Here’s a story that broke yesterday but has continued to pick up steam through the movie blogs today: The Weinstein Co. is planning to release box office champ Inglourious Basterds on DVD by the end of the year in order to use the discs for a cheap but aggressive Oscar campaign. This isn’t surprising news considering Harvey Weinstein’s Oscar addiction, but it has suddenly made me aware that Basterds is both deserving of and sure to receive a nod for Best Picture, which would be Quentin Tarantino’s first such nominee since Pulp Fiction 15 years ago.

Seriously, if we can be talking about District 9, Star Trek and other genre movies for the top category now that it will include ten contenders, how couldn’t Basterds be seen as a likely nominee? People have celebrated Christoph Waltz’s performance since Cannes, and he’s sure to garner a Best Supporting Actor nod, but few have noted how the film itself is a lock, too. Certainly if Weinstein can get The Reader a surprise Best Picture nomination with only five available slots, he can get this film onto a ballot double the size.

Don’t forget the Holocaust rule; how could the Academy ignore a movie that features vengeful Jews assassinating Hitler and 300 other Nazis all at once in a blaze of glory? Never mind that they didn’t get some of the worst offenders involved in the genocide.

Could Basterds garner more than the two obvious nominations? I doubt Tarantino will receive recognition for either directing or screenwriting, but who knows? Any other performances worthy? Any tech fields? Variety has an interesting article today on the costume design by Anna B. Sheppard. She’s been twice nominated for, interestingly enough, Holocaust films (Schindler’s List and The Pianist), but this time she was presented with more of a challenge. I have a feeling this third Holocaust-related project could be the one to get her the Oscar.

Check out what the other film blogs are saying about Basterds‘ Oscar chances after the jump:

• Tom O’Neil at Gold Derby first scooped the Weinstein’s Oscar plans, claiming they’re modeled after the Crash strategy. Here is his expectation of the outcome:
  

  Beware, Hollywood. Given how red rivers flow in Tarantino pix, the town will be engulfed in a blood tide this December when Harvey unleashes his “Inglourious Basterds” DVD campaign. It will probably pay off with two Academy Award nominations: best screenplay (Tarantino) and supporting actor (Christoph Waltz). Maybe more. “Pulp Fiction” got nommed for best picture when there were only five slots; this year there will be twice as many.

• Ross Miller at ScreenRant is worried this campaign means a slim, feature-less DVD release, for now anyway, but here are his thoughts on what Basterds‘ Oscar future looks like:
  

  Having seen the film twice now, it easily deserves a Supporting Actor nomination for Christoph Waltz (he should also win, IMO), and also a couple for Original Screenplay and Best Director for Tarantino. I have a feeling that at least a couple of those will end up being the case (Actor and Screenplay), with Best Picture maybe slipping in there as well, since the Academy has expanded the Best Picture nominees from five to ten entries.

• C. Jerry Kutner at Bright Lights After Dark celebrates the return of Rod Taylor in a post that has me wondering if maybe the Academy will honor his very short performance as one of those lifetime-achievement-type nominations. It’s not that unlikely, even if he hadn’t put in such effort:
  

  Taylor came out of retirement to play Sir Winston Churchill in Tarantino’s highly personalized take on World War II (as much about the cinema as it is about the War). According to the Miami Herald, Taylor “watched dozens of DVDs to get Churchill’s voice, complete with lisp, and the hunched body language”…Taylor as Churchill appears in one scene only of Inglourious Basterds, saying very little, but dominating the scene with his presence as only a true star can.

• Brad Brevet at RopeofSilicon would love to see Michael Fassbender nominated, but he just doesn’t see any potential for Basterds outside the Waltz nomination. He presents why the film won’t make the cut for Best Original Screenplay:
  

  The Academy can sometimes be hard to judge and I think categories such as Best Original Screenplay will be much easier to sort out as we move along, but I won’t be writing off Inglourious Basterds anytime soon considering the news Inarritu’s Biutiful may not be released this year and the fact Apatow’s Funny People didn’t do so well. But that still has Tarantino battling out with the likes of the following in alphabetical order:

  * (500) Days of Summer – Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber
  * Bright Star – Jane Campion
  * Broken Embraces – Pedro Almodovar
  * The Hurt Locker – Mark Boal
  * A Serious Man – Joel and Ethan Coen
  * Up – Bob Peterson

  You tell me, do you see it fitting inside the top five with those names?

