Is Diane Kruger Quentin Tarantino’s new muse? No, not at all in fact, she had to fight tooth and nail to get even screentested and seen by the director, who was initially not interested in hiring her for “Inglorious Basterds” (Kruger says he wanted another actress for the part of Bridget Von Hammersmark, but she dropped out, presumably that was Nastassja Kinski?).
However, the photos from the New York Times Sunday magazine spread are very Q&U are they not (the appelation that Quentin and Uma Thurman went under for co-conceiving of the Beatrix Kiddo character from “Kill Bill”)?
The accompanying interview with Tarantino in the NYTimes article is pretty uneventful, but it was a little odd to read Tarantino’s reasoning for rushing ‘Basterds’ was more than just having the film ready in time for Cannes.
“Yes. I wanted to have a masterpiece before the decade’s out,” he said plainly.
Ok, don’t know about you, but we come from the school where you let others laud your work and one should simply just let it speak for itself good or bad. It gives further evidence to pieces like this U.K. Guardian piece that basically posits that Tarantino’s best days might be behind him, and or he may have just fallen in love with his own voice (who stares into the mirror and calls their work a “masterpiece,” but an Adonis?).
In the NYTimes article we also learn that Tarantino is also apparently a massive fan of Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns” and apparently wrote a still-ongoing 20-page review for the film which will surely ignite geeks to retroactively append the film classic status (for the record we always liked this picture, but love is a strong word).
Anyhow, “Inglourious Basterds” a masterpiece? We’ll give Quentin that it’s his best written work since “Pulp Fiction” and has all the potential to be magnificent, but anything other than that remains to be seen as of now. For the record, we’d love to eat our words and the film to be spectacular, but what we’ve seen so far?… We’re not convinced yet. As usual though (which applies to almost all films), we’re happy to be proven otherwise.
Update: Remember the “Brad Pitt is a Basterd” teaser poster for the film? Well Eli Roth has his own version now.
QT archives who have the exclusive poster describe his character (for those that haven’t already read the script), as “The Bear Jew. A baseball-bat-swinging Brooklynite with an almost Mr Blonde-esque psychopathic twist to his personality,” and that’s almost on the money. The character is actually from Boston.