Come anticipate Kill Bill with me

PS my friend saw Intolerable Cruelty last night and she said it sucked

PPS I saw Runaway Jury this morning and it was mediocre

I hope your friend is wrong about Intolerable Cruelty -- I love the Coen Bros. but already feared this would be awful because it has that Welsh muppet in it.

(s1utsky! There you are! I have a question for you about DV decks, but I'll mail you offline when I have time)

Still...Kill Bill! Did I mention I really don't like Lucy Liu either? She seems like a mean person. I'll watch her movie, but I won't be her friend.

*weeps*

I'll let you hurt yourself.

""Kill Bill: Vol. 1" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has shootings, stabbings, beatings, beheadings, disembowelings, amputations, mutilations, eye-gougings, slicings, choppings, bitings and a spanking. Also some naughty words."

I have the mild worry that none of the characters will be sufficiently likeable/hateable and that I won't really care about anything but the action itself.

Well, as Quentin explains in his interview, he's a writer, always has been. His...thing, y'know, is a novelistic thing, and he's not prepared to dumb himself down for the sake of a script.

Whatever, Quentin.

*sits in silent anticipation*

http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2003/10/10/kill_bill/

He's got a martial arts fetish and an anime fetish; Ebert in liking films that pay homage to things he fetishizes shocker.

Exactly! He liked the Tomb Raider sequel, fer cryin' out loud -- a gushing review for something like Kill Bill is hardly out of character.

the castration motif was amusing.

Ally OTM

"If you think I have given away plot details, you think there can be doubt about whether the heroine survives the first half of a two-part action movie, and should seek help."

I really want to see Kill Bill. Like I haven't wanted to really, really see a movie all year, the closest was I want to see Lost in Translation but it's not like I'm creaming myself over the concept (otherwise I'd have gone already, obv), but I'm like DYING to see this movie. WTF?

"Faster Ally Kill Kill"

Sean, it only said that cos it was hurt.

If all of the swords in Kill Bill were lightsabers instead - but nothing else were different - how would you feel?

I have a sword of my very own. Though I didn't think I would need to bring it to NYC.

You forgot boring and lame.

Sure, but this pretty much holds for for anyone, don'tcha think? Ally totally OTM about Dark City, though--it's really weird how much he loves this fairly intersting film. Reminds me of his ultraexuberance for The Phantom.

I haven't seen anyone comment on Uma's acting, my only real worry concerning what should be a superfun, superdisposable movie. It does seem like the kind of nonacting role she could really excel in (I'm being serious--think Keanu in The Matrix).

Anyway, I saw it, it was pretty good. Some very good action, lots of fun little Tarantino candy stuff, great music, often very funny. It was pretty bloated though--really should've been one movie. Some of the scenes played WAY too long.

i really hope this split-in-two thing is a disaster so it is never done again.

Start collecting eurodisco 12-inches while you can still get 'em for $2 because that showdown scene between the Bride and O-Ren with that Santa Esmaralda track as the score is going to have nu-cratediggers glomming onto that shit like next-wave rare groove.

Like everyone else, I groaned when I first heard this was going to be in two parts, but now it seems to make sense. I couldn't imagine sitting through the Daryl Hannah and Michael Madsen sequences after all the House of Blue Leaves craziness. Even if it had been edited more judiciously, I have a feeling the linearity of the plot would've made me restless at a certain point.

Disappointed that the RZA's score was fairly minimal -- in fact, I had a hard time discerning what was actually original music.

http://theimaginaryworld.com/box722.jpg

Quentin drives the Pussy Wagon now.

also the garden behind the House Of Blue Leaves is one of the most beautifully designed + lit sets of all time.

Also, I hope they release a special edition DVD that comes with a free "PUSSY WAGON" keychain.

