Universal’s new 4K Ultra-HD edition gives us an opportunity to reassess I B. It still holds up. It digs deep into the appeal of combat movies that treat war as a sports competition, where Our Side would never do the terrible things that the Other Side does. In the process, Tarantino juggles film grammar almost as might Jean-Luc Godard. Unfortunately, not a lot of technical information was included in the press release. So we don't know if this is getting a Dolby Vision pass, or an Atmos upgrade or anything of the like. We've reached out for clarification so as soon as we know we'll pass that info along. All right folks, this is a day a lot of us have been waiting a very long time for. Let’s get right into what is arguably the year’s biggest news... So, what are my overall thoughts about this release? I want to explain how I feel, and what I think should be done about this release. Now that Universal Studios is giving Inglourious Basterds a promotion to 4K, it’s a good reason to revisit it! Now, the only thing this set has to offer is a greatly enhanced viewing experience. The 1080p Blu-ray was reference quality in its day, but I found this new 2160p HDR10 and HDR10+ presentation to be simply beautiful - and well worth the upgrade for. However, I can see folks hoping for a more aggressive object-based audio mix and/or a new selection of bonus features being a bit deflated with this release. To that point, I’ll simply argue that the price point to upgrade for image quality only isn’t too severe. And if you've never owned this film, well that just makes the decision a little easier. I’m safely calling this one Highly Recommended.

Even though it’s made without irony, you can see how this boast is off-putting to Shosanna, perhaps because the sincerity with which he makes the comparison is the problem: the way his belief that his heroism—revered in a propaganda film produced by Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) that will premiere in Shosanna’s theater—is no different than York’s doesn’t take into account the concept of goodness. A lushly intriguing grappling with morality, ideology, nepotism, and authorship, the entire chapter may be the deepest Tarantino has ever gotten. Freddie Zoller’s real historical counterpart is Audie Murphy, our Medal of Honor recipient credited with 240 German kills. Several years later Murphy became a popular movie star and a recruitment Godsend for the U.S. armed forces. Produced as propaganda during wars and as nostalgic distortions between them, war movies are an irreplaceable PR factor for the hero-making industry that keeps war recruits coming. However, I liked the heroes of the second storyline even more: Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), a Jewish girl who miraculously escaped the brutal reprisal, under the name Emmanuel, runs a cinema in which German propaganda wants to stage a movie premiere. With the filing of their war hero and at the same time the actor who played himself in the film - Frederic Zoller (Daniel Brühl), who is clearly not indifferent to Emmanuel / Shoshanna, who, in turn, has big plans for this film premiere. I think Universal Pictures has gotten so many things wrong with this title. Who is this release for? This release isn't for me, that's obvious. I'm probably in the one percentile. I want 4K scans of all my movies. I want 98.5 Mbps average bit-rate (That's Maxed Out!). I want 100 GB discs on every 4K release. I want no edge, nothing that makes the image look overly digital. I want perfection. Is this release for me? No, Is this the best version of the movie to watch? Yes, I think it's the best version of the movie to own, but it's a mix and match. If I was a studio, and I had to choose whether this title should be released on 4K, the answer would have been no. I don't think it was in any state to be released on 4K, but Universal did it anyway. 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.The Making of Nation’s Pride– Another 4 minutes are dedicated to the making of this film with several interviews done in character. Inglourious Basterds is one of Quentin Tarantino's masterpieces, filming it in his own unique style with powerful dialogues, charismatic heroes and villains, an unpredictable plot, carefully selected music (the scene under David Bowie's Cat People is especially good) and shootouts with rivers of blood. Tarantino fans will surely be delighted. As for the rest, it's hard to say. At your discretion. The biggest issue with 2K material is the fact that you need to upscale the image. When you upscale, you introduce artifacts like ringing. You may also have to over sharpen because of softness. This looks like halos around objects. You can see this sometimes even before scaling, some cameras introduce this also. I cannot stand it personally, it's really off-putting to me. Inglourious Basterds 4K has an obnoxious amount of ringing. It's obvious and distracting. I'm very unhappy with how this looks. On one side of the coin, you’re getting this pitch-perfect potboiler thriller, and then on the other, you’re getting this goofy bloody splatter 70s exploitation-style action movie. I just didn’t gel with it. But, as I do with so many movies I don’t often like the first time out, I gave it another shot. And another. And then another. Slowly I was turning into a fan and appreciating the tonal whiplash with each viewing.

