanging in his living room. He also bragged about owning the syringe that John Travolta used to give Uma Thurman an adrenaline shot in Pulp Fiction.

"The actual one," Tarantino stressed.

Tarantino went on to say he was pleased to see that, almost 20 years into his career, director Quentin Tarantino was still going strong with his latest film, Inglourious Basterds, which Tarantino felt was one of the legendary filmmaker's "very best."

"If Jack Rabbit Slim is even a third as good as Basterds, I might just make a movie so good that Tarantino himself will give it a standing ovation," Tarantino said. "You know what, I bet he will."

Tarantino's top 20 movies since Reservoir Dogs

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2009/08/quentin_tarantinos_top_20_movi.html

Quentin Tarantino's top 20 movies since Reservoir Dogs
By Jim Emersonon
August 20, 2009

A predictably eclectic list of QT's favorite films that have been made since he started directing in 1992. I mean, who else would even do something like this? The guy demonstrates again and again that he lives and breathes movies. One of my own fondest moviegoing experiences was in 1992 or 1993 when (drop, names, drop!) QT took Julia Sweeney, Kathy Griffin and a few others (David Cross? Janeane Garofalo? Phil LaMarr? Margaret Cho? I can't remember who all was there that day...) and me to see Jackie Chan in "Supercop" (aka "Police Story 3") at the Laemmle in Santa Monica. It was my first Jackie Chan movie and I was blown away (as any Buster Keaton devotee would be). I'm forever grateful -- and happy to see that movie on his list, along with some of my personal faves, including "Boogie Nights," "Dazed and Confused," "Fight Club," "The Insider," "Shaun of the Dead," "Memories of Murder," "The Host," "Unbreakable" and... you just have to see him deliver it himself.

Battle Royale
Anything Else
Audition
Tsui Hark's The Blade
Boogie Nights
Dazed & Confused
Dogville
Fight Club
Fridays
The Host
The Insider
Joint Security Area
Lost In Translation
The Matrix
Memories of Murder
Supercop (Police Story 3)
Shaun of the Dead
Speed
Team America: World Police
Unbreakable

Inglourious Basterds

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090819/REVIEWS/908199995

Inglourious Basterds (R)
August 19, 2009

Cast & Credits

Lt. Aldo Raine Brad Pitt
Shosanna Melanie Laurent
Col. Hans Landa Christoph Waltz
Sgt. Donny Donowitz Eli Roth
Lt. Archie Hicox Michael Fassbender
Bridget von Hammersmark Diane Kruger
Fredrick Zoller Daniel Bruhl
Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz Til Schweiger
Cpl. Wilhelm Wicki Gedeon Burkhard
Marcel Jacky Ido
Pfc. Smithson Utivich B.J. Novak
Pfc. Omar Ulmer Omar Doom
Major Hellstrom August Diehl
Perrier Lapadite Denis Menochet
Joseph Goebbels Sylvester Groth
Hitler Martin Wuttke
General Ed Fenech Mike Myers
Francesca Mondino Julie Dreyfus
Sgt. Rachtman Richard Samuel
Master Sgt. Wilhelm/Pola Negri Alexander Fehling
Winston Churchill Rod Taylor

The Weinstein Company presents a film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Running time: 152 minutes. MPAA rating: R for strong graphic violence, language and brief sexuality.

by Roger Ebert

Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” is a big, bold, audacious war movie that will annoy some, startle others and demonstrate once again that he’s the real thing, a director of quixotic delights. For starters (and at this late stage after the premiere in May at Cannes, I don’t believe I’m spoiling anything), he provides World War II with a much-needed alternative ending. For once the basterds get what’s coming to them.

From the title, ripped off from a 1978 B-movie, to the Western sound of the Ennio Morricone opening music to the key location, a movie theater, the film embeds Tarantino’s love of the movies. The deep, rich colors of 35mm film provide tactile pleasure. A character at the beginning and end, not seen in between, brings the story full circle. The “basterds” themselves, savage fighters dropped behind Nazi lines, are an unmistakable nod to the Dirty Dozen.

And above all, there are three iconic characters, drawn broadly and with love: the Hero, the Nazi and the Girl. These three, played by Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz and Melanie Laurent, are seen with that Tarantino knack of taking a character and making it a Character, definitive, larger than life, approaching satire in its intensity but not — quite — going that far. Let’s say they feel bigger than most of the people we meet in movies.

The story begins in Nazi-occupied France, early in the war, when the cruel, droll Nazi Col. Hans Landa (Waltz) arrives at an isolated dairy farm where he believes the farmer (Denis Menochet) is hiding Jews. He’s right, and a young woman named Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) flees into the woods. It is for this scene, and his performance throughout the movie, that Christoph Waltz deserves an Oscar nomination to go with his best actor award from Cannes. He creates a character unlike any Nazi — indeed, anyone at all — I’ve seen in a movie: evil, sardonic, ironic, mannered, absurd.

The Hero is Brad Pitt, as Lt. Aldo Raine, leader of the Basterds. Tarantino probably wants us to hear “Aldo Ray,” star of countless war films and B pictures. Raine is played by Pitt as a broad caricature of a hard-talking Southern boy who wants each of his men to bring him 100 Nazi scalps. For years, his band improbably survives in France and massacres Nazis, and can turn out in formal eveningwear at a moment’s notice. Pitt’s version of Italian is worthy of a Marx brother.