Nate the Dork: "HOLY FUCKING SHIT HE'S BRINGING IT RAGING BULL STYLE"

S1utsky: "yeh"

hey that black and white part was obviously that Sword of Doom reference I was talking about it isn't inexplicable !@#$#@!$@

I just heard that there's like an "easter egg" after the end credits, so now I'm pissed I didn't stay for them. Did anyone see it? Could you descibe it to me?

what genre was the vernita green scene supposed to represent?

Dan: yeah, how great was that!

here: http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~alexward/script.htm

Pam Grier blaxploitation, supposedly (though I am disappointed with the lack of razors hidden in her hair)

movie is worth seeing, but not the greatest that was released this year.

Bud = Zombie
Elle = Western
Bill = "suspense" of all things.

Sorry.

1) GO-GO! She steals the movie, IMHO, and her duel scene with The Bride is the highlight of the final big fight sequence.

2) The rockin' handclap/kick/synth(?) track that played as the anime O-ren Ishii was rooftop sniping. If this is a RZA track I just want an entire cd of this type of shit. If it's not RZA -- who is it?

: related note : I was surprised at the non-Wuness of the incidental music. Really simple yet suspenseful use of sounds with nary an MPC beat in sight.And that Morricone music *swoon*!

3) The orange skies fake ass airplane scenes.

Good movie. Can't wait to see it again.

I will chop up violent people with a machete or bang their heads repeatedly in a door.

*those who own Beretta 70 will understand my dorkery.

but its the only thing the world still loves us for! well, that and our pizza pies. and our, how you say, yankee doodle mutherfucker cheeseburgers.

That sounds like the best Applebee's menu item ever. Eatin' good in the neighborhood!

For what it's worth when I went to see it for a second time today (to sort out my conflicting thoughts on it) two jackasses brough their 10-12 year old sons and i thought that was pretty horrifying. I doubt they can appreciate the irony of the violence.

fyi to momus-kill bill has a great eyepatch scene.

Yeah, well, it was a last minute change, I believe. Check the original teasers and trailers, and you may be able to see at least one or two quick cuts that are in color there that were b/w in the film.

...

I'm sorry, but this film just flat out sucked. I'm not even going to go into detail, because all I have to say is this - I was not engaged at all on any level whatsoever in any sort of emotion, experience, suspense, enjoyment (or distate, for that matter). It just felt totally flat, empty, and dull. Actually, fuck that, I'm not apologizing. This film sucked, and I do really only say this about once a year, but
"I WANT MY TIME BACK!"

Wouldn't it be nice if, in the year of 'shock and awe', an American director made a film which wasn't 'the most violent movie ever' or 'the ultimate film violence desensitizer'?

vs.

"Wouldn't it be nice if, in a time of racism, sexism, Republicanism, and general assholishness, a 'cool kids' magazine didn't gleefully rejoice in these things, in the name of supposedly 'desensitizing' us to them?"

visually too, it was quite lovely. and i enjoyed the music as well.

That thesis was, I believe, disproved.

Hmm. The music I'm thinking of was during the "sword presentation ritual" with the whistling, with Edda Dell Orso (sp?) type singing - sounded just like something out of a Leone western. I need to check out this Bacalov feller. Any recommendations?

Probably not a good thing though; little kids shouldn't be watching all that violence!

Oh Momus you're so cute when you're full of it!

WARNING: minor spoilers

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/10/10/DD25088.DTL&type=movies

Bloody 'Kill Bill' slices through endless combat
Mick LaSalle

"Technically, you shouldn't believe any review of Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill: Volume 1" that you've read so far because the film world's auteur du jour decided just this week to make last-minute tweaks in the film coming out today. He didn't finish tweaking until Thursday. On the other hand, it would take more than a few days and a few tweaks to turn this mess into a cohesive product.
To be fair, Tarantino never asked anybody to take him seriously. But critics did anyway and set him up for the fall that he is about to take with "Kill Bill: Volume 1," a 90-minute orgy of endless sword fights, multiple severed limbs and gushing blood. It boggles the mind that after six years of silence, all Tarantino has to offer is this garbage.

