Δεν το πολυ-σκέφτηκαν εκεί στον ΑΝΤ1..Από το sport24, οι πρώτες αντιδράσεις για την επιστροφή Σούμι..
Η επιστροφή του Μίκαελ Σουμάχερ έχει προκαλέσει ενθουσιασμό. Ο κόσμος περιμένει αγωνιωδώς τον αγαπημένο του πιλότο, να κάτσει στο κόκκινο μονοθέσιο και να οδηγήσει την Ferrari και πάλι στον δρόμο των επιτυχιών.
Ωστόσο όταν ανφερόμαστε σε μια τόσο μεγάλη προσωπικότητα θα πρέπει να συμμεριζόμαστε και άλλους παράγοντες. Ο Γουίλι Γουέμπερ, ο άνθρωπος που τον γνωρίζει πολύ καλά και διεύθυνε την καριέρα και την εικόνα του 7 φορές παγκόσμιου πρωταθλητή, έσπευσε να επισημάνει την ανησυχία του.
"Τον συμβούλεψα να μην το κάνει, λόγο των προσδοκιών που έχει ο κόσμος. Αν ο Σουμάχερ επιστρέψει, τότε αυτοί θα θέλουν να τον δουν να κερδίζει", είπε χαρακτηριστικά ο έμπειρος ατζέντης στην φημερίδα Der Tagesspiegel.
Κατά τη διάρκεια της συνέντευξης του ο Γερμανός μάνατζερ παραδέχτηκε πως "ηFerrari τον ρώτησε και εκείνος δεν μπορούσε να πει όχι. Είναι καλό για όλους: τα Μέσα, τους υποστηρικτές του, την φόρμουλα 1".
Ενώ, ο Γουέμπερ εξέφρασε τους φόβους του για την επιστροφή του Σουμάχερ λόγο του ότι έχει μείνει για πολύ καιρό εκτός εντατικών προπονήσεων και ότι οι άλλοι πιλότοι γνωρίζουν τα καινούργια μονοθέσια καθώς έχου ήδη εμπειρία 10 αγώνων.
Ένα από τα σημαντικότερα πρόσωπα στην ιστορία του μηχανοκίνητου αθλητισμού, ο Νίκι Λάουντα, σε αντίθεση με τον μάνατζερ του Σουμάχερ χαρακτήρισε την επιστροφή ως "λαμπερή".
Στη συνέχεια μάλιστα ο Αυστριακός παγκόσμιος πρωταθλητής τόνισε πως ο Ραϊκόνεν θα ευνοηθεί και θα αναδειχθεί από τον Μίκαελ Σουμάχερ θέτοντας το ερώτημα "Ποιος θα είναι πιο γρήγορος; Το πιο ενδιαφέρον πράγμα θα είναι να τον δούμε εναντίον του Κίμι Ραϊκόνεν στο άλλο μονοθέσιο της Ferrari".
Την γνώμη του Λάουντα ασπάζεται και το1ο αφεντικό του Σουμάχερ, ο Έντι Τζόρνταν, ο οποίος έδωσε στον Γερμανό πιλότο το βάπτισμα του πυρός το 1991.
"Θα δείτε ένα νέο Ραϊκόνεν γιατί δεν θέλει να ντροπιαστεί από τον Μίκαελ Σουμάχερ",είπε ο Ιρλανδός στο BBC Radio 5 Live.
Έχει βουήξει από το πρωί στην - ισπανική - δημοσιογραφική πιάτσα οτι η Villareal, συγκλονισμένη από την χθεσινή υπερ-εμφάνιση του Ολυμπιακού και το υπερ-τεράστιο κοουτσάρισμα του Γεωργιανού κράμματος Alex Ferguson - Pep Guardiola - Jose Murinho, αποφασίζει εντός ωρών να σουτάρει τον - άχρηστο χο χο χο - Valverdeκαι να σπρώξει όλο το ζεστό χρήμα για να σπάσει το - περίφημο - κλειστό συμβόλαιο του Timur..
Δυστυχώς, οι φήμες που θέλουν το χθεσινό να είναι το πρώτο και το τελευταίο παιχνίδι του Timur στον ερυθρόλευκο πάγκο φαίνεται να επιβεβαιώνονται...
και καλό κοουτσάρισμα.. εγώ κολλήματα δεν έχω και το χω ξαναπεί.. η ομάδα έπαιξε όπως έπρεπε.. της πήγε και το παιχνίδι από την αρχή..
Για δοκιμές στην αρχή, αλλά ποιος αμφιβάλλει πως θα είναι πιο γρήγορος από τους περισσότερους;;
Πρέπει να ζήλεψε την δόξα του κυρ-Σάββα, δεν εξηγείται αλλιώς..
Η χθεσινή βραδιά ήταν τελείως απογοητευτική. Υπάρχει όμως η ρεβάνς και με μία καλή εμφάνιση πάμε για να πετύχουμε το στόχο μας, δηλαδή το Τσάμπιονς Λιγκ. Είμαστε απογοητευμένοι αλλά και ενθουσιασμένοι γιατί ο Παναθηναϊκός είναι πολύ καλύτερος και πιο γρήγορος από πέρσι
Μήπως βιάζεσαι λίγο ρε συ Τότη να κρίνεις αν ο ΠΑΟ είναι καλύτερος και - ειδικά - πιο γρήγορος από πέρσι; Ειδικά αν χρησιμοποιείς ως κριτήριο το πρώτο επίσημο ματς της σεζόν, είναι λιγάκι δύσκολο να καταλήξεις στο συμπέρασμα αυτό, έτσι δεν είναι; Και μήπως να το κοιτάξεις λιγάκι αυτό που είσαι και απογοητευμένος και ενθουσιασμένος μαζί; Τώρα που ναι νωρίς ακόμα δηλαδή..
