Before you think we're getting too carried away here, let's make it known right away that we don't do this for just anybody; it takes a special kind of affront for us to sit down and hammer out correspondence amid so much more compelling news of the day. (Like have you seen Michael Jackson recently? Holy shit, right?) But like your contemporary Paul Thomas Anderson, who so annoyed us by signing off on a There Will Be Blood DVD skimpy enough to have been a costume in Death Proof, your transgressions seem to require a little more direct attention than those of say, Brett Ratner or Uwe Boll. You're Quentin Tarantino, after all — QT! You stole made Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction! You are a living legend, an artist among artists, and you deserve everything that's coming to you.

Which is why we think it's time to ask you directly: When will you and Harvey Weinstein stop inflating the world's interest in Inglorious Bastards?

Look, it's not like we don't want to see your riff on World War II actioners — your Dirty Dozen, your death-defying, ensemble mission flick. To the contrary, we'll probably be first in line (on the second or third Friday of its release, but whatever), and we'll probably enjoy it. You've always entertained us, and even as your returns diminish, you're one of the few filmmakers on whom we always bestow the benefit of the doubt.

But that benefit does not extend to your pandering on behalf of Inglorious Bastards. We know what you're thinking, and we don't wholly disagree: There's interest in you, and by extension, interest in the project. This much is obvious. So when you showed up in Provincetown last month to receive your "Filmmaker on the Edge" award — the one distributors pay for at festivals when they need some press, and fast — and pimp out your recently finished script, it made sense. That's the game, and you and Harvey have played it expertly (if not always profitably) for years.

We even tolerated you supposedly tipping Anne Thompson around the same time about the script's length and Harvey's patronage. The rest would follow like it always does: You'd get a blank check; recruit some hip, testosterrific cast of A-listers and has-beens; and we'd see you next year at Cannes. Alas, you elided a key point: Harvey isn't paying for it.

No one is, in fact. It'll probably be made, maybe even by your May 2009 deadline. Meanwhile, in a move pulled unusually early from the dogeared Weinstein Textbook, the press is doing your fundraising for you. We'd give you Provincetown if not for the embarrassing leaks that followed this week, one after another — the kickdowns to Nikki Finke ("Quentin Tarantino is talking to Brad Pitt"!) and now this Inglorious Basterds [sic] script over at Vulture, itself the venerated "basterd" offspring of your insolvent patron's public studio-shopping. Mission accomplished, we suppose, if overexposure is what you had in mind. The anonymous media saturation is supposed to come just before the release, not just before the money runs out.

So while we know it's a slow news month, and while we know you've got a deadline, really, QT — is this what it has come to? Is your loyalty to the Weinsteins worth suffocating your work in the crib or pulling the rug out from under your own persona? We always knew you loved exploitation, but come on. Dump those chumps and reclaim a little pride; you deserve it. And if you determine you don't, fine. Just quit bringing us down with you.

Love,

Defamer

[Photo Credit: AFP]

The day on which the Thank God We're Working Summer TV Press Tour got its start was one of singular euphoria. ...

So thrilled were the critics with the whole still-employed/Beverly Hills/expense-account thing, they generously overlooked TV One following its first session, on racism in America, with one that kicked off with homophobic remarks made by a guy who appears to be one of the new co-hosts of TV One show Black Men Revealed.

And, hours later, they also graciously let it slide when Florence Henderson — born 1934 — slipped in a reference to herself as being part of the baby boom generation...

*GUNSHOT*

And this is one of the good items — a self-effacing glimpse into the abyss of modern culture, where ex-SAG president Ed Asner predictably wheezes on behalf of an actors strike, the Hallmark Channel cannibalizes the very bones of cable television and Ted Koppel fakes what little funk remains beneath his ever-thickening species of wig. Sign us up, seriously. How did we ever overlook the credentialing process?

We think we know, actually: Having proven its irrelevance after nobody — not readers, not viewers, nobody except perhaps the overextended networks and publishers who pay for it all, and certainly not us — even noticed when the WGA strike necessitated its cancellation last January, the TCA press tour is but a holdover of entitlement and uselessness, all but invisible, little but dead. Which is to say: Make it stop. Dogs, ponies, shows — drown them all, pocket the money, make better TV and hire back the swaths of critical dead who gave half a fuck before polishing network turds became the law of the land.

Or just call it even. We don't even care at this point as long as the publicity reach-around in TV, film, politics and pretty much any measurable media ecology makes so few people happy or even remotely intrigued. Just make it stop. Katherine Heigl doesn't need your defenses, Chandra Wilson. Olivia Munn and Kevin Pereira's "romantic tension"? Kill yourselves. Mark Cuban on day-and-date film releases for the trillionth time? He can afford to be wrong for 20 lifetimes, but beat writers fall for it year after year after year.