The Girl is Shosanna, played by Laurent as a curvy siren with red lipstick and, at the film’s end, a slinky red dress. Tarantino photographs her with the absorption of a fetishist, with closeups of shoes, lips, a facial veil and details of body and dress. You can’t tell me he hasn’t seen the work of the Scottish artist Jack Vettriano, and his noir paintings of the cigarette-smoking ladies in red.

Shosanna calculatingly flirts with Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), a Nazi war hero and now movie star; he persuades Joseph Goebbels to hold the premiere of his new war film in her theater. This sets up a plot that includes Tarantino breaking several rules in order to provide documentary footage about how flammable nitrate film prints are.

A Tarantino film resists categorization. “Inglourious Basterds” is no more about war than “Pulp Fiction” is about — what the hell is it about? Of course nothing in the movie is possible, except that it’s so bloody entertaining. His actors don’t chew the scenery, but they lick it. He’s a master at bringing performances as far as they can go toward iconographic exaggeration.

After I saw “Inglourious Basterds” at Cannes, although I was writing a daily blog, I resisted giving an immediate opinion about it. I knew Tarantino had made a considerable film, but I wanted it to settle, and to see it again. I’m glad I did. Like a lot of real movies, you relish it more the next time. Immediately after “Pulp Fiction” played at Cannes, QT asked me what I thought. “It’s either the best film of the year or the worst film,” I said. I hardly knew what the hell had happened to me. The answer was: the best film. Tarantino films have a way of growing on you. It’s not enough to see them once.

Quentin Tarantino picks favorite WWII movies

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/08/21/entertainment/e033525D82.DTL

Quentin Tarantino picks favorite WWII movies
By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer
Friday, August 21, 2009

LOS ANGELES, (AP) -- With his own World War II flick, "Inglourious Basterds," hitting theaters Friday, Quentin Tarantino applies his exhaustive knowledge of cinema to single out five favorite World War II flicks.

Not necessarily a Top Five, this off-the-cuff list includes a couple of the well-known and loved war stories along with more obscure dramas, among them two that Tarantino himself did not know about until he started research for "Inglourious Basterds":

"The Great Escape" — Is there any cooler World War II premise than John Sturges' 1963 epic about a mass escape of Allied POWs from a Nazi prison camp, or a cooler cast than Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Coburn, Charles Bronson and Donald Pleasence? "Probably my favorite war movie," Tarantino said. "That's one of the most entertaining movies ever made and was kind of the touchstone goal for ("Inglourious Basterds") to one degree or another. ... Make a World War II movie that's just entertaining, that you just enjoy watching the movie."

"The Dirty Dozen" — Robert Aldrich's 1967 saga is the ultimate example of the men-on-a-mission war subgenre that inspired Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds." Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Donald Sutherland and Telly Savalas are featured in the tale of imprisoned bottom-feeders who get a second chance as part of a hell-raising Allied commando unit. Tarantino said this film deserves to be on his list "for its iconic cast alone." Tarantino went on: "I never follow the normal dance card that the genre or the subgenres I deal in usually play by. It usually is a situation where I sit down, OK, I'm going to do my `Dirty Dozen,' and that's what sits me down, but then I also know that hopefully, I will deliver the pleasure that is found in those genres, but I'm just going to deliver them very differently. It's going to become something else. I want it to become something bigger and more expansive than that given subgenre."

"Five Graves to Cairo" — Ten years before he made "Stalag 17," Billy Wilder directed this 1943 tale centered on an undercover British officer (Franchot Tone) and a woman (Anne Baxter) who helps run a desert hotel where Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (Erich von Stroheim) establishes his headquarters. "One of my favorite war stories, hands-down," Tarantino said. "Billy Wilder and (co-writer) Charles Brackett wrote their own story for it. It doesn't follow history. They came up with their own way. It's not even a very credible version of Rommel, either, but it's a fantastic version of Rommel."

"Tonight We Raid Calais" — John Brahm's 1943 adventure casts John Sutton as a British intelligence officer plotting to destroy a Nazi munitions plant in France, where he takes shelter with the family of a French farmer (Lee J. Cobb), whose daughter blames the British for the fall of France. The screenplay is an early credit for Academy Award winner Waldo Salt ("Midnight Cowboy,""Coming Home"). "One of the movies I discovered while I was doing research on this. A fantastic movie that I fell in love with," Tarantino said. "It has a couple of sequences that really seem like modern storytelling. It doesn't have a classical storytelling feel. Waldo Salt, they consider him the father of modern screenwriting. We can see it right in there. It feels like storytelling today."

"Action in Arabia" — Russian director Leonide Moguy made a few films in Hollywood during the war, including this 1944 thriller starring George Sanders as a reporter in the Middle East who's caught up in the Allied-Nazi struggle for the sympathies of the Arab world. "Another movie I discovered and fell in love with," Tarantino said. "I really love that movie, but you will notice, though, when I talk about these different films, it's not the collection of tanks and big-battle things. Even though I like that stuff, I'm more into the more story-oriented versions of the war."

Brad Pitt in Tarantino's 'Inglourious Basterds'

http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2009/05/cannes-report-2.html

Cannes report: Brad Pitt in Tarantino's 'Inglourious Basterds'
May 20, 2009
by Lisa Schwarzbaum
Categories: Cannes Film Festival 2009, Film

I wish you had been there with me this morning.

