Blah, blah, blah. “Inglorious Basterds.” Yes, we’re obsessed, but it’s because we got into a WWII kick earlier this year and Quentin Tarantino’s film dovetailed with that historical fetish. It’s just coincidence. Reader of the blog will know we don’t necessarily love everything QT’s done and have been hard on the guy, but ‘Basterds’ the script, is probably his Everest.
Anywhoo, Tarantino Archives have confirmed some more of the cast members of the film – or at least confirmed who plays who, so we thought we’d take a deeper look.
Sylvester Groth as Joseph Goebbels
As we noted a few days ago, Sylvester Groth played Joseph Goebbels in the German comedy “Mein Führer” in 2007 and he looks like he did such a good job, he’s been tapped to play the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda once again. He doesn’t have a huge role in the film and appears in scenes even less than Hitler does, but the Nazi right-hand man is present and accounted for.
Rod Taylor As Winston Churchill
78-year-old Australian actor Rod Taylor (“The Birds,” “The Picture Show Man”) joined the cast a few days ago and he’s been pegged to play the great Winston Churchill. Who knows what obscure film (or TV show for that matter) that Tarantino saw him in and loved him in, but either way, he’ll play the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in a small cameo. The scene will see Taylor acting and cigar-chomping alongside Michael Meyers as a British General and Michael Fassbender who plays a English field Lieutenant who was also a film critic before the war (which actually comes in handy). Their mission is to rendezvous with the American Basterd soldiers and attempt to take out the Nazis in an undercover mission in occupied France.
Martin Wuttke As The Führer
Let’s face it, almost every older German actor has probably played a Nazi at some point or another (often multiple times), and Martin Wuttke is no exception. He too had the privilege (?) of playing Joseph Goebbels in 2003’s “Rosenstrasse,“and in Tarantino’s WWII epic, he gets to play the big kahuna himself – Chancellor Adolf Hitler. Hitler doesn’t have a lot of screen time either, but he does have one juicy interrogation scene early in the story.
Lastly, we know we said there was no way Tarantino could have the film ready for Cannes of 2009, but we also didn’t think Oliver Stone could shoot and edit “W” in five months and have it ready for release this Friday. We were proved dead wrong there and it looks like we could be eating our words again as Tarantino is apparently shooting and editing as he goes along. There’s a real possibility that he could make Cannes. So we’re backing away from any claims that he can’t before we look even more foolish.
