The self-reflexive practices of the meta-film take various forms. On the one hand, there’s the legacy of cinephilic directors from Brian De Palma to P. T. Anderson to Robert Rodriguez who shout out to specific films through their in-crowd referencing, or even go so far as to structure entire narratives through tributes to cinema’s past. Then there’s “the wink,” those film’s, like this weekend’s The Muppets, who exercise cheeky humor by breaking the fourth wall and by constant reference to the fact that they are in a heavily constructed film reality. The third category is less common, but perhaps the most interesting. There has been a recent influx of films that don’t use past films to construct present narratives or engage in Brecht-light humor, but have as their central narrative concern the broad developmental history of the medium itself, from practices of filmgoing to particularities of projection, and anything in between. Bertolucci’s The Dreamers is a good example of this mode of meta-filmmaking, but more high-profile films have begin to make this turn, specifically by directors who formerly operated in the first (and perhaps most common) category, like Tarantino with Inglourious Basterds two years ago. Now Martin Scorsese has followed suit with the 3D love letter to early cinema and film preservation that is Hugo.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news column that would like to lend apologies to those who despise brevity. Tonight’s just not a quantity kind of night. It is, however, a quality kind of night. Quentin Tarantino is now officially on a casting binge for Django Unchained, reportedly signing up Sacha Baron Cohen to play a gambler who buys Kerry Washington as his companion, thus angering the titular slave played by Jamie Foxx. I love it when he plays the villain.

All throughout the casting process of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained we’ve watched the director recruit big name actor after big name actor to fill out the male roles in his script. But there was one character who kept getting named, danced around, but never announced as being officially cast. We got news of the man who would be playing Django, the titular character and husband to Broomhilda. We got news of who would be playing Calvin Candie, the slave owner that kept Broomhilda under lock and key. Everything that happens in this movie seems to hinge on the character of Broomhilda, yet their hasn’t been much speculation as to who would be cast to bring her to life. Today that oversight ends, and most of the principle casting of Django Unchained seems to get wrapped up, with the casting of actress Kerry Washington in the Broomhilda role. Washington is a pretty face, who’s been known to do things like appear in L’Oréal ads, but she has a pretty lengthy film career behind her at this point as well. Perhaps most memorably she played the role of Kay Amin in The Last King of Scotland, and she’s even already had some experience playing Jamie Foxx’s significant other in Ray. Apparently the role took so long to fill because Tarantino was interested in casting an unknown for Broomhilda, but try as he might he just couldn’t find anyone to top Washington’s auditions. Despite the fact that Tarantino won’t be able to wow

The casting news for Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming foray into the Western genre, Django Unchained, just keeps getting better and better. Like a sports nerd amassing the perfect fantasy baseball team, Tarantino has been looking over the stats and picking out the most rock solid actors to fill key roles on his squad. Like a seasoned Dungeon Master, he has been amassing the Hollywood personalities with the most awesome points to accompany him on his quest. And Variety is reporting that the man is nearing yet another blockbuster acquisition. Now he’s in talks with Joseph Gordon-Levitt to join an already-excellent ensemble. Apparently Gordon-Levitt has every intention of working with Tarantino and joining this increasingly awesome-sounding movie, but there are some scheduling hiccups to work out. You see, JGL is a busy, busy man, and he’ll probably have to shift some stuff around in order to get his skinny little hinder on set when Tarantino needs him. If the two parties are able to work things out, it will see Gordon-Levitt joining a cast that already boasts names like Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Don Johnson, and Kurt Russell. That’s almost enough to make what Stallone is doing on The Expendables 2 look girly in comparison.