So, TCA press tour attendees? Hello? We love you as people, support you as peers and just want to see you happy. Really. And we know your editors will take it rough, but they'll get over it, and anyway, it's time: Put this dog down.

• That Sputtering Sound You Hear? Another Press Tour Revs Up [Washington Post]

Alas! "Firefighters managed to remove some of the videotapes," reported today's LA Times. " 'Nothing is lost forever,' Universal President Ron Meyer said of the videos." Which got us thinking: If we hadn't drunkenly slept through the fire bell at Defamer HQ yesterday morning, but instead had dutifully raced to battle the flames, what would we have saved? And what would we have ceremonially thrown atop the pyre? Play along with our moral quandary after the jump.

We know, we know: "How dare we play God with art?" It's actually pretty easy when you think about chucking the negative of Patch Adams into the conflagration, or sprinting through the stacks and smoke in a quest to save Slap Shot. What if we only had time for one of each, though? Do you run straight for Vertigo, which MCA-Universal bought from Paramount in the 60s along with Psycho and Rear Window? The Last Movie, which has yet to be suitably released on DVD? Imitation of Life? E.T.? The Deer Hunter? Frankenstein? Jaws? Melvin and Howard? The volunteer firefighter in us has to bypass them all and head directly for Orson Welles's Touch of Evil; no opening sequence or Charlton-Heston-as-Mexican performance so towering or bold could conceivably go by way of flame. If it all but killed Welles, the least you could do is risk your life to save it.

But despite a back catalog of such wretched fare as Jaws: The Revenge, W.C. Fields and Me, Flash Gordon (soundtrack notwithstanding) and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, all of whose disappearances would assuage our conscience beyond measure, we'd most actively seek out the ritual sacrifice of Howard the Duck. Yes, it features the historical interest of Lea Thompson getting frisky with a billed, feathered dwarf and Tim Robbins's early starring role as a spastic scientist, but still: We wouldn't be surprised if we'd have to move on to our second choice — the Damon Wayans vehicle Major Payne — because Thompson and/or Robbins actually got to burning Howard before us.

That leaves a lot of classics to lament on both sides, but also a lifetime of decent sleep knowing we did the cosmos this cinematic solid. Your results may vary; tell us about it below, if so.

• What burned in the Universal fire [LAT]

It might be self-serving of us to suggest they publicize their films, and in a way, we empathize with their reclusion; Larry Wachowski has been the subject of sex-change and dominatrix-dating speculation since a feminized version of himself — earrings, plucked eyebrows, manicure — showed up on the Matrix Revolutions red carpet in Cannes five years ago with mistress Ilsa Strix (née Karen Winslow) on his arm. The siblings later sneaked into the New York premiere of V For Vendetta (which they wrote and co-produced), and last week in Los Angeles they went positively presidential with subterfuge at the debut of Speed Racer. "They did not do the red-carpet press line at the Nokia Theatre on Saturday, and were well-camouflaged during the after-party," wrote Borys Kit in The Hollywood Reporter. "Photographers were sworn to secrecy as to their whereabouts, and Warner Bros. assigned handlers the mission of keeping journalists off the scent."

Like it matters; the Wachowskis haven't granted an interview in the decade since The Matrix, deferring to mega-producer and de facto representative Joel Silver and their casts to flog their work publicly. Their crews sign non-disclosure agreements. The duo's contracts entitle them to a luxury rarer than final cut — an opt-out provision shielding them from the promotion of their films. It's Stanley Kubrick/Terrence Malick/Eric Rohmer stuff, but with one crucial exception: Their films aren't that good.

Or at least they haven't been in nearly 10 years; Speed Racer is no different. But what is good about it are the things to which only they can speak — the practice of reinventing the source cartoon, the relationship of vision to execution, the extraordinary scene transitions eschewing cuts for something closer to a scrolling-head montage (like "bullet-time," you just have to see it), or, on the most basic of levels, directing a standout cast (and even a goddamned monkey) against one green-screen backdrop after another. Unlike Iron Man or Warners' even more anticipated summer offering The Dark Knight, the brands work in concert with personalities to acquire traction. Emile Hirsch's abstract praises are not enough.

Warner Bros. faced the similar scenario with Kubrick for nearly three decades, covering the director's final five films from A Clockwork Orange through Eyes Wide Shut. Obviously, his death in March 1999 put a pretty irrevocable kibosh on promoting the latter film, but he did speak out from time to time about the intervening work; his daughter Vivian's behind-the-scenes documentary about The Shining was a broadcast TV event in 1980, and he did a few select interviews in 1987 on behalf of Full Metal Jacket. Moreover, he was always involved with people — actors, writers, other filmmakers — and his 15 years of work prior to his British exile in the late '60s had installed him permanently among the world cinema vanguard.

