Quentin Tarantino has started lining up his Inglorious Bastards. Still in negotiations with Brad Pitt to star as Bastards' chief Nazi hunter, he's recruited horror director Eli Roth to play a baseball-bat wielding nutter and The Office's former temp B.J. Novak to play PFC Utivitch, described in QT's script as a Jewish-American soldier of slight build who comes from New York. Meanwhile, in the so-mad-it-has-to-be-true corner, Tarantino has approached Britney Spears about playing busty lesbian dancer Varla in his remake of the 1965 cult film Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, about a thrill-seeking trio of strippers who torment a young couple in the desert. Russ Meyers' homage to big-breasted women has long been a fave of Tarantino's and if he does cast Spears (who will no doubt be dreaming of a Travolta-style career fillip in his capable hands), it would go down as the most bizarre director-star combo since... well, ever.

Smith Wins Porno Appeal

Further to yesterday's news that Kevin Smith has won his appeal and convinced the MPAA to lower the punitive NC-17 rating slapped on his porn-com Zack And Miri Make A Porno to an R, Smith has been chatting about the arguments he used to sway the MPAA's appeals board (who he approached after the ratings board rejected him twice over two sex scenes between co-stars Jason Mewes and real-life porn queen Katie Morgan). "My point is, it was comically graphic," he said. "All the sex in the movie with the exception of one scene is very cartoonish, very campy. It wasn't designed to titillate... Anybody not inclined to see a movie with 'Porno' in the title is not going to see it, so it kind of regulates itself to a degree." More at Variety

DreamWorks Axes Simple Jack Site

A big chunk of Tropic Thunder's viral marketing campaign has involved setting up elaborate websites tied into the fictional A-list stars and their made-up movies that populate Ben Stiller's action comedy. But DreamWorks has yanked one of the sites – www.simplejackmovie.com - which served as an homage to a character played by Stiller's Oscar-seeking actor after complaints by disability rights advocates. In Thunder, Stiller plays action lunk Tugg Speedman, who cynically attempts to woo the Academy crowd by playing a simple-minded but loveable farm boy – a barbed jab at actors' penchant for playing mentally challenged characters and Oscar voters' knee-jerk habit of rewarding them for it. With Simple Jack's tagline of "Once upon a time... there was a retard", it's not surprising Stiller's satire isn't going down well with groups like the Special Olympics and the Downs Syndrome Association of Los Angeles, who want to meet with DreamWorks CEO Stacey Snider to discuss their concerns. Snider axed the site as a preemptive move. You can still check out rainofmadness.com, Tropic Thunder's spoof on Apocalypse Now doc Hearts Of Darkness, though! As of yet, Coppola-rights groups haven't complained.

Casting Call: Streep, Bonham Carter

* Helena Bonham Carter is playing "a very bad person" in McG's currently shooting Terminator: Salvation, she's revealed to Sci Fi Wire. A last-minute replacement for Tilda Swinton, Bonham Carter says her long-term partner Tim Burton "would have killed me if I hadn't done it because he's such a Terminator fan."

* Meryl Streep is planning to play the female lead in an untitled romantic comedy directed by soft-soap specialist Nancy Meyers (The Holiday, Something's Gotta Give). The lung-busting Mamma Mia! belter will make up one corner of a love triangle with two men in Meyers' script...

* Tween star Max Thieriot (Nancy Drew, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl) has been signed to star in Chuck Russell's sci-fi action thriller Prodigy, about an elite boarding school grooming future world leaders with the help of pharmaceuticals in which several alumni are murdered. Thieriot will play the school rebel, who is implicated in the slayings...