“Hey Quentin, come sign this and we’ll give you some money.” Not to put too fine a point on it, but that’s probably how it all went down. Upon inspection, it’s hard to miss the “Director Approved” sticker on the outside of the Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown Blu-ray releases. Signed, sealed and kissed with love by director Quentin Tarantino. It’s a slick piece of marketing by the folks at Miramax, who have released these through Lionsgate, to convince you that there’s something special about these releases. As if they were meticulously transferred to high definition in a dark room by the mad cinematic scientist who dreamed them up in the first place. I find that part hard to believe. In fact, it’s hard to believe that there’s much in these that wasn’t more than passed over by Tarantino. Does that make them a bad batch of Blu releases? Not exactly. There’s still plenty of love in owning Pulp and Jackie on a higher format, but that doesn’t exactly make them quite as special as that ‘Director Approved’ sticker suggests.

It was recently reported that Kevin Costner was dropping out of Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming revenge Western about slaves and slave owners, Django Unchained. Costner was supposed to play a mean old snake named Ace Woody who oversees a plantation and keeps the slaves in line using not so nice methods. It seemed like a great opportunity to give Costner a meatier, or at least more interesting role than he has had in a while, and I was pretty disappointed to hear that he wouldn’t be able to work with Tarantino. Sometimes I’m astounded at how fickle I can be.

Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming spaghetti western type movie Django Unchained includes a lead role that calls for a mean man to do mean things. The character’s name is Ace Woody, and he’s a slave owning creep. Up to this point it was pretty much a lock that the role was going to be played by Kevin Costner, it was even the opinion of this writer that Tarantino might be looking to give Costner’s career a shot in the arm, much like he’s done with a couple aging actors before. But now it’s looking like Costner will be dropping out of the role, and it’s because his career doesn’t need any resuscitating after all. Deadline Chuichu is reporting that due to his duties playing Pa Kent in Man of Steel and his work in the History miniseries The Hatfields and McCoys, Costner’s schedule isn’t going to allow for him to take part in the lengthy two month film shoot that Tarantino has planned. That means Tarantino is going to need to find someone else to play Ace Woody. My unsolicited advice would be to go after either Woody Harrelson or Tom Hanks, both great actors who have lots of experience playing characters named Woody. No need to thank me Quentin. In my heart you already have.

Sure, sure, sure. Samuel L. Jackson has finally confirmed he’ll team with Quentin Tarantino for a fifth time, but the real excitement coming from the bowels of Django Unchained is that Gerald McRaney has also secured a role. Some may think McRaney could be the career Tarantino resurrects this time around, but he’s already come back strong with appearances in Get Low, The A-Team and the forthcoming Red Tails. There’s your indie, your action flick, and your historical prestige film. Now, he’ll be in a Tarantino slavesploitation movie. The superfecta. The role is unknown at this point, according to /film, but McRaney is a veteran with a lot of chops, even though he usually finds himself playing the gruff military man. He’s clearly done more television work (crushing it as the star or co-star of stuff like Major Dad and Deadwood), but with the last few years, he’s almost doubled his movie credentials. The man has come a long way since being Bastian’s dad in The NeverEnding Story.

There’s already been a lot of high profile casting news for Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Western Django Unchained. Jamie Foxx is going to be playing the lead role, an ex-slave who is going after his ex-owner to liberate his wife. Leonardo DiCaprio is going to play said slave-owning creep. Samuel L. Jackson will be his manipulative servant. And Christoph Waltz is set to play a German bounty hunter that shows Django the ropes. That’s a fine enough sounding cast right there, but strap yourself in, there’s more. Deadline Las Cruces is reporting that Tarantino is in negotiations to get Robin Hood to join the cast. That’s right, the one true Robin Hood, the Bryan Adams Robin Hood: Kevin Costner. You might also know him as that guy who drank his own pee in Waterworld. However you remember the guy, you probably can recollect that once upon a time he was a pretty big deal. And history shows that Tarantino loves to take actors who used to be a big deal and give them a chance to shine once again. If Costner signs on the dotted line, he will get a chance to do just that, as the role he is up for is that of Ace Woody, the brutal taskmaster who trains slaves to fight one another in gladiatorial battles. It’s a showy, villainous role that could very well get Costner a lot of attention, much like Waltz’s Jew hunter character did in Inglorious Basterds. As he showed in Mr. Brooks,