I say this with no glee. There was a time when Tarantino seemed like the most promising filmmaker of his generation. And of course, he still has talent.

He has flair. He knows where to place a camera and how to maximize tension and take moments to the extreme. But with "Kill Bill," we realize that his flash and panache are in the service of absolute emptiness. This puerile, ugly fantasy is the sad but unmistakable product of a consciousness not worthy of serious attention.

In fairness, since no critic, including myself, saw the final version of the film, I'll go back for a second viewing after the movie opens.

The film -- really half a film -- takes its inspiration from the kung fu movies of the '70s and the Japanese and Hong Kong action extravaganzas of the '80s and '90s. Perhaps that in itself should serve as a clue. Tarantino's inspiration is coming secondhand, not from life but from fantasy, and from other people's fantasies, to boot. Once it was possible to assume that Tarantino's pop culture references were an ironic critique on the barrenness of media-age culture, but there's no mistaking it now: Tarantino's work is not a commentary on the barrenness. It is the barrenness.

Yet all would be forgiven if he at least turned in a decent kung fu movie. He doesn't. Instead of something kinetic and fast-paced, we get a ponderous wallow in gore. Originally conceived as one movie, "Kill Bill" is being released as two films, but "Volume 1" does not play like a discrete entity. Scenes are allowed to go on forever, as if to stretch this installment to feature length. And then it doesn't really end; it just stops. At least it does stop.

Uma Thurman's blood-covered face fills the screen in the movie's first shot.

She plays the Bride, an elite assassin whose wedding has been interrupted by her former associates. They've come and killed all her guests, and now her former boss, Bill (David Carradine), is there off camera to finish her off. As he shoots her in the head, the screen goes black. It's a disturbing opening, but it's also arresting. At this point, there's still hope.

"Kill Bill: Volume 1" is essentially a revenge saga. The Bride wakes up after a four-year coma, and just as soon as she can get her atrophied legs moving, she starts working her way down a list, killing people. In that way, the movie is like "A Chorus Line": The story doesn't move forward but sideways,

with each character getting a turn.

When the Bride shows up at the door of one enemy (Vivica A. Fox), the camera, as in an Asian action film, moves in for a pair of ominous close-ups as the soundtrack blares. It's an amusing touch, until we realize that Tarantino isn't making a parody but a bloated American tribute. The '70s- sounding soundtrack is cranked just into the zone of distortion, to replicate how it might have sounded in a small, empty theater 30 years ago. It's an authentic touch, but it's also 90 minutes of very loud, very bad music.

The movie is full of similar indulgences, including a tedious sequence about the making of a sword, and, even worse, a dull expository sequence, in which we find out how an American-born woman, Cottonmouth (Lucy Liu), became head of a Japanese crime syndicate. It's rendered as a Japanese anime, with lots of cartoon blood. Mainly, though, the movie is about combat -- with scenes of Thurman kicking with her long legs and holding a sword with two hands, as the bodies pile up in a circle around her.

Heads, arms and legs are cut off, and the blood gushes as from a shower. These dismemberments are not isolated incidents but the substance of the film, a blood-running motif. The centerpiece is a ridiculously overlong and grotesque scene in which the Bride, in pursuit of Cottonmouth, kills and dismembers scores, maybe hundreds, of people. The scene must go on for 30 minutes. It feels even longer.

As the body count mounts, and the blood soaks the floor, "Kill Bill" gradually begins to seem like a deeply neurotic expression hiding behind a screen of genre convention. Among Tarantino's many women with swords, we get Go Go (Chiaki Kuriyama), a 17-year-old in a Catholic school uniform who is Cottonmouth's lethal bodyguard. Whose delicious fantasy is this? And when steel nails penetrate her brain, and her eyes fill with blood, is that supposed to be funny? Or cool? Or arousing?

