Inglourious Basterds (U.S. - Germany) By TODD MCCARTHYA Weinstein Co. (in U.S.)/Universal Pictures Intl. (foreign) release of A Band Apart (U.S.)/Zehnte Babelsberg (Germany) production. (International sales; Universal Pictures Intl., London.) Produced by Lawrence Bender. Executive producers, Erica Steinberg, Lloyd Phillips, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein. Co-producers, Henning Molfenter, Carl L. Woebcken, Christoph Fisser. Directed, written by Quentin Tarantino.
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
"Inglourious Basterds" is a violent fairy tale, an increasingly entertaining fantasia in which the history of World War II is wildly reimagined so that the cinema can play the decisive role in destroying the Third Reich. Quentin Tarantino's long-gestating war saga invests a long-simmering revenge plot with reworkings of innumerable genre conventions, but only fully finds its tonal footing about halfway through, after which it's off to the races. 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. Several explosive scenes and the names of Tarantino and topliner Brad Pitt promise brawny commercial prospects, especially internationally, as the preponderance of subtitled dialogue might put off a certain slice of the prospective domestic audience. In no meaningful way based upon Enzo G. Castellari's schlock 1978 Italian WWII programmer of the same title, Tarantino's deliberately misspelled namesake has been in the oven for many years, initially as a would-be "The Dirty Dozen"-style bad boys "mission" adventure and until very recently as a massive miniseries-length epic spanning the entire war. The narrow mission focus has prevailed in the end, but not in the way that might have been expected, as the group of Jewish avengers led by Pitt's Tennessee Lt. Aldo Raine rep only one component of a vast ensemble that feeds into a Nazi-foiling plot only a hardcore film buff could have dreamed up.
In fact, the best characters are non-Yanks, all of whom speak their own languages and one or two others to boot. But this commendable gesture toward linguistic accuracy is virtually the only realistic aspect of the picture, which otherwise soars on its flights of fancy and deliberate anachronisms -- the use of David Bowie's "Putting Out the Fire" at a crucial point is particularly inispired -- and flattens out only when Tarantino gets too carried away with over-elaborated dialogue scenes, a problem that could easily be addressed with some slight trimming between now and the skedded August opening.
Never less than enjoyable and more than that in the second half, "Basterds" is divided into five "chapters," the first being "Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France." Wording not only reflects the Sergio Leone-style nature of the opening scene, in which notorious Nazi "Jew Hunter" Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) arrives at a farmhouse to ferret out a hidden Jewish family, but honestly reflects the fantastical nature of the narrative to come.
The long discussion in which Landa engages the nervous farmer establishes, in slightly protracted fashion, Landa's erudition and his relaxed, self-amused way of leading up to the lethal moment. It also provides Waltz, a good-looking 40ish actor who carries off dialogue in four languages with consummate ease, with an early chance to claim the picture as his own, which he does.
One member of the Jewish family, young Shosanna (Melanie Laurent), escapes the massacre, only to surface three years later, in 1944, as the owner of a cinema in occupied Paris. Now a very quickly grown-up blonde, Shosanna endures the unwelcome advances of Nazi war hero Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), who calls himself "the German Sgt. York" for his exploits at taking out dozens of Allied soldierssinglehandedly, a feat celebrated in a new German movie, "Nation's Pride," starring Zoller himself.
In short order, Shosanna is compelled to tolerate the company of the infamous Dr. Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) as well that of Landa, who informs her at length that the Nazis want to take over her theater to hold the premiere of Zoller's film, an event to be attended by Nazidom's elite. As difficult as it is for Shosanna to bear these monsters, the event does provide the long-suffering woman the opportunity she's been waiting for to strike back at her family's killer and other Nazis in the bargain.
A notable continuity issue crops up here, as Shosanna is told the gala screening is to be held that very evening. In the next chapter, "Operation Kino," a British commando leader (and former film critic), Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), is told by a general (Mike Myers, amusing and greatly made-over) that the opening will take place three days hence. Quite apart from Shosanna's own plot, the Brits, in league with the Basterds, plan to infiltrate the premiere courtesy of their invaluable secret agent, beauteous German leading lady Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger).