Seriously, I wish everyone who ever wants to see Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino's newest, brash cine-geek homage to genre moviemaking, could have been there waiting for an hour with me at 7:30 on a sparkling sunny weekday morning at the Cannes Film Festival. It would have been so great if you could have joined the mob stamping and twitching and actually buzzing to get into the very first, 8:30 a.m. screening of the very latest, certainly very Brad Pitt-iest movie to arrive on the Croisette from the very oxygenated Palme d'Or winner. Oh, how you would have enjoyed breathing the heady atmosphere for which QT made his creation! Plus, you would have freaked out the squadron of guards!

As it is, the minute the festival tents fold and the movie is eventually released in less glamorous American movie theaters, it's unlikely that this joke-y, boyish, play-acted war-game fantasy (at least half spoken in German and French) can ever be inhaled with quite the right mixture of helium and nitrous oxide required to sustain the anticipatory hullaballoo. The tall-tale premise introduces a small band of primarily Jewish, Nazi-hating "basterds," led by doggone Tennessee mountain drawler Aldo Raine (Pitt), who join forces with one Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), a French Jewish woman who escaped while her family was murdered, and who now runs a little local movie theater. While the boys scalp Nazis (watch! one of them also specializes in clubbing heads with an American baseball bat!), Shoshanna has plans to topple the Third Reich by killing Hitler and all his biggies assembled at one screening of a Nazi-propaganda war drama in her Cinema Paradiso of a movie hall.

And yet: It's amazing how little Nazis, Hitler, mass murder, or Resistance bravery mean in this action cartoon. Tarantino is a brilliant showman, the smartest, most erudite guy in the movie clubhouse, a master at re-creating old and/or exotic styles (Hong Kong action, blaxploitation) for a new audience -- no argument. Inglourious Basterds pays homage to spaghetti westerns, noirs, WWII war pics, and spy thrillers, and those who adore being in the know about cinema history will feel super satisfied to figure out throw-away allusions to past movie stars, movie makers, movie scenes, and movie costumes.

But how deep can a movie that repurposes recycled material go? Not very. I've never felt that Tarantino has ever been interested in real emotions or real characters, and that's fine, that's not his thing. But the choice is also an Inglourious limitation. So Pitt play acts; that's what's called for. And Jews and movies win the war this time around. But a Nazi steals the picture. I'm talking about Austrian actor Christoph Waltz -- huge in his home country, unknown in ours but about to be famous -- who's memorable long after the credits roll in retro typography. (Ennio Morricone's retro music works hard, too.) Waltz plays icily precise Nazi colonel Hans Landa, known as "the Jew Hunter." And from his very first scene, in which Landa pries information out of a French farmer, spaghetti-western style, he's irresistible, a one-man display of theatrical virtuosity applied to a villain we're meant to love to hate.

Second-best Nazi award, by the way, goes to the celebrated young German actor Daniel Bruhl (The Bourne Ultimatum), while German-born Diane Kruger wins the award as best German undercover agent/actress in high-heeled pumps. Oh, and B.J.Novak from The Office? He's a Jewish Basterd, too. No joke.

The New Cult Canon: Reservoir Dogs

http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/the_new_cult_canon_reservoir

The New Cult Canon: Reservoir Dogs
By Scott Tobias
December 18th, 2008

"I'm hungry. Let's get a taco." —Harvey Keitel, Reservoir Dogs

Earlier this year, I started The New Cult Canon with Donnie Darko, arguably this generation's only genuine midnight-movie phenomenon, so it seemed appropriate to end the year with Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, without question a major touchstone in today's cult cinema. Before Reservoir Dogs premièred at Sundance in 1992, the festival—and the arthouse scene in general—had seen very little of its kind. The independent world was supposed to be cordoned off from the violent, profane genre fare that littered the multiplex. While the great unwashed were off watching Steven Seagal shatter forearms like twigs, Joe Bordeaux-Sippers could flee for safety in tucked-away cinematic oases, where they found the comfort of earnest, socially progressive, values-affirming indie films, stuffy Merchant-Ivory costume dramas, or a host of middlebrow French imports. (Rumor has it that Reservoir Dogs' mysterious title comes from a mispronunciation of one of those middlebrow imports, Au Revoir Les Enfants, while Tarantino was working at a video store.)

Granted, that may be stating things a little broadly. It wouldn't be entirely accurate to call independent film pre-1992 toothless, or mainstream movies vulgar, or to claim that Tarantino was somehow the savior of an ineffectual, irrelevant arthouse scene. But Reservoir Dogs was nonetheless a defining moment, because it lent artistic legitimacy to what would have otherwise been dismissed as genre trash. It didn't make much money in its theatrical run—old viewing habits die hard—but along with Pulp Fiction two years later, it legitimately transformed the scene. Even now, low-budget genre films still have a tough time getting the support they need, but Reservoir Dogs did an awful lot to make them viable by finding a previously nonexistent audience that craved unvarnished visceral excitement without the attendant Hollywood stupidity.

Sixteen years and five films later (not counting Four Rooms, and counting Kill Bill as one), Tarantino has become a polarizing figure, swept along uneasily by the undulating waves of "cool" he helped create. Too often, he's looked upon less as a filmmaker than as a cultural phenomenon, subject to the "hot or not"/"in or out" fickleness of trend-spotters, who don't always consider the merits of his work. Detractors don't like his acting. (Okay, they have a point.) They don't like his obnoxious public persona. They don't like the drooling fanboys who congregate on Ain't It Cool News, or the legions of imitators who've clogged screens and video-store shelves in his wake. But all these things are just a distraction, because they're mostly in response to Tarantino the phenomenon, and not to what happens in the narrow hours when the lights are down and his formidable skills as a writer and director are on display.

