By Steven Zeitchik

It's still not likely, but 10 days into the release of "Inglourious Basterds," there's an outside chance the WWII pic could become Quentin Tarantino's biggest grosser ever.

The revenge-fantasy/ensemble drama/film-geek wet dream climbed to $74 million in domestic boxoffice this weekend, leapfrogging both editions of "Kill Bill" (which each earned between $65m and $70m domestically). Now the only target left is "Pulp Fiction," which earned $108 million on its way to Oscar glory.

There are still plenty of caveats to go around, of course. Scoring
$100+ million in 1994 means a lot more it does in the ticket-inflated
period of 2009. And even with a big international cast and some nice
momentum on the global front, "Basterds" is unlikely to catch the $213
million worldwide take of "Fiction."

But for a movie that was greeted with some skepticism when its development was first announced (only a year before it hit theaters), its numbers are no small achievement. In fact, after its strong hold in a quiet weekend (kudos to Weinstein schedulers, even if the dating meant the pic stepped on the company's own "Halloween II"), "Basterds" now ranks as one of the top boxoffice underdog stories of the year, trumping the first-quarter successes of low-mid budget pics like "Taken" and behind only the eye-popping $417m global take of "The Hangover."

By Steven Zeitchik

The focus for this weekend has been all about the Weinsteins, their future and other unanswerable questions rehashed by the New York Times. But the little secret behind the opening of "Inglourious Basterds" on Friday is that it means plenty to its director, too.

When we interviewed QT in Cannes, he implied that he was helping out the Weinsteins at this crossroads of their careers, just as they helped him with "Pulp Fiction" back in the day. But Tarantino needs a big opening for himself.

Since "Kill Bill" hit a goldmine of $70 million in domestic boxoffice six years ago, the helmer has made less money with each successive picture, culminating in the underperformance of "Grindhouse" two years ago. Sure, that's only three pics ("Kill Bill, Vol. 2" came between them) but it's sobering when you consider his last bona fide hit before "Kill Bill" came back in '94 with "Pulp Fiction."

And the stakes are high for a director like Tarantino, who has until now spent most of his career in the relative cocoon of the Weinsteins. It's hard enough as it is for an auteur to get movies financed above a certain budget (and QT, with his penchant for effects, stars and big tableaus, is not making any $5 million indies). A string of underperformers doesn't help.

By Steven Zeitchik

We're personally not the sort to call the spectacle of men locking their legs around each other's necks while thousands watch in frenzied enthusiasm the pinnacle of modern sport.

But a lot of young males who follow the UFC do, and they're the ones The Weinstein Company is hoping to reach with its campaign for Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds." It's part of a bold — if not exactly foolproof — promotion for the upcoming World War II pic.

The movie will be all over the org's landmark UFC 100 event from Vegas (an event you may be familiar with if you've tuned in to an on-demand cable channel any time over the last few weeks, or if you've been in the unfortunate position of spending a lot of time at South Bay frat-boy bars). There'll be logos in the ring at the fight, billboards for the movie and a trailer shown to the thousands packing the Mandalay Bay to watch the greasy pummelings.

By Steven Zeitchik

Pretty much everyone agrees that "Inglourious Basterds" needs some cuts ahead of its August release — including Tarantino himself, who's all but said as much. The question is — where does it need them most, and how much will they help?

On the first question (the subject of vigorous debate at the afterparty at the Noga Beach Wednesday night) we'd submit a couple of scenes for consideration. There's one about midway through in a small-town French bar that sets up the various factions and ground rules that's a particular muddle — it manages to be talkie and digressive and yet doesn't do the key job of setting up the alliances and stakes, which makes the betrayals that end the scene (in a hail of gunfire, natch) kind of punch-less.

There's also the Valkyrie-esque final section, where several plots to kill Nazi brass converge, that could do with a scalpel too. It's not that that there are too many things going on; it's that what's there seems thrown about and around with no particular cohesion or direction. (The film, for all the trailer's implication otherwise, btw, is not really a vigilante revenge-fantasy; Brad Pitt's group is but one element on a much larger canvas.)