Οι παίκτες δεν είχαν συνέλθει απλό τα πλέι οφ. Δεν χρειάζονται τα πλέι οφ στο ελληνικό πρωτάθλημα. Πρόκειται για μία κουραστική διοργάνωση και ο κόσμος δεν έδειξε τη συμμετοχή του σε αυτά τα γήπεδα. Η ομάδα δεν πρόλαβε να ξεκουραστεί μετά τα πλέι οφ καθώς η προετοιμασία άρχισε αμέσως
Έλα; Πως; Τι super δικαιολογία είναι αυτή; Η ομάδα είναι κουρασμένη από τα play-offs; Δεν παίζει να έχει ξανακουστεί - στα παγκόσμια χρονικά - τέτοια δικαιολογία για Ιούλη μήνα.. Η ομάδα είναι κουρασμένη.. Τι είπε το παλικάρι.. Όχι από τα ματς, όχι από τον ένα μήνα προετοιμασία, αλλά από τα περσινά play-offs..
Υποστηρίζω πάντοτε τον προπονητή του Παναθηναϊκού. Δεν τον υποστηρίζω όμως σε δύο πράγματα. Το ότι έχει πει 'εγκαταλείπω του χρόνου' και το ότι με το ροτέισιον μας έχουν πεθάνει από όταν ήρθαν οι ξένοι προπονητές
Καλά, εδώ μιλάμε για τον ορισμό της υποστήριξης.. Σκέψου να μην τον υπόστηριζε κιόλας δηλαδή..
Με λίγα λόγια, ο βάζελος είναι πολύ καλύτερη ομάδα από τους Τσέχους και το 2-0 το έχει εύκολα στην ρεβάνς.. Αρκεί να είναι στοιχειωδώς σοβαρός.. Μπορεί;
Τις φήμες είμαι σίγουρος πως τις έχετε ακούσει..
Σ ένα σπορ που - ειδικά φέτος - λείπουν οι μεγάλες προσωπικότητες, έχει χτυπηθεί - όσο λίγα - από την οικονομική κρίση και το ενδιαφέρον του κόσμου - μέρα με την ημέρα, αγώνα με τον αγώνα - λιγοστεύει, μια επιστροφή Σουμάχερ θα ήταν πραγματικά βάλσαμο..
Δεν έχω καμία αμφιβολία πως αν επιστρέψει (έστω και για 6-7 αγώνες) θα είναι πάλι το σημείο αναφοράς.. Δεν μπορεί να γίνει αλλιώς.. Στο χώρο της formula 1, he is the Special One..
Αλλά, για να είμαι ειλικρινής - νομίζω πως είναι ένα ακόμα (καλά σκηνο-θετημένο αυτήν την φορά) τέχνασμα των υπευθύνων στην προσπάθεια τους να ξαναφέρουν τηνformula 1 στο προσκήνιο..
ΥΓ. Τώρα αποδεικνύεται πόσο αφελείς ήταν όσο νόμιζαν πως πιλότοι όπως ο Αλόνσο, ο Ραικόνεν ή ο Χάμιλτον, θα μπορούσαν να στηρίξουν στις πλάτες τους το σπορ.. Δεν γίνονται αυτά παιδιά..
Ο ρεπόρτερ του sport24 φαίνεται να είναι λίγο πιο ενθουσιασμένος με την άφιξη Κελάτι απ' ότι η περίσταση επιβάλλει..
Ψηλός, γεροδεμένος και πάνω απ' όλα σίγουρος για τον εαυτό του ο Τόμας Κελάτι έφτασε στην Αθήνα το πρωί της Τρίτης για να ολοκληρώσει τις τυπικές διαδικασίες της μεταγραφής του στον Ολυμπιακό.
Wow...
Όχι, προσωπικά δεν το βρίσκω καθόλου αρνητικό που - κατά πως φαίνεται - Orlando Bloom και Keira Knightley είπαν - για διαφορετικούς λόγους ο καθένας - όχι στην τέταρτη συνέχεια των Πειρατών.. Εξάλλου, κυρίως ο ρόλος του Will είχε κουράσει πολύ, ενώ αυτός της Elizabeth σωνόταν μόνο και μόνο από το.. παιχνίδι με τον Johnny στο 2 και τον - σχεδόν - πρωταγωνιστικό ρόλο στο 3... Πάντα (και παντού) όμως, το παιχνίδι ανήκε στον Captain Jack..
Έτσι λοιπόν, βρίσκω πολύ θετική την κίνηση των παραγωγών (βλέπε Jerry Bruckheimer) να επιστρέψει το focus της ταινίας στον Captain Jack - καλώς ή κακώς, η περσόνα που "έφτιαξε" με το ταλέντο του (και την διορατικότητα του σκηνοθέτη Gore Verbinski) ο Johnny Depp, είναι ο βασικός λόγος για να είναι κανείς ενθουσιασμένος με την προοπτική μιας ακόμα ιστορίας των Πειρατών..
Λίγη προσοχή μονάχα θέλει στο να βρεθεί ένα έξυπνο story και - φυσικά - ο κατάλληλος άνθρωπος να αναλάβει το γενικό κουμάντο μετά τον Verbinski.. Αν και - καθόλα - πετυχημένος με τους Πειρατές, νομίζω πως είναι σωστή κίνηση να αναζητηθεί ένας νέος σκηνοθέτης, κάποιος που θα δώσει ένα νέο όραμα και (σκηνοθετική) οπτική στο franchise αυτό.. Και είμαι σίγουρος πως για να υπογράψει ο Johnny θα έχει πάρει τις διαβεβαιώσεις του πως κάτι τέτοιο είναι και στις προθέσεις των παραγωγών..
Τώρα που το σκέφτομαι, τι να κάνει άραγε ο Tim Burton;; χα χα χα...
