Quentin Tarantino Says Inglorious Bastards Not A Period Piece, Ramping Up Pre-Production

Quentin Tarantino is on a hellfire mission, codename: Inglorious Bastards. This new BBC article implies that he's not backing down from his earlier claim that the film—now plural!—will be ready in time for next year's Cannes Film Festival. And yet, there's not even an official cast. It's now known that the legendary casting rumors over the years, from Stallone to Arnold to Eddie Murphy to Adam Sandler, were but a dream, though some of those guys could still pop up. QT offered some new details on the look and feel for his epic WWII-gone-Spaghetti Western...

"I don't want it to feel like a period film. I want it to feel current," says Tarantino. "I want it to feel right now. One of the things I have to battle against is 30 years of Nazi-occupation TV movies where we've all seen the big streets and the vintage cars and the Swastikas, and we've just seen that ad nauseum. This is a modern, in-your-face movie. This is not a TV movie period piece."

He added that the script "doesn't look anything like" The Dirty Dozen. On the special features to the new three-disc release of 1978's Inglorious Bastards, QT also told director Enzo G. Castellari that his film is in no way a remake/rehash of that film either, he just liked the title a lot. So, we've got that out of the way. Nothing else was specified, but he sounds ready to go...

"You're talking to a real happy dude right now," said Tarantino. Adding, "I didn't know everyone knew about it, so this is actually kind of very bizarre for me."

That's funny, isn't it? Given that everything we know about the project originated from QT over the years. Given that Tarantino's films are usually set in a perplexing and signature haze where the '70s intertwines with the present, his use of the word "current" could mean just about anything.

Discuss: I still can't believe it's finally happening, wow. What do you think of QT's latest comments? What are you picturing?