Check out these wonderful minimalistic movie posters designed by Grischa Stanjek (Atomic Popcorn reader) who so graciously shared this personal project with us and now we’re sharing it with all of you! The goal Grischa set for this project was to “reduce each movie to one single object” and I’d say Grischa achieved that goal with flying colors! Thank you Grischa for sharing these with us! Keep up the good work!

If I had to choose a favorite out of this series it might be a Clockwork Orange, captures the movies sense of humor perfectly!

Remember if you’ve got any movie related artwork whether still images or videos send them to us and we’ll share them with the extended Atomic Popcorn family! Go movies!

Machete, Robert Rogriquez’s feature spin-off of a trailer from the Rodriguez/Tarantino double-feature, Grindhouse, has been slotted for release on September 3rd.

The film follows an renegade Mexican called Machete (Danny Trejo) as he seeks revenge against the people who double-crossed him. The cast also includes Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, Cheech Marin, Rose McGowan, Steven Seagal, and Robert DeNiro.

I think anyone who has already heard about this knows what they’re in for, but can it get a more widespread viewership based on word-of-mouth come Labor Day weekend?

Christoph Waltz, the Austrian actor who received widespread acclaim for his role as Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, just added a directing gig to his already-busy schedule.

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Waltz is going to direct Auf und Davon (Up and Away) off his own script, based on the novel with the same name.

After his mainstream success in “Basterds,” Waltz filmed the role of the villain, Chudnofsky, in Michael Gondry’s The Green Hornet, which is set to be released at Christmas. He has also signed on to Water for Elephants and is considering a role in A Little War of Our Own, so it will probably be some time before this movie gets off the ground.

U&A is the story of a woman who “is the ruthless host of a dating show competition. She finds herself in over her head when the show’s romantic story line bumps into her own feelings for a contestant.” Sounds like a typical rom-com to me, but, with Waltz, I’m not sure.

You can tell that he definitely has a sense of humor — both from his role in Inglourious Basterds and his charming Oscar acceptance speech.

The movie would mark his feature-directing debut, as he has previously only directed for television.

Fox International Productions is financing, but that doesn’t mean it will play in the US. President Sanford Panitch said, “While Christoph’s rise to international stardom will continue, we are very proud to collaborate with him on his very own project.”

I am really glad to see this awesome actor get more work. He was terrific as “The Jew-Hunter” and seems like a nice guy.

Since the dawn of the motion picture industry people have been trying to capture the essence of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre on film. In fact, since the first silent film was released in 1915 there has been at least one movie or television adaptation per decade.

Cary Fukunaga’s new project will be the first feature-length Jane of the new millennium.

On the heels of the BBC’s successful Jane Eyre miniseries in 2007, which garnered three Emmy Awards, the company announced plans early in 2008 to produce a Jane Eyre for the big screen. Ruby Films and Focus Features signed on for production as well.

Like the most recent television and film adaptations, this new project will also be a period piece. However, the screenplay, written by Moira Buffini, sets a foundation for the project to capitalize on the more gothic elements of the story.

While Ellen Page had signed on for the title role back in May of 2008, casting and starting dates have shifted. As the film moves through pre-production with a release date set in 2011, we have been given a new Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester.

Mia Wasikowska, a name best associated with Tim Burton’s upcoming Alice in Wonderland, will be playing Jane. Michael Fassenbender, most recognized for his part as the British officer Lieutenant Archie Hicox in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, is set to play Rochester.

Fassenbender is thirteen years older than Wasikowska. He is ruggedly handsome and she is beautifully plain. We know little outside the actors’ faces and the promise of gothic underpinnings; however, I feel this production is already off to being the first to capture that elusive quality of Brontë’s novel that others have missed.

Note: The following essay, which is obviously being published months after the release of Inglourious Basterds, was written for a literary criticism class that explores theory behind literary criticism and focuses on analyzing textual works from a variety of perspectives. This assignment involved using these tools of literature to explore a work outside of the written word — I chose Inglourious Basterds.  I thought I’d share it in order to show just how relevant Basterds is to the craft as a whole, so enjoy it!

To argue that filmed media such as motion pictures and television shows should not be judged or viewed in the same critical light as a piece of literature is overlooking an essential facet of this media. Film is rooted in the written word, and every event in motion is sparked by a screenplay that could easily merit a critical analysis of form, depth, and “literariness.” Literature and film are not not mere tangents of each other, nor do they share vague, accidental similarities, but instead exist as branches of one tree that infinitely stretch out to layer the world around us. Thus, film is as readily analyzable as any written text, as long as a critic is willing to examine this medium by using the theory behind literary form.