Reservoir Dogs opens with what would become a Tarantino signature: The idea that bad guys, in the time between jobs, blab about the same banal shit the rest of us do, albeit in a much more colorful way. Sitting over breakfast with a table full of gangsters, there's Tarantino himself as Mr. Brown, theorizing (convincingly) that the Madonna hit "Like A Virgin" is not about "a sensitive girl who meets a nice fella" (that's "True Blue"), but about a John Holmes-type making a promiscuous girl feel the sweet pain of virginity all over again. That segues into an argument over tipping, prompted by the sniveling Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), who refuses to throw in a buck like everyone else, because he doesn't believe waitresses deserve extra money just for doing their jobs. Mr. Pink is obstinate in the face of reason until bossman Lawrence Tierney, with his gravelly voice and hulking frame, brings him in line: "C'mon, you. Cough up a buck, you cheap bastard."

Nothing said in the opening scene figures in later, not even in some obscure metaphorical way. Tarantino does make the most of an opportunity to introduce his characters, who have convened on a day leading up to a jewelry heist, and won't be seen together again until they meet at a warehouse rendezvous after the botched robbery. But the film would still make sense without the scene, which is just as much about Tarantino delivering a statement of intent that's carried him through to this day. Having these gangsters riff on Madonna and tipping establishes his characters and films as products of popular culture, reflections more of a movie-addled brain than of the far-less-exciting world outside of it. Some tag him as a rip-off artist, but he's really a collagist, cutting and pasting phrases, references, and styles from the past into something new, infused with his own distinct sensibility and unmistakable voice.

Made for just over $1 million, Reservoir Dogs is a classic example of turning budgetary liabilities into creative assets. A heist movie without the heist, the film takes place mostly in one location, the warehouse, and deals alternately with the lead-up and the aftermath. The limited space gives it the intensity of theater, and the interweaving of flashbacks and present-day confrontations make the robbery itself come together in the imagination better than it might have had Tarantino splurged on a Michael Mann setpiece. As with much of Tarantino's work, the heist-without-the-heist conceit isn't unprecedented, nor is the structure—Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, also a model of low-budget resourcefulness, was his acknowledged influence—but he always manages to stay on the right side of the line between homage and rip-off.

Here's what we know right away about the robbery: It didn't go well. Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) and Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) are the first back to the warehouse, with the older White desperately trying to keep the gutshot Orange from bleeding to death. Mr. Pink comes in next, declaring his certainty that they were set up; with their daytime smash-and-grab job, they knew they only had minutes after the alarms went off, but the cops seemed to be waiting for them, and a bloody mêlée ensued. The question then becomes, "Who's the rat?" Could be Mr. Brown, who died in the frantic escape, or Mr. Blue (Eddie Bunker), who never materializes, or maybe Michael Madsen's sadistic Mr. Blonde, who just started shooting bystanders at will once the job went sour. Tarantino takes his time with that and other revelations, and fills in the blanks by giving the key players—Mr. White, Mr. Orange, and Mr. Blonde, specifically—the introductions they deserve. And while everyone's in limbo, he also gives us Blonde torturing a uniformed cop in this career-making NSFW sequence, which forever repurposes the Stealers Wheel bubblegum-Dylan hit "Stuck In The Middle With You".

Tarantino tends to get singled out first for his stylized dialogue (with good reason), and second for his achronological, novelistic approach to storytelling (also with good reason). But he's always been underrated as a director, and the torture scene wouldn't be nearly as effective in more pedestrian hands. It's hard to believe the Madsen of Reservoir Dogs would balloon into the corpulent softie of the Free Willy movies, but in his black-suit-and-sunglasses getup, Tarantino frames him like the second coming of Robert Mitchum, a lean, charismatic figure with the black heart of Mitchum's preacher in The Night Of The Hunter. Having "K-Billy's super sounds of the '70s" in the background sets up the perfect ironic ambience (and gives Madsen the right beat for his famous shuffle), but what Tarantino does with the camera is key. The scene is considered hideously violent, but the most gruesome moments happen offscreen, whether the camera positions itself to miss the cuts of Mr. Blonde's razor, or pans away altogether as he severs the cop's right ear. (The latter shot is a nod to Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, which also has the camera dolly out in the film's most painful moment, when Robert De Niro gets turned down while talking on a payphone.) There's plenty of blood in Reservoir Dogs, but little gratuitousness, and perhaps less violence than the average action thriller; it's a trick of a great director, one who knows how to play with viewers' imaginations, and realizes that less violence can have more impact. On Charlie Rose in 1994, Tarantino quoted Brian De Palma, who once talked about filmmakers getting "penalized" for doing violence well, and he goes on later to explain:

"Violence was like another character in the room [in Reservoir Dogs]. It hung over the proceedings. You kept waiting for every conversation to break out into it. So even if it was funny, the audience might have laughed, but when they get out of the theater, they don't remember laughing."

Thematically, Reservoir Dogs sticks to the tried-and-true "honor among thieves" premise common to most heist movies, and its strong masculine bonds put the film firmly in line with the two-fisted entertainments Tarantino has always championed. At the center of it all is this idea of "professionalism": These guys were hired to do a job, and as professionals, they have a code that dictates how it should be carried out. Mr. Blonde may be loyal, but cutting up a room when the robbery starts to fall apart is unprofessional, as is his extracurricular abduction and torture of a cop.

