Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming WWII film Inglourious Basterds premiered at the Cannes Film Festival the other day to mostly positive reviews, with one person even calling it his best work since Pulp Fiction. The cut people saw at Cannes was 2 hours 27 minutes, a fair length for a movie that’s reportedly made up of mostly dialogue-driven scenes. And yet it seems that may not be the version the general public will end up getting: We will most likely see an even longer cut.
From Tarantino himself comes the word that his Cannes-cut of Inglourious Basterds is over 20 minutes short of the 2 hours and 48 minutes he is contractually obligated to produce. So what does this mean for the movie? Well, it appears that to make up the time, Tarantino will be re-editing the movie post-Cannes, changing things here and there and perhaps even adding an entire scene.
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The more the better, I say!
Some of the negative reviews (which thankfully are the minority of them) have criticized Basterds for seeming incomplete, the reason some people are citing that is the fact that he rushed like crazy to get it done in time for Cannes. Some people are saying that he should have taken his time, and presented a rougher edit of the movie, play it out of competition, and thus he would have avoided such criticism.
The reason Tarantino rushed to get it done is because he had the opportunity to premiere it at the Cannes Film Festival. Who the hell would turn down that chance? I know, with the passion Tarantino has for movies, that he would be the last person to turn that opportunity down. He has a history with the festival, with his first two movies, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, playing there (the latter winning the prestigious Palm d’Or award, something which is considered by a lot of people to be a higher honor than winning Best Picture at the Oscars). He was also the President of the Jury a few years back (where he pushed for Oldboy to win the Palm d’Or over Fahrenheit 9/11, sadly to no avail).
However, if the editing rush employed to get the film ready in time for the festival resulted in the movie’s quality suffering, then it may not have been such a good idea after all. Having said that, I’m sure a cinephile like Tarantino wouldn’t let his newest project premiere at the most famous and respected film festival in the world if it weren’t ready. If anything, it’ll give him a chance to make fixes from the criticisms before it hits the world stage.
Do you think Tarantino should have took his time with the editing of Inglourious Basterds or did he do the right thing by frantically editing to get it done in time for Cannes?
Inglourious Basterds is scheduled to be released on August 21st this year.
Sources: Variety and Softpedia
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11 Comments
I think he should have waited to get it done….but either way I can’t wait for this film.
huh, didn’t know the length of the movie was forced in the contract.
Who cares and who wants to sit through nearly 3 hours of a crappy Tarantino movie? I have no idea why everyone loves this guy so much when every single one of his movies, IMO, was a complete waste of my viewing time.
I’m not sure why this movie is getting all the hype that it is. I realize it’s a new QT movie and all, but other than that it sounds a bit like a “Dirty Dozen”-type tale, which has been done quite well before.
I’ve not seen “Reservoir Dogs” yet, but I thought “Pulp Fiction” was a terrific movie. However, most of the other QT movies I have seen have been hit or miss, at least for me.
I know he is a big movie buff, and I’m sure he was very eager to get his movie shown at the prestigious Cannes festival.
Oh, I thought when they said he was editing it, he was going to get rid of himself as director and Brad Pitt, then there would have been a chance I might watch this, but guess not, lol.
@skippy
Basically if you’ve seen one QT movie you’ve seen them all…
I am still not sure about this movie, but I did not know that Taratino was an advocate for Oldboy at Cannes. That is by far one of my favorite movies of all time.
I am just wondering, how can Mr. Tarantino be contractually obligated to make a movie a certain length. Isn’t he his own producer. Didn’t he choose not to join the Director’s Guild because he didn’t want anybody telling him how he should make his films?
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