Inglourious Basterds

Set Contains:

Like the picture they accompany, the supplemental features on the Inglourious Basterds special edition embrace the cerebral and the absurd with equal gusto. The strongest and most informative extra in the set is a 30-minute conversation with director Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt, and critic Elvis Mitchell, one of Tarantino's most ardent supporters. Mitchell guides the talk to intriguing topics, including the physicality of Pitt's performance and Tarantino's directorial shorthand with the actor. It's followed closely by the complete, six-minute "Nation's Pride," Eli Roth's marvelous re-creation of a Nazi propaganda film, as well as Mitchell's scholarly examination of "Pride," its evocative poster art, and the real German film that influenced it (The White Hell of Pitz Palu, which plays at Melanie Laurent's theater). There are also likable tributes to Italian filmmaker Enzo Castellari, who helmed the original Basterds (and who appears as a Nazi general in the film's finale), and actor Rod Taylor, who shares some amusing stories about how he came to be cast as Winston Churchill. Less intriguing is "Quentin Tarantino's Camera Angel," a three-minute collection of cheeky comments by the film's European clapper handler, and "Hi Sallys," a montage of blown takes and salutes from cast and crew to editor Sally Menke; same goes for "The Making of 'Nation's Pride,'" a silly, faux making-of documentary with Roth affecting an atrocious accent as its director. The extended and alternate scenes--three in total--are also minor at best, and there are galleries of poster art and previews as well. After watching the special edition, one can't help but feel that a simple commentary from Tarantino might've rendered the majority of these extras, well, extraneous. --Paul Gaita

Product Description

Brad Pitt takes no prisoners in Quentin Tarantino’s high-octane WWII revenge fantasy Inglourious Basterds. As war rages in Europe, a Nazi-scalping squad of American soldiers, known to their enemy as “The Basterds,” is on a daring mission to take down the leaders of the Third Reich. Bursting with “action, hair-trigger suspense and a machine-gun spray of killer dialogue” (Peter Travers, Rolling Stone), Inglourious Basterds is “another Tarantino masterpiece” (Jake Hamilton, CBS-TV)!, ISBN13:B002T9H2LK ISBN10:B002T9H2LK Material Type:dvd