Eli Roth directs Nazi propaganda film for Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds has become the object of daily blog obsession, but this is pretty cool news. We already knew that neo-genre royalty Eli Roth had signed on for a supporting bit in the new movie (as he did in Death Proof), but now he’s also taken a turn on the opposite side of the camera as the helmer of a Nazi propaganda short to be featured in the movie.

Details haven’t been (and hopefully won’t be) revealed about the gig, the latest in a long tradition of directorial cameos among the Tarantino school of filmmakers. After the failure of Hostel: Part II, Roth had publicly decided to give his career a rest, though he remains attached to a film adaptation the Stephen King novel Cell.

The Nazi propaganda machine found a particularly productive home in German cinema in the 1930s and ’40s, and the regime exploited the new medium with stark, disquieting work that survives today. Roth, a film-school brat with a tastelessly subversive eye for excess, will no doubt found plenty of old material to mine.

Related links:
News: Ennio Morricone scoring Inglourious Basterds
News: Perplexingly retitled Inglourious Basterds begins shooting
News: Casting continues for Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards

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