Διαβάζω στο zougla για τον - μεγάλο γόη - Orlando Bloom και... δεν τον βλέπω καλά:
Την απόφασή του να μη λάβει μέρος στην τέταρτη ταινία των «Πειρατών της Καραϊβικής» δημοσιοποίησε ο Orlando Bloom. Ο λόγος; Μία γυναίκα, ή μάλλον η γυναίκα της ζωής του. Ο 32 ηθοποιός αποφάσισε να απέχει για κάποιο χρονικό διάστημα από τις επαγγελματικές του υποχρεώσεις, μήπως και καταφέρει να πείσει την Miranda Kerr να τον παντρευτεί. Το 26χρονο μοντέλο από την Αυστραλία έχει απορρίψει ήδη δύο προτάσεις γάμου του διάσημου ηθοποιού, φέρνοντάς τον στα όρια της απόγνωσης.
Μεγάλε.. Λέγκολας, την έχεις δαγκώσει για τα καλά την λαμαρίνα, ε;
Δεν ξέρω αν το αξίζει η κοπέλα, αλλά τουλάχιστον ξέρουμε ποιος είναι ο.. άντρας της σχέσης...
Από σήμερα το blog θα ανανεώνεται πιο τακτικά..
Ελπίζω τώρα που έχουν χαλαρώσει και τα πράγματα στην δουλειά να μπορώ να κάνω γύρω στα 8-10 posts την μέρα..
Thanks for your support!
Δεν είναι κανένας χαζός ο Τιμούρ Κετσπάγια. Και θέλει να έχει καλυμμένα τα νώτα του. Να ξέρει ο ίδιος κι όχι να τα μαθαίνει μέσω άλλων. Ο Ολυμπιακός έχει τμήμα σκάουτινγκ. Με τον Μπόζινταρ Μπάντοβιτς και φυσικά τον Ανδρέα Νινιάδη, που είναι και πολύ φίλος του Κετσπάγια. Αλλά ο προπονητής του Ολυμπιακού προτίμησε να πάει ο ίδιος στην Μπρατισλάβα να δει την Σλόβαν με την Ζρίνσκι Βοσνίας. Καμία σχέση με τον Ερνέστο Βαλβέρδε, που ποτέ δεν πήγε να δει ο ίδιος αντίπαλο της ομάδας πέρσι. Και προτιμούσε να έπαιρνε την έκθεση του Νινιάδη η, του Μπάντοβιτς. Προφανέστατα ο Κετσπάγια θέλει να δείξει ότι αυτός δεν υποτιμάει κανένα αντίπαλο… Αλλά ίσως και να εμπιστεύεται μόνο τα «ίδια του τα ματάκια». Όπως κι αν έχει το «παίζει»αλλιώς σε σχέση με τον Ισπανό προκάτοχό του. Απομένει να δούμε αν θα δικαιωθεί. Η, την πατήσει κι αυτός στην Ευρώπη…
Άσε μας ρε περίεργε.. Ο Βαλβέρδε δεν πήγαινε ποτέ ο ίδιος για scouting γιατί έτσι (δεν) κάνουν οι coach σε όλες τα μεγάλα και σοβαρά club.. Γι' αυτό έχουν (και πληρώνουν) τους scouters..
Η κουλτούρα του Ernesto δεν ήταν (και δεν μπορούσε να ήταν με τις παραστάσεις που είχε..) "να φυλάγομαι, δεν ξέρω ποιός θα μου την φέρει και από που θα μου ρθει".. Κανείς σοβαρός προπονητής (ξέρεις απ αυτούς που βγάζουν το ψωμί τους σε topομάδες στην Primera Division) δεν λειτουργεί έτσι..
Αλλά ψιλά γράμματα αυτά για κάτι περίεργους σαν κι εσένα, ε;;
Τι γράφει ρε παιδιά το sport24.gr;
Τον Αντώνη Πετρόπουλο έχει στην μεταγραφική της λίστα η Τότεναμ όπως αποκάλυψε η people.co.uk. Ο προπονητής των "σπιρουνιών" θέλει να φέρει έναν εκ των Χούντελααρ, Πίτερ Κράουτς λόγω της αποχώρησης του Ντάρεν Μπεντ. Αν κάποια από τις δύο παραπάνω περιπτώσεις δεν προχωρήσει τότε η Τότεναμ δεν αποκλείεται να χτυπήσει την πόρτα του Παναθηναϊκού.
Δηλαδή η ο Πετρό είναι η τρίτη επιλογή μετά από Χούντελααρ και Κράουτς;;
Καλά, ΟΚ, εντάξει, ότι πείτε.. Αλλά άμα αυτή η.. ρημάδα η πόρτα δεν χτυπήσει, μην εκπλαγείτε κιόλας, έτσι;;;
Legendary Pictures and vidgame publisher Blizzard Entertainment are mounting the film, and Warner Bros. will co-finance and distribute. The team boasts an impressive pedigree: In addition to the director of "Spider-Man," the partners have added "The Dark Knight" producer Charles Roven to the creative mix.
The plan is for Raimi to supervise development of "Warcraft" and shoot the picture after he completes work on "Spider-Man 4," which gets under way early next year for Columbia Pictures.
The movie will be financed under the Legendary Pictures' co-production and co-financing deal with WB, in a manner similar to the Todd Phillips-directed "The Hangover" plus the Roven-produced "Batman Begins" and "Dark Knight."
The "Warcraft" universe features an epic conflict between the Horde and the Alliance. The game has developed a global following since its launch in 1994 and shows no signs of slowing. Its most recent expansion, "Wrath of the Lich King," sold more than 2.8 million copies in the first day of release and more than 4 million its first month.
"Warcraft" is "emblematic of the kind of branded, event films for which our studio is best known," said Warner Bros. Pictures Group president Jeff Robinov. The deal revives a long-dormant pact made by Legendary and Blizzard for a film adaptation of the game (Daily Variety, May 8, 2006).
"At its core, 'Warcraft' is a fantastic, action-packed story," Raimi said in a statement.
Raimi most recently directed "Drag Me to Hell."