Once this mission is set in motion, pic clicks confidently on all cylinders. Before this point, some scenes feel overly attenuated; the leisurely exchange between Landa and Shosanna in a Paris restaurant features needlessly repetitious dialogue has a deadened, airless quality due to the almost total absence of ambient sound and surrounding activity. The Basterds' first appearance, in which they gleefully display their grisly Nazi-scalping technique and which features much twangy, down-home speechifying by Pitt, also proves less amusing than was no doubt intended.
By contrast, a long tavern sequence in which the group of reveling spies -- including Bridget, Hicox, Til Schweiger's renegade German and Gedeon Burkhard's undercover corporal -- party on until coming under the suspicion of a Gestapo officer (August Diehl, excellent), is vintage Tarantino, brimming with delicious dialogue, wonderful linguistic mixing, lively group interplay and tension slowly built to a convulsive climax. Scene vaults the picture straight into its grand climax, in which all the top Nazis, including Goebbels, Goerring and, crazily enough, Hitler himself, conveniently place themselves under one roof awaiting the madly inventive fate devised for them by Shosanna.
While World War II has probably inspired as much fiction as any other single topic in film history, "Inglourious Basterds" is one of the few to have brazenly altered history to such an extent. Because he carefully sets up the approach at the outset, as well as through his sense of style, Tarantino gets away with it, and is in a position to fine-tune the picture before locking a final cut. Other scenes ripe for pruning are all those featuring Hitler prior to the grand finale, interludes that come off as cartoony, unconvincing and unnecessary.
In a true ensemble picture, Waltz stands head and shoulders above the rest with a lusty performance in the juiciest role. Laurent is appealingly thoughtful and observant as the young lady awaiting her chance, Fassbender cuts a dashing figure, speaks with a wonderfully clipped accent and rather resembles Daniel Day-Lewis here, and Kruger is far more engaging and animated than she's heretofore been in her big international pictures. Pitt clearly enjoys rolling his former moonshine runner's accent around in his mouth, although his performance is overly defined by constantly jutting jaw and furrowed brow. Inferring a measure of self-evaluation by Tarantino, some viewers will take exception to the film's final line, in which Aldo admires his climactic bit of brutal handiwork: "I think this just might be my masterpiece."
Shot almost entirely at Babelsberg Studio outside Berlin, with brief location work in Paris, pic features terrific production values across the boards, from David Wasco's rich production design and Anna Sheppard's fine costumes to Robert Richardson's clear-eyed, beautifully framed lensing and Sally Menke's sharply timed editing. Tarantino eschews a traditional score in favor of a crazy stew of source music, ranging eclectically from Dimitri Tiomkin's "The Green Leaves of Summer" from "The Alamo" and some Mike Curb motorcycle movie music to eight selections from the Ennio Morricone library.
Basterd Eli Roth shot the black-and-white battle footage from the "Nation's Pride" film-within-a-film, which features glimpses of original "Inglorious Bastards" star Bo Swenson.
Camera (Deluxe color, Panavision widescreen), Robert Richardson; editor, Sally Menke; music supervisor, Mary Ramos; production designer, David Wasco; supervising art director, Sebastian Krawinkel; art director, Stephan Gessler, Marco Bittner Rosser, David Scheunemann; set decorator, Sandy Reynolds Wasco; costume designer, Anna B. Sheppard; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS), Mark Ulano; supervising sound editor, Wylie Stateman; re-recording mixers, Michael Minkler, Tony Lamberti; sound designers, Harry Cohen, Ann Scibelli; visual effects designer, John Dykstra; visual effects supervisor, Victor Mueller; special effects supervisors, Gerd Feuchter, Uli Nefzer; special makeup effects, Gregory Nicotero, Howard Berger; stunt coordinators, Jeff Dashnaw, Bud Davis, Antje "Angie" Rau (Germany); associate producer, Pilar Savone; assistant directors, William Paul Clark, Bruce Moriarty; casting, Johanna Ray, Jenny Jue, Simone Bar, Olivier Carbone. Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 20, 2009. Running time: 152 MIN. (English, German, French, Italian dialogue)
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Film Review: Inglourious Basterds Bottom line: A surprisingly tame war movie from the king of pulp fiction Quentin Tarantino. May 20, 2009, 05:58 AM ET
CANNES -- History will not repeat itself for Quentin Tarantino. While his "Pulp Fiction" arrived late at the Festival de Cannes and swept away the Palme d'Or in 1994, his World War II action movie "Inglourious Basterds" merely continues the string of disappointments in this year's Competition.