One scene we would leave is the extended beginning, in which the main character/Nazi Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) shows up at a French farmhouse looking for sheltered Jews. Post-screening chatter had this as Candidate Number Un for the knife, but it's such a showcase for Landa's seriocomic brand of sparkly viciousness that we wouldn't touch it at all. (Waltz, incidentally, is hands down the best thing about the film. Both he and ICM, which recently signed him, will be dining out for a long time on what really is an amazing performance).

As for the question of how much all these will matter, we have our reservations. Cuts shouldn't be a response to length — a 30-minute scene can be tight and a 30-second one can be slack — but to scenes' efficiency and excitement, and it's not clear if simply excising a few minutes here and there is going to give the film what it needs.

That's because the movie is stylish and occasionally funny, but often seems like a mash-up of every World War II movie ever made (or: It's not really a movie about World War II; it's a movie about World War II movies). The entire project was Red Bulled from development to lock-in (ten months between the start of the script and the wrapping of production, for eg) and while there's a certain energy that comes from that, there's also a certain wobbliness. Tarantino can't seem to decide whether he wants this to be a genuine World War II picture or an ironic comment on one,  which leaves the audience caught betwixt and between, with neither detached laughter or suspenseful involvement. Cuts by themselves may not bridge that divide.

Tarantino closes the film by having a character say "Well, I think this is my masterpiece" right before the director's name flashes on the screen. We'll see how much paint he's willing to scrape off his Mona Lisa.

By Steven Zeitchik

The early word on Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" is that it's a talkie movie — much talkier than the action-heavy trailer would have you believe (and which squares with Tarantino's claim to us in our sitdown with him earlier this week, among other things, that this is as much "Pulp Fiction" as "Kill Bill.")

We're catching the pic at the public premiere tonight that will be the lovefest for Cannes' favorite fils. The press conference this morning was mostly devoid of any major shenanigans, though Pitt did his usual press conference swagger that makes him seem a little above it all, while Tarantino trotted out his intense, slightly dorky passion.

There were a lot of jokes about Canada and Canadian media (with native Mike Myers getting in on the act). Some other notable quotes

QT: Artistically Brad and I have been sniffing around each other for a long time…longing glances across the room.

Pitt (on the recent diversity of his roles): More than anything, it's about the company I keep and how do you want to spend your time because it takes you away from your family, being away for months at a time."

Eli Roth (on whether this was a Jewish revenge-fantasy): "I'm Jewish, and this is like kosher porn. It's something I've fantasized about it since I was a little kid.

QT: I'm not an American filmmaker. I make movies for the planet Earth."

QT (on the odd spelling of the title): When you do an artistic flourish like that and then explain it is to take the piss out of it and invalidate the stroke. Basquiat takes the L off his hotel door and puts it in a painting. And if he explained why he did it he may as well have not done it at all."

What the… After a season of World War II movies, Quentin Tarantino will ride in this August, according to this new trailer, with plenty of bootkicking of the jack-booted in his recently wrapped “Inglorious Basterds.” Basic plot line: Brad Pitt rounds up a small group of unlikely soldiers, and they respond with Tarantino acts of violence. It’s “Defiance” by way of “Kill Bill,” though the dialogue is more straightforward than many previous efforts. (A sample, from Pitt’s monologue: “We will be cruel to the German and through our cruelty they will know who we are … the German will be sickened by us. And the German will talk about us. And the German will remember us.”) High-concept irony along the lines of “Pulp Fiction” or high-concept irony along the lines of “Grindhouse”? We shall see …

By Steven Zeitchik

A cheeky Brit who valiantly fought zombies, the actress who played one-third of a Polanski love triangle, a noted torture-porn director, the biggest star in Hollywood and Ryan from the Office — Tarantino’s description of Inglorious Bastards as constituting a rogue group was perhaps meant more literally than we first realized.