Let's just call it pornography. And let's just admit it's indefensible."

Then we'd both cry and cry and cry realizing that these were our fucking neighbors.

(translation: Girolamo, if you don't like it, fine, but that review is the biggest bunch of bullshit nonsense I've ever seen. How about you look up his review of Charlie's Angels and post that? I'm curious if he'd hate that too, since the only difference violence-wise between this and any number of films I've seen in the past, oh, five years is the fact that the violence is almost entirely perpetrated by and aimed at females.)

That was one of my favourite moments in the movie! Actually, I'm not really outraged that he didn't like it, but just wanted to take this opportunity to say that I loved it.

what a douche

(Obv. the answer is yes but not for any reasons to do with violence at all, I mean god, have either of them worked out in ten years)

Here is an excerpt from Tarantino's script for Tom and Jerry Kill Bill:

'Boss Tanaka's head is liberated from its body... The head hits the floor... And from the spot between its shoulder blades, a geyser of blood shoots up in the air.'

Hmm, 'liberated', hmm, 'geyser'. Interesting choice of words. Is the author an American, by any chance?

DESTRUCTION IS NOT 'LIBERATION'! NO BLOOD FOR OIL!

No. Because life is short, art is long, and there's no fucken room to know that shit! That's what's wrong with Tarantino, the absolutely pointless references to not very good films. But bad 70s movies are cool, and knowing about them, in QT world, is a good use of time. This Ye Olde Postmodernism is totally played.

'FLASHBACK - SPAGHETTI WESTERN STYLE'

'The woman on the floor has just taken a severe spaghetti-western-style gang beating.'

'The BRIDE on the porch; we do a quick Shaw-Brothers-style Zoom into her eyes.'

'A SNAKE WITH SIX HEADS, DONE IN A COOL BUT LOW-BUDGET SPEED RACER-STYLE OF ANIMATION, rears its heads to strike.'

'We see Japamation-style images of The Bride's verbiage.'

'The fighting style is now like an old Shaw Brothers film, with Pai Mei dodging at will all of her rapid sword slashes.'

You know, welcome to a 1988 edition of Saturday Night Live.

On Radio 4 in England, QT said that putting in references was a 'parlour game', and that he was beyond it. I just can't work out what he was on.

Apparently there is a war movie in the works, though, Momus. WWII, I think. 'Dyou know what they call hot dogs in Germany?' etc.

Ooh, everything solved! Women are brutalised, but (and it's a BIG BUTT, HUR HUR!) by brutal women. Wow, women can show how good they look covered in blood, and they can prove they're just as good in the killing machine stakes as any man! Right on sister! Wildcat fight, ROWR! Let's all masturbate with a clear conscience, then.

'An entirely witless and babyish film, usually watching women suffering. Totally dismal. Pathetic and morally suspect.' Ian Hislop

'I think it's a deeply feminist film, I think it's a masterpiece as well. The conceit of the film is that Uma Thurman is Clint Eastwood in 'A Man With No Name'. Lucy Liu is Lee Van Cleef. What he does is take the other side of the feminine, the dark side, and foregrounds it. He's constantly referring back to films that you know.' Bonnie Greer

Mark Kermode clarifies that he likes 'insane screen violence' and has no problem with the sexual politics of the film, but just finds this uninteresting and superficial.

Greer, though, shd kno better:

The conceit of the film is that Uma Thurman is Clint Eastwood in 'A Man With No Name'. Lucy Liu is Lee Van Cleef. What he does is take the other side of the feminine, the dark side, and foregrounds it. He's constantly referring back to films that you know.'

Where to start? Perhaps with the fact that 'A Fistful of Dollars' is already a knowing piece of proto-pomo, already knows that the Western myth is bullshit. Already packed with references, and aiming away from 'psychological' themes. Leone's 'Once Upon A Time' (script: Bertolucci) is practially Brechtian in this (epic) respect. So referring back is cannibalistic.

