Daily Loaf

Thursday night at 11:30 p.m. EST, the highly anticipated Lady Gaga and Beyonce video “Telephone” made its world premiere. The nearly 10-minute extravaganza directed by Jonas Åkerlund was inspired by the work of Quentin Tarantino — Kill Bill in particular. (The actual pussy wagon even makes an appearance.) They story picks up where Gaga’s “Paparazzi” video left off: The singer is in jail for murdering her boyfriend, and it takes a fierce Beyonce to bail her out. From there the gal-pals go on a wacky, dance-filled crime spree that includes Gaga wearing her trademark crazy outfits and making sandwiches. Lady Gaga has been drumming up the anticipation herself saying, “I feel so sorry for the ‘Bad Romance’ video because the ‘Telephone’ video is so much better.”

Decide for yourself after the break …

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As an audience, we sometimes love to see movies that show the badassery that can result when normal human beings are pushed past their breaking point. With yesterday’s release of Mel Gibson’s Edge of Darkness, I got to thinking about some of the other revenge movies out there. Here is my list of the Top 10 revenge movies of all time — and no, it doesn’t include Jaws 4: The Revenge.

As always, if you have one I missed, (and I’ve heard I need to catch up with some guy named Charles Bronson) let me know in the comments section below. Just don’t sick Liam Neeson on me!

10) Memento
This is the tale of a guy who wants to find his wife’s killer so bad, not even short-term memory loss can stop him. Vengeance is a dish best served … wait, what was I talking about?

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[Editor's Note: This review is by CL Atlanta's Curt Holman. Also check out Cooper Levey-Baker's interview with one of the stars of the original Inglorious Bastards. And for news and reviews of all the summer's biggest movies, go to CL's Movies & Television site.]

Hipster filmmaker Quentin Tarantino refuses to explain the intentional misspelling in the title of his weird World War II epic Inglourious Basterds. The titular Basterds apparently care no more for spell-check than they do the rules of war. Dashing, drawling Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) leads a squad of eight Jewish-American G.I.s into occupied France with the sole purpose of killing as many German soldiers as possible. The idea is that the “disemboweled, dismembered and disfigured bodies” will freak out Hitler’s high command.

The Basterds aren’t just guerillas but wartime terrorists who scalp their victims and never hesitate to kill, torture or deny medical care to fight the “Natzis.” At first, Tarantino seems to present an inflammatory apologia for torture and prisoner abuse, a la 24. Inglourious Basterds arrives in theaters in the midst of an American health care debate that’s hurling Nazi metaphors and swastikas around like blunt instruments. Will town-hall meeting protesters take up the film’s symbolism and call themselves Basterds?

Maybe not, for Inglourious Basterds isn’t the movie it’s sold as, or initially seems to be. Sorting out Tarantino’s intentions for his bold, eccentric WWII fantasy is like defusing a meticulously crafted time bomb that could be either a dud or a high explosive.

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Rumors have been kicking around for some time that Quentin Tarantino is planning to recombine the excellent Kill Bill: Vol. 1 & 2 into one complete film on DVD. Of course, that was before the director ditched the continental 48 for Europe to shoot this summer’s Inglourious Basterds starring Brad Jolie. Fortunately, QT has gone on the record again, stating that Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair will be a reality, and that the filmmakers have even gone back and added a brand-spankin’ new, 7 minute anime sequence to the film. Though there’s still no release date (Amazon has a link to product they claim has been “discontinued by the manufacturer”), expect to see this package drop sometime right before the release of Basterds. It’s called corporate cynergy, yo!

Click below for more of today’s news from Tinseltown…

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