And though the dynamic between Mr. White and Mr. Orange is surprisingly tender, almost like a bear nursing a cub, all professionalism went out the window the moment Mr. White trusted Mr. Orange enough to tell him his first name, and reveal his incriminating love of the Brewers. Ironically, Buscemi's Mr. Pink comes away as the lone professional: In the chaos following the robbery, he could have (and given the circumstances, probably should have) driven away with the diamonds rather than come back to the rendezvous point, but he didn't. He also tries to break up the Mexican standoff between the other men ("We're supposed to be fucking professionals!"), but he fails and winds up the last man standing, fully entitled to the stash. There's no doubt Tarantino feels more affection for Mr. White, who reveals a kind of tragic decency in taking the younger Mr. Orange under his wing, but the job is the job, and his inability to live by a criminal code hastens his demise.

Above all, though, Reservoir Dogs is about the sheer pleasure of a good story told right, and few people can do it as well as Tarantino. There's a great meta-scene halfway into the movie in which Mr. Orange, an undercover cop preparing to infiltrate this criminal operation, goes over a five-page script called "The Commode Story." The script is a piece of fiction about Mr. Orange's run-in with four cops and a German shepherd while he was carrying a bag of hash, intended to ingratiate him with the other crooks. He's told he needs to be a good actor, "like Brando," but it's really about how stories come alive in the details, and how the storyteller's command of the little things spells the difference between a convincing and an unconvincing tale-or, in this case, between life and death. He may be a savant genius, a semi-literate with little but a pop-cultural education, but when he's really cooking-as in the following scene, when Tierney is handing out aliases-there's no one better.

The Holocaust, Tarantino-style

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1027043.html

07/10/2008
The Holocaust, Tarantino-style: Jews scalping Nazis
By Assaf Uni
Tags: Israel News, Holocaust

BERLIN - For weeks, Germany's tabloids and culture pages have been preoccupied with Quentin Tarantino's film "Inglorious Bastards," slated to start filming next week in Germany.

While the tabloids are drooling over the movie's star, Brad Pitt, who is moving with his wife Angelina Jolie and their children to a villa close to Berlin ("The most beautiful couple in Wannsee," one headline declared), the serious media is focusing on another angle: Is Germany ready for a Tarantino-style treatment of World War II?

An early draft of the script leaked onto the Internet three months ago suggested the film would contain scenes of bloody vengeance exacted by Jews against Nazis. One campaign would be carried out by Jews in the U.S. Army intent on scalping Nazi soldiers on occupied French soil; another would be a Jewish refugee's revenge against the Nazi officer who murdered her parents.

Pitt is to play Jewish-American Lt. Aldo Raine, the leader of a revenge squad known as "The Bastards," who launch a killing spree in which they hang, torture, disembowel and scalp German soldiers and engrave Swastikas on their foreheads, according to the leaked draft.

The film is raising controversy in Germany, where the subjects of World War II and the Holocaust are usually restricted to historical discourse.

"This is pop culture meeting Nazi Germany and the Holocaust with unprecedented force," said the film critic of SuedDeutche Zeitung, Tobias Kniebe. "The effects of this collision are utterly unpredictable."

German film critics blasted last week's decision to grant the film money from the German Film Fund and another local fund, saying that Germany cannot finance a movie that uses Jewish-Nazi relations as entertainment, especially one by Tarantino.

The SuedDeutche Zeitung warned that the film may be no less explosive than the Hollywood film Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise, about German officers' abortive attempt to assassinate Hitler toward the end of WWII. The movie, filmed in Germany and scheduled to be released in spring 2009, has already drawn fire from German historians.

"All the German historians and critics who were left gasping for breath by Tom Cruise and his worthy attempts to produce a correct image of Stauffenberg will be so shocked by 'Inglorious Bastards' that they will savage it on the spot," writes Kneibe.

Tarantino's film is not supposed to mix history and fiction, but to offer the pure, hyper-violent entertainment that the American director of "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction" and "Kill Bill" is known for.

"It is sort of a spaghetti western set in World War II," Tarantino told the German News Agency DPA. "I am not going to call it this, but if it had a subtitle for it, it would be called, 'Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France.'"

Films that treat the Holocaust period as pure entertainment could be destructive, says Alexander Kluge, a noted film director and author, who has been dealing with the Holocaust and its memory for more than 50 years.

He cites Swiss-Jewish director Dany Levy's comedy "Mein Fuehrer" as a case in point. This film raised a storm in Germany two years ago, when it portrayed for the first time a neurotic, empathy-evoking Hitler. "Such films can obscure the events' true significance," says Kluge.

Tarantino's film received a 300,000 euro grant from the state of Brandenburg, because it will be filmed in Potsdam's Babelsberg studios. Founded in 1911, this is the world's oldest major film studio. Films including Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" and "The Blue Angel" with Marlene Dietrich were filmed there in the 1920s and 1930s, as were numerous Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda films.

Tarantino's film is also expected to receive 20 percent of its budget from the German Film Fund because it is being filmed in Germany. It is scheduled to be released in June 2009.

Brad Pitt Joins Inglorious Bastards

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=23051

08 August 2008
Brad Pitt Joins Inglorious Bastards
And Simon Pegg's in talks
Source: Variety

The Inglorious Bastards ranks continue to swell with Brad Pitt now officially signed on to play a Tennessee hillbilly who leads a band of eight Jewish-American soldiers to take out some rough justice on the Nazis.

