Inglourious Basterds
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Melanie Laurent, Diane Kruger, Daniel Bruhl, Eli Roth, Michael Fassbenderr, Til Schweiger, Samm Levine, B.J. Novak, Mike Myers
Rated R
Release date: August 21, 2009

I did not discover Quentin Tarantino at the same time everyone else did, but by the time his 1997 crime drama Jackie Brown, an adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch, was released I knew who he was. I came by his movies on my own with my only knowledge of them being what I had read in magazines like Rolling Stone, Premiere, and Entertainment Weekly.

Pulp Fiction, his epic anthology of strangely believable adventures in the underworld, was the first. I rented that movie when it was first released on video but it took me all of the one-week rental period to watch it because I could not view it in the presence of my younger brother and sister. But as I watched Pulp Fiction, piece by piece every day before and after I went to school, I became captivated by what I was seeing and I began to understand why Quentin Tarantino was the talk of the town. Here was undoubtedly the most innovative and dynamic new filmmaker to emerge in a decade that had seen more than its fair share of cinematic underachievers and would see even more before the millennium came to a close. Tarantino’s films were heavily criticized for their violence but when weighed against the majority of the R-rated action fare that was coming out of Hollywood there was not much bloodshed at all. What gave the violence in Tarantino’s films its impact was its relative restraint. His films rely mostly on the integral developments of plot and character. When the violence does come, be it in a shocking gag (the accidental shooting of Marvin in Pulp Fiction) or an extended battle sequence (the House of Blue Leaves fight which takes up the majority of Kill Bill Volume 1‘s third act), it feels like a cathartic release of tension and energy. Tarantino’s own personal celluloid orgasm, if you will.

The Weinstein Company has officially announced that Quentin Tarantino‘s World War II movie Inglourious Basterds will be released on August 21, 2009.

At last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Tarantino promised to have the movie for the ’09 festival. No word yet as to if he’ll still fulfill that promise with the release date now set for three or so months after Cannes. I won’t be there, so I’m just happy to know when I’ll get to see it, but I am starting to think he’ll have it there and hopefully we’ll start to hear some feedback on what to expect.

For the Amish who recently jumped ship and embraced technology, Inglourious Basterds stars Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson, Mike Myers, and Diane Kruger as well as many, many others. It follows Pitt and his band of Jewish soldiers who were previously captives and are out to kill a group of Nazis.

Everyone’s favorite new WWII movie project from Quentin Tarantino, the curiously spelled Inglourious Basterds, has now begun filming in Germany!

Simple, but great news! Now images and eventually trailers will start raining down on us.

Speaking of images, we received the first one of Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine, on the film set. Click the image here to see a larger version. (The official synopsis is below.)

Inglourious Basterds follows a band of Jewish soldiers who go after the Nazis and has a crazy cast including Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger (Troy, National Treasure), Eli Roth (Hostel), Samm Levine (Not Another Teen Movie), B.J. Novak (The Office), Julie Dreyfus (Kill Bill), Michael Fassbender (300), Mike Myers, and Cloris Leachman among many others.

The Tarantino Archives has obtained some pictures from the set of Inglorious Bastards.

The pictures are mainly of the farmhouse that will be used in the film. There’s also a picture of a piece of paper that has the very odd spelling of the film as “Inglourious Basterds,” which I doubt they’re actually using; seems more like one of those inside-joke deals amongst the crew, I would think.

If you’re one of the many who has read the script, you’ll know the first 15-20 minutes involve this farmhouse and you’ll see that it’s nothing short of perfect-looking.

I’m taking this as a sign of very good things to come.