Last week, as I watched Quentin Dupieux’s Rubber, I noticed that the trailers on the rental Blu-Ray were all of titles sharing space at the top of my queue: titles like Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins, Kim Ji-woon’s I Saw the Devil, and Jason Eisener’s Hobo with a Shotgun. All, I quickly realized, had been released by the same studio, Magnet Releasing, whose label I recalled first noticing in front of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson. After some quick Internet searching, I quickly realized what I should have known initially, that Magnet was a subsidiary of indie distributor Magnolia Pictures. The practices of “indie” subsidiaries of studios has become commonplace. That majors like Universal and 20th Century Fox carry specialty labels Focus Features and Fox Searchlight which market to discerning audiences irrespective of whether or not the individual titles released are independently financed or studio-produced has become a defining practice for limited release titles and has, perhaps more than any other factor, obscured the meaning of the term “independent film” (Sony Pictures Classics, which only distributes existing films, is perhaps the only subsidiary arm of a major studio whose releases are actually independent of the system itself). This fact is simply one that has been accepted for quite some time in the narrative of small-scale American (or imported) filmmaking. Especially in the case of Fox Searchlight, whose opening banner distinguishes itself from the major in variation on name only, subsidiaries of the majors can hardly even be argued as “tricking” audiences into

With a high profile list of black actors like Will Smith and Idris Elba (but somehow without Jaleel White), the casting process for Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained has been a guessing game that played out like casting roulette with a loaded gun of disappointment for fans looking forward to something gritty and exploitative. Will Smith’s name dropping off created a sigh of relief (because the guy couldn’t even suck it up to play a superhero with limp penis problems), Elba going to Pacific Rim meant a great choice became unavailable, and now there’s one name on the list left standing. Deadline Tombstone is reporting that Jamie Foxx has only to sit across the table from Tarantino and sign some papers before becoming the freed slave who learns to kill from a German dentist-cum-bounty hunter (Chrstioph Waltz) and seeks out revenge on a cruel slave owner (Leonardo DiCaprio). Foxx is the kind of actor who has serious chops and barely ever gets to use them. Who could have guessed that he and Jim Carrey would make an honest stab at dramatic work back when they were goofing of for In Living Color? Foxx playing Wanda playing Django would no doubt be the high point of any thespian’s career. Even though everyone on the planet was hoping to see Tarantino resurrect Cuba Gooding Jr’s career, this casting is just about as strong as it gets. Besides, if there’s any disappointment here it’s that Tarantino is taking on Leone instead of doing a

When I write this column, I typically don’t get the opportunity to write about movies from my teen years. I, like many, came into a cinephilic love for art and foreign cinema during college, and in that process grew to appreciate The Criterion Collection. Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (1993), however, is a movie that’s followed me through various changes in my life for (I’m just now realizing as I write this) about half of my time thus far spent on Earth.

Between Martin Scorsese with Boardwalk Empire, Michael Mann with his upcoming series Luck, Tony and Ridley Scott with The Good Wife, David Fincher with his upcoming House of Cards, Steven Spielberg with too many upcoming projects to name, and an ungodly amount of smaller names that have directed various pilots, many filmmakers have been trying their hand at a smaller screen. While that’s great, it isn’t enough. So it’s time to discuss what other filmmakers would be suited well for the idiot box. Here are seven filmmakers that should try their hand at television.

A lot of speculation has gone into figuring out who will play the lead role of the slave turned bounty hunter Django in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming spaghetti western homage Django Unchained. Many people were pretty certain that Tarantino was dealing with Sony because he was trying to get Sony poster boy Will Smith to sign on to star. Then there was some rumbling that The Wire star Stringer Bell Idris Elba would be stepping into the role due to some comments that he twittered on his twitterer. There has been so much talk about who is playing the lead role in this film that speculation about the other characters has become something of an afterthought. Until now, because one man just heated things up in the race to fill out the rest of Tarantino’s cast, and that man’s name is Leonardo DiCaprio. According to Deadline Carbondale, DiCaprio is being courted to play the villainous role of Calvin Candie, and negotiations with him are reportedly going much better than those with the once supposed near-lock Smith. Candie is the owner of an establishment where female slaves are used as prostitutes and males as gladiators to battle to the death. The story of the film deals mostly with the ex-slave Django hooking up with a German Bounty hunter in order to learn to be a badass and then free his wife from the clutches of the evil Candie. With DiCaprio being looked at as a likely candidate to fill the Candie role,

