Eli Roth Is A Basterd In Tarantino’s ‘Masterpiece’

This weekend, Screen Rant posted a new poster for Inglourious Basterds which featured the movie’s lead star, Brad Pitt, in uniform and showing off his neck scar. In that article, fellow Screen Rant writer John said we can safely expect to see the other stars of the film get their own similar posters. Well, he was dead on in saying that as today we have a new on featuring Eli Roth.

In the film, Eli Roth (Hostel, Cabin Fever) plays one of the Basterds, Sgt. Donnie Donowitz, whom the Nazis refer to as “The Bear Jew.” The character hails from Boston, is a little psychopathic and uses a baseball bat as his weapon of choice. That’s my kind of soldier!

This poster sums the character up nicely:

He looks like a cool character, no doubt about that.

Inglourious Basterds, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, will be premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in just a few weeks and the New York Times had a chance to speak with the filmmaker about the movie and its rather quick production time.

“We shot the film in Berlin and a little bit in Paris. I only cast actors who could speak English with their native accents. The Germans have accents, the French are French, and the English are English. During the war, your understanding of German, whether you were a French citizen or you were in a concentration camp, meant the difference between life and death. In Hollywood movies, Germans often have English accents, and I can’t go for that contrivance. The proper accent could be the difference between success and failure.”

I love the fact that Tarantino placed emphasis on the languages. It’s decisions such as these regarding the details that make all the difference in a good movie. Next, they asked Tarantino about filming and finishing the film in a quick manner in order to make the cut into Cannes. Quentin’s response:

“Yes. I wanted to have a masterpiece before the decade’s out.”

A masterpiece eh? I certainly hope so. From everything we’ve seen for this movie and Tarantino’s history of film and television, this movie should be incredible and I can’t wait to see it.

In 1994, Pulp Fiction debuted at the Cannes Film Festival and was awarded the prestigious Palme d’Or, the highest prize awarded at the festival for competing movies. I can’t believe that was fifteen years ago. Let’s hope Inglourious Basterds is strong enough to warrant another win for Tarantino.

What do you think of the poster and the movie so far?

Inglourious Basterds hits theaters August 21, 2009.

Sources: New York Times, /Film, The Quentin Tarantino Archives