Jonathan Culler’s tri-fold definition of literariness can easily apply to the arena of film without need for much adjustment. However, to attempt to find the “best” example of a film that possesses literary qualities is a fool’s errand. Such a quest attempts to differentiate too greatly between the two mediums of literature and film, or between all existent art forms, for that matter. I can name fifteen films on the shelf behind me that have moved me as greatly as any novel while not forsaking depth, subtext, characterization or intricacy for dazzling effects work. I choose to use as an example the film that is not only freshest in my memory, but also has expanded in meaning and shifted my perceptions upon subsequent viewings — a surefire sign of scholarly attention to detail. This film is Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, which is layered with deft material by a keen artisan’s eye, resulting in a text that cries out to be explored from poetic and hermeneutical vantage points.

Culler states that to analyze literature is to “keep before us … the suspension of the demand for immediate intelligibility” (Culler 41). In a broader, more accessible sense, I feel this is the critical ability to revel in a sort of pleasant (or unpleasant, if the writer sees fit) ambiguity as an arc of characters and storyline unfolds. This is highly contrasted with our day-to-day lives, in which dialogue is simple and functional, and our worldly imagery is often taken at face value. The best films are able to tap into this ideal uniquely — a film leaves no breathing room as far as imagery goes. Readers of novels may envision a thousand different faces for a given character, a thousand intonations of a given sentence. Brought to life on the screen by actors and directors, however, a screenplay becomes more specific. This may be seen as a constraint that limits the extent of a film’s “literariness,” which forces a filmmaker to expand depth by detailing between the lines. This can be achieved through depth of cinematography and detail or the minute variables of inflection behind lines of dialogue. Thus, literariness in film is embodied in the work of every person responsible for a movie, from screenwriters to actors to the key grip who lights up sets.

One specific way Inglourious Basterds transcends this constraint is in the myriad oblique ways it hints and doesn’t tell. Tarantino demonstrates an ability to breathe life into every living corner of the film for our analysis. Why, for instance, are the titular Basterds only peripheral characters in a movie that bears their name, and only tangentially related to the film’s outcome? It is up to the critic to decipher the deliberate misspelling of the title, and the possibly unintentional filmmaking mistakes — a need for immediate intelligibility is expanded, and the implication of the misspelling is instead dwelled upon. The title of the film is scrawled in the opening credits with Tarantino’s own handwriting as depicted on the cover for his original screenplay. But why? Why is such a personal flair so asymmetrical from the rest of Tarantino’s catalogue utilized in this particular film, or is it of importance at all? To seek an answer to this question is a viable option for the same reason any literary text is worthy of analysis, under the umbrella that Culler labels the “hyper-protected cooperative principle,” which proclaims that the mere existence of such a potential irrelevancy dictates its importance and worthiness of exploration (Culler 62). Outside of the realm of literariness — in this case, embodied in the screenplay and finished film — this misspelling would be seen as ignorant nonsense, an unfortunately personalized typo.

Culler also cites the importance of “reflection on the implication of means of expression” (Culler 41). Through cinematography, a film has the power to express theme and voice on an almost subconscious level, when executed correctly. There are moments within Inglourious Basterds that are downright blatant in their homage to expressionism (or is it expressionism itself?), layering new and often unsettling meanings upon images that we’re familiar with from films such as The Wizard of Oz in a striking example of postmodern metafiction. But it’d be a disservice to the film to call the references it makes entirely blatant; a greater percentage of the imagery functions on another level. For instance, it can’t be unintentional that the introduction of “The Bear Jew” occurs in a leafy drainage system subconsciously evocative of the Holocaust imagery we’re so accustomed to. Or can it? The director certainly had a hand in the formation of sets and the scouting of locations for filming. Is it an accident that our minds are trained toward that grim thought, or are we being towed by successful filmmaking? These are the same sort of questions we may read into a novel: is it happenstance that a new story may evoke the characters of Shakespeare or the imagery of The Odyssey? The craftsman filmmaker, like the master of literature, has a keen understanding of where the branches of his or her tree may extend into the consciousness — what themes are similarly evoked, and where the roots for their own work rest in the ground. This tree only extends further by inviting the critic (as a work of literature does) to invest the film with his or her own interpretations, and exploring the possibilities of reference and depth.

Thus, Inglourious Basterds is operating on two levels intertwined: the first seeks to deliver a visceral and emotional experience solely through unique imagery — one unaware of The Wizard of Oz would simply be struck by Inglourious Basterds’ power. The latter operation is the film’s process of drawing attention to its own references, demanding for the critic to contemplate deliberate strokes and their implications in the broader spectrum of film and storytelling. This is quite comparable to two central methods of research used by psychologists in order to investigate human behavior, beliefs, and motives. The idiographic approach is an attempt to study the uniqueness of an individual, and the differences that distinguish that individual from the rest of society. The nomothetic approach, on the other hand, investigates the common threads between people by studying a wider range of individuals at once. Thus, the first level of analysis of this film (in other words, emphasizing the emotional experience conveyed by its imagery) could be equated to an idiographic approach or a case study, in which the uniqueness of Inglourious Basterds as a work of art becomes apparent. Contrarily, the second level can be seen as a nomothetic attempt to embed the film in a world that serves to deepen the meaning of Tarantino’s work.