And revenge isn't feminist.

When you say 'an uptight social historian from the 70s', is that a way of saying 'a socialist'? Because if so, it's not a parody. As you know.

the problem is that blood, esp. well corepgraphed blood, is wonderful to look at, even sexual--release of fluids and all that, aesthicsed (sp) violence is an almost universal in our culture, and in the japanese you love so much, momus.

That must be why I look away from the screen when violence occurs, and why, when they're taking a blood sample at the hospital, I shut my eyes.

If Tarantino had made a film with lots of shooting semen, I would be entirely in favour. Semen is a constructive fluid.

Is it wonderful to look at? And if aestheticized violence is universal in out culture (which ain't necessarily so), does that mean we should approve? Is the release of fluids sexual? Always?

Isn't there actually something a bit weird about movie geeks like Scorsese and QT getting off on violence, something a bit cockrock?

Soory, but I found every word there questionable.

As Quentin Tarantino said when quizzed on the violence of his latest release, Kill Bill: “F*** man, I don’t feel the need to justify the violence. It’s what Edison invented the camera for; it’s such a cinematic thing. Literature can’t quite do it; theatre can’t quite do it; painting can’t quite do it. Cinema can do it. Sure, Kill Bill is violent, sure it’s f***ing intense, but it’s a Tarantino movie. You don’t go to a Metallica concert and ask the f****ers to turn the music down.”

In re: Metallica - well I fucken would!!
As for QT's ontology of the cinema, I think Andre Bazin can rest on his laurels here.

Why is QT off the hook and Gaspar Noe strung up? Surely GN is 'foregrounding the dark side' of masculinity? His 'Irreversible' contains the least aesthetisized violence I can imagine; simultaneously it's a more inventive piece of cinema than QT's pomo schmorgasbord. More moral, dare I say it.

The movie camera was invented twice. Once by an American to show people getting shot and stabbed, and once by some french brothers to show trains entering a station, rockets flying to the moon, and couples having arguments in cafes.

A bit later, television was invented twice. Once by an American in order to show the Jerry Springer show and once by a Scotsman to show a picture of a puppet's head. The puppet's name? Stooky Bill.

If Momus had a point besides "exacting revenge for the Vice thread" then I probably would.

I'm not quite sure who called this a feminist film; if Momus could point us to a review as such it'd be helpful but he's not usually keen on backing himself up. Which is all good by me, but I'm not going to like try to converse with someone like that, just like he shouldn't have conversed with 90% of the people on the Vice thread.

-Momus

TS: Meaningless studies with spurious conclusions vs Meaningless studies where bees sting trout lips.

I'd suggest maybe actually replying to statements already made on the beginnings of the thread by other posters but that would require actually engaging other ILXors in conversation and not holding a Momus monologue and jizzing all over us, like normal.

xpost Dan, I can see that, I mean basically it is a "feminist" film because it's almost an all female cast (regardless of their supposed attractiveness-I find Lucy Liu to be hideous for the record, and I'm pretty sure Dan finds Uma Thurman extremely unattractive, for whomever decided that if they were "ugly" girls no one would find it feminist) but OTOH I brought up Charlie's Angels for a reason; I find it hard to find it that "feminist"--whatever that's meant to mean--when they all apparently work for a shadowy male figure.

another xpost: oh fuck off now.

Lucy Liu a bit too feisty a geisha girl for you, Momus?

Momus: is tarantino indie? ;)

''So basically Bonnie Greer made a soundbite with minimal explanation''

A study of gender politics behind this movie is coming up Ally, you just have to wait bcz humanities departments take a while to catch up.

I would agree with this had A) I at one point in my life not thought Ayn Rand was a total quack shitface, B) she had ever made me laugh ONCE.

