Earth's Mightiest Links!

Risky Business a hideous sounding new version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame may be upon us. Action/adventure... inspired by The Pirates of the Caribbean. Huh?
Movie|Line thinks that Salt is going to be bigger than Inception. I've been thinking this too, yo. I don't know why but I think Salt is going to be massive... we're speaking of box office, mind.
Empire Haley Joel Osment is 22 now! He's returning to the screen after a long absence to play a virgin teacher in the comedy Sex Ed.
Cinema Blend Edward Norton calm about The Avengers situation.


In Contention the top 10 performances in Chris Nolan films. Hard to argue with #1 but otherwise I'm sure there's room for debate.
Guardian Will Mélanie Laurent be the biggest French export since Binoche?
MTV Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, True Blood) is already eyeing a third HBO series. Good luck topping the previous two. P.S. Why doesn't my beloved Joss Whedon make the jump to pay cable. I'll never understand it. He's perfectly suited for long form writer driven stuff. God, I hate this Avengers movie, tying up all these people.
That Obscure Object "I wish this excuse was still relevant." Teehee

Finally, behold and gape at this Toy Story 3 finger painting.



Having "painted" on my iPhone, I frankly cannot believe that someone can do this (although I'm sure it would help to have that larger iPad surface).

Lunch With... Colonel Hans Landa

It's Inglourious Basterds Day. Theme days until Hollywood's big night.

Lunch with new acquaintances should be fun if not entirely relaxing. You definitely want to get to know each other but still, it shouldn’t feel like an interrogation. Next time before accepting an “invitation” like Shoshanna did in Paris, you might want to reconsider. Not that she had much of a choice.

You’ve surely noticed that Landa’s refreshment breaks always involve dairy -- a glass of milk, a dollop of cream -- “Attendez la Crème!” But what makes this scene in Inglourious Basterds so amazing (it's my second favorite after this one) is that his amiability isn't sweet at all but curdled.


This strudel may well be delicious, but if your dining companion isn't what you'd hoped for you won’t have the appetite for it. Shoshanna doesn’t enjoy this one but at least she gets sweet revenge later on. Landa will get his just dessert.

Related Posts: Breakfast With...

Mélanie Manly Laurent

Inglourious Basterds was always a conversation starter. But we didn't expect it to start this conversation. Mélanie Laurent is actually a man!

Actual screenshot (with web menu removed, highlight and "oops" added)

Best Supporting Actor, eh? We always thought it was an odd strategy to position Laurent right out of the Oscar race by vying for Lead Actress. But this is even crazier gambit. Oscar voters do have eyes, you know!

I'm joking. As far as I know Mélanie is still a woman but thanks to readers RJ and Jim T for pointing out this error on theWeinstein Co website. I'm sure someone will fix this pronto but for now let it stand as an amusingly literal and/or satiric demonstration of the absurd modern flexibility for Oscar categorizations.

Salt N' Pepa N' Linkerella

mmmmmANGELINA. Mangelina. I'm so curious to see Salt now that Jolie is staring me down from the poster (she does so more intimidatingly there -- the gaze is more benevolent in real life) and I'm reminded that Salt was originally written for a male star. Will we see any telltale signs of that gender-switch in the movie?

Oh link it, link it real good
MovieLine awesome composer Alexandre Desplat doesn't believe in holding his tongue. Doesn't approve of Quentin Tarantino's music
Old Hollywood Hedy Lamarr in ecstacy
Nicks Flick Picks finally gets around to "best actress 2008", both his own and Oscar's, but hot damn it's a good read. Plus: awesome comments section with heated / lucid opinions
In Contention Mélanie Laurent promoted to Lead Actress for Inglourious Basterds campaign
Cinema Blend Katey dives into the Screenplay categories. Cheerleads In the Loop
Cinematical maybe you missed my tweet on the Tim Burton exhibit at MoMA? Here's a whole interview.