It all certainly started out with fact. Around 5:30 PST Sunday morning, actor Idris Elba had some very cryptic and very interesting comments for the Twitterverse. Here’s what he had to say: Having one of the biggest meetings of my professional life today…meeting a very controversial director for a very controversial part. :-/ Followed by: On the plane to the destination of my fate…..ok…. a lil dramatic….destination of my life..? The second Tweet was accompanied by an image of Elba on the aforementioned plane. Predictably, the rumors began shortly after and continue up to this point. But one rumor seems to have caught much more steam than any others. That being that Elba was on his way to meeting with Quentin Tarantino, and the “controversial part” he spoke of was for the title role in Tarantino’s latest, Django Unchained.

Due to the long-standing love affair between Quentin Tarantino and the Weinsteins, there was never really any question as to whether or not The Weinstein Company would be doing the domestic distributing for the filmmaker’s upcoming spaghetti western homage Django Unchained. Which studio would handle the international distribution was very much in question however, and the subject of a pretty intense bidding war. Popular opinion was that Universal would end up with the duties, as they just teamed up with Tarantino for Inglorious Basterds, and that was his most financially successful film in quite some time. Unfortunately for Universal, those works ended up getting gummed up because of The Fresh Prince.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s waiting to watch the latest episode of Community because it promised its girlfriend it would. And that’s really hard to do, because that show’s really good. Also, Josh Holloway from Lost guest stars in the two-part season finale. How can that be resisted by the world’s most interesting nightly movie news linkdump? Must… hold… on… Must… do… the news… Quentin Tarantino went big when he cast Brad Pitt as his lead in Inglorious Basterds. So to see him considering Will Smith as the titular character, a freed slave trained by a German bounty hunter that sets out on a quest to save his wife from a head slave, is an act of pure bravado — he’ll just go get anyone he effing pleases to star in his movies, won’t he? And if that wasn’t enough to blow your mind, consider this: Christoph Waltz is said to be circling the role of the German trainer, with Samuel L. Jackson in consideration as the bad guy. That’s potentially a perfect storm of awesome, so we’ll see.

Quentin Tarantino’s “next” film is an amorphous and constantly shifting entity that seems to only find its final form once the cameras start rolling, but that’s never stopped the internet from bandying about titles, plots, and cast lists as if they were confirmed plans. At various times the divisive director has been reportedly about to start work on The Vega Brothers with John Travolta and Michael Madsen, a follow-up to Inglourious Basterds that would place Brad Pitt and his merry men in the racist South of the 1950′s, a re-imagining of The Shadow, a third Kill Bill film, and even a remake of Russ Meyers’ Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! None of these have come to fruition (yet), but recent days have seen speculation that Tarantino’s upcoming film would be a Western set in the American South. Adding nothing concrete at all to the rumor was the apparent leak of the cover page to his just completed script for a film titled Django Unchained. Yes please.

What is Movie News After Dark? Like your collegiate sex life, it will be in and out quick with nothing very interesting to say. It will, however, deliver unto you all the magical and wondrous movie news of the day. And it promises to call you the next day, because you’re a person, dammit. We open tonight with images of humans running away from fireballs. It must be time for a Michael Bay update. This one is from Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and it includes zero robots. Not quite as interesting as the ones that include robots, but still quite ‘splosiony.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly column about movie news that wasn’t big enough to get quality real estate on the home page. Or the stuff that everyone else missed. But you won’t miss it! Because it’s all right here! “I think he has a script ready to start of a new film, a Southern. I think it’s really exciting. It’s another new story and a fresh piece of material that he is channeling at the moment.” That’s Uma Thurman, talking about Quentin Tarantino’s next film.