First Photo of Brad Pitt Hints ‘Basterds’ Is Just a Catalogue Shoot

After a long slog winning over everyone from skeptical Germans to Cloris Leachman, Quentin Tarantino is already a little more than a week into shooting his World War II action epic Inglourious Basterds [sic]. And now the first photo from the set features star Brad Pitt in smooth, modelesque repose — just the way we remember our grandfathers telling us about the European front. See him in all his Nazi-scalping sartorial splendour after the jump.

We thought at first that Pitt looked a little aged as Basterds‘ Lt. Aldo Raine; maybe not Benjamin Button-aged, but certainly more distinguished than the frosted flake he portrayed last month in Burn After Reading or the sandalled hero sure to follow in his forthcoming The Odyssey. It’s most likely just us, though, perhaps having missed the stage direction in Tarantino’s bootlegged script that called for “a tall, brooding Jew, Abercrombie-coiffed, and boasting the weathered visage of one top-secret orphan-hunt too many.” Either way, wake us up when Cloris arrives.

• First Look At ‘Inglourious’ Brad Pitt [Empire via /Film]