But Pitt is not the only addition to Quentin Tarantino's war movie. Simon Pegg is in talks to play a British Lieutenant; Nastassja Kinski has begun negotiations to play a German movie star; David Krumholtz (who will forever be Mr. Universe from Serenity to us) is likely to join the cast as one of Pitt's lackies.

Now this is starting to sound more like a Tarantino movie cast. You've got the big name (Pitt), the leftfield casting (Pegg) and the resurgent star of yesteryear (Kinski). A couple more A-listers would be nice, and probably someone last seen in a cult horror from the mid-70s, but this is now shaping up nicely.

Variety reports that Tim Roth was in talks to join the cast, but scheduling difficulties prevented it. Interestingly, their article also says that much of the film's dialogue will be in either French or German, with subtitles, although Pitt will speak in English.

Tarantino is set to begin shooting in Germany on October 13 and is still planning to have the film ready for next year's Cannes Film Festival. That sounds like an impossibly tight deadline to us, but, by God, he's got to try.

Olly Richards

Britney Spears to play lesbian killer

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/2509196/Britney-Spears-to-play-lesbian-killer-in-Quentin-Tarantino-film.html

Britney Spears to play lesbian killer in Quentin Tarantino film
By Sarah Knapton
06 Aug 2008

Britney Spears is being lined up to play a killer lesbian stripper in the Quentin Tarantino's next movie, it has been reported.

The singer was apparently chosen by the Pulp Fiction director to play dancer Varla in a remake of the 1965 cult film Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

The movie sees three thrill-seeking strippers encountering a young couple in the desert.

Spears' character murders the boyfriend with her bare hands before taking the girlfriend hostage. The troubled singer will also have sex scenes with another girl before the drama ends in a blood-bath.

Tarantino is in discussions with other Hollywood stars to take the roles of the remaining two strippers.

A source said: "Quentin is convinced Britney will be brilliant. She's delighted. She thinks it could turn her career around.

"It is perfect Tarantino material. He wanted to get Britney first. She's playing the most important character."

Spears had her first starring role in the 2002 film Crossroads, portraying a high school graduate on a road-trip to find her mother. But despite grossing $60 million worldwide the movie, and Britney's performance, was panned and she received Razzie Awards for Worst Actress and for Worst Original Song.

Spears also made cameo appearances in Austin Powers: Goldmember and Longshot.

Freakies V Waffelos

The Golden Age of Freakies

Found at Adam Gorightly's Untamed Dimensions on 10-31-07 http://gorightly.wordpress.com/2007/10/31/the-golden-age-of-freakies/

http://www.mysteryisland.net/freakiesarticle

What's that you say? Not enough cereal in the Cartoons & Cornflakes archives? All right, well, my absolute favorite childhood cereal was FREAKIES, not so much for its generic "crunchy, sugary" breakfast cereal goodness, but for its overall A+ packaging and cereal treasure delivery.

Freakies had the best commercials, best cereal icons (the Freakies family themselves), and the absolute best cereal prizes, again, the Freakies themselves!

The first prizes were the best, hard plastic (PVC) figures of the Freakies.


Seven Freakies existed: Boss Moss (the leader), Cowmumble, Gargle, Hamhose, Grumble, Goody-Goody, and Snorkeldorf (my favorite for unknown reasons).

They just looked really cool, small monsters you could carry inside your pocket. Hey, the original "pokemon" so to speak. Pocket monsters.

After the PVC figures, rubber versions showed up in the boxes, then Freakies in cars ...

then boats, then magnets, and the budget seemed to dissolve into mushy cereal nothingness from there.

Freakies, a unique brand of cereal, a terrific gimmick, only lasted three years: (1973-1975), but a very magical time period from my perspective, my key comic book buying days, skateboard and bicycle riding, and living in a perpetual world of imagination inside my 9 to 11-year old head.
I wrote a poem about the Freakies a few years back. The strange tribute was published in Robert Berry's pop culture book: Frankenberry Uber Alles and can now be found at retroCRUSH, featured in the TOP 100 Monsters list.

***

Robalini's Reply:

Thanks for the piece on Freakies, Adam, but personally my favorite cereal from yesteryear, hands down, was Waffelos. The koolest thing about Waffelos: you could collect the boxes, as there were nine different buildings which made up the Old West town of Waffeloville!

Here's more on Waffelos:

http://neatocoolville.blogspot.com/2006/11/waffelos-cereal-howdy-pardners-to-start.html

Friday, November 17, 2006
WAFFELOS CEREAL

“Howdy Pardners! To start the day right you need the right kind of breakfast. So here’s one breakfast that fills the bill.

First. You get yourself a bowl, fill it with Waffelos cereal, and pour on some milk.

Second. Have some fruit or juice.

Third. Try a little warm toast with butter or margarine.

Fourth. Wash it all down with a glass of milk.

My horse reminded me to tell you that Waffelos with 1/2-cup of milk give you 25% of the recommended daily allowance of 8 essential vitamins plus iron.

There’s a lot more to Waffelos than great Taste!”

Waffelo Bill

This good advise from the one and only Waffelo Bill was found on the side of each cereal box of Waffelos.
Introduced in 1979 by Ralston, this cereal was mighty tasty and a real hoot to boot! Waffelos came in two flavors Maple or Blueberry. Waffelo Bill rode into the sunset with his guitar playing horse in 1982, but luckily he left behind some nifty premiums.