Roven and his Atlas producing partner Alex Gartner will produce with Legendary's CEO Thomas Tull and chief creative officer Jon Jashni, Raimi and his producing partner, Joshua Donen. Rob Tapert will be executive producer, and Blizzard senior VP of creative development Chris Metzen will be co-producer."'Toy Story' came out in 1995. Think of how many kids were born since then. They only know us from the home videos. These films were meant to be seen on the big screen," he said.
In addition to the classic Pixar pics' makeovers, Lassater also discussed "Toy Story 3." Directed by Lee Unkrich, Buzz and Woody must come to grips with a grown-up Andy.
"It's a different emotional core from the other movies," said Lassater.
"We needed to have more than just have the toys go on another adventure," added Unkrich.Παρά τις φήμες που ήθελαν τους τέταρτους «Πειρατές Της Καραϊβικής» να καθυστερούν την έναρξη των γυρισμάτων, ο διευθυντής παραγωγής της Disney, Oren Aviv, επιβεβαίωσε χτες στο συνέδριο Comic Con στο Σαν Ντιέγκο ότι οι κάμερες θα πάρουν φωτιά τον Απρίλιο και το Μάιο του 2010.
Ο Johnny Depp θα φορέσει, λοιπόν, για τέταρτη φορά τη στολή του πιο δημοφιλούς ρόλου του, του εκκεντρικού Captain Jack Sparrow. Μάλιστα, πάντα σύμφωνα με τον Aviv, οι συγκεκριμένοι «Πειρατές» φιλοδοξούν να ξεκινήσουν μια νέα τριλογία, δίνοντας και πάλι το περισσότερο βάρος στο ρόλο του Sparrow, κάτι που είχε σταδιακά μειωθεί στη δεύτερη και τρίτη ταινία.
Επιπλέον, οι νέοι «Πειρατές» θα είναι πιο απλοί και συκρατημένοι, τόσο στο σενάριο όσο και στον προϋπολογισμό, αφού η κατάσταση παραείχε γίνει περίπλοκη στην τρίτη ταινία. Επιθυμία του Aviv είναι να ξεκινήσει η νέα τριλογία δίνοντας έμφαση στους χαρακτήρες και την ουσιώδη πλοκή. Αυτο, βέβαια, σημαίνει ότι οι «τσουχτεροί» στο κασέ τους Keira Knightley και Orlando Bloom δε θα εμφανιστούν στη νέα ταινία.
Όλα είναι καθοδόν, λοιπόν. Μένει μόνο να βρεθεί και σκηνοθέτης, αφού ο Gore Verbinski που είχε αναλάβει τους τρεις πρώτους «Πειρατές» δε φαίνεται να επιστρέφει, οπότε η Disney θα πρέπει να βρει ένα καινούριο όνομα.Σύμφωνα με δημοσιεύματα του αθλητικού τύπου το Σάββατο («Εξέδρα», «Φως»), ο Λουτσιάνο Γκαλέτι «κάρφωσε» τον υπεύθυνο ανάπτυξης της διαιτησίας όταν η κουβέντα έφτασε στον κανονισμό για την κίτρινη κάρτα που πρέπει να αντικρίζουν οι παίκτες όταν βγάζουν στο φανέλα τους.
Ο διάλογος είχε ως εξής:
Βασσάρας: «Είναι παράλογο να παίρνετε κίτρινες κάρτες επειδή βγάζετε τη φανέλα. Μην το κάνετε, θα έχετε πρόβλημα».
Γκαλέτι: «Εσύ δεν έχεις παίξει ποδόσφαιρο για να νιώσεις πως είναι. Ξέρεις πως είναι να πετυχαίνεις γκολ;»
Βασσάρας: «Μπορεί να μην ξέρω αλλά δεν είναι μαλ...να αφήνεις την ομάδα σου με 10 παίκτες γι’ αυτό το λόγο;»
Γκαλέτι: «Δίκιο έχεις, αλλά δεν μπορείς να καταλάβεις. Είναι η τρέλα της στιγμής και του ποδοσφαίρου».
18 July 2009 11:31 AM, PDT
Warner Bros. banked another $26.83 million in receipts on Friday, the third day of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince's reign at the box office. On Thursday it had taken in $22.02 million after a sensational opening day on Wednesday when it raked in $22.2 million in midnight previews and went on to count $58.18 million for the entire opening day. It was the second-biggest Wednesday opening in history, behind last month’s Transformers 2. The Princely total so far: $107.03 million. The film is expected to score at least $30 million today (Saturday), traditionally the biggest day of the week for family films. (Half-Blood Prince is rated PG.)
Παιδιά, φορέστε τα γάντια, δώστε την μάχη σας κι εμείς εδώ είμαστε για να σας στηρίξουμε όσο μπορούμε..
17 July 2009 6:26 PM, PDT
Robert Rodriguez has reportedly assembled an all-star cast for his new Grindhouse spin-off, including Robert De Niro, Jonah Hill, and Michelle Rodriguez.
The movie is based on a fake trailer that appeared before Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's 2007 Grindhouse double-bill.
Two years on, the filmmaker has decided to turn it into a full-length film.
Danny Trejo will reprise his role as Machete, a madman hellbent on revenge, and De Niro will play a senator who double-crosses him, a tipster tells movie website Bloody-Disgusting.com.
Shooting on the spin-off is scheduled to begin on 29 July.
Σε αναζήτηση παρουσιάστριας και πάλι λοιπόν ο ΑΝΤ1 για τον Πρωινό Καφέ..
χαχχαχααχαχααχαχαχχααααχαχαα.....
Τόμας Κελάτι λοιπόν κύριοι, ο.. παιχταράς των 10 πόντων μ.ο. από την Μάλαγα...
Νίκος Πατέρας: Απ’ ότι φαίνεται έχουν τελειώσει οι μεταγραφές. Είπαμε φέτος, να πάρει και μερικούς ο Ολυμπιακός…16 July 2009 7:06 PM, PDT
Denise Richards regularly checks into hotels for secret no-strings-attached sex sessions with male friends.
