I totally went method. And I realized, thinking about this stuff all the time, that’s why these [method] actors are nuts. I mean, I didn’t go method like, “What is this strange man with a microphone doing in my face?” [laughs] But when I was on set, we only talked in character, and off-set, I talked as Donny a lot as well…And it gives you permission…to behave a certain way, and we’d say the most disgusting stuff. It would just fly out. And during the vet scene, I remember going on a 20-minute rant as Donny about why we needed to keep shooting that day. And Quentin was like, “That’s exactly what Donny would say!” I was like, “This is what it’s about!” and “This is what we’re here for!” as Donny.

Right. Hamming it up with one of the worst Bahstahn accents I’ve heard since the Shutter Island trailer* is totally method. Constantin Stanislavski is high-fiving in his grave. Daniel Day Lewis called Eli Roth up and was like “You know how I dropped out of film completely and moved to Italy and took up shoemaking for five years? You should do that! But for all the years! Totally method, bro. Method 4 lyfe. P.S. I HATE YOUR MILKSHAKE.”

*The part where DiCaprio says “we ah doooly appointed federahl mahshalls” makes me LOL every time.

Let’s talk about that movie.

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The movie will be all over the [UFC]‘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.

As much as what the campaign says about the UFC as an increasingly mainstream venue for movie promotion, it says more about the kinds of marketing studios see themselves needing, especially studios marketing a 2 1/2 hour movie that’s heavily in non-English languages (and especially a studio like TWC, which urgently needs this pic to be a hit).

We just hope some of the amped-up fans don’t get the wrong idea about who are the bad guys and who are the good guys.

As someone who has actually been known to enjoy a UFC event now and again, I can assure you, the majority of these dudes are jerks. They’re like, “If I had a time machine, I’d go back in time and PUT HITLER IN A FLYING ARM BAR!” That is what they are like. Now would you kindly pass the Ed Hardy wine.

Liked it:

TotalFilm: “Not only did I love every minute, if the French projectionist wanted to cue it up and roll it again from the start, I would have sat through the whole film again, with the biggest grin on my face.”

Did not like it:

Guardian (who call it “an armour-plated turkey,” the kind of cutesy, nonsensical shorthand that is the hallmark of a pretentious douche with no real insight): “Quentin Tarantino’s cod-WW2 shlocker about a Jewish-American revenge squad intent on killing Nazis in German-occupied France is awful. It is achtung-achtung-ach-mein-Gott atrocious. It isn’t funny; it isn’t exciting; it isn’t a realistic war movie, yet neither is it an entertaining genre spoof or a clever counterfactual wartime yarn. It isn’t emotionally involving or deliciously ironic or a brilliant tissue of trash-pop references. Nothing like that. Brad Pitt gives the worst performance of his life, with a permanent smirk as if he’s had the left side of his jaw injected with cement, and which he must uncomfortably maintain for long scenes on camera without dialogue.”

Liked it:

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Samm Levine is not, however, on a poster.

Yikes. Personally, I’m not a fan of Eli Roth’s directing work because I feel like the world is a bad enough place and life is difficult as it is without actual images of horrific torture being burned into my face. But that’s just me. I recognize that lots of people love watching humanity pushed past its breaking point to a soundtrack of blood-cold shrieking, and somehow in my honest desire for everyone to have fun and do what they want to do while we’re alive as long as it doesn’t actually hurt anyone else, I am forced to accept that this is fair enough. Besides, Cabin Fever was pretty good! But I don’t think there’s any confusion about Eli Roth as an actor, is there? He is not very good at it. In fact, if I had to rank him, I would say that he is just slightly more talented than another director-would-be-movie-star: Quentin Tarantino.

But a movie poster is a really big deal. It has only a few seconds, a cursory glance, to win you over and convince you to invest your time and 12 dollars. Steve Zahn didn’t even make it onto the poster for his new movie, and Steve Zahn is great. This movie posters says “Eli Roth is a box office draw.” This movie poster says “the people want more Eli Roth.”

Eli Roth is America’s boyfriend.

New York Times: Inglourious Basterds‘ is a World War II epic that combines historical events with a vivid, pop sensibility. The movie stars, among others, Brad Pitt as an American lieutenant in search of Nazis and Diane Kruger as a German movie star/spy. It’s both authentic and highly theatrical. Did you shoot on soundstages in America or in Europe?

Quentin Tarantino: We shot the film in Berlin and a little bit in Paris. I only cast actors who could speak English with their native accents. The Germans have accents, the French are French, and the English are English. During the war, your understanding of German, whether you were a French citizen or you were in a concentration camp, meant the difference between life and death. In Hollywood movies, Germans often have English accents, and I can’t go for that contrivance. The proper accent could be the difference between success and failure.

It is far too early in the morning, far too early in the week to have to deal with Quentin Tarantino’s self-aggrandizing commentary on his own genius, but while I applaud his trailblazing insistence on authentic accents, I think we can all agree that it’s going to have little to no bearing on the ultimate quality of a movie predicated on the idea of “what if we hit a Nazi in the head with a baseball bat.” But if it WERE true that the proper accent could be the difference between success and failure, then the answer is failure, because Brad Pitt’s comically southern drawl looks about as authentic as the Cracker Barrel (the Cracker Barrel is not very authentic). And doesn’t Mike Myers play a British General? Perfect. Tarantino should have just called this movie Glourious Accants.

“Mommy, what is he hitting with that baseball bat?”
“That is a human head, dear.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Oh, no sweetie, it’s OK. It’s a Nazi’s head, so it’s good that he’s hitting him in the head with a baseball bat.”
“What’s a Nazi?”
“The Nazis were bad people who killed Jews.”
“What’s ‘Jews’?”
“They’re the people who killed Christ. We hate them too, but a little less than we hate the Nazis. Now go get the phone, it’s time to vote for one of these incredibly talented singers.”

Inglourious Basterds snacke proview aftear tha jomp.

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