Quentin Tarantino’s long-time editor Sally Menke was found dead yesterday, and while we don’t have any new news about why she died (all they say is “heat may have played a factor”, which is basically saying, “I don’t know — it was hot?”), I do have some new stuff to make you sad.  The video above is the “hi, Sally” reel from Inglourious Basterds, which Tarantino did for all his films to show his appreciation for his editor.  Vanity Fair also has a short profile.  Here’s a snip:

Tarantino has freely admitted that editing with Menke was like working with a writing partner, and no doubt the director’s trademark ability to hold and savor the tension of a beat well past the point when other directors would have moved on—or keep an audience riveted by his free-form pop soliloquies—flowed from Menke’s artful cutting. How else could he have gotten away with an opening scene in Inglorious Basterds that occupies practically a whole film reel? Or danced delightfully around the meandering diner conversation that sets up Reservoir Dogs? Or found such depth of feeling in Robert Forster’s stoic, steady smile in Jackie Brown? Arguably, Samuel L. Jackson owes much of his reputation and his career to Menke’s judicious close-up choices in Pulp Fiction.

Anyway, I thought I’d share this with you all, just in case you weren’t feeling enough like sh*t this morning.

[video via Cineboobs]

This little gem is called “Quentin Tarantino’s Camera Angel” and it comes from the DVD extras on Inglourious Basterds. Basically, the clapboard operator on a film set normally calls out the scene number before each scene (48E, for example). In most cases, they use the military alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, etc.), but Tarantino’s clapboard operator Geraldine Brezca is hilariously Italian and likes to invent her own alphabet, like “48 fockeen Nazis, take one.”

She swears a lot and uses pasta names and couldn’t be anymore stereotypically Italian if she’d said, “Mama gonna smoke-a cigarette and-a cook-a you a nice-a plate-a pasta. Now doan-a fock up-a you fargin iceholes.”

Other things to look for: Christolph Waltz’ amazing facial expressions as he reacts to Brezca’s newest alphabet, and a cameo by Quentin Tarantino’s imaginary cocaine wizard from the Oscars.  He just appears out of nowhere to do the clapboard in one clip.  Q must’ve been really high that day.

[via LaughingSquid]

I was sitting here trying to decide whether to write about next, Sony and Lionsgate negotiating for joint rights to Terminator — so exciting, right?  It’s true, this business is like shark tank filled with monkeys cornholing — or just post this picture I found.  The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.  Which I’m eating, with all the time I saved not writing about Terminator.

[Thanks to TyVick for the tip]

After the jump, you can watch all six minutes of Nation’s Pride, the fake Nazi propaganda movie within the movie Inglourious Basterds.  It was directed by Eli Roth, and it’s pretty good as far as fake Nazi propaganda made to look like real Nazi propaganda but not really by a Jew in 2009 goes.  I think if 2009 U.S. had a propaganda minister like Germany had Goebbels in the 40s, it’d be Michael Bay, and all his films would star the cast of Jersey Shore.  And the marquee said “Fist Pumpin.”

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Quentin Tarantino loves Japanese stuff almost as much as he loves railing eight balls, so it’s no surprise that he got recruited by Softbank for a series of Japanese cell phone commercials.  As always he’s a ball of sweat and nervous energy and a lot of fun to watch — video’s after the jump.

“Inglourious Basterds” is set to open in Japan on Nov. 20, around the time the commercials are expected to begin airing. The quirky “White Family” commercials, which feature a talking-dog father and an older brother character played by American Dante Carter, have been a hugely successful for Softbank, and about 60 have been made so far. Tarantino, a longtime Japanophile, is to appear as “Uncle Tara-chan,” dressed in a black kimono — a new addition to the unconventional family in a country where the nuclear family remains very much the norm.  [THR]

Haha, get it?  It’s funny because the West is frivolous and shameful.  Anyway, I don’t know why no one’s done the obvious thing and cast Tarantino in a coffee commercial.

QUENTIN TARANTINO: Hi.  I’m Quentin Tarantino here for Illy brand espresso beans.  But you know what? They don’t need me to tell you how good their f-cking coffee is. You’re the ones who buy it, you know how f-cking good it is, okay?  When Bonnie goes shopping, she buys sh-t.

BONNIE HUNT: It’s true! I’m such a klutz!

QUENTIN: But when you buy coffee, you wanna f-cking taste it.  And that’s why you come to us.
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