Kerry Washington Is Tarantino’s Lady Django

As you, a regular reader of The Projector, surely know, we're pretty obsessed with Quentin Tarantino's upcoming "Django Unchained." (This obsession also classifies us as "someone who writes on the Internet.") Grierson thinks "Jackie Brown" is the apex of the Tarantino experience, but as much as we love that movie, we're ecstatic with the direction his career is starting to turn. He's taking Big, Important Topics (in the case of "Inglourious Basterds," World War II; with "Django," American slavery) and making them his own, morphing them with his sensibility in order to attack them in new, oddly moving ways. (Remember: The least important part of "Basterds" are the Basterds.) We can't wait to see what he does with it, particularly considering that crazy cast of Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio (as an evil slave owner!), Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz, Kurt Russell and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Now that crazy cast has a new member: Kerry Washington, most famous as playing the wives of powerful men ("Ray," "The Last King of Scotland"), is gonna play Ms. Django. If you've forgotten the plot, Django (Foxx) teams up with a German bounty hunter (Waltz) to rescue his wife (Washington, now) from the sadistic plantation owner Calvin Candle (DiCaprio) and his evil compatriots (Jackson, Russell and, probably, Gordon-Levitt). That's a freaking movie we wanna see. You gathered that.

Washington is a politically active actress -- she is an active supporter of Howard Zinn -- and also the spokesperson for L'Oreal, barely beating out Zach Galifianakis. She also has a fancy Website. And this time next year, she's going to be everywhere.

Kerry Washington Lands 'Django Unchained' Lead [Deadline]