This world doesn’t strictly apply to the spectrum of film, but to a vast universe of references. Take, for example, the interrogation scene of a Nazi officer in the aforementioned drainage system. As the scene (in which the rebellious Jewish “Basterds” gain the upper hand) becomes more and more brutal, a single, yellow, dead leaf falls from an overhanging tree in the autumn scene. The leaf floats down and finally rests on the chest of a Basterd played by Gedeon Burkhard. It is inarguable that this leaf upon landing resembles the Star of David, enough so that the eye is always drawn to it in the moment. The way this transpires onscreen indicates that it was most likely not a planned event — there are no camera tricks to be found, no special effects — so the moment exists as a lucky result of actor placement and good timing. The craft and literariness of the work dwells in Tarantino’s knowing use of the moment, as a director and editor, to expand the depth of the scene in unanticipated ways. The leaf could simply be seen as an accident, or a deliberate stroke to invest a scene of visceral brutality with a stamp of cultural significance and history. The moment could be inherently beautiful, as any successful piece of literature is, or aesthetically gripping due to the schema of connections it creates, subconsciously weaving pulp fiction into a realistic context.

This isn’t to say that context — either filmic or historical — is the essential element in viewing a film through the lens of literature. However, in the case of Inglourious Basterds (and much of Tarantino’s remaining catalogue), this is likely to be the most dominant ingredient. Tarantino is simply so precocious in his knowledge of film that his work has often been criticized as moving beyond intertextuality toward blatant homage and plagiarism. It would be hard to argue against the fact that his style is blatant; however, it would be harder to argue that it thrives perfectly by serving as a commentary upon both the world of film and the real world that has produced these films. Intertextuality is present between Inglourious Basterds and the surface of media violence that has enabled its existence, just as intertexuality is present between the film and those who have paved the way for it.

To exemplify the intertextuality on display in the film, it is important to examine Culler’s statements regarding the importance of the critic’s attention to “how meaning is made and pleasure produced” (Culler 41). In the case of Inglourious Basterds, the work particularly thrives in the way it has divided the spectrum of its critical audience. It bisects the attentive viewer by heaping a great deal of excitatory violence on his or her plate as a means of release; one feels their blood boiling as tension builds in the film and violence is ratcheted up. However, the film simultaneously forces this viewer to question the emotion felt due to the subject material at hand: as an audience member, are you being asked to make a judgment call on the appropriateness of violence in cinema? If so, what does this say about your bloodlust, your fascination with what is transpiring? These are questions that are actively asked throughout the film. Tarantino is manipulative in Inglourious Basterds, and his work is self-aware. As perverse and cartoonish as many of the moments in the film may be, they still warrant a place within the arena of critical commentary simply through the understanding of their place within the realm of violent cinema. No haphazard bloodshed in the film is executed haphazardly, and every gruesome moment of self-indulgence is engineered to coerce the viewer into questioning his or her taste for the violence they’re observing.

Inglourious Basterds makes a statement about innate violence that is illustrated specifically enough and broadly enough, through text and subtext, to be explored through a variety of perspectives; yet, as with any literary work, conclusions drawn from these perspectives will be reached in drastically different ways. It is this ambiguity of stylistic choice and moral statement is the labyrinthine aspect of the film — and of the best films in general — that intertwines Basterds with literary material, solidifying its foundation as a piece of literature itself, and warrants its exploration through literary study on a level equal to any novel.

Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University

Press, 2000.

Here’s the short and sweet Quentin Tarantino news of the past week: Inglourious Basterds’ wild success, both with audiences and critics, has given the director the breathing room to admit he wants to revisit Uma Thurman and the Kill Bill franchise. Two caveats:

1. (Spoiler) Bill is dead.

2. With the exception of Basterds, Tarantino yaks about movie ideas all the time without following through — The Vega Brothers is a great example.

However, according to Variety, QT not only confirmed that he would be making Kill Bill 3 at the Morelia Film Festival by the ten year anniversary of the second film in 2014. The juice is that he also talked about bridging that span of time with a possible “‘re-imagining’ of a number of genres including a Western or a 1920s to ’30s ‘Pretty Boy Floyd’ type gangster movie.”

Inglourious Basterds has proven that Tarantino has the ability to deftly marry his unique writing style to a period piece without resorting to idiocy. I’m all for a true blue Western, as he has long hinted his interest in the genre, particularly with a very interesting performance in Sukiyaki Western Django.

