A Kate Hudson/Minka Kelly catfight is brewing, Matt Damon gets fat, Mary-Kate and Ashley double date, Kourtney Kardashian gets knocked up, Sienna Miller takes the "Slinky Wizard" home, Seth MacFarland says Stewie is gay and Jaime Pressly pees in public.
After a long slog winning over everyone from skeptical Germans to Cloris Leachman, Quentin Tarantino is already a little more than a week into shooting his World War II action epic Inglourious Basterds [sic]. And now the first photo from the set features star Brad Pitt in smooth, modelesque repose — just the way we remember our grandfathers telling us about the European front. See him in all his Nazi-scalping sartorial splendor after the jump.We thought at first that Pitt looked a little aged as Basterds' Lt. Aldo Raine; maybe not Benjamin Button-aged, but certainly more distinguished than the frosted flake he portrayed last month in Burn After Reading or the sandaled hero sure to follow in his forthcoming The Odyssey. It's most likely just us, though, perhaps having missed the stage direction in Tarantino's bootlegged script that called for "a tall, brooding Jew, Abercrombie-coiffed, and boasting the weathered visage of one top-secret orphan-hunt too many." Either way, wake us up when Cloris arrives.
The Weinstein Company today announced that Quentin Tarantino's WWII epic Inglorious Bastards has begun principal photography, and the accompanying press release was notable for two reasons. First, the official announcement spells the title as "INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS," aping the misspelling on the title page of the widely-leaked (and poorly spelled) script; does this mean that the film will goose-step into theaters bearing the same appellation? Still, there was one other tidbit tucked into the end of the film's cast roundup that we're shocked to find wasn't the subject of its very own, trumpet-blaring announcement:The 26th and final name listed in the cast? None other than Dancing with the Stars comeback queen Cloris Leachman, who will hopefully revive the German accent that has served her so well in both Young Frankenstein and Broken Lizard's Beerfest. Sure, sure, we're also excited that Goodbye Lenin's Daniel Brühl has been confirmed (he's our bet to succeed Gael Garcia Bernal as the next hot foreign import) and that Mélanie Laurent has been announced as female lead Shoshanna, but let's face it: all other news pales in comparison to the Cloris. Quentin, we eagerly look forward to her paso doble/Batusi dance scene — don't let us down!
Hollywood can't win for losing these days with the German people, whose extra-defending litigious streak has nothing on the wounded national pride recently suffered after readings of Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards screenplay. While the thing has gathered dust on our computer desktop since midsummer, it's being voraciously consumed in Starbuchsens, on MeinSpace and around other social-gathering hotspots around the country; the ensuing national controversy condemns "scenes of vengeful Americans bashing, scalping, shooting and strangling German soldiers" and — worse yet — the almost certain state subsidies promised to the Deutschland-based production:
Overbearing hype aside, Inglorious Bastards really wouldn't be a Quentin Tarantino film unless he revived at least one moribund career in the process. Enter Mike Myers, who is now confirmed to play British Gen. Ed Fenech, "a military mastermind who takes part in hatching a plot to wipe out Nazi leaders." It's a relatively small part, we're now told, with Fenech featured on only seven pages — 29 lines total — recruiting a Nazi killer reportedly tailored for Simon Pegg, who has yet to be officially attached.Myers joins an ensemble that already includes Brad Pitt, Eli Roth and B.J. Novak, nudging the project ever closer to the unmarketable territory where Tarantino and Harvey Weinstein seem to flourish together. Moreover, we didn't expect Myers to do another non-comedy so soon after The Love Guru; that Halloween remake we pegged him for was something we presumed was at least a few years off, or at least well after Austin Powers 4. But when even Deepak Chopra is hating on you, some gambles are just more necessary than others. Good luck, Mike!
