Tarantino's Frenzied Week of Casting

This dude has been all over the place this past week, making tons of casting announcements for his fast-tracked Inglorious Bastards. I get more and more excited about this movie everytime I hear about it. But there have been some bumps that i'm a little bit disappointed about. On the good news side of things we've got Brad Pitt, Samm Levine, and BJ Novak. I'm a huge Pitt supporter as I've said before, and I love seeing him play outlandish characters. I think he's gonna give one of his best performances with Tarantino behind him. And I mean, c'mon, Neal from Freaks and Geeks as a Nazi killer? That's totally fuckin genius. Novak I'm actually a little uncertain about because I don't really like his acting on The Office. He's a great writer, but I think his acting and his timing is pretty lacking. However, I put this on the good news side of things because this is the kind of casting I like, where someone is given the chance to really prove themselves and prove guys like me wrong. I hope Novak does that.

But then there's the not-so-bad-but-still-kind-of-disapointing news of the non-casting of Simon Pegg, and the non-casting of Adam Sandler in favor of Mike Myers. First off, the Simon Pegg news is not too upsetting because while it would have been awesome to see him get the Tarantino treatment, his scheduling conflict is with his new movie Paul, which is apparantly being directed by Superbad's Dave Motolla. This excites me to no end. What really made Superbad work for me was that it was filmed like an indie drama, which I think could work very well for this comic book nerd-road trip comedy. Also, apparantly Pegg and co-star Nick Frost will switch hero-sidekick roles, which I think may be quite rewarding and possibly give Frost the star power he deserves.

The Sandler news is good news in the same way the Pegg news is good news in that his scheduling conflict is with Apatow's new movie Funny People. The cast for that movie is shaping up to be great as well, and it sounds like it will be a nice balance for Sandler, weighing in with comedic and dramatic moments, hopefully much like Big Daddy (in my mind, his most successful movie). However, what the fuck man!? We know he can do some great dramatic work (thank you PT Anderson), so how awesome would it have been to see him really go balls out for a crazy Tarantino character!? And instead they cast Mike Myers (or at least are in talks to)? I mean, yeah it would be great to see Mike Myers come back to the movies and actually do something worthwhile, but 1. I'm less confident in Myers ability to do a great Tarantino role, and 2. I'm just much more interested in seeing Sandler do the Tarantino role. He just seems like he'd fit in for some reason. I dunno.

Oh and in Ummm...Really?-casting we have Eli Roth. What?

Anyone got any opinions about all this casting? Anyone feel as strongly as I do about the Sandler/Myers thing?