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Quentin Tarantino is so high on the Cannes experience that he worked at a breakneck pace to shoot and edit the 165-page epic-sized WWII drama “Inglourious Basterds” in eight months. And when the writer-director bows his film on Wednesday, he says, “I’m expecting this to be one of the high moments of my career.”
Reflecting on the pic over a hamburger at the Carlton Hotel, Tarantino said it was worth the struggle to debut his third film in competition. (Tarantino won the 1994 Palme D’Or for “Pulp Fiction” and also brought “Death Proof”).

“This is the cinematic Olympics,” Tarantino said. “What an exciting year for auteurs this year, with four Palme d’Or winners. If you’ve done a movie you’re proud of, that you might be defined by, then to me the dream is not necessarily to be there at Oscar time. That’s wonderful. But my dream is to always go to present the film at Cannes.

“There is nothing like it in cinema,” he said. “Nobody has seen your film. It’s a wet print, fresh out of the lab. The entire world film press is here, and they all see it, at one time. The greatest film critics in the world, who are still critics, and they’re all fighting and debating it. When you think back on your career, it comes down to these high moments. That level of excitement is unparalleled.”

Getting to the Croisette took discipline. The film had the same 10-week production schedule as “Pulp Fiction,” fast for a period war movie shot in Europe. Read more.

The official website was updated with lots of goodies! Quotes, pictures, soundtrack and others. Be sure to check it out.

The movie will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 20th. Prior to that there will be a photocall and pressconference. Brad is expected to attend. Thanks Rita and Gina.

PARIS — “This ain’t your daddy’s World War II movie,” Quentin Tarantino said with a grin, standing on a street corner here that had been scrubbed of 21st-century signposts to become the set of Inglourious Basterds, his new film about a band of Jewish-American soldiers on a scalp-hunting revenge quest against the Nazis.

Although it was mostly shot at Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam, Germany, the movie’s subtitle is Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France. So on a three-day sojourn in Paris in December, Tarantino and his bi-continental moviemaking coalition commandeered a 1904 bistro with peeling paint, Art Deco stained glass and a wall of windows overlooking an intersection of identifiably Parisian streets.

“We had to have a scene to sell the audience that we’re in France,” Tarantino said. “This is it.”

Inglourious Basterds, which is to have its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 20, is Tarantino’s first movie since Death Proof, half of Grindhouse, a double feature and box-office flop that he directed with Robert Rodriguez, and his first solo feature since Kill Bill Vol. 2 in 2004.

Tarantino calls Inglourious Basterds his “bunch of guys on a mission movie.” Judging by the script, it should have the crackling dialogue, irreverent humor and stylized violence that are hallmarks of his work.

“You’ve got to make a movie about something, and I’m a film guy, so I think in terms of genres,” he said. “So you get a good idea, and it just moves forward and then usually by the time you’re finished, it doesn’t resemble anything of what might have been the inspiration. It’s simply the spark that starts the fire.” Read more.