Acclaimed writer and film director Quentin Tarantino and Warner Bros. Records will join forces to release the original soundtrack to Tarantino's upcoming film Inglourious Basterds on August 18th three days before the highly anticipated film his theaters nationwide on August 21st. As evidenced by the eclectic soundtracks to such previous films as Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Kill Bill, Tarantino is a huge music fan and treats music as an important character in each of his films. Though Tarantino is loathe to reveal details about what specific songs will be included on the soundtrack, preferring to keep it a surprise for the audience, Tarantino's longtime music director Mary Ramos says that the Inglourious Basterds soundtrack is similar to Kill Bill in that "it features Quentin-style 'deep cuts' tracks that record company vaults don't even have. And because the film centers around a cinema, it will include songs from Nazi-era German screwball comedies and some of the coolest score cuts that have been meticulously chosen from films you've most likely never heard of but will want to Netflix right away!" Inglourious Basterds was screened at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where Christoph Waltz took home the Best Actor prize. Tarantino recently told the New York Times: "This ain't your daddy's World War II movie." The film is set in the first year of the German occupation of France, Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). Shosanna narrowly escapes and flees to Paris where she forges a new identity as the owner and operator of a cinema. Elsewhere in Europe, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) organizes a group of Jewish-American soldiers to perform swift, shocking acts of retribution. Later known to their enemy as "the basterds," Raine's squad joins German actress and undercover agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) on a mission to take down the leaders of the Third Reich. Fates converge under a cinema marquis, where Shosanna is poised to carry out a revenge plan of her own. Employing pulp and propaganda in equal measure, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds weaves together the infamous, oppressed, real and larger-than-life stories of WWII.