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.
Boxoffice expectations for this co-production that will see the Weinstein Co. handling domestic and Universal handling international distribution will still be considerable, but there isn't much chance of the kind of repeat business Tarantino normally attracts.
The film borrows its title but little else from Enzo Castellari's 1978 World War II film. In Tarantino's version, a small group of Jewish-American soldiers under the command of Brad Pitt's Aldo Raine terrorizes Nazi soldiers in Occupied France, performing shocking acts of savagery and corpse mutilations. How close they come to war crimes is unclear since, in a very un-Tarantino manner, he shows little more than a few scalpings that earn Aldo the nickname "Apache" from the Germans and one execution by a baseball bat.
As a matter of fact, for a war movie there is very little action. People talk, soldiers scheme, and a German war hero pesters a French woman in Paris. Otherwise, the action comes in short bursts such as the machine-gunning of a hiding Jewish family through a farmhouse floorboards and a shootout in a bistro.
Reportedly, Tarantino has been having a go at this script for over a decade, and it looks like he never licked the dramatic problems. The "Basterds" are formed in 1941, then suddenly it's 1944 and they have firmly established their reputation. But only one scene gives the flavor of what they do to deserve it.
Unlike Tarantino's previous films, "Inglourious Basterds" does not build to a climax through a series of ingenuous episodes, each one upping the stakes and the tension, but rather it rolls the dice on one major operation.
The head of Germany's film business Joseph Goebbels wants to hold the premiere of a movie celebrating the exploits of the army's finest sharpshooter, Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), in Paris. All the top Nazi brass will be in attendance, including Hitler. A British lieutenant (Michael Fassbender) parachutes behind enemy lines to organize the Basterds to blow up the cinema.
Unbeknownst to the Allies, however, the cinema's owner, Shosanna (Melanie Laurent), a Jew who seeks revenge for the execution of her family, has the same general idea only she wants to locks the doors and set the theater on fire. Best of all for her, the head of security for the event is none other than the villainous Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), who killed her family.
The maneuvering by both groups, the Basterds and Shosanna and her lover-assistant Marcel (Jacky Ido), with the Germans always seeming to be one step away from discovering the schemes, occupies most of the movie leading up to the premiere. Then Tarantino rewrites the end of World War II.
There are a few moments of classic Tarantino tension in the farmhouse when Col. Landa interrogates the French farmer hiding a Jewish family, in the bistro where an SS officer grows suspicious of a Basterd's German accent and at the premiere where Col Landa appears to uncover one of the plots.
Otherwise the film lacks not only tension but those juicy sequences where actors deliver lines loaded with subtext and characters drip menace with icy wit. Tarantino never finds a way to introduce his vivid sense of pulp fiction within the context of a war movie. He is not kidding B-movies as he was with "Grindhouse" nor riffing on cinema as with "Pulp Fiction" and the "Kill Bill" films.
Tarantino has been quoted as saying of "Inglourious Basterds," "This ain't your daddy's World War II movie." In fact, it pretty much is. His scalp-hunters are any Dirty Dozen on a mission, the bread and butter of war movies. The major difference is that some fine European actors simply aren't given enough to do.
Diane Kruger's role as a German movie star is close to being unnecessary. Bruhl does have a key role as the war hero who plays himself in a German propaganda movie but Til Schweiger is little more than a dress extra. On the other hand, Tarantino can waste time on a scene back in England, where the British officer receives his orders, simply for the opportunity to g et Mike Myers into makeup and prosthetics that make him unrecognizable.