Humor is a weapon. It may only be my opinion, but sometimes I feel that being able to laugh at super-violence (as I myself once did in theaters playing Reservoir Dogs and Clockwork Orange, among other films) is a way of defusing some of the part of our psyche that stores & obsesses over bloody images that we may have come across in films, music, literature, life, etc. Almost as though laughter-at-violence (when that is the INTENTION) = psych steam-release valve.

Is it really a big deal that it's girls hacking each other up instead of boys, anyway?

This is the point, isn't it: 'films, music, literature, life, etc'. Life, etc? In that order? I'd wager that most ILXors don't see much violence in their lives, still less the kind of violence that QT films. So these bloody images come from other films: and they needn't. It is possible to go without. Laughing here solves a problem that needn't be there in the first place.

What can I say? Real violence does exist, and it doesn't do to laugh at it.

So what, you just decided to post preconceived notions without reading any of the posts in the thread?

Positive things about the film:

- The O-Ren sequence plays out like a live-action anime film; I felt like I was watching Ninja Scroll come to life during that entire sequence (only without the demons). In particular, the aforementioned silhouette scene in that sequence was breathtaking.

- I like Tarantino's storytelling conceits. I like the out-of-sequence back and forth pacing (had the story unfolded in strict chronological order, the movie would have ended on an anticlimax rather than a cliffhanger).

- Despite the comic-book nature of the violence, the characters conform to its rules; you don't see someone get injured, scream "AAARGH!" and then shrug it off like it didn't happen. (See again the two climactic fights and notice that the participants feel the aftermath.)

- The assassins who jacked up The Bride are humanized before/during their confrontations (Vernita and her discovery of family life, O-Ren's horrific childhood). On one level the movie is a deeply unambiguous revenge fantasy, but on another it isn't; the O-Ren confrontation souldn't have been resolved in a different manner, but the Vernita conflict didn't have to play out the way it did, having not read the script linked earlier I don't know if this is something that will come back in Vol 2 or not.

*COUGH*sense of humor*COUGH*

Well, that's fine, but a) 'Reservoir Dogs' and b) 'The Killing'

- Despite the comic-book nature of the violence, the characters conform to its rules; you don't see someone get injured, scream "AAARGH!" and then shrug it off like it didn't happen. (See again the two climactic fights and notice that the participants feel the aftermath.)

This just isn't a virtue! It means the continuity dept didn't drop the ball.

Okay, there are virtues, there are virtues, and by contributing to the thread I'm contradicting myself, but better films get shorter threads, less proper attention. Films that deal with the world rather than other movies - and no, for most of the world's population the two are not co-extensive!! So that'll be my final word too.

Oh NO! It's been used in other movies, so it's WORTHLESS here! What a fool I've been!

This just isn't a virtue! It means the continuity dept didn't drop the ball.

TRANSLATION: "I have already decided I don't like this movie so I will discount anything positive that is said about it." (see also me re: Justin Timberlake)

In your opinion. But you seem not to get that other people might have opinions different than yours.

So basically you begrudge the fact that people want to talk about a film you haven't seen yet more than your favorite issue/feeling movie. (Dan proving "you read into things what you want to see" SHOCKAH) (I wonder if I should delete that last parenthetical aside as it's ripe for misunderstanding, particularly since Enrique said he was outie) (Ah fuck it)

- Despite the comic-book nature of the violence, the characters conform to its rules; you don't see someone get injured, scream "AAARGH!" and then shrug it off like it didn't happen. (See again the two climactic fights and notice that the participants feel the aftermath.)

It's not just 'my opinion' here that's at stake. When we're saying that simple continuity work is a virtue then the history of filmmaking is at stake!

Other people are free to opine that this is a virtue, and yet more are free to be reletavistic and say that no one opinion is better than another. No-one's stopping them.

But, seriously. It's not about issues that I'm interested in; it's about the idea of film as something that can observe, explain, treat, even, the world we live in. Films about revenge fantasies of kung-fu assassins...? C'mon.

AKA "I don't like action movies so I pay no attention to what happens in them."

