Remember The Film "Inglourious Basterds"?

Do you recall the new Tarantino film? I blogged about it here, last August. W




Well, Inglourious Basterds is set to premiere (as promised) at the Cannes Film Festival (France) in May. The film will be in competition as well.

The trailer:



To remind you:

...The film centers on an all-Jewish American commando unit called “the Basterds” which is causing mayhem behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied France. The unit is led by one Lieutentant Aldo Raine, played by none other than the yellow press’ favorite Hollywood beau Brad Pitt. He leads them to scalp Nazis and wreak havoc upon Hitler’s occupying force, while sporting a moustache that some claim will bring that type of facial hair back into the mainstream. The most surprising aspect of the script though is that the actual main character seems to be not Raine, but a young Jewish-French girl hiding in a Paris Cinematheque. Shosanna [Dreyfus], as Tarantino has baptised his latest heroine, is seeking revenge for the murder of her family at the hands of an evil SS Colonel, Hans Landa. While Nazi party bigshots are planning the premiere of a propaganda film at the Cinemateque, The Basterds’ and Shosanna’s paths will inevitably cross, in what sounds very much like a clever and violent plot to strike against the occupiers...

Let's make it a bit clearer:

The Basterds

The Basterds are a hand-picked bunch of tough guys who chase down Nazis and scalp them, a practice that has given their leader, Raine, his nickname. "The idea is that they're doing an Apache resistance against the Nazis," says Tarantino. "It's taking the idea that the Jews are acting like the Apaches in a no-win situation. The idea is to terrify the Nazis, get inside their minds."

Aldo 'The Apache' Raine is played by Brad Pitt



Aldo Raine is an American hillbilly who has recruited a crack team of Nazi killers called The Basterds, and who joins forces with the British to carry out Operation Kino.

Shosanna Dreyfus is played by Melanie Laurent



Shosanna is a Jewish girl who escapes the SS and moves to Paris, where she assumes a new French identity and becomes the manageress of a small cinema.

Frederick Zoller is played by Daniel Brühl

Zoller is a German sniper who is being celebrated in Josef Goebbels' latest propaganda production, Nation's Pride. He falls for Shosanna, and tries to persuade Goebbels to hold his premiere in her cinema.

Ed Fenech is played by Mike Myers

Fenech is the brains behind Operation Kino, a plan to sabotage Goebbels' big premiere.

Colonel Hans Landa of the SS, aka The Jew Hunter is played by Christoph Waltz

Landa is the suave genius of the SS and a celebrated Nazi. Hitler has personally put him in charge of ridding Occupied France of Jews.

Sounds a bit violent?

You bet:



And this:-

...Quentin was like, 'No, no, no. This is the movie they were talking about in "Knocked Up"! This is Jews kicking ass.' ... This movie has the intensity of 'Reservoir Dogs,' the style of 'Pulp Fiction,' the violence of 'Kill Bill,' the adrenaline of 'Death Proof' and the characters of 'Jackie Brown.' It's really the greatest of Quentin's talents, all culminating in this film."

..."There are a lot of scalpings," Roth grinned wickedly. "He's not going to skimp on the scalping, let me tell you. Quentin based what the Basterds do on what the Apache Indians did. They would do what's known now as the Apache Resistance, where they would capture people and horribly mutilate them, scalp them, torture them, cut them up and leave one person alive. Then, [the survivor] would go back to the cavalry and describe what happened — and the psychological warfare got so strong that if the cavalry came across a bunch of Apache Indians, they would just take their guns and shoot themselves in the heads and shoot each other in the heads because of the horror of what had been described to them. ... This is what the Jews are doing to the Nazis. We get these Nazis and we scalp them, and we beat them to death with a baseball bat."

And to Roth, a Jewish filmmaker from Boston with a well-known taste for blood, there couldn't have been a more welcoming environment to make his acting debut (after small cameos in various films over the years). "What's funny is I expected [Tarantino] to cast a bunch of big dudes. I thought I'd be the smallest guy," Roth marveled. "Instead, he basically cast my Hebrew school class. I looked around, and I was like, 'These are the kids who were in my bunk at Camp Cedar Lake.' It's them going on a killing spree — and that's what makes it so much fun."