Not so for the Wachowskis, a couple of ex-carpenters from Chicago whose one-two dynamos Bound and The Matrix boosted expectations from 1996 to 1999. Their work since has lapsed into the type of indulgence that further evokes itself in those clauses guaranteeing their immunity to press, and by extension, their audience. That audience has had nothing to latch onto for too long now; no taut narratives, no singular parallel universes and certainly no visual benchmarks that can and/or should speak for themselves. Their self-containment borders on alienating, their aloofness sharing breath with its conjoined twin, arrogance.

As the most public recluses working today (and at the highest budgets), their godfather Silver can only buy the Wachowskis their privacy for so long — especially as another of their putatively visionary summer efforts meets diminishing returns in a culture craving voices with faces and faces with names. If the Viral Era has taught us anything, it's that every mystery needs a payoff, and you have to earn your mystique if you expect to exploit it.

[Photo Credits: Wireimage, Getty]

It's simpler than any of that; this whole thing comes down to a picture of a 15-year-old looking like she just got the shit fucked out of her. And if there's anything America loves more than a war, it's teenagers fucking.

And a culture war about teenagers fucking? Sign us (and Bill O'Reilly and Hilary Duff and the women of The View and...) up! We should have seen it coming last week when 14-year-old Taylor Momsen was seductively featured in her underwear on the cover of New York Magazine's Gossip Girl issue. Not to be outdone, the gang at VF — expert flesh-spotters from waaayyy back — coaxed their own peek at the bare back of a billion-dollar Disney franchise, adding signature flourishes of bedhead and smudged lipstick. To hear Cyrus tell it in VF, it was an "artful" touch by her photographer, and "you can't tell Annie Leibovitz no."

Subtle rape inferences aside, Disney can tell Annie Leibovitz no, and a few hundred million dollars' worth of Hannah Montana franchise decline will only illustrate how quickly the company would have interceded had it had the chance. The kicker, of course, is that the plunge is inversely proportionate to our interest in seeing Miley Cyrus (and Taylor Momsen, Hayden Panettiere, Lindsay Lohan and, years ago, Brooke Shields and God knows who else before her) appearing rode hard and put away wet. Is it right? Is it wrong? It doesn't matter, because teenagers fuck.

In fact, we were once teenagers fucking — underage, illegal, the whole thing — and we recall this being an issue then as well. The social critics who decried us fucking were helpless against our hormones and the mass-culture monolith that endorsed it all the way; the Miley Cyrus case reaffirms that dynamic more than a decade later. Except now, faced with the most mainstream "perversion" yet, a little more intellectually honest approach is required.

For starters, nobody was exploiting anybody — at least not any more than VF would have otherwise. A publicist probably blew it somewhere along the line, but Miley Cyrus is 15 — at least a year older than her target demo — and she knew what she was doing. She made a choice, and her apology was not for offending her fans but rather for acknowledging that, again, teenagers fuck. She is a teenager, and if she's not fucking yet, then she will be. This is not debatable. Naturally it would be criminal, but like millions of other law-breaking, fucking teens, she and her partner(s) will gleefully do it anyway. Hopefully they use protection.

Also, teenagers fucking is a billion-dollar industry. Juno, for example, would not have been a lucrative, laureled darling of both the Christian right and the hipster left had she and Paulie Bleeker not A) fucked and B) kept the baby they conceived. Superbad was a more pointed argument for the appeal of teenagers not only fucking, but fucking well. Then there's Gossip Girl and the cult of Britney, the latter of whose teen sexuality only spiked as a cultural commodity after she became a mother in her 20s. Crazy! But as the previous generation's iconic teenager fucking — with a partner like Justin Timberlake, natch (yes, guys are also teenagers fucking) — that's part of her brand.

Finally, while we respect the values and basic laws protecting minors from sexual abuse and exploitation, we do not think one photo or the tone of those around it compromises social order the way, say, a polygamist sect or a basement full of kids made with one's own daughter might. This is Miley Cyrus growing up in public like hundreds of teens before her and countless more to follow. She's a sexual creature at 15, just like the rest of us were, are or will be. Hannah Montana has its own universe, and if teenagers don't fuck there, great. Here, however, teenagers fuck, and love it or hate it, that's the world we crave. It hardly seems like news.