The actress has been single since her split from ex-husband Charlie Sheen, preferring to get her kicks from rendezvous with "friends with benefits".
She tells U.S. tabloid Globe, "You don't want to bring them home to your house, but I have certain needs. Friends with benefits are awesome. I used to be like, 'Oh no, you have to be in a relationship.' But after going through a divorce, I'm like, 'Life is short, I wanna have a good time.'"
Ξέρω τι σκέφτεστε.. Πως μου ήρθε τώρα εμένα να γράψω για το Donnie Darko 9 ολόκληρα χρόνια μετά την πρώτη προβολή του στους κινηματογράφους.. Κι έχετε και τα δίκια σας..Now she's back, proffering a fresh mint julep with a shot of hassle on the side: "Will you please get back to work for me?" she asks. "I'm missing you." Tarantino's expression doesn't change, but you can tell there's a mint leaf of annoyance garnishing his response: "August," he says. "My new movie comes out in August." (It's called Inglourious Basterds, and Brad Pitt's in it, kicking ass and collecting Nazi scalps, and it's only the movie Tarantino's been talking about making for, like, a hundred years, Lay Lay!)
He laughs so she knows it's okay. Lay Lay remembers now, about the new movie. She says listen—her band is playing down the street at the Roxy tonight. "It's three of us ladies," she says. "I play drums." Hence the arms. "So if you're looking for fun," she says, "come see us!" Quentin thanks her for the invite. He thanks her for the drink.
I've been warned that he's tired. He spent six hours at a photo shoot today. And he's still in shock over David Carradine, found dead in a Bangkok hotel yesterday morning. Last night, Quentin went on Larry King Live, looking like a traumatized superfan. He showed Larry his Kung Fu lunchbox, complete with thermos.
Then there's the movie. Basterds screened at Cannes in May. Variety said it was "never less than enjoyable." The Hollywood Reporter found it lacking in "those things we think of as being Tarantino-esque." The Guardian called it "an armor-plated turkey." This in turn has fed rumors that the Weinstein Company is nervous about the movie's two-and-a-half-hour running time, about the long stretches of dialogue in subtitled French and German. A few days after we meet in L.A., a few Hollywood gossip sites float the rumor that Quentin has been asked to cut forty minutes out of the movie.
Tarantino says he's not worried about the way Basterds was received at Cannes. The "bona fide literary film critics"—the ones he respects, as opposed to Internet mole people and "celebrity journalists"—mostly dug the movie. And when the studio screened it this week in L.A., it went over huge. If not for Carradine's death, he says, "I'd be happy as a fucking clam."
He seems less happy than a clam tonight, though. He seems tense. He's sweating despite the air-conditioning. Banging those tasty beverages. There's a defensive edge to his trademark know-it-all answers.
"I respect criticism," he says. (He's been working on a movie-review book, on and off, for a few years.) "But I know more about film than most of the people writing about me. Not only that, I'm a better writer than most of the people writing about me. And I can write film criticism better than most of the people writing about me.
"Look," Tarantino says, "if you're a nice-guy artist, all you have to worry about is becoming boring at some point. But I'm not a nice-guy artist. When my movies come out, they draw a line in the sand."
*****
Back in January, Tarantino was at Studio Babelsberg, eighteen or so glum gray miles outside Berlin. He was in his element. Shooting on the soundstage where Fritz Lang made Metropolis, where Josef von Sternberg directed Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel, and where Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels played movie mogul after the Nazis took over—which is funny, because Goebbels's quest to be the David O. Selznick of the Third Reich is a major plot point in Basterds. Tarantino was grooving on the meta-movieness of it all. He was racing, too—come hell or high water, they were going to have this movie done in time for Cannes. But he was in a good mood. "Compared to Kill Bill, this is a spa," he said, grinning. "It's a facial. A salt rub. A Thai massage!"
He was on an elaborate movie-theater set, under opera boxes draped with Nazi flags. The theater was full of German extras, done up for the premiere of a fictional Goebbels movie called Nation's Pride—silk gowns, opera gloves, S.S. dress uniforms.
Quentin fed them their motivation. "You guys are filled with the pride of a victorious Reich at this moment," he said, and then an AD relayed this to them in German.
Eli Roth, horror-movie auteur and Tarantino confrere, shot the Nation's Pride footage we see in Basterds. Roth was in Germany anyway; he plays Donny Donowitz, a bat-wielding soldier known to terrified Germans as "the Bear Jew." He was on-set today, in a tux and white gloves, ready to mingle with the crème de la crème of Nazi society."Quentin got the Jewish director to do the Nazi propaganda film," he says, grinning. "I thought I'd never do anything more disgusting than Hostel II!"
Quentin took a break around ten thirty that night. We sat next to each other in the back of his fake movie house, talked about the script. He was supposedly working on it, or not working on it, during the six-year gap between Jackie Brown and Kill Bill. Myths accrued. It was a 600-page screenplay. It was his magnum opus. He wanted Stallone and Willis and Eddie Murphy for the leads. He wanted Tim Roth and Michael Madsen. He wanted Adam Sandler. He was staying up all night, smoking more dope than Widespread Panic's road crew and watching D-grade flicks Joe Bob Briggs wouldn't use to prop up a wobbly table. He'd become a pure pop-cultural swamp thing, freed by success to sleep and root in the primordial muck that birthed him. In Down and Dirty Pictures, Peter Biskind's 2004 book about the House of Weinstein and the rocky interfaith marriage between art-house and multiplex that Tarantino's success helped Bob and Harvey engineer, Tarantino is last glimpsed circa 2000, "lost in his labyrinthine World War II script."
