Variety’s Anne Thompson did an interview with Quentin Tarantino recently, in which he told her that he thought Death Proof wasn’t as good as it could’ve been because he “overfiddled.”  Because of that, he put Inglourious Basterds on a tight schedule and delivered a “dripping wet” print to Cannes.  The Cannes cut was 2 hours 27 minutes – he had to keep it under 2 hours 46 to retain final cut – and now he plans to use his 19 minutes of leeway to add a couple scenes.

He’ll edit together one scene that he shot but didn’t assemble; it comes right before the La Louisiane sequence featuring Michael Fassbender and Diane Kruger as a British soldier under cover and a German movie star who wants to help him bring down the Third Reich. Fassbender pops in the movie, so it makes sense that the filmmakers would want to give him more screen time.  The scenes featuring Maggie Cheung as Madame Mimieux, the proprietor of a Paris cinema who takes in Shosanna Dreyfuss (Melanie Laurent), won’t be restored. It doesn’t add to the narrative.

Tarantino also plans to preview the movie in the States, outside of California, not with research cards but just to see how it plays with an audience. He and editor Sally Menke will then fine-tune and tweak the timing. The Weinstein Co. releases the movie August 21.  [Variety]

I haven’t seen the movie, but 19 minutes sounds like just enough time to squeeze in an argument between Brad Pitt and Eli Roth about how the latest Ella Fitzgerald is really about how she likes big dicks.