Tuesday marked the 20th anniversary of the theatrical release of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. In competition at the 89’ Cannes, it lost the Palm d’Or to Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies and Videotape, owing at least in part to jury president Wim Wenders’ now famous opinion that the film’s hero, Mookie, was insufficiently heroic. Lee was incensed enough to suggest that Wenders “had better watch out ‘cause I’m waiting for his ass!” He even claimed to have a baseball bat with the director’s name on it.

As Sgt. Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming WWII revisionist epic Inglorious Basterds, Eli Roth could quite possibly have the best role in movie history. He’s not the star, so the film’s success does not rest on his shoulders. He gets to act alongside Brad Pitt, which, for eye candy purposes, is awesome in its own right. He’s getting paid to spit Tarantino dialogue, notoriously some of the best in the biz. And, perhaps best of all, he gets to annihilate, exterminate, and eradicate, in the most violent ways possible, f**cking Nazis. We spoke to the Hostel director about bringing Quentin home for the holidays, mimicking Brad Pitt at Cannes, and the ‘holy shit’ factor that comes with being in a Tarantino movie.

This year’s New York Asian Film Festival (through July 5) is, as ever, a cornucopia of surprises—a collective punch to the gut and a scold to all other festivals less ballsy, diverse, and important. This is not a fanboy event, despite what titles like Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl might initially lead you to believe. Drawing chiefly from South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong, the films range with delightful incongruity from the romantic and sentimental to the perverse and avant-garde. Watching all 50-plus entries this year proved unfeasible (surprise), but I’ve attempted to separate some of the wheat from the chaff.

When Richard Linklater directed School of Rock—the first truly commercial success of his career—you’d think he’d stay in the world of profitable, A-list comedy. After all, the paychecks are bigger than what you’d make for say, directing a film that features Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy discussing abstraction and truth, uninterrupted on the streets of Paris. But Linklater has always followed his own path, and despite making some of the most memorable films of the last twenty years (Dazed and Confused, Waking Life), the director still struggles to get projects off the ground. I recently had the chance to speak to Linklater from his home in Austin, where we discussed his latest documentary, his upcoming period piece Me and Orson Welles starring Zac Efron and Claire Danes, and anything and everything about the movie business.

The fashion industry has been abuzz for months about the upcoming documentary release, The September Issue, which follows Vogue editrix Anna Wintour, her cohorts, and her hordes of minions as they put together the magazine’s most coveted issue—its annual September installment. But according to Forbes, the issue itself, on which the film is (and arguably lives are) staked, falls short ... literally. The upcoming Vogue September issue boasts the least number of ad pages in years.

There is a bounty of astonishing moments in Sacha Baron Cohen’s guerrilla comedy Brüno, but rather than spoil what’s in the movie, I’ll spoil what isn’t. A few months ago, Mike Walker of the National Enquirer called The Howard Stern Show and claimed that Ben Affleck had told Sarah Silverman he just did an interview with a “very famous openly gay fashion journalist,” and that it was the weirdest interview of his life. Even though I found it hard to believe that a savvy Hollywood vet like Affleck could be fooled by Baron Cohen’s now unmistakable character, I still waited for his all-American jawline to pop up on screen.

Look, world. I know we’re still mourning the loss of the man responsible for some of the greatest innovations to strike pop music, apart from the Puppini Sisters’ rediscovery of close harmonies. But that doesn’t mean you can throw good taste to the wind and run around issuing clumsily worded statements that really have no bearing on the State of Things as We Know It. Those which especially won’t help sell a few more copies of your crappy fitness DVD. I’m glaring at you, Kim Kardashian. And your empty proclamations of love.

BlackBook has a famous lineage of interns; we’ve yet again found another one amongst our unpaid ranks whose existence and presence has shocked, shaken, and amazed the staff in ways we didn’t think our interns were capable of doing. This one, like all the others, has a very special secret: her life’s ambition. No, it’s not a career in publishing. It’s finding and ravishing the man of her dreams (and those of every other girl aged 14 through 40): actor Robert Pattinson. While we simply talked to her about her obsession before, we’ve now given her time to explore it.

Despite horrid reviews and jive-talking robots, there are a lot of people going to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen this weekend (I’m talking to you 10-25 male demographic). The movie has already grossed more money than most do in an entire theatrical run, and it isn’t even the weekend yet! But still, not everyone is going to the multiplex this weekend. Richard Linklater, director of the classics School of Rock, Dazed and Confused, and Before Sunset, has a better way to spend his time. Hint: it involves books. His thoughts:

I say “maybe-boyfriend” not because I’m a soulless, heartless blogger frothing at the mouth for more click-throughs—well, fine, that’s a big part of it—but also because it’s not every co-star that cautiously looks after his colleague with such scrutiny. Which is why the cockles of RPatz’s heart should be warmed that Michael Welch—who plays Mike Newton in the Twilight saga— has taken his concerns for his beloved to the streets: “I don’t see how this is sustainable—is this gonna keep going for the rest of his life?” He continues, “I understand it, it’s Edward Cullen, I get it. But he’s still Rob Pattinson first—he’s still his own guy. Is it time to start getting concerned here? It’s tough, man. I don’t know where his life is really headed.” But Welch’s concern does tend to approach absurdity, where even says, “If he’s in a room and he looks down and he looks back up, [in that instant] everyone in the room will be staring at him. It’s kind of ridiculous. [That level of fame] is literally Rob Pattinson and Barack Obama.”