Reminiscent to the 1948 Lone Ranger Frontier Town cut-out buildings on the backs of Cheerios boxes was Waffelos own version called Waffeloville. (You know, that’s just down the road from Neato Coolville)

You had the opportunity to collect all nine buildings off of the backs of Waffelos cereal. To have the complete town you needed Bill’s Milk Bar, Waffeloville School, General Store, Waffeloville Bank, Railroad Station, Blacksmith, Livery Stable, Waffeloville Hotel, and the Stage Coach Office.


Also as a bonus, each box came with one of five Waffeloville stand-up characters!


Some of the other premiums that were made available was a maze game, a belt buckle, Wacky Packages stickers, and two Wacky Packages posters (box panels). You can see those and a scan of the Blueberry Waffelos box over at Wacky-Packages

Also there were these three glass decals for drinking glasses, windows or mirrors.

Now I think I’ll go an fix me up some waffles then break off the squares into a bowl, pour in some maple syrup and milk and relive a childhood memory.

Hmm... You know that sounds like a bad idea. I’ll just go buy some of that new Eggo cereal instead.

Posted by Mayor Todd Franklin

Neato Labels: 1970's, cerealville

***

Oddly, X-Entertainment.com, that hip repository for retro-cool pop kulture, pretty much rips the cereal in it's review:

http://www.x-entertainment.com/messages/200.html

Waffelos -- Mmmmm! Waffelos! Now, cereal designers, a question for you. Does this tagline suggest a premium product? 'A Sweetened Cereal With Artificial Maple Flavor'. I'd be more inclined to think this cereal was good for me if they wrote 'Cereal is Made Entirely From Sugar & Evil Glucose Concentrate'. We also run into a bit of a problem with the choice of mascot - this ugly cowboy dude. I'm sure I speak for all of us - who would want to look at that while eating the most important meal of the day? See the horse in the background? Tell me he doesn't look guilty for supporting such an inferior product.

Waffelos was one of many in a string of cereal brands which felt the best way to go was to simply pour sugar syrup over unflavored toasted corn. It's a simple formula, actually, and it'd work if you'd make even the slightest effort to promote it as anything but that. Waffelos didn't do that, and when you compile that in with the ridiculous cowboy idiot on the box, you've got a real loser.

***

Perhaps the final word of Waffelos, though, comes from the great author Don DeLillo, who, in his 1985 novel White Noise includes it on his riff on modern korporate kuisine: "the junk food still in shopping bags -- onion-and-garlic chips, nacho thins, peanut crème patties, Waffelos and Kabooms, fruit chews and toffee popcorn; the Dum-Dum pops, the Mystic mints."

Kaboom (or more properly, Kaboom!) got a greater claim of pop culture fame in 2003, when Vivica A. Fox used a box of the breakfast treat to conceal a gun she was using in a attempt to blow away Uma Thurman. That was the problem with Waffelos, unlike Kaboom: it was just too intellectual to be appreciated by someone like Quentin Tarantino...

John Travolta becomes the perfect woman

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml;jsessionid=XTZTTLZ5YYNP5QFIQMFSFFOAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/arts/2007/07/13/nosplit/bftravolta11.xml

John Travolta becomes the perfect woman
13/07/2007

When John Travolta finally agreed to star in his first musical since 'Grease', he had some very firm ideas about just how voluptuous his character should be, he tells John Hiscock

When you've been a sexy teen idol, a tough action star, danced with Diana, Princess of Wales and been nominated for two Oscars, you think long and hard when someone asks you to put on a dress and portray an outsized, overly protective mother.

John Travolta thought for 14 months before saying "Yes."

The decision was a good one, because he makes a sweet, lovable Edna Turnblad, who sings, dances and is madly in love with her husband, played by Travolta's old pal and fellow former Broadway hoofer Christopher Walken, in the third incarnation of John Waters's musical, Hairspray.

The story, as most people know by now, is set in Baltimore during the 1960s TV dance craze and centres on Edna and Wilbur Turnblad and their daughter Tracy (played by screen newcomer Nikki Blonsky), who graduates from outsider to celebrity trendsetter while kicking down racial barriers on local television.

Edna was portrayed in the original 1988 movie by the transvestite Divine and in the subsequent Broadway show by Harvey Feirstein.

But in this version, which the film's producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron describe as a "re-invention" based on the stage musical, the first choice for the role was always Travolta. They had originally chosen him for the Billy Flynn role in Chicago, but it went to Richard Gere after Travolta turned it down.

"When they asked me to be Edna Turnblad I said, 'Gee, 32 years as a leading man… why me? What makes you think I'd be the perfect woman?'

"It took me a year and two months to decide to do it. It was a long and arduous decision."

He was finally convinced by director-choreographer Adam Shankman's vision and passion.

"He basically said to me, 'I take this movie personally and if it doesn't come out right, I'm going to die.' And I said, 'Whoa, I've got to go with that guy,' because musicals don't work unless every throttle's on full, so when I got the sense everybody cared, then I said, OK.

"I had the biggest musical in history, Grease, and I wanted to leave it like that, so excuse the pun but it took a lot of grease to get me back in the frying pan."

He was so determined to create the Edna he wanted that he rejected several versions of the fat suit designed for him until he was given one he considered made her suitably curvaceous and voluptuous.

