The first look at Brad Pitt in costume as Lieutenant Aldo Raine in Quentin Tarantino’s intentionally misspelled Inglourious Basterds has arrived and looks as much like a GQ shoot as anything Tarantino would have in one of his films. The complete cast for the upcoming film was recently unveiled and while including several actors most have never heard of, we did learn Cloris Leachman had joined the cast in a cameo role as Mrs. Himmelstein — “a very old Jewish woman” who is visited by Eli Roth’s character Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz in a flashback sequence that illustrates the character’s baseball-bat loving need for Jewish vengeance (via The Playlist). Certainly a good bit of nostalgia casting.
As for the film, Inglourious Basterds begins in German-occupied France, where Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). Shosanna narrowly escapes and flees to Paris, where she forges a new identity as the owner and operator of a cinema.
Elsewhere in Europe, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) organizes a group of Jewish soldiers to engage in targeted acts of retribution. 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. Fates converge under a cinema marquee, where Shosanna is poised to carry out a revenge plan of her own…
The film is currently underway in Germany and expected to hit theaters in 2009. Tarantino has said he would like to have the film ready for the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, which would mean having it finished by May 13, 2009. We’ll have to wait and see.
For now, check out the pick of Pitt below and you can click here for a slightly larger version.