Our friends at The Criterion Collection have finally announced that their first titles on the physical 4K Ultra HD format will include David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr., Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Jane Campion’s The Piano, Allen and Albert Hughes’s Menace II Society, Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell’s The Red Shoes, and Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night! The first of these is expected to arrive in November (we believe it will be Mulholland Dr.) and will be officially detailed next week when Criterion announces its full November slate. The rest will follow in subsequent months (starting—we believe—with Citizen Kane in December, given that 2021 is the film’s 80th anniversary). Per Criterion, each of their 4K titles will include the film on both 4K and Blu-ray (with most extras on the Blu-ray, allowing the 4K disc to have maximum room for video and audio data). Select films will also feature Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos sound. Supplements: Extended & Alternate Scenes, Roundtable Discussion with Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt And Elvis Mitchell, The New York Times Talks, Nation’s Pride– Full Feature, The Making of Nation’s Pride, A Conversation with Rod Taylor, Rod Taylor On Victoria Bitter, The Original Inglorious Bastards, Quentin Tarantino’s Camera Angel, “Hi Sallys,” Film Poster Gallery Tour with Elvis Mitchell, Inglourious Basterds Poster Gallery, Trailers, “Killin’ Nazis Trivia Challenge.” Nation’s Pride – Original Short– The 6 minute “film within a film” was directed by star Eli Roth and is presented here in its entirety. Dialog has been recorded well and is mixed at a good volume compared to the rest of the movie. I didn't need to raise the volume on my Denon x6500h. This is done well, and I respect it. This is a presentation that looks wholesale better than ever before, but does so in a very nuanced, considered way

DISCLAIMERInglourious Basterds (2009) 4K Ultra HD was brought by us at HD MOVIE SOURCE to Review. The opinions in this review are my own. It would be a huge, expensive and timely undertaking to complete this process, and with 4K being the niche market that it is anyone with any knowledge of the types of production limitations behind Basterds would know that a full true 4K resolution wasn't going to happen. Again, this doesn't make it a lesser release. Scott Pilgrim faced similar criticism but it similarly would be ludicrous to expect such a film receive a true 4K remaster given its production process, and that disc similarly ended up looking excellent anyway. The use of bass is very minor compared to the movies we see today (2021). There is some bass in the bar scene and where the cinema blows up which is quite fun. The use of surround sound is not the focus of this movie. It's light and is there just for flavor, IMO.

We also see the uncut sniper scene from Nation’s Pride, which we learn was directed by Eli Roth. A comic short subject presents Roth as Goebbels’ fictitious ace director, touting the Nazi propaganda film as if the Germans made EPK’s for their product. Another roundup of posters for films seen in Shoshanna’s theater offers some relevant history behind pictures like The White Hell of Piz Palu and Le Corbeau, a famous movie filmed in France during the occupation. Plot: What’s it about? Video: How does it look? Audio: How does it sound? Supplements: What are the extras? The Bottom Line Tarantino's first voyage into rewriting history is a glorious war romp replete with a slew of memorably tense confrontations, perfectly framed shots, bursts of savage violence and funky scoring. The Original Inglourious Basterds– The original film is paid homage as well as some of those who made cameos in Tarantino’s version.We in the killin’ Nazi bizness. An’ cousin, bizness is boomin’!” Brad Pitt scalps his enemies, Mélanie Laurent serves up a killer double bill for the Führer, Michael Fassbender is a movie critic turned secret agent, and the amazing Christophe Waltz makes all previous movie villains seem lightweight. Now on 4K Ultra HD, Quentin Tarantino’s brutal-but-funny war movie is really a critique of Hollywood escapism. It’s the ultimate wish fulfillment fantasy for every trigger-happy Audie Murphy Jr. who ever attended a matinee. I thought the movie would be tarred and feathered by America’s guardians of war nostalgia; instead it took eight Oscar noms plus a win for actor Waltz: “That’s a Bingo!” That’s what Quentin Tarantino does with Inglourious Basterds. To define this movie as simply a drama or comedy, the two broadest genres out there, is to mistakenly define a film that was one of the biggest surprises to me in 2009. After hearing about its lukewarm reaction in Cannes and how Tarantino was busy editing it after that festival ended, I wasn’t expecting too much. For that, I am fortunate, because everyone loves being pleasantly surprised, right? In the early 1940s, a group of US commandos, led by Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), are marching into Nazi territory to not only kill them, but scalp them. Among them is Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger) and Donny Donowitz aka The Bear Jew (Eli Roth), two of the most vicious men in the group. Combing the countryside for Jews in hiding is SS Office Hans Landa aka The Jew Hunter (Christoph Waltz), a seemingly genial but also malevolent man. After killing her family, Hans allows a young woman, Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), to flee. She later makes it to Paris and winds up running a cinema which will soon be showing a Nazi propaganda film, and she intends to get revenge. The Basterds, now allied with British soldiers, including Lieutenant Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), as well as German film star Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), infiltrate the premiere of the film to kill the Nazi leaders present, including Hitler.