The great part about this is that if all really goes as planned, we’ll have two Tarantino films in the next five years.

The Bear Jew himself, Eli Roth (Hostel, Cabin Fever) has finally pushed through the media madness that followed Inglourious Basterds and is now showcasing the two simultaneous projects he’s been talking up for a while.

He’s wrapping up the script for his sci-fi flick Endangered Species while he gets ready for his Louisiana exorcism movie Cotton, directed by Daniel Stamm. One of these titles is boring, the other is seemingly nonsensical. Roth is shooting for the former to be completed by November alongside his expanded script of Thanksgiving (which we saw a glimpse of in 2007′s Grindhouse).

The writer/producer/director is tight-lipped about Endangered Species, only revealing to Variety that he intends to maintain his “sick sense of humor.” Also, his mentor Quentin Tarantino has supervised the script for Species and given notes along the way. Details on Cotton are sparse, but Roth told Bloody-Disgusting.com a while back that the script by Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland was “the scariest script I’ve read in years.” Uh-oh.

Eli’s also busy developing a script with RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan for a kung-fu film titled The Man With the Iron Fist.

I’m as excited about all these projects as I am wary of their quality. Time will soon tell if Tarantino’s leadership has developed Roth’s skill as a filmmaker since the abysmal Hostel: Part II.

As I sit and stare at the new Inglourious Basterds poster that adorns my wall, a hundred different thoughts run through my mind, memories from my first (and sadly, only) viewing of the film over a week ago. Perhaps it’s the fact that each major character is present on the poster, bearing a unique facial expression that summarizes their agenda in Quentin Tarantino’s war. Eli Roth’s Bear Jew is a bloodthirsty madman. Pitt’s face is skeptical and mischievous. Shoshanna is wounded, vengeful.

Perhaps moreso than ever before, Tarantino has crafted an ensemble cast of characters with such fleshed out detail that for once I care. I love Pulp Fiction beyond a shadow of a doubt, but I’d be hard pressed to name a character I feel for enough to cringe at their timely disaster. Jackie Brown‘s got a whole bunch of well-rounded characters, but just because I love Michael Keaton’s Ray Nicolette doesn’t mean I’m there with him.

Basterds on the other hand — it’s a film about wounded people, angry people, lashing out at each other with all of their talents, as diverse as they may be. For Hugo, this equates to a bloodbath. Shoshanna is fire and smoke and theatrics. For Col. Hans Landa, words are enough to pierce to the bone, and he knows it.

You’ve probably realized by now that this barely constitutes a “Mirror/Mirror” comparison, and that’s true — I’ve just been dying to write about this film. I feel as if I owe it to Inglourious Basterds for existing. For every ten, fifteen films that are released and seem to be very good, only a select few are transcendent. I’ve seen dozens of art house films that warrant disdain — Tarantino’s commentary on the art form itself, by way of schlocky violence and grit and meta self-reflection, is truer art in the poppy attitude it has than most of them.

In fact, it was so transcendent an experience that it was hard to define the myriad reasons I was in love with it instantly upon exiting the theater. I’m sure many people felt this way — in fact, I know it, I’ve seen it. I’ve been unable to write about it simply because it would take a few more revisits to pinpoint the reasons amongst reasons that I adore the film absolutely. The only film I can consider comparing it to yet on that level would be Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood.

It’s somewhat ironic that I stumbled upon Tarantino’s review of There Will Be Blood this week (which I’ve included after this article), as no two films have inspired such diarrhea of the mouth in me as that film and Tarantino’s latest. Two of the freshest, most unpredictable and magnetic, lightning in a bottle films of my lifetime thus far. I compare them because with both, although I love a thousand things about them, I just can’t explain it. Not it. Not the lingering sensation the film leaves that become rooted in my mind afterward, encompassing dialogue and action and trivialities.

But, if I must, for the sake of rooting the article to something concrete I give you the example comparison between Daniel Plainview and Hans Landa, our protagonist villains, evil heroes, basterds. Both Anderson and Tarantino beef up these characters to an unstoppable degree, empowering them with unparalleled gifts of wordplay and manipulation. Then, they set up a domino world for their characters to knock down like monsters, each brutal and intimidating conversation unveiling a new element of character.

That really doesn’t do the trick, I know. But it’s a start — for God’s sake, I could write a book about every thought that crosses my mind when I watch There Will Be Blood. I just can’t wait until Inglourious Basterds joins that film on my shelf — two character driven works of cinema, dirty little whirlwinds of fascinating plot that allow the viewer to read between the lines and decipher a little piece more every time.

There Will Be Blood and Inglourious Basterds. Ladies and gentlemen, we are a lucky audience.

These two films are not only some of the best films of the decade, but they are defining works of their filmmakers’ careers. Check them out immediately. They’re dialogue-driven, relentless, fascinating and elemental.