Is there a word missing here or am I being thick?

Possibly the better way of phrasing this is "I hold action movies to the same standard I hold documentaries because hey, they're both movies."

“F*** man, I don’t feel the need to justify the violence. It’s what Edison invented the camera for

I mean, has he got Edison mixed up with Smith and Wesson?

you don't see someone get injured, scream "AAARGH!" and then shrug it off like it didn't happen.

Having read the script, I have to say this is just not true. Read the chapter entitled Yuki's Revenge, where Yuki, 'dressed in her Japanese private schoolgirl outfit with white blouse, plaid skirt, bobby socks, blazer, and barrettes in her hair', does a bunch of stereotypical Japanese tourist things before becoming 'evil' (her tourism turns into 'stalking') and justifying a horrific death at the hands of The Bride after attacking her with an 'Israel sub-machine gun'. But, guess what, she does indeed 'shrug it off':

'The Bride shot up, pulls herself to the top of the stairs.
She sees Yuki lying at the bottom, dead.

Yuki's face, dead, eyes closed...then they pop up open...
Guess what...she's not dead. Though she's bloody and her
schoolgirl uniform is filled with bullet holes she rises. Her
head turns in the direction of the Bride...

The Bride sees this and can't believe it...'

But of course it justifies the pumping of more bullets into the stereotypical Japanese schoolgirl. And of course it's a 'reference' to pop schlock horrorflicks where the 'monster' always comes back to life, so it's 'clever' too. Do you get it? Are you sure? It's entertainment, right? It's what cinematography was invented for, right? It's Metallica, right? Turn it up, right?

Look, between Tarantino saying the camera was invented to record violence and Enrique saying film is 'something that can observe, explain, treat, even, the world we live in' I think it's pretty obvious which side the burden of proof must fall on. One statement is reasonable, the other almost insane.

Yeah, Edison didn't invent guns, but give me a break, violence has been part of the texture of film since The Great Train Robbery . (And theatre, too, since the Greeks). What makes Tarantino different in ideology from his idol Godard and his "all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun?"

i'm not sure what i think of it.

Here's the part where I'm supposed to wave around all the 'highbrow' films I like; but I won't, in part because I reject the terms high- and lowbrow.

I will say that most of QT's rhetoric is derived from Jean-Luc Godard, that Godard after '68 rejected the cinema of entertainment, that his work was flawed, that he did, however, open up our ideas about film like no other director.

And again, he thought, much like (for example) Jean Renoir, Abbas Kiarostami, Fritz Lang, that films should strive to be about the world, not about other movies. He knew that our sense of the world is structured by movies; but that did not lead him up a blind alley; instead it led him to break the codes of cinema completely.

Fin du rant

[description of the desecration of Momus's fetish object snipped]

A) You have not seen "Kill Bill Vol 1".
B) The script online is not the exact film that was shown.
C) I have not and do not intend to read portions of the script that are in the second movie; thanks for posting spoilers for me! (dumbass)
D) Complaining that a scene which is referencing a horror movie convention does something that references a horror movie convention strikes me as being about as useful as complaining that water is wet.
E) If you are dumb enough to go to the Metallica concert KNOWING FULL WELL WHAT THEY SOUND LIKE, you don't get to complain about it.
F) So far the vast majority of the movie-bashing (with the notable exception of Girolamo) comes across to me as "EW YOU POURED BLOOD ALL OVER MY WANK MATERIAL".

(sub-xpost: Enrique still has not clarified whether he meant to say that "Kill Bill" was "about the idea of film as something that can observe, explain, treat, even, the world we live in" and that those are issues he is not interested in, or if he left out some crucial words.)

(sub-sub-xpost: s1utsky OTM)

I have no problem with the idea of the film camera as a penis, or with sexy films featuring sperm. But American culture has always had problems with fucking. Problems it apparently doesn't have with killing. It's 'clean' to kill but 'dirty' to fuck. We can safely say that one film Tarantino will not be remaking any time soon is 'In The Empire of the Senses'.

