Editorial: Has Quentin compromised his BASTARDS?

Quentin Tarantino first mentioned shooting his ambitious WW-II epic to end all WW-II's epic around the time he finished JACKIE BROWN in 1997 and began working on the script a few years before the end of the Millennium. When INGLORIOUS BASTARDS was becoming even more epic than he could have possibly imagined, Quentin went off and worked on other things, KILL BILL and DEATH PROOF. As well as living life, it's always been credited that the absence between 1997 and 2003 was particularly because he just couldn't crack INGLORIOUS BASTARDS the way he wanted to. So here we are, fast forwarded to 2008 and the script has been in development for ten years. Quentin has more or less (yeah sure, it was probably on the shelf for months on end whilst he was working on other projects but you get my meaning) been working on the film non-stop. He has certainly been hard at working grafting at it from the end of promoting GRINDHOUSE in America (you may remember he took the script with him to work on as he toured Europe) and having sat down and read it from beginning to end in the last few days, I say it's brilliant. It's not quite as epic as I thought it would be (the film has no massive battles out of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN for instance) but it definitely keeps up Quentin's word for shooting a movie like THE DIRTY DOZEN. In fact, from reading the script, THE DIRTY DOZEN is the movie I think that has influenced him most. That and possibly a little bit of CINEMA PARADISO, which kind of encapsulates the final act. So what am I talking about when I mention that Quentin has compromised THE BASTARDS? Well, at Cannes earlier this year, he suddenly got the urge to announce that he wanted the film to be in competition at next year's event. Quentin, a self-proclaimed lover of the festival, seemed to be the child who wanted to return to the candy store and wouldn't be happy unless he got his way. Quentin seems obsessed with getting the movie playing at the festival next year, if it kills him. That meant finalizing script, casting, location scouting, filming and post-editing in less than a year. For a movie over 165 pages long (at least 2 and a half hours in length), that's no small feat. Quentin's obsession with getting the film playing at Cannes next year may have cost him what for many was the juiciest aspect of the film. Originally, we heard the names of the massive 80's stars Bruce Willis, SylvesterStallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and even Jean Claude-Van Damme for the picture... mirroring the kind of A-LIST stars these long assed war movies would have in the 60's. But as soon as Quentin said he wanted it at Cannes, he could only ever give actors two or maybe three months notice at most. And as so many of the people we know for sure (and probably loads we don't) he went after couldn't make it to the dance because of prior commitments, Quentin has had to compromise his cast somewhat. This is what he has so far, looking in particular at the BASTARDS. Only the name of Brad Pitt is an A-lister here... The Bastards... * Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine * Eli Roth as Sgt. Donnie Donowitz * B. J. Novak as PFC Utivich * Til Schweiger as Stiglitz British Bastards... * Mike Myers as Gen. Ed Fenech, a British "military mastermind" who provides a plot to kill Nazi leadership. * Michael Fassbender as Lt. Archie Hicox We know he wanted Adam Sandler for the movie. We know he wanted Tim Roth. We know he will want Michael Madsen. We know he wanted Simon Pegg for the movie (who would have been fantastic by the way in the role of Archie Hicox, absolutely perfect) but he's had to settle possibly for his second/third/fourth choice for some of the roles. Were Eli Roth and B.J. Novak... really the names we were expecting in this? Other roles here, he has also had to settle for. The great role of Bridget Von Hammersmark, a beautiful and seductive German A-list movie star which was clearly written for Uma Thurman has ended up with a Hollywood actress who has the looks but has never been able to deliver in Diane Kruger. We know Quentin went after Natassja Kinski but she turned him down. More settling. We know he even met with Leonardo DiCaprio, one of the biggest and most talented movie stars on the planet but he then inexplicably decided not to use him! Now when I read the role of "The Jew Hunter" Col. Hans Landa in my head, DiCaprio is perfect for it but I can kinda see where he was coming from by casting an actual German. Christoph Waltz will rule in that role. It's such a great part... one of those that Quentin is just able to write with such perfection. Robert Forster, David Carradine, Harvey Keitel in JACKIE BROWN, KILL BILL and RESERVOIR DOGS respectively. Those amazing roles that carry the picture and breath new life into actors. So we ask ourselves, has Quentin compromised the picture or will it actually be better for the fact that there aren't many A-list stars present. Is their less ego's here, more honest actors who are desperate to carve their classic role in cinema in INGLORIOUS BASTARDS? Waltz, Kruger and Novak... certainly have a great chance of doing that. Or should Quentin have waited? Has his obsession with getting the movie into Cannes, cost him what he set out to do in the first place. A massive A-list cast of Hollywood's finest for a WW-II epic. He has no Charles Bronson, no James Coburn, no Lee Marvin. He only got his Steve McQueen (Pitt), but actually the movie might be better for that fact?