• Kristopher Tapley at In Contention sees Basterds more deserving of tech nominations than a writing one:
  

  A couple of pieces caught my eye today featuring talent associated with Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” a film that, despite my feelings of the narrative, had a rather refreshing visceral sheen to it.  That’s a tribute, no doubt, to folks like Bob Richardson, David Wasco, Anna B. Sheppard, etc.

• One of the pieces Tapley highlights is the pre-Variety showcase of Sheppard at Boxwish, which points out the achievement:
  

  Clearly her CV made her an ideal fit for whipping up the era’s authentic period costumes, but it was a challenge that Sheppard was slow to accept until assured that Inglourious Basterds wasn’t a traditional by-the-book retelling of World War II’s horrors, but a boisterous, imaginative and spiky vision of it. As the trailer’s tag-line says “you haven’t seen war until you’ve seen it through the eyes of Quentin Tarantino,” and Sheppard was thrilled to learn that this applied to costumes as well.

• Lane Brown at Vulture questions the merit of Basterds:
  

  Why didn’t the Weinstein Company release Inglourious Basterds closer to awards season? We figured it was because it they didn’t plan on it winning many awards. But Tom O’Neil posits today that Harvey’s plan is to make an Oscar push around the time of its DVD release later this year…It worked for Crash, so we suppose anything’s possible.

• Bob Westal at Premium Hollywood has doubts about the Academy’s appreciation for both Tarantino and his treatment of the Holocaust:
  

  Quentin Tarantino’s films are not Oscar-friendly. The older members of the Academy have traditionally leaned strongly towards a very traditional, essentially literary and middle-class, view of quality which is pretty much the antithesis of the Tarantino aesthetic. It’s only been through his widespread acclaim and a subtle loosening of old prejudices that his films have gotten the definitely limited Oscar recognition they have and, considering what some regard as a too lighthearted view of World War II horrors, I wouldn’t expect this one to be much different. Of course, with ten nomination slots for Best Picture, and the universal groundswell of acclaim for heretofore internationally unknown German actor Christoph Waltz, two or three nominations (including the semi-inevitable “Best Original Screenplay” nod) are almost a certainty.

• Peter Bart at Variety less-directly addresses Basterds‘ qualifications for the Holocaust rule:
  

  Writing in The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg struggles to find a subtext in “Inglourious Basterds” dealing with “Jewish empowerment.” I would argue the only thing on display here is Tarantino Empowerment. He has the power to make very long movies with very self-referential dialogue. He owns the play pen.

• Kevin Jagernauth at The Playlist sees a potential for four major nods but wonders if Basterds will be hurt more by the fanboy rule than helped by the Holocaust rule:
  

  But as the Oscar season shapes up, it will be interesting to see how viable (or not) of a player “Inglourious Basterds” will remain in the major categories. The danger with throwing Tarantino’s film into the Oscar mix is that Harvey could end up with a “The Dark Knight” situation on his hands. As readers might recall, that film did boffo box-office numbers and was universally loved by critics, but as far as the Academy was concerned, it was still just a fanboy film.

• Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere sees the problem being the film’s violence, despite the fact that we’ve seen a movie like The Departed win four Oscars, including Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture. His argument:
  

  The only Inglourious Basterds Oscar nomination that’s going to happen is Christoph Waltz for Best Supporting Actor — end of story. Harvey can blanket Hollywood with DVDs to make sure this happens, but isn’t Waltz’s nomination already pasted into most people’s heads? Tarantino’s screenplay hasn’t a prayer of being nominated for Best Original Screenplay. Not with that damn baseball-bat/brain-matter scene. Gran Shaggy Poo sez the over-50s ain’t goin’ for it.