C'est La Gêne I can't read French but I can read enough French to know that any post where you admit you saw Batman and Robin six times in the theater is a fun one. For French readers only I suppose.
i09 More Black Cat rumors for Spider-Man 4 and the internet's tendency to freak the hell out over them. It's gotta be that plunging neckline because white-haired heroines don't work out so well onscreen [cough*Gwen Stacey/Storm*cough]
mainly movies a personal top 100 of the decade
Birth of a Notion remembers Ben-Hur today, which happens to be its 50th anniversary

Team Experience: Oh, Those Basterds

As you may have noticed some blog buddies of mine have been pitching in randomly of late as my off-cinema life has pulled me away. Oh, to live only for the cinema! To get you acquainted with these life savers o' mine, I've decided to gather them as a collective once a week or so and ask them to share their individual feelings on a question posed by me. Yes, I'm a control freak.

Question for the Team
What's your favorite moment/performance/anything about Inglourious Basterds?

SPOILERS ahead obviously.

David: Maybe I was just blinded by the beauty. Or maybe it's my secretly perverse soul. But easily the most striking moment of Inglourious Basterds for me is the reciprocal shootings of Fredrick (Daniel Brühl) and Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent). Tarantino has a reputation for finding strange beauty in his moments of graphic violence, and it's no different here. It's the surprising possibility that Shosanna maybe did care about Fredrick after all, trumped by the shock (nonetheless prefigured by Shosanna being decked out in a vibrant blood-red dress) of him turning over and gunning her down. The cliche of the two young pretty leads falling in love overriden by their politics and bloodlust. It's the fall being filmed in slow-motion that does it, I think - she was ready for death, but not in this way. A moment of majesty amongst the madness.

Adam: It's Shosanna's vengeance that lingers most through all the smoldering celluloid. Her triumphant escape at the film's start and joyously maniacal act of resolve by the film's close is ultimately what elevates the movie for me. She's far more clever and efficient at killing those Nazi bastards than any of the Basterds we came here to see. Shosanna's like the French-Jewish Black Mamba. Quiet, calculating, and wholly deserving of the blood she's about to spill. She doesn't need a checklist reminding her to Kill Bill or Adolf Hitler, she gathers all her foes in one locale and does them away swiftly and with cinematic splendor. In true Tarantino style he finds the perfect musical accompaniment, this time in David Bowie's "Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)" as Shosanna dons lipstick and warpaint, readying to play host to her prey and bid a fiery, unforgettable farewell. After years of silent rage, Shosanna burns the house down and shares an exuberant laugh with the viewing audience, who've likewise held their breath through hours of tense conversation and Nazi loathing. Oh what a (cinephile's) relief it is...

David and Adam both took to Shosanna but I personally have to go with the underground bar and card game scene which centers around Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) and the film critic lieutenant (Michael Fassbender). As noted in the vodcast, there's an undeniably wealth of well edited tension and ingeniously scripted surprise in that particular scene but the cherry on top is that the movie characters are playing a game of assumed identities (the character cards on their heads) over their reel life game of assumed identities (double agents / faux Germans).

BeRightBack and Robert refused to play my reindeer game in the way I intended. But maybe you share their gripes or their hold-out feelings?

BeRightBack: The thing that bothers me, even as I loved every minute of watching it in terms of its energy and humor, is that Tarantino goes out of his way to tell us that he is talking in the language of kitsch, not history. At the end, the movie points outside of itself to history anyway. The clean white sheet invaded by black-clad, menacingly debonair Nazis in the first scene turns into a burning movie screen haunted by Jewish anguish and revenge by the end. But the foregrounding of virtuosity throughout the movie undercuts the power of this cinematic catharsis; if these aren’t “real” Nazis, then these aren’t “real” Jews.

Consider the first scene: a discussion is conducted in a room under which a Jewish family is hiding from certain death. The tension ratchets up with every exchange, every beat. At one point, the Nazi takes out an enormous pipe; it is impossible not to laugh at this. The punchline has been set up perfectly, the performances have been calibrated for maximum effect. None of this would have worked without the Jews beneath the floorboards, providing the necessary tension for the punchline. But the scene is not about the Jews, it is about the punchline. So is the movie, until the end. And this is what doesn’t work for me.

