If you hadn’t already noticed, we’re knee-deep in Oscar season now.  Though many are put off by the awards race in general, one of the highlights of the year is always THR’s roundtable interviews with “the contenders.”  This year’s directors roundtable is really something, as the one-hour conversation involves Quentin Tarantino, Ben Affleck, Ang Lee, Tom Hooper, David O. Russell, and Gus Van Sant.  Though the entire interview is well worth watching, we figured our readers would be interested in a particular nugget from Tarantino in which he describes Death Proof as the “worst” film he’s ever made.

Hit the jump for more on that comment and to watch the full roundtable interview.

I first discovered him in college twenty years ago, getting my first real taste of what cinema was all about. We delved into deep esoteric films, the sort that never showed up at your friendly neighborhood Blockbuster. They were directed by men with complex Eastern European names and featured content designed to alternately expand and confound our expectations. Class after class, semester after semester, we studied them with all the seriousness our young minds could muster. They were Important. They were Art. We needed to understand them if we hoped to grasp the secrets that this medium held.  Then, in the middle of it all, my friend Shanan knock on my door, gripped me by the coat lapels and spoke in the soft, serious tones one normally associates with rooftop snipers. “We went to this movie called Reservoir Dogs. You have to see it. Right. Fucking. Now.”  Hit the jump for my full review.

Quentin Tarantino has been on the block for twenty years now, so Lionsgate has collected all of the director’s films, and thrown them into one giant box set.  Tarantino XX: 8-Film Collection will include Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, and Inglourious Basterds as well as True Romance (which Tarantino wrote), and his half of Grindhouse, Death Proof.  The 10-disc box set also includes a critics discussions piece exploring Tarantino’s work, a retrospective of Tarantino’s career, and a tribute to Tarantino’s late editor Sally Menke.

While all of the movie have been released on Blu-ray before and these discs will have all the same special features, it’s still nice to have them all in one place.  Hit the jump for the press release, and to check out the Mondo-designed box art.  Tarantino XX: 8-Film Collection is due out November 20th.  Tarantino’s new film, Django Unchained, is due out December 25th.

By now, most Quentin Tarantino fans are aware of the connections interlaced throughout all of his films.  John Travolta’s Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction is the brother of Michael Madsen’s Vic Vega in Reservoir Dogs, Harvey Keitel’s Mr. White worked with Alabama from True Romance, the plot basis for Kill Bill is described as the synopsis for a TV series in Pulp Fiction, etc.

Now the epiphany that Eli Roth’s character of Donny Donowitz aka “The Bear Jew” in Inglourious Basterds is the father of the movie producer Lee Donowitz in True Romance has inspired a truly mind-blowing theory that the rest of the films (chronologically speaking) in Tarantino’s filmography take place in a world where [Inglorious Basterds spoiler] World War II came to an end when Adolf Hitler was brutally murdered in a movie theater by the Basterds.  Hit the jump for more.

There are two things to note about this recent release of Grindhouse. The first is that when the film premiered in the spring of 2007, much was hoped for this three hour double feature from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Rodriguez’s half Planet Terror had a stripper (Rose MacGowan) and her off-again boyfriend (Freddy Rodriguez) battling a zombie plague brought on by a scientist (Naveen Andrews) and a crazy solider (Bruce Willis). Death Proof is the second half and has Kurt Russell playing a killer whose weapon of choice is a stunt car, and whose prey are young women (including Rosario Dawson, Zoe Bell, Tracy Thoms, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Vanessa Ferlito, Sydney Poitier, Jordan Ladd and Rose McGowan). But Tarantino’s and Rodriguez’s fan-base and the world at large either didn’t get or didn’t care about the movie, and so it flopped at the box office. It was meant to be a fun flagship production by the Weinstein company, and instead was a big black eye. As such the films were broken off and sold separately on home video. So finally, three and a half years later, the film comes as originally intended to DVD and Blu-ray. And my review of this three hour opus is after the jump.

While the whole purpose of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse was to re-create the double-bill experience of going to a Grindhouse movie, The Weinstein Company split the film into two DVDs/Blu-rays: one for Rodriguez’ Planet Terror and the other for Tarantino’s Death Proof.  Grindhouse also featured fake trailers from Eli Roth (Thanksgiving), Rob Zombie (Werewolf Women of the S.S.), Edgar Wright (Don’t), Rodriguez (Machete), and Jason Eisener, John Davies, and Rob Cotterill (Hobo with a Shotgun).  While none of these trailers were included on the DVDs/Blu-rays, the last two fake trailers are currently being adapted into feature-length films, with Machete scheduled to hit theaters on September 3rd.

Today, Wright tweeted, “So, get this, tomorrow I am doing a commentary on ‘Don’t’. Some of you will know what that means is finally happening.”  Fingers crossed, it means that we’re finally getting the full Grindhouse on DVD/Blu-ray.  I’m not sure when we would get it, but I’d bet it would be timed with the DVD/Blu-ray release of Machete.  Hit the jump to check out Wright’s fake trailer for Don’t.

More homes would have movie posters on their walls if studios made them as eye-catching as what artist Ibraheem Youssef has done with the films of Quentin Tarantino.  They remind me of the “I Can Read Movies” series with their minimal designs that cause fans to grin and make the uninitiated want to get in on the joke.  I’ve seen all of Tarantino’s movies, but I can’t seem to grasp the reference Youssef’s making for Inglourious Basterds even though I’ve seen that movie twice and recently.  Help me out in our comments section.

Check out all the posters after the jump.  You can purchase them as 12×18 prints or 24×36 posters at shop.ibraheemyoussef.com.  All prints and posters are limited editions, hand-signed, and numbered.