The news has come in in steady waves over the last few days that Simon Pegg, Nastassja Kinski, Eli Roth, Brad Pitt and B.J. Novak are all in talks or have been cast in the latest Q extravaganza, and outlets are pouncing. Tons of outlets — entertainment press, fan sites — are swarming because of…casting announcements? Of older German actresses? Of sitcom stars? Of non-actors?

Before the locations have even been set, Tarantino and the Weinstein juggernaut (they say they don’t want press for castings until all is ready to be announced, but really) have managed to make the sundry business of Hollywood casting not just industry news but actual news. It’s the first time outside a tentpole superhero movie that we can remember where casting bits are actually treated as developments worthy of Anderson Cooper.

What is it about this movie that has caused an insane amount of interest both inside and outside the industry? It’s certainly not the source material; this is, after all, a sort-of remake of a 70’s Italian war movie. It may be partly Tarantino, but we don’t recall this frenzy, even in those pre-blog days, over “Kill Bill” or “Jackie Brown.”

We suspect a lot of it has to do with timing. The de facto strike means there’s not a whole lot of casting going on, elevating the interest level in the few movies that are casting. And the production is moving fast — not three months will pass between when Tarantino first showed the script to producer Lawrence Bender and when production starts –that the usual trickle of casting news is coming on like a tidal wave. So many thesps are said to be meeting with Tarantino in Germany (while he location-scouts, mind you) that you wonder when he has time to eat or sleep. It’s a good thing Berlin is a late-night kind of town.

Maybe the biggest stroke of genius is who he’s chosing — or, more precisely, how diversely he’s choosing. The cast offers something for everyone. Even on this partial list, there’s young and old, dramatic and comedic, quirky and hot, cult and mega-famous.  You want to tune in just to see how much of a non-sequitir the next casting choice will be.

But let’s not forget the biggest benefit for us ink- and HTML-stained types: we get to use the “So-and-So is becoming a bastard” formula in a lede or headline. Never underestimate the media’s interest in Tarantino. But really never underestimate the media’s interest in an easy pun.

American audiences may have turned a deaf ear to “Grindhouse” when it rolled out via the Weinstein Co. in the states last month, but the international press gathered here in Cannes greeted Quentin Tarantino with applause, whistles and cheers after viewing his retooled “Death Proof,” his half of “Grindhouse,” which is playing in competition. A beaming Tarantino appeared at the official press conference accompanied by his star Kirk Russell and a quartet of the movie’s tough-talking gals — Zoe Bell, Tracie Thoms, Rose McGowan and Rosario Dawson. Rodriguez and Tarantino’s patrone Harvey Weinstein hovered in the wings. The new version of the film is nearly two hours long, almost a half hour longer than it appeared in “Grindhouse.” (Here’s THR’s Kirk Honeycutt’s take on the instant remake.) But, Tarantino explained, he’s dropped in only two new scenes — a lapdance that Russell’s Stuntman Mike receives in the first half of the film and his first encounter with the girls in the second half of the film. The new cut does make it clearer that Mike is a stalker from the very beginning. And the femme-to-femme dialogue scenes run longer. That’s because, Tarantino said, when he and Tarantino sandwiched their two movies together in “Grindhouse,” “we didn’t cut our films to the bone, we cut them way past the bone.” Of the film’s new look, he added, “I actually really like the fact that if you count the minutes, it hasn’t changed dramatically, but it’s changed 180 degress in terms of the emotion.” Russell hadn’t seen the new version — Tarantino didn’t want his actors to see it until the official red carpet screening Thursday night. But the actor, a little grumpily, groused, “I’m disappointed for any audience that they won’t get the ‘Grindhouse’ experience. My prediction is that 20 years from now, you’ll want the ‘Grindhouse’ experience, you won’t see them separately.” Weinstein, though, is confident that the newly separated films will perform better abroad than they did under one banner in the U.S. Of “Death Proof’s” prospects, he promised, “It will dwarf ‘Grindhouse,” trust me.” (Gregg Kilday)