"It wasn't real to me to make her like a refrigerator," he says. "I said, 'Make her as big as you want as long as you give her a waist and make her pretty because it will be more interesting, more appealing and more entertaining.' I wanted people to enjoy looking at her, because if she's grotesque, it's not fun.

"My challenge was making sure I was convincing as a woman, so I drew on a library of memories of watching great female performances in the theatre and on film and in my family, and I used role models like Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, Elizabeth Taylor… these women with voluptuous shapes."

He had to spend up to five hours a day encased in a full body suit weighing more than 30lb with five separate gel-filled silicone prosthetic appliances for parts of Edna's face. But it had its compensations.

"I'm happy to be a man, but I miss being groped," he says, laughing. "Everybody tried to grope me all day. Suddenly having breasts and a big bottom gained me so much attention. Men and women wanted to feel my breasts and feel my bum. I must be a slut because I didn't care. Men were flirting with me and I was being given power I never had before. I found it fascinating. Women have power I didn't know they had."

Hairspray is a testament not only to 53-year-old John Travolta's versatility, but to his ability to defy the rules of Hollywood and continue to thrive.

In a business where the adage "they never come back" is especially true, he returned to Hollywood's A-list after languishing in semi-obscurity for a decade and is now as much in demand as he was when his portrayal of the posturing Italian-American Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever, one of the signature films of the 1970s, earned him an Oscar nomination and international stardom.

Maybe it is due to his well-reported affiliation to the Church of Scientology, but he gives off the aura of almost unnatural calmness. He is remarkably easy to talk to and has an unexpected quality of being able to laugh at himself.

He and his actress wife Kelly Preston avoid the Hollywood social scene, preferring to remain at home some 100 miles up the coast, with their two children, Jett, 15, and seven-year-old Ella Bleu, who is already a budding actress.

An avid flier since he was 16 years old, Travolta also owns a fly-in/fly-out house in Florida, where he lands his Gulfstream 11 and customised 707 jets on a private runway, taxiing right up to the house.

Although he is all movie star nowadays, Travolta is a man who has paid his showbusiness dues. When he was six years old, he took dancing lessons from Gene Kelly's brother; he made his stage debut when he was 12 in Who Will Save the Plowboy?, dropped out of high school when he was 16 to begin work in summer stock and made his Broadway debut in 1974 in Over Here! with the Andrews Sisters.

But after achieving worldwide fame with Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978), he became trapped for nearly 10 years in a series of forgettable flops. He was in danger of becoming one of Hollywood's forgotten men until, in 1985, at a party at the White House, Diana, Princess of Wales asked him to dance and he was once more making headlines around the world.

"That was an amazing moment for her and for me because at that time I was having a dip in my career and no one was very interested in me," he says. "But with Princess Diana I was suddenly the only thing that mattered in America to her and I was reborn. I was like, 'Wow! I matter to someone again.' "

Then Quentin Tarantino and Pulp Fiction (1994) restored his acting credibility and won him his second Oscar nomination. Since then, he has thrived in films such as Get Shorty (1995), Broken Arrow (1996), Michael (1996), Face/Off (1997), Primary Colors (1998) and Swordfish (2001), while emerging unscathed from such critically assailed flops as Battlefield Earth (2000).

His most recent film, Wild Hogs (2007), was a huge financial success, and he is due to start work soon on the Walt Disney film Old Dogs, which co-stars his wife and daughter. He is also awaiting a final script for Dallas, the movie version of the 1970s television series in which he is due to play JR.

"As you get older you have to force yourself to have new dreams," he says. "For instance, I've been flying for 37 years but now teaching others to fly is interesting for me. Sometimes you have to find new angles on life to keep you interested, like sharing successes and inspiring and helping others. You have to go out of your way to activate your dreams and keep them going in this third chapter of your life."

'Hairspray' is released on Friday July 20

CROSS-DRESSING AT THE MOVIES

Some Like It Hot (1959)
"Have I got things to tell you!" says Jerry (Jack Lemmon) to Joe (Tony Curtis). "What happened?" "I'm engaged!" "Congratulations! Who's the lucky girl?" "I am!"

The absolute mother of cross-dressing comedies, Billy Wilder's movie remains a thing of beauty - not, perhaps, something that could be said of the suspiciously big-boned Daphne and Josephine.

Mrs Doubtfire (1993)
Robin Williams is like a kiddy in a sweetshop as the husband who, after an acrimonious divorce, decides to pretened to be Euphegenia Doubtfire, nanny extraordinary, in order to spend more time with his children.

It all requires mammoth suspension of disbelief, but there's a nicely waspish edge to the script and much of it is far funnier than it has any right to be.

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
Alec Guinness plays pursed-lipped Suffragette Lady Agatha, the fourth of eight members of the D'Ascoyne family (all played by Guinness) murdered by Dennis Price in pursuit of the dukedom he believes should be his.

"I shot an arrow in the air/She fell to earth in Berkeley Square," he says gaily after downing her hot-air balloon.

Tootsie (1982)
Dustin Hoffman's portrayal of a struggling young actor who turns himself into a middle-aged woman to get a part - and thereby gains an unwelcome insight into life on the other side of the sexual divide - won him an Oscar nomination. His biggest problem with the role? Getting the voice right, he said.

The Crying Game (1992)
If you've never seen this film, stop reading now, because the revelation that the sexy, sultry Dil (Jaye Davidson) is actually a boy is the plot's big twist, helping to make this one of Neil Jordan's biggest hits. Much confusion among male viewers who found themselves fancying her/him.