You know we love you. We've seen everything you've done multiple times, once even all in the same day. Our hearts soared when Daniel Day-Lewis credited your "mad, beautiful head" for his Oscar triumph this year; his appreciation spoke for us as well. Sure, we have issues with Magnolia (OK, we hate it), but at least when the DVD came around we were able to make a little more sense of your passion and indulgence. That behind-the-scenes doc by Mark Rance? Fantastic. We'd have preferred the commentaries like those in Boogie Nights and Sydney (a/k/a Hard Eight), but hey. If you're going to charge us for two discs, you'd better make the second one worth our dime.

Which gets us to this new two-disc "collector's edition" of There Will Be Blood, which Paramount Vantage released April 8. Pardon us, but what the fuck is this?

We're sitting here with our favorite film of 2007, looking for your commentary. Nothing. We bust out the second disc. Photo clippings from your research? Three deleted scenes — only one of which features, you know, editing? And, finally, an exhumed silent short about the history of oil drilling? Really? $30 for two discs and all we get is a public-domain two-reeler from 1923?

Look, PTA, we know it's probably not your fault. There's probably a commentary sitting on some hard drive in Vantage boss John Lesher's office waiting for the precise moment when "collectors" will be ready to part ways with another $30 to hear it. There's probably behind-the-scenes footage with Scott Rudin arriving on location in Marfa, Texas, overdressed and throwing a BlackBerry at the assistant whose weather forecast turned out 15 degrees cooler than the actual temperature. We know there are interviews with you, Day-Lewis, Paul Dano and Ciaran Hinds floating around. We know because it's you, and we expect great things. Not... this.

So get with the fucking program already, PTA, and stop jerking us around with the most stingy, shabby, half-assed miscarriage of DVD justice since Mulholland Drive. You're not that pirate George Lucas, and we're not "collectors"; we're fans — true believers and dedicated followers who deserve better. And you're a candid visionary, so tell Paramount to fuck off and send us the real DVD already, for Christ's sake.

— Love, Defamer

The moment in question comes when King Of The Friars, Jeffrey Ross, launched into one of his trademark "roast" bits and started putting the screws to Real World punching bag Puck. In what can only be described as a overly macho and HGH-fueled show of support, a few fully lubricated meatheads who we didn't even recognize (save for CT) unexpectedly bumrushed Ross and tossed the unsuspecting comedian into the pool below for his transgressions against the King Of The Snot Rocket. From the look on Ross' face, this moment was clearly unscripted.

For us, this moment represented everything that has gone wrong with the show in the last three or so years. While the composition of the cast has always included a few instigator types, the battles used to be fought on the psychological level, not the physical. The popularity and watchability of the loveable lunkhead Brad led the RW casting directors to fill future casts with aspiring Abercrombie & Fitch catalog models, all of whom also doubled as alcoholics-in-training. Much like pouring water on the back of Gizmo, a bunch of wannabe Brads were spawned after that San Diego season, and Jeffrey Ross felt their wrath last night.

• Real World Awards Bash [MTV.com]

While most of the marketing of HDTV is targeted towards cinemaphiles and sports enthusiasts, there certainly is an net-positive end benefit for connossieurs of news programs to plunk down the $2 grand or so it takes to upgrade to hi-def. Not only does the medium allow viewers to be more sufficiently stimulated on both the visual and audio fronts, this blogger would argue that it makes the viewer more likely to actually absorb and process the information that the program is trying to relay. For instance, in Bush's War, the visual clarity of the footage that was shot in Iraq (not to mention the haunting stills from 9/11) resonates within your head and your heart in a way that traditional, low-def TV cannot possibly compete with.

Which is why we are so surprised that the venerable news division of CBS has staunchly refused to upgrade their flagship show, 60 Minutes, into HD. Sure, no one wants to see Andy Rooney's nose hairs in 1080p, but we're pretty sure they could gauze up their lenses in such a way that everyone's favorite cantankerous crankypants could look as good as Cybill Shepherd did on Moonlighting. But there's no denying that the rest of the show could really use the upgrade. Take last Sunday's segment where Anderson Cooper got in goal to try and stop David Beckham's patented bendy kicks, for example. Since the show has already acquiesced to lowering their journalistic standards to a point where they can justify interviewing someone as vapid and meaningless in our country as David Beckham, why not go the extra mile and take their visual presentation to the next level? We're sure it has something to do with cost, but that excuse quickly flies out the window when you consider that the budget and funding-challenged PBS can afford to do so. So, Sean McManus, the gauntlet has now been thrown. You already have a last-placed news show on your hands, so why not invest the extra $$$ necessary to make the strides to save the last remaining audience members you have left?

RELATED (but not really): 5 Ways In Which The Hills is JUST LIKE An Antonioni Film [Spout]