Wylie Stateman, left, Harry Cohen and Sally Menke at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, where Inglourious Basterds had its premiere.

Sharp dialogue.  Splintered chronology.  Bursts of extreme violence.  Obscure film references.  Must be Quentin Tarantino, the filmmaker who burst onto the American film scene in the early ‘90s like an adrenaline shot to the heart.  He won an Oscar and a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award for the screenplay for 1994’s Pulp Fiction (with Roger Avary), and was nominated for an Academy Award and a BAFTA for Best Director.

Sally Menke, A.C.E., whose editing work on Pulp Fiction was also nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA, has been there every step of the way since Reservoir Dogs, providing the brilliantly bold cutting for all of the director’s films.  Tarantino vanished after 1997’s Jackie Brown, resurfacing in 2003 with that roaring rampage of revenge, Kill Bill: Vols. 1 and 2, for which Menke received another BAFTA nomination.  The pair’s latest film is one that he has wanted to make for a long time––Inglourious Basterds (yes, it’s purposely misspelled).  The World War II piece follows an audacious plot to assassinate the entire Nazi high command during a film premiere.  The film opened wide through The Weinstein Company August 21.

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