Quentin told me that all that fog-of-war-movie stuff was exaggerated. He wasn't lost. He just couldn't stop writing. He'd produced more story than a movie could hold. He thought about turning it into a novel. He came close to writing it up as a twelve-episode mini-series—his own gonzo Band of Brothers. He says director Luc Besson (La Femme Nikita) talked him out of that. "You're one of the only guys whose movies make me want to go out to a theater," Besson told him one night over drinks. This stuck with Quentin. In January 2008, he took one more shot at chopping his monster down to movie size.
He cut one major plotline—a story about a group of AWOL black soldiers making their way across occupied France, which he might turn into a Basterds sequel if this one does well. He focused in on the Basterds, a unit of Jewish American commandos using terrorist tactics against the Third Reich, and Shosanna Dreyfus, a French farm girl who flees to Paris and becomes the proprietress of a movie house after the Nazis murder her family. He wrote a new third act, bringing these two stories together, to bloody and historically inaccurate effect, at the gala premiere of ein film von Joseph Goebbels. He'd write all day; at night he'd listen to records or float in his pool, ruminating. He feels that the movie was really written between January and July of last year. "I've never written such a big thing so fast before," he says. "It just came tumbling out of me."
He finished the script on July 2 and sent it to his longtime producing partner, Lawrence Bender, the next day, telling him he wanted to shoot it in time for Cannes. "I was like, ‘Wow—really? You finished it? Shit!' " Bender says. "That was a wild moment." Tarantino flew to France to persuade Brad Pitt to play Lieutenant Aldo Raine, the leader of the Basterds. ("We talked about movies into the wee hours of the night," Pitt told reporters in May. "When I got up the next morning, I saw five empty bottles of wine lying on the floor—five!—and something that resembled a smoking apparatus.… And apparently I'd agreed to do the movie." When I ask Tarantino who supplied this apparatus, he says, "That was Brad. He did the fabrication. He can take a Coke can and make it—functional.")
When I ask Harvey Weinstein why Tarantino decided to make the movie on this scramble-the-fighters timetable, he brings up Grindhouse, the double-feature slasher-film tribute Tarantino co-directed with Robert Rodriguez in 2007. Weinstein doesn't believe that Grindhouse's poor box-office performance had anything to do with Quentin's decision to get moving on Basterds but believes Tarantino "wanted to get back in the saddle. He did his B movie, and I think it was time for him to go back and make his Quentin Tarantino movie."
Tarantino has a simpler explanation.
"I just like Cannes," Tarantino told me. "It's like the whole planet is checking your movie out—boom!—at one time, and—bam!—it either works or it doesn't. And especially when I'm there—it's the closest thing to Muhammad Ali having a championship fight. It's just—bam! You're throwing it down."
*****
Tarantino became the Cassius Clay of the Croisette back in 1994, when Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or. Clint Eastwood read the good news. He'd gone to France as a Sundance wunderkind; he came back as the biggest auteur-celebrity since Orson Welles.
They still love him in France. When he hits Cannes—boom!—in May, with Basterds, autograph hounds waving Tarantino posters in protective plastic sheeting jockey for position at the barricades with tuxedoed paparazzi. On the red carpet, he boogies to Dick Dale's "Misirlou," the opening-credits song from Pulp Fiction. He grabs Mélanie Laurent, who plays Shosanna in Basterds. She's all in white, he's all in black. They cut that red rug. They do the swim. They do the sailor's hornpipe. They do the twist, just like John Travolta and Uma Thurman. Quentin air-guitars down the red carpet—ten feet, twenty feet—and back up. It goes over huge. Everybody screams louder a couple of minutes later when Brad rolls up with Angelina. But next to Quentin's display of irrational exuberance, Brad and Angelina look like a couple of s.
The movie plays. When it's over, Tarantino gets a standing ovation. It lasts eleven minutes. A cameraman finds Quentin in the crowd, puts his face up on that big Palais des Festivals screen. He's hugging Mélanie. He's holding Brad's fist in the air, like the ref in a prizefight. He's smiling a cryptic smile.
"I felt like that ovation was a review," Harvey Weinstein tells me later, when I ask him about the post-Cannes reviews. "I think they would have stayed and cheered longer."Weinstein also denies that Quentin's been asked to trim the movie.
"Those stories are all untrue. There's no fucking way. Here, read my lips: That is nuts. Please don't even write that, it's insanity. There's not even a question of that. Whatever you're reading, it's like some insane blogger. He's not gonna cut. What he's doing is just reorganizing some scenes. I mean, the guy had six weeks to cut his movie [for Cannes]; most guys take six months. Most guys take a year. When I worked with Martin [Scorsese], we'd do eighteen months in postproduction. Quentin Tarantino cuts a movie in six weeks? Come on! There's shit on that cutting-room floor that'll blow your brains out. I was telling Quentin the opposite—‘You should put that shit back in the movie'—'cause it's un-fucking-believably great."
After the Cannes screening, there's a party, down on the beach. Big party tent, French ingenues lighting cigarettes off tiki torches, a DJ—flown in, somebody tells me, from "one of the hottest clubs in St-Tropez"—spiking his set with QT soundtrack cuts like "Son of a Preacher Man." Brad and Angelina float by; I try to stand within range of Angelina's healing radiance, in case I have an undiagnosed case of leprosy that needs curing.
Tarantino sips Heinekens. He talks to ladies—first to ladies he knows, then to ladies who look like they want to know him because he's Quentin Tarantino. After about an hour, he opens the velvet rope around his banquette. A security guy clears a path for him through the crowd. He makes his way out of the tent. Shakes a few hands en route. Disappears ninja-like through the black curtain separating the party from the rest of the beach. The DJ plays Chuck Berry's "You Never Can Tell," the twist song from Pulp Fiction, but he's not there to hear it.
Later, I ask Tarantino what he was thinking that night as the applause went on and on. "I wanted to get the biggest standing ovation of the festival, and I got it," he says. "They counted it. But I wanted to be inscrutable. That was my cool moment, and I was gonna be cool. Sometimes it's your time to be Elvis, and that was my time."