Even Pitt, sporting a somewhat overdone Southern accent, and Laurent, the film's two leads, don't get a chance to explore their characters in any depth. They are who they are the minute they appear on screen and nothing much changes through the film.
In fact, in your daddy's war movies, men and women often did undergo interesting transformations. So perhaps Tarantino is right.
Festival de Cannes -- Competition
Sales: Universal Pictures International Production companies: The Weinstein Co. and Universal Pictures present a Zehnte Babelsberg Film/A Band Apart Films production Cast: Brad Pitt, Melanie Laurent, Christoph, Daniel Bruhl, Til Schweiger, Eli Roth, Michael Fassbender, Diane Kruger. Director-screenwriter: Quentin Tarantino Producer: Lawrence Bender Excutive producer: Lloyd Phillips, Erica Steinberg, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein Director of photography: Robert Richardson Production designer: David Wasco Costume designer: Anna B. Sheppard Editor: Sally Menke
Quentin Tarantino has made an eye-catching return to the Cannes Film Festival with Inglourious Basterds, an epic World War II movie set in Nazi-occupied France. Tarantino was last at Cannes in 2007 with his 'grindhouse' film Death Proof. Tarantino swaps fact for pulp fiction in Inglourious Basterds, a comic revenge fantasy about Jewish freedom fighters bringing down the Nazis in 1944. Brad Pitt plays Lieutenant Aldo Raine, the leader of a gang of Jewish-American soldiers operating in occupied France whose self-proclaimed mission is "to kill as many Nazis as possible". They succeed in Tarantino's usual grisly-comic fashion, carving swastikas into the foreheads of any German soldier they do not scalp. The plot culminates with an attempt to incinerate the Nazi high command - including Hitler, Goebbels and Goering - at a film premiere in Paris. It's western meets war movie, with David Bowie on the soundtrack In the words of Tarantino, it's "the power of cinema bringing down the Third Reich". Once again, the US director has blurred film genres. Essentially it's western meets war movie, with David Bowie on the soundtrack. And it becomes positively camp-operatic in parts - particularly in its portrayal of a shrill, semi-hysterical Adolf Hitler and British generals who could have been lifted from 'Allo, 'Allo. Pitt may get top billing, but he's not the star of the show. That honour goes to Christoph Waltz, a German TV star who plays SS officer Colonel Hans Landa. Comedic menace. So important was this character to the film, says Tarantino, that he considered scrapping the movie if he couldn't find the perfect actor to play him. Waltz carries off comedic menace with aplomb in a performance that makes him a strong contender for this year's best actor prize. The film runs almost three hours and has a large international cast This is not an American movie. Rather, it's Tarantino's homage to the European cinema he adores. Indeed, there are so many scenes shot in French and German that an English-speaking audience will spend a lot of the film reading subtitles. Some will wish there were a few more, just so they can understand Pitt's Tennessee-born, almost incomprehensible character. Inglourious Basterds clocks in at nearly three hours, and its director could certainly have trimmed more of its flab. This, and Pitt's character not getting the screen time he deserves, are the main disappointments. It can't touch Pulp Fiction, which won the Palme d'Or in 1994 before going on to win an Oscar for its screenplay. Still, the consensus here at Cannes is Tarantino has made a glorious, silly, blood-spattered return to form. The Times, Ben Hoyle
Quentin Tarantino stages a comeback with Inglourious Basterds…Quentin Tarantino stormed back to the scene of his greatest triumph today with a World War Two revenge film that critics greeted with relieved cheers. Inglourious Basterds is a violent, funny love letter to cinema filmed in four languages and starring Brad Pitt in the lead role. The snap verdict this morning was that it is not the former wunderkind director’s greatest achievement but should prove enough to resurrect his career. Some ten years in the planning, Inglourious Basterds took on increasing significance for Tarantino as the films that he made while polishing the script proved progressively less and less successful. Tarantino had been seen as one of the most original voices in cinema when he released his first film Reservoir Dogs 15 years ago. The former video store clerk wrote, starred in and directed the film at the age of 29. Then he won the Palme d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, with his second effort Pulp Fiction in 1994. Both works were notable for their snappy dialogue, great but obscure soundtracks and observations on male relationships. With Jackie Brown, a 1997 homage to the blaxploitation