Brad and George at the Venice Film Festival last year on 8/27/08. Credit: PRPhotos

The Cannes Film Festival opened up Wednesday evening, and now many people are counting down the hours until a couple of things happen: first, that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie walk the Cannes red carpet so we can analyze every detail of their body language to see if they are in fact broken up because Brad’s drinking and calling up Jennifer Aniston, who is fighting with Courteney Cox, and secondly, that we get to hear about Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. To promote the film during the festival, promoters have papered Cannes with posters of Brad Pitt, dressed in his World War II soldier’s costume, with the words “Brad Pitt is a Basterd” plastered above the image. Classic:

Brad Pitt is a Basterd. That may or may not be the case, I’m only quoting one of the banner drop-down posters draped over the Carlton Hotel in Cannes.

The Brad Pitt is a Basterd is part of the lavish promotion for Quentin Tarantino’s much anticipated Inglourious Basterds.

His leading lady Diane Kruger is also, rather impolitely in my view, hailed as a basterd.

The thing about Cannes is that these billboards are designed to grab our attention. In previous years I’ve found some of the clever marketing for movies more fun than the pictures being advertised, which is a little sad.

But we will know by the middle of next week whether Tarantino’s Basterds are worth screaming about. I hope so.

[From The Daily Mail]

I really can’t wait to see Inglourious Basterds, more for Tarantino than Brad, because I like both. Alas, the film doesn’t come out in America until August.

In other Jolie-Pitt news, I’ve got one more story: I think People Magazine totally copied an article verbatim from OK! Magazine. Last month, we reported on this funny little story from OK! about how all of the mothers in Long Island were dressing up for Brad Pitt sightings. It was funny and cute, and many people enjoyed it. Wednesday afternoon of this week, People put up an article almost exactly like the OK! piece from last month. It’s the weirdest thing, check out the links to compare. The only new information in the People article is that George Clooney came for a visit and freaked everyone out. People claims, “Brad recently had lunch with pal George Clooney at the Breakers restaurant in Bayville, N.Y. [A local source says:] ‘I heard a woman screaming at Stop & Shop because the clerk was telling her George Clooney was at the Breakers… It startled me because she shrieked so loud. Then, a few women said they were going to go down there and see if they could run into Clooney.’” So, basically, Brad Pitt sightings get women dressing up in pearls and heels, while a George Clooney makes grown women start shrieking like it’s 1964 and they just saw Ringo Starr. Clooney and Pitt have very interesting fan bases.