*****
life gives you only so many Elvis moments, and Tarantino's had a few. Real triumphs—the kind that involve The Man with No Name presenting you with some hardware at a film festival just a few short years after you quit your dead-end job at the video store to make movies or die trying, yeah, but also the artistic kind. Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, sure. But watch both the Kill Bill movies back-to-back and tell me they don't add up to another Pulp-grade masterpiece—Tarantino not just synthesizing but trumping his influences, in a movie that happens to be about getting revenge on your mentor
If it's harder now to see him as a game changer, it's partly because he's made maybe a little too much of his cool moments over the years, saying yes to judging American Idol, acting on Broadway, and playing himself in a Wizard of Oz adaptation starring the Muppets. But it's also because of how thoroughly he's changed the game. He's partially responsible for hollow, hyperstylized post-Pulp crime movies from Romeo Is Bleeding all the way up to Smokin' Aces. But some of the best movies of the past two decades feel deeply post-Quentin, too, from the deadpan brutality of Fight Club to the pop-referential ball-breaking of the Apatow gang. The nonlinear storytelling of Pulp Fiction filters down through Memento all the way to How I Met Your Mother. The mainstreaming of QT's trashatarian taste made your local art house—where classy Brit fluff like Enchanted April used to rule—safe for unabashed exploitation flicks from foreign lands, like Korea's Oldboy and Sweden's Let the Right One In.
He can't light a fire under modern cinema every time, though. Basterds lacks the Swiss-watch craftsmanship of Pulp Fiction. It feels like Tarantino skimmed his behemoth of a rough draft and hammered together whatever worked, sometimes at the expense of clarity. That said, much of what he kept ranks with the best stuff he's produced in all his years of wonderfulness. A tense twenty-five-minute bar scene that unfolds like a one-act play; a montage of Laurent getting dressed to kill, set to David Bowie's "Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)," that out-DePalmas Brian DePalma; the performances of Laurent and Christoph Waltz, who won best actor at Cannes for his turn as the affably despicable Nazi commandant Hans Landa.
The minute we see Laurent's character passing an afternoon in a café with a cigarette, a glass of vin rouge, and a paperback of Leslie Charteris's The Saint in New York, we get it—she's a QT dream girl, and the movie is his dream. It's a big, sprawling period piece in a time-honored, respectable genre, but he's completely uninterested in demonstrating that he can play by that genre's rules. All that classical war-movie stuff—the big-battle set piece, the ragtag crew storming the castle with knives between their teeth—takes a backseat to Quentin's own obsessions. Language. Restaurants. Women's feet. Other people's movies—pre-World War II German cinema, spaghetti Westerns, Heaven's Gate—and the moviegoing experience itself. Even the soundtrack is all borrowed score—a little Elmer Bernstein, a lot of Morricone, even a Billy Preston cut from the 1972 Jim Brown vehicle Slaughter.
Tarantino's critics dismiss him as a mixtape filmmaker, furnishing halls of mirrors with references and trivia. Basterds won't shut them up. Tarantino doesn't care.
"I've had people write that I've seen too many movies," he's saying at the Hamlet, sometime around mint julep number three. "In what other art form would being an expert be considered a negative? If I were a poet, would I be criticized for knowing too much about Sappho? Or Aristotle?"
Another common knock on Tarantino: He set out in a more mature, meditative direction with Jackie Brown, then wimped out, opting for flashy pastiche over human-scale drama. He begs—big surprise—to differ.
"I didn't go in that direction," he says. "I arrived at my destination with Jackie Brown. I did it! I don't have to prove that I can do it again. I can do it again if I wanna do it again, but even if I go off and do Friday the 13th part nine, that doesn't change Jackie Brown. That's still a mature piece of work. Made when I wasn't even that mature."
That's the weird part—you made your getting-older movie when you were only 34. (He's 46 now.)
"Yeah. And it's as much of an old-man movie as I ever wanna make."
He's said this sort of thing before. That he has no desire to be a "geriatric" filmmaker.
"You can lie about a lot of things," he says, "but your filmography doesn't lie. It's right there. And it doesn't give a shit about why you did it. It doesn't give a shit about what was happening that year in your life, or that gal you were married to. Ten years after the fact, your movies are all created fuckin' equal. And if you go through their filmographies, directors don't get better. Especially when they've had a serious twenty- or thirty-year career. It's not like they're waiting for their last five years to make that out-and-out masterpiece. They get worse."
(I ask him to expand. I say he doesn't have to mention names. He says he wasn't going to. You can probably fill them in yourself: Francis Ford Coppola, puttering about the vineyards of diminished expectation. Eastwood, endlessly rephrasing what Unforgiven had to say about Dirty Harry types in the winter of their badassedness. Scorsese, maybe, though it would probably hurt Tarantino to say that out loud.)
"I imagine this is partly just what happens to you when you're in your sixties," he says. "And for other filmmakers, well, maybe that's fine. But if you're a rock 'n' roll artist, and then at some point you start singing big-band tunes—you can do it, and you can be really happy, but there's a difference in your career.
"People change," he says, setting his mint julep down next to his water glass.
"There's the rock 'n' roll time"—he points at the drink—"and there's the big-band time," he says, pointing at the water. "I don't want that. Where I'm coming from, I'm thinking about when I'm dead and gone, and some kid—who's maybe not even born yet—sees one of my movies and digs it. And he says, ‘This guy's fucking got it going on. I want to see something else by this guy.' But he doesn't know who the fuck I am, so he doesn't know to go to Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs. He's just gonna pick the easiest one he can get his hands on. And if that's one of the ones I make during my old-man years—well, I've lost him right then and there."
It's like when you're in high school, I say, and you decide you're going to check out Bob Dylan, but because you don't know any better, you end up buying one of the weird Christian records. Or Knocked Out Loaded. You're saying you don't ever want to make your Knocked Out Loaded.