pictures of the 1970s, he showed that he could create a compelling female lead too. After three films in five years he took another six to release his next effort. Kill Bill, split into two films released in 2003 and 2004, was attacked as bloated and lacking spark. His most recent project before Inglourious Basterds, a double bill of nostalgic horror films made with his friend Robert Rodriguez called Grindhouse, was a $50 million box office disaster. A self-confessed movie geek he has been in Cannes for the past week watching as many films as possible and today he spoke stirringly about why he would rather win on the Riviera than at the Oscars (where he only has a Best Screenplay award, for Pulp Fiction). Cannes “was always the goal, the dream” even though shooting in Germany only began last autumn. “There’s no place like Cannes for film makers. It is cinema nirvana. “During this time here on the Riviera cinema matters. It’s important - even the things people boo it’s out of passion. The fact that all the world’s film press from the planet Earth, from America, Finland, Iceland, Greenland... Canada. They are all here. You drop that movie, Bang! Everybody wades in at the same time. And they argue and they jostle and they do this and they do that and it’s like the cat is out of the bag for the entire planet Earth.” To further applause from journalists, most of whom seemed desperate to rehabilitate him, he declared: “I’m not an American film maker. I make movies for the planet Earth and Cannes is the place that represents that.” Empire Magazine
Empire has just seen Quentin Tarantino's eagerly-awaited WWII flick, Inglourious Basterds, and it's rather brilliant. Every bit as idiosyncratic as the spelling of its title, it's a wonderfully-acted movie that subverts expectation at every turn. And it may represent the most confident, audacious writing and directing of QT's career. 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. But that’s all set up by the opening title card (the film is divided into five chapters), ‘Once Upon A Time In… Nazi-Occupied France’. Not only does that allow Tarantino to use Spaghetti Western-esque musical cues and swipe the odd shot and convention from the likes of Sergio Leone, but it frees him up to take those liberties. This is a fairytale world, in which American soldiers can ghost behind enemy lines, scalp hundreds of Nazis and never get caught. And in which… no, we won’t go there. Not yet. But the ending is so thrillingly audacious that this reporter laughed out loud when it happened. Even when, having read the script, I knew it was coming.The performances are superb across-the-board. Pitt is hilarious throughout, lending his lines that air of ****y movie-star insouciance that was a touchstone of his turns in the Ocean’s movies. But the standouts for me were Michael Fassbender, who deserves to become a star on the basis of his turn as British officer Lt. Archie Hicox, and Christoph Waltz, as the movie’s villain, Col. Hans Landa, aka The Jew Hunter. A complex creation, refined, calculating and yet utterly monstrous when the time comes, Landa was the role that Tarantino struggled to fill, so much so that he might have had to pass on making the movie had he not filled it. But in Waltz, he’s found gold. He may look like an evil Rob Brydon, but the Austrian actor is fantastic: oleaginous, chilling and often devilishly charming. He may be a shoo-in for a Best Supporting Oscar nom, and even though it’s mighty early yet, he could become the first actor to win for a Tarantino film. There are flaws, of course – what film doesn’t have flaws? But they may be exaggerated depending on your feelings about Tarantino. Some of his Grindhouse flourishes – large captions stamped on screen, the usual flirting with structure and chronology, offbeat musical cues (a David Bowie track shows up at one point) and the sudden introduction of a hip narrator (Samuel L. Jackson) – may irk some, but this movie-movie approach has been Tarantino’s forte since Uma Thurman drew a box on the screen in Pulp Fiction. It’s certainly very talky, and there’s no doubt that Tarantino is in love with the sound of his characters’ voices, but QT dialogue is so much better than most other screenwriters that it’s hard to quibble. If all scenes in movies are about control, Tarantino understands that perhaps better than anybody, and some of the scenes here – the opening exchange between Landa and a French dairy farmer, and the Reservoir Dogs-esque scene in French bar, La Louisiane – are masterclasses in how to switch control from character to character. Indeed, both scenes are as tense as anything Tarantino has ever done in his career. Remember, though: this is not the official Empire review, simply a reaction to this morning’s screening. Empire’s official verdict may differ from mine, so bear that in mind.