Robert: Quite frankly I haven't seen it yet. Why not? Because every time a Quentin Tarantino movie comes out, its like the love/hate relationship that the film community has with him plays itself out in my brain. When I'm watching a Tarantino movie I'm entranced by the coolness and stylishness of it all. When I'm not I'm annoyed by the lowbrow as highbrow shtick. I openly despise his cohorts Eli Roth and Robert Rodriguez. And it's difficult to remember how Tarantino has ascended to an entirely different plain than others who do what he does. When Christoph Waltz's name was first floating around as potential Oscar nominee, I thought "yeah right, for a Tarantino movie?" before I remembered that Pulp Fiction garnered 3 acting nods, Jackie Brown got one, and Kill Bill seemed oh so close.

As my id and superego go back and forth it's necessary to take a moment and remember that a film is nothing more than what happens up on that screen when the lights go down. It's not the hyperbolic ranting of fans nor the dismissive musings of academics. And with that in mind I'm starting to look forward to seeing Inglourious Basterds. When opening weekend numbers showed surprising success I found myself doing something unexpected. I found myself rooting for Quentin Tarantino.

I consider you, faithful reader, to be a part of the larger team too. If you'd like to answer the question at hand or respond to any of these notions, do so in the comments. We'll move on from those highly discussable Basterds after this discussion and get back to Oscar talk.

And speaking of... since the new Tarantino made such a popular turnaround post-Cannes, do you see any Oscar nods in its future? Besides Christoph Waltz's Supporting Actor bid. Tech nods, direction, screenplay? Oscar is already famously scalped, is he not?

Tarantino Can't Shut Up. Neither Can We

Now that we've got a few videos under our belts, Katey and I generally wrap up our conversations in about 12 minutes. Then we edit out repetitive / awkward bits. This time, we couldn't stop talking.

Our conversation about Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds is reflective of the film's overstuffing. We did our best to avoid spoilers though there are a couple of small ones. It's best to avoid all the scenes that are available online before you see it. I know this isn't the way people interact with movies these past few years but it's so fun to be surprised at the movies and it's a pity that that happens less and less frequently. Tarantino is a great example of a filmmaker who rewards those who don't seek out spoilers. You can predict the various elements (i.e. obsessions) that will appear in each movie, but rarely can you foresee how he'll fuse them all together.

YouTube caps videos at 10 minutes so this might be a wee bit choppier than past conversations but we hope you enjoy and definitely join in the conversation in the comments section.

Part One
...in which we talk about violence, self-editing, film criticism and movies that draw attention to the man behind the camera.



Part Two
... in which we attempt to wrap it up with more on the superb European cast, Tarantino's big head, the "wait for the cream" structure and the twisty jokey gamesmanship of this movie about movies.

Red Carpet: Amanda's Tip Money, Jennifer's Baby Food

A random sampling of actresses (and actor) that were out and about this week, as is our habit since this isn't a celebrity fashion blog but we do like to stargaze. From left to right: Mélanie Laurent, Amanda Seyfried, Christoph Waltz, Renée Zellweger, Miss Piggy and Jennifer Aniston

photos reworked from Zimbio & Just Jared

Why do you suppose Amanda Seyfried has cash out?

I'm pretending that she's going to tip Mélanie and Christoph for their fine work in Inglourious Basterds. I certainly want to. I'm shoving $20s down their pants if I get the chance. The photo of Seyfried was actually snapped on the set of her new movie with Gael García Bernal (Letters to Juliet) so maybe she's saving the tip money... she must have seen Bad Education.

photo src

Meanwhile, Zeéeeee is waving to Mélanie but the French girl isn't waving back. I don't have a story beat in mind for that one but I think that's generally a smart move, pretending you didn't notice her. That said, I'm really bad at ignoring her, aren't I? For example, every one in the world skipped Miss Potter and I still tortured myself with it. New in Town sits on my DVD shelf even now (no, I did not purchase it) and how long will it be until I succumb? It's a sickness.

In other news, did you hear that Marc Jacobs furnished Miss Piggy with a new look? I love it. Miss Piggy is a national treasure and she's been out of the limelight for too long. I'd much rather hear about her cross-species love life than Jennifer Aniston's predictable romantic woes.

And speaking of...

Have you seen the trailer for Love Happens in which Jen breathes new life into dimpled, cleft widower Aaron Eckhart? They're both likeable performers but that movie looks like total baby food. It's simply flavored utterly predictable mush. The trailer is Hollywood making choo-choo noises, hoping you'll open wide for a spoon feeding.