"Yeah," Tarantino says. (Then he says "Yeah" about eighteen more times.) "Even though I do really love the Sam Shepard song on Knocked Out Loaded. That's an epic song—‘Brownsville Girl.' But that's what I mean. People are gonna be rummaging in the grab bag of Quentin Tarantino's work, and I want it all to be fucking kick-ass. I want the first film to be as strong as the last film. I want that kid to get his little dick hard about every single one of 'em."
A lot of the directors you're alluding to, I point out, would probably say they're doing the best work of their careers.
"They might very well think that." Tarantino says. "And that's why I don't want to be making movies at that point.
"There are directors," Tarantino says, "who don't know how to stop working. Maybe they thought of themselves as artists at one time, but now they're just directors, and they're going out and getting a job. And they live beyond their fuckin' means, anyway, so they can't stop working."
I imagine that kicks in for a lot of people, I say. Even if you don't live beyond your means—at some point, if you've got a wife and kids and a mortgage, that has to affect the choices you make.
"That's living beyond your means!" Tarantino says, laughing. "When you gotta go out and make a movie to pay for the kid's private school and for the three ex-wives, don't talk to me about your artistry. It's their job. It's not my job. It's my calling."
He says he's going to hang up his megaphone when he's 60. He'll write books, maybe judge a few film festivals. Grace the occasional Tarantino retrospective with his presence. "I'll be the grand old man," he says. "Like what Sam Fuller did the last twenty years of his life. That looked pretty groovy to me. And when I'm sitting there in my retrospective, I don't want to have to watch the movie I made to pay for my pool."
I ask if that's why he takes so much time off—if he's trying to conserve that young-director energy.
"Let me answer this in a few different ways," he says, then stops. "Actually, give me a second—I'm gonna run to the restroom."
When he comes back he's winded, as if the restroom he ran to was a few blocks away.
"Here's the thing," he says. "When I'm doing a movie, I'm not doing anything else. It's all about the movie. I don't have a wife. I don't have a kid. Nothing can get in my way. The whole fucking world can go to hell and burst into flames. I don't care. This is my life. It's Mount Everest. If you're climbing Mount Everest, you're not doing anything else. All your concerns, all the mundane things, family, any of that, it just—pfft—disappears. Goes away. It's mist. It's just nothing but the mountain, every single solitary day. I'm not saying that I'll never get married or have a kid before I'm 60. But I've made a choice, so far, to go on this road alone. Because this is my time. This is my time to make movies."
He grabs my napkin off the seat, uses it to mop his brow. He says there was a moment, a couple of years ago. A relationship, one that might have led to marriage. "But if that had happened," he says, "I wouldn't have made Inglourious Basterds. Or I might have eventually, but I wouldn't have made it with the same intensity. And it wouldn't be finished now. Some people will like Inglourious Basterds. Some people won't. But it was made with all the passion I've made everything with—except maybe my first film, which was probably made with more passion than I'll ever have again. I'm doing exactly what I need to be doing." He taps out punctuation on the table. "I'm right where I need to be."*
*****
it's like he's giving us the speech Ving Rhames gives Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction, when he tells Bruce to throw the fight: "This business is filled to the brim with unrealistic motherfuckers. Motherfuckers who thought their ass would age like wine. If you mean it turns to vinegar, it does."
And he's not wrong. Maybe a little presumptuous, a little too positive that there'll be Tarantino retrospectives by the time he enters the Lifetime Achievement age bracket, but not wrong. Still, it's a little weird that—at 46!—he can't see any middle ground between forswearing all worldly attachments in the name of art and making movies to pay for your pool. That he doesn't perceive any upside, for an artist, of spending time outside worlds of your own making.
The thing about hanging out in those worlds, of course, is that you get to be God. Which means you get weird. Which is maybe why the night ends the way it does. Here's what happens. We talk a little longer, and then the waitress comes over. Not the one who took our orders before. A new girl. Asian. She asks if we want another drink. Quentin says he's up for one more, then asks what time it is. It's ten thirty-five. He takes this news badly.
"You were supposed to bring our check over at nine o'clock," he says.
"I did," the waitress says, confused.
"No, you didn't," Quentin says firmly.
"Yeah, I…," the waitress starts to say.
"Well," Quentin says, "you didn't tell us, ‘This is your check.' "
"Oh," the waitress says. "I'm sorry." She seems sorry. Quentin won't let it go.
"You were supposed to let me know that it was nine," he says. "That was why you were bringing the check over!"
The waitress doesn't know what to say. She's suddenly being directed by Quentin Tarantino, and he has some issues with her performance.
"I asked if you wanted anything else," the waitress says, "and—"
"That's just what a normal waitress does," Quentin says. "You were supposed to come over and say, ‘Here's your check,' because that was my cue, to know when it was time to go. You did it just like a normal person would do it." He laughs. It's like I'm sitting here with Mr. Pink all of a sudden. Or like all the stress of the night—talking about the movie, defending himself, maybe the whole sad David Carradine thing, too—is coming out. The waitress apologizes again.
There was an arrangement, it seems. We were supposed to talk for two hours and then the waitress was supposed to bring the check at nine, as a signal, so Tarantino knew when to excuse himself. The subterfuge makes no sense. It's the kind of plan only a guy who's seen too many movies would make. The waitress looks flustered. The waitress looks humiliated.
The waitress says, "My apologies. So you don't want another round?"
"No," Quentin says. "We're gonna take off. I have to—yeah," he says. "I gotta take off."
I ask if we can talk again. He says yeah—yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah—we can grab another hour on the phone. Absolutely. (A few days later, his publicist calls to walk back this promise. We never talk again.) He grabs bad motherfucker, gets up, and leaves. He practically leaves a Quentin-shaped hole in the wall, he's out of there so fast. Maybe he drops by the Roxy, checks out Lay Lay's band. Who knows. I sign the check, overtip guiltily. Waitressing is the number-one occupation for female non–college graduates in this country. I think I heard somebody say that in a movie once.
Πηγή: GQ magazine