Sir Sean! Your are gallant! Readying the troops to go out in search of yours truly!
Truth be told, I overindulged in 31 glorious documentaries at Hot Docs in Toronto. 'twas wonderful! I wanted to write about it here, but have been too pooped. So instead, I've been reclining by the pool, taking in the sun (under cover naturally, don't need any more wrinkles!), although I've decided not to cavort with Tilda & Penelope on the Croisette this year.
Hope all is well.
Posts: 3891 | Location: Church | Registered: July 10, 2003
WILLIAM PETERSEN: Well, this is a shock. The only explanation for this is that somehow in the last year, every one of you tried to act with rubber gloves and tweezers.
Posts: 6617 | Location: NY | Registered: December 01, 2002
Speaking of glorious, has any seen Angelina Jolie at Cannes? Magnificent! Bright red lipstick atop those plumped out lips! She may well be the bell of the ball!
It's a look I intend to replicate at Mar 7th 2010 Oscars which falls on the very day of my 60th birthday!
Posts: 3891 | Location: Church | Registered: July 10, 2003
Originally posted by ETHELCHARLES: Speaking of glorious, has any seen Angelina Jolie at Cannes? Magnificent! Bright red lipstick atop those plumped out lips! She may well be the bell of the ball!
It's a look I intend to replicate at Mar 7th 2010 Oscars which falls on the very day of my 60th birthday!
What about nails? Also jungle red?
I know you admire that glamour-puss but I have to laugh every time they try to make an action hero out of that top-heavy, twig-arm girly girl...
Originally posted by ETHELCHARLES: Speaking of glorious, has any seen Angelina Jolie at Cannes? Magnificent! Bright red lipstick atop those plumped out lips! She may well be the bell of the ball!
It's a look I intend to replicate at Mar 7th 2010 Oscars which falls on the very day of my 60th birthday!
Miss Ethel, this image of Brangelina is, in one word, just, Powerful. It's almost intimidating in its level of Awesomeness.
Originally posted by ETHELCHARLES: Speaking of glorious, has any seen Angelina Jolie at Cannes? Magnificent! Bright red lipstick atop those plumped out lips! She may well be the bell of the ball!
It's a look I intend to replicate at Mar 7th 2010 Oscars which falls on the very day of my 60th birthday!
Miss Ethel, this image of Brangelina is, in one word, just, Powerful. It's almost intimidating in its level of Awesomeness.
I'm calling a Supporting Actor Oscar nom for Christoph Waltz.
WHOOO 1000TH POST
"Notorious was nice, but it’s not in the color purple range" "Angels and Demons may get nominated for cinematography the imagery was profound" "District Nine will definitely win for best foreign film it made money and everyone loved it" ~ 8movies
Posts: 2714 | Location: nz | Registered: January 12, 2009
Lots of buzz today that the financial crisis management team the Weinsteins hired to deal with their possibly bankrupt status are talking to Universal today about distributing Inglorious Basterds.
Earlier today, the Weinsteins pushed back the release dates of the rest of their schedule for this year, presumably because they don't have the money to advertise them. There have been indications they were having difficulty raising money for the marketing of the Tarantino film.
The death throes have been going on for some time.
Originally posted by seanflynn: Lots of buzz today that the financial crisis management team the Weinsteins hired to deal with their possibly bankrupt status are talking to Universal today about distributing Inglorious Basterds.
Earlier today, the Weinsteins pushed back the release dates of the rest of their schedule for this year, presumably because they don't have the money to advertise them. There have been indications they were having difficulty raising money for the marketing of the Tarantino film.
The death throes have been going on for some time.
Why am I reminded of Hitler dancing a jig?
Also, Inglorious Basterds seems, like any Tarantino movie, to be an automatic hit.