· There's an art to gorging on a casino buffet dessert station, and YouTube's Feeder-Scene Queen Deidrababe is going to walk you through it, blondie by blondie. Deidra: You have a standing offer to do premiere spread reviews for us. [Deidrababe's YouTube Channel]
· Well, it seems someone heard our appeal to reason in the Trade Roundup today: Variety is reporting Brad Pitt has signed on for Inglorious Bastards. Pitt. Novak. Roth. The Weinsteins are back! [Variety]
· As Playgirl publishes its last hard edition, a gallery of some of their greatest covers. We know we've rubbed many a one out to Alan Thicke's sensual mullet and the sultry divorce-porn of Kramer Vs. Kramer. [GiggleSugar.com]
· Lil' Kim's karaoke party ends in the bludgeoning death of both a woman and at least one performance of "Don't Stop Believin'." [AP]
· Hey, look everyone! It's the new Quantum of Solace poster! [RR]
The completely fabricated demand for Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards — the subject of white-hot, Weinstein-fueled media speculation until a real phenomenon worth covering came along — is reportedly entering the realm of fact on its way to a deal at Universal. Variety notes today that the Weinsteins may partner with the studio for a 2009 release; few other details are available except that Paramount is/was the second choice of Tarantino and Harvey Weinstein and, of course, a conveniently planted reminder that Tarantino met with Brad Pitt in his recent casting quest.
After the Tuesday night Coldplay concert in Inglewood, the maybe star of Inglorious Bastards Leonardo DiCaprio tried to make a quick exit. Unfortunately for DiCaprio, assortments of photographers were ready to greet him by his luxury car. Like a man whose just been caught cheating, DiCaprio reluctantly admitted that he likes Coldplay, but only "about this much."
· Baby Mama's supporting womb Amy Poehler is in "final negotiations" to star in the "don't-call-it-a-spinoff" The Office spinoff. Said Poehler, "The second I heard Aziz Ansari had already signed on, it really just became a matter of 'when do we start?'" [Variety]
· Most annoyingly overhyped project ever (and it's still just a script! Barely a glimmer of a storyboard in its amorous father Quentin Tarantino's eye) Inglorious Bastards is said to now be considering Leo DiCaprio to star, in addition to Brad Pitt. Also on their shortlist: Marlon Brando, Charlie Chaplin, and Jesus Christ. [Variety]
· Wait a second—Desperate Housewives is actually committing to the whole jump-ahead-five-years gimmick used in the season finale? We guess so, as all the kids on the show have been replaced by teenage actors. Maybe that's what Grey's Anatomy can do with Katherine Heigl: Set next season in 2118, where all your friends at Seattle Grace enjoys the benefits of a miraculous age-freezing pill, except Izzie, who didn't sign up for trials. (And died of natural causes at 86.) [THR]
· Lost writer Craig Rosenberg will make his feature directorial debut with The Panopticon, about "a medical salesman who receives a mysterious videotape from himself telling him the world will end and that he must stop it." [THR]
· Fox has ordered a presentation for Sincerely, Ted L. Nancy, a non-scripted comedy based on the popular disgruntled-consumer-fights-back Letters From A Nut books, an inferior retread of Don Novello's classic The Lazlo Letters. [THR]
Disgruntled as its recent self-esteem plunge has made us, no one could realistically suggest that the Weinstein Company is what you'd call "circling the drain." Maybe "studying the drain," or even "pawning the drain," if today's latest Harvey newsflash is to be believed: The Weinsteins have locked up a deal with Showtime as the premium-cable outlet for 95 films over seven years. Starting in 2009, the agreement covers both Weinstein Company and Dimension Films releases, including the so-hot-no-one-will-claim-it Inglorious Bastards and Rob Marshall's musical Nine.
Dear Quentin Tarantino,
The inevitable karmic payback for Fraggle Rock: The Movie is coming swift and severe at The Weinstein Company, where Harvey Weinstein is reduced to bringing in outsiders to get two of his long-delayed passion projects off the ground. Relativity Media appears ready to kick in at least half of Nine's $80 million budget, meaning the long-delayed, Daniel Day-Lewis/Nicole Kidman-starring musical will finally start shooting this fall.
We've apparently been at the wrong film festival for the last week; while Mike White teased LAFF attendees about School of Rock 2 and while three-quarters of the X-Files braintrust jerked around more than 500 fans with virtually no details about the new movie, Quentin Tarantino spent the weekend telling anyone in Provincetown who would listen about his developing World War II epic Inglorious Bastards. Anne Thompson notes today that the script is done — down from its original 12,000-page draft, we hear, to a more manageable 154 or so — and Tarantino preempted genre cynics in a missive to the BBC:
