Now that Inglourious Basterds is out on DVD and Blu-Ray, watch the movie again. Read the script as well. Study them both and become Tarantino's script editor.
If, like many commentators, you think it's not his greatest film, think about where he could have improved it. And what do you think are the best sequences/scenes/moments?
Look at:
Opening Scenes
Introduction of Brad Pitt Main Character
Structure of whole movie
Structuring of scenes
Pace
Tension
Characters
Visuals
Dialogue
Consider why some parts are not as successful as others. How would you have written these differently?
It can be a wonderfully instructive exercise to learn from the masters when they're not quite on top form as when they are!
The Plot
Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is set in Nazi-occupied France during World War II and centres on a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as “The Basterds” who are given a mission to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis.
Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) a hillbilly straight from the mountains of Tennessee, a man with a scar around his neck that "will never once be mentioned," sets up the group of avenging soldiers. Known to their enemy as "The Basterds," Raine's squad joins German actress and undercover agent Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) on a mission to take down the leaders of The Third Reich.
Inglourious Basterds Good, Not So Good?
Looks like the maverick writer/director has got mixed reviews for his latest movie premiered this morning (20 May). "History will not repeat itself for Quentin Tarantino. While his Pulp Fiction arrived late at the Festival de Cannes and swept away the Palme d'Or in 1994, Inglourious Basterds merely continues the string of disappointments in this year's Competition." The Hollywood Reporter.
Screen International's Mike Goodridge complained about the length. "Even though there is some action and a fair smattering of Tarantino's customary blood-spilling, the film-maker devotes much of the running time to dialogue."
But some critics liked it!
"A glorious, silly, blood-splattered return." said the BBC critic, but she, like others, thought it was too long: "At nearly three hours, its director could certainly have trimmed more of its flab."
Inglourious Basterds. Brad Pitt on location in Germany as Lieutenant Aldo Raine, a hillbilly from Tennessee who leads a squad of Jewish-American soldiers in Nazi-occupied Europe. See
QT Archives.
Screenwriter/Director: Quentin Tarantino. The Weinstein Company. Universal Studios. Zehnte Babelsberg Film.
Inglourious Basterds:World War II
Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). She manages to escape and flees to Paris, assumes a new identity and becomes the owner of a cinema.
All their fates converge in a Paris cinema, and Shosanna is poised to carry out a revenge plan of her own...
The cast also includes Eli Roth as Sgt. Donnie Donowitz, called "The Bear Jew" by the Nazis because of his predeliction for smashing in their heads with a baseball bat. The cast also includes Daniel Brühl and Mike Myers.
"It is sort of a spaghetti western set in World War II. I am not going to call it this, but if it had a subtitle for it, it would be called, 'Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France.'"
Quentin Tarantino
Inglourious Basterds How's The Trademark Tarantino Dialogue?
“… I sure as hell, didnt come down from the goddamn Smoky Mountains, cross five thousand miles of water, fight my way through half Sicily, and then jump out of a fuckin air-o-plane, to teach the Nazi’s lessons in humanity.”
Inglourious Basterds Production
The movie sees Tarantino reuniting with Academy Award-winning director of photography Bob Richardson, Academy Award-nominated editor Sally Menkeand production designer David Wasco. Award-nominated Anna Sheppard is the costume designer.
Academy Award-nominee Lawrence Bender is producing, Erica Steinberg and Lloyd Phillips, and Bob and Harvey Weinstein are the film's executive producers. Co-producers are Charlie Woebcken, Christoph Fisser and Henning Molfenter. Pilar Savone is the associate producer.
The Weinstein Company and Universal Pictures, through its newly formed International Studio, are partners, co-financing and co-presenting the film - The Weinstein Company handling domestic, and Universal the international distribution.
Zehnte Babelsberg Film, a subsidiary of Studio Babelsberg AG, is producing Inglourious Basterds.
Tarantino's film received a 300,000 euro grant from the state of Brandenburg, because it will be filmed in Potsdam's Babelsberg studios. Founded in 1911, this is the world's oldest major film studio. Films including Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" and "The Blue Angel" with Marlene Dietrich were filmed there in the 1920s and 1930s, as were numerous Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda films.
Tarantino's film is also expected to receive 20 percent of its budget from the German Film Fund because it is being filmed in Germany.
The film is shooting at Studio Babelsberg as well as in Berlin, Saxony and Paris.
Tarantino is apparently still hoping to get the movie to Cannes 2009.
In the original 1977 Enzo G Catellari movie, Inglorious Bastards (Quel maledetto treno blindato), a group of American military prisoners escape their transport in the wake of a bombing, and volunteer for a dangerous mission with the French Underground. It was a remake of Robert Aldritch’s The Dirty Dozen, in which a group of American military prisoners attack a chateau full of Nazi officials.
The Controversy
Inglourious Basterds is already causing controversy. There are those who are not entirely happy with the thought of Tarantino making a movie about Jewish soldiers in the Second World War.
In the newspaper, Haaretz, an article entitled "The Holocaust, Tarantino-style: Jews scalping Nazis" posted from Berlin,Assaf Uni wrote that for weeks, Germany's tabloids and culture pages have been preoccupied with Quentin Tarantino's film.
The serious media is focusing on [the question]: Is Germany ready for a Tarantino-style treatment of World War II?
An early draft of the script leaked onto the Internet three months ago suggested the film would contain scenes of bloody vengeance exacted by Jews against Nazis. One campaign would be carried out by Jews in the U.S. Army intent on scalping Nazi soldiers on occupied French soil; another would be a Jewish refugee's revenge against the Nazi officer who murdered her parents.
Pitt is to play Jewish-American Lt. Aldo Raine, the leader of a revenge squad known as "The Bastards," who launch a killing spree in which they hang, torture, disembowel and scalp German soldiers and engrave Swastikas on their foreheads, according to the leaked draft.
The film is raising controversy in Germany, where the subjects of World War II and the Holocaust are usually restricted to historical discourse.
"This is pop culture meeting Nazi Germany and the Holocaust with unprecedented force," said the film critic of SuedDeutche Zeitung, Tobias Kniebe. "The effects of this collision are utterly unpredictable."
German film critics blasted last week's decision to grant the film money from the German Film Fund and another local fund, saying that Germany cannot finance a movie that uses Jewish-Nazi relations as entertainment, especially one by Tarantino."