(xp)

(I have not had time to read this thread.)

Because it saves time. I have a job, there are lots of things I want to do before dying, and basically, no, I do not have time. There might be the odd worthwhile actioner - but I can't think of any.

godard didn't think movies should be about other movies?!!!

I hear you, and I tried to explain this, but no, he didn't; instead, he saw that people, especially young people in post-war Europe, who couldn't cling to the tarnished heritage of their parent's culture, saw the world through a movie filter. This became, from about '65, political for Godard, and by '68 he saw Hollywood cinema as an ideological mechanism for keeping people passive. To cut a long story short.

(sub-xpost: Enrique still has not clarified whether he meant to say that "Kill Bill" was "about the idea of film as something that can observe, explain, treat, even, the world we live in" and that those are issues he is not interested in, or if he left out some crucial words.)

No, sorry I meant 'it's about' as in 'I'm all about'. 'Kill Bill' is not about much that I can identify in the world.

No, it's not my wank material because I'm not going to see it.

How about "EW SOME PEOPLE POUR BLOOD ALL OVER THEIR OWN WANK MATERIAL"?

So admit it's a genre you don't really know anything about/have little experience in, rather than dismissing it as infantile!

Well, see above, but this postmodernist angle is sure played out by now. Not completely - obv. the election of Arnie is some justification for the pomo analysis. If 'Pulp Fiction' had merit it was, as QT has said, because of the friction between genre charactrers and real situations.

But, y'know, we've had 'Scream' since then: every freakin movie is 'about' other movies, or far too many of them are. And I'll agree with David Thomson that no-one in the US is making films about what it's like to live there. There's a big problem there.

Huh? It has no bearing on a film where a bunch of beautiful women get 'killed'? Come again?

Okay, gimme the five best actioners I ought not diss, but I have to say I've seen enough. Or, I've seen more action movies than I have films from South America. Which is not a good thing.

I haven't seen the Battle Royale films, but I made sure to mention them in my 'content free' and (apparently) 'apolitical' piece in Vice magazine about the homeless, to point up the bloodthirsty and tough-minded context (money plus ultraviolence) in which the social problem of homelessness is set. And I -- like Godard, but not Tarantino -- would completely connect it to Marx's concept of 'false consciousness', the idea that capitalism tries to make us love its own spectacular callousness.

(The idea that Battle Royale serves as some great commentary is foolish at best and I'd highly suggest you actually see the film before you stick your neck out on that one, Momus-san)

...In the summer of 1968, lame duck president Lyndon Johnson nominated [Supreme Court Justice] Fortas for chief justice. In the Fortas nomination, Senate conservatives found a way to attack the entire Warren court. Their weapon would be Fortas's liberal rulings on pornography. The print of Flaming Creatures confiscated in Ann Arbor was flown to Washington, DC, at the behest of Senator Strom Thurmond, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The senator "already has some experience as a film critic," Variety noted. "He recently railed against The New York Times for criticizing The Green Berets."..

...More suggestive was the account of Flaming Creatures an anonymous senator offered a Newsweek correspondent: "That movie was so sick," the senator explained, "I couldn't even get aroused." Thus the movie's failure as pornography was something worse than pornography itself.

Now I don't really want to compare Tarentino with Jack Smith, they're pretty different in terms of style, but what Smith aimed to achieve (in a much much different way) was in a sense similar. According to Jerry Tartaglia, "...Jack created the conditions in which the confluence of actors, sets, costumes, and impossible actions bring about 'accidents' which move the viewer out of the state of reverie and into an alienated state of awareness." Like I said, that's pretty different from Tarentino, and most Hollywood films in general, but I think in some ways QT makes films in which a space is set up to induce both that "reverie" and "alienated state of awareness." Most of the time I've found he's not that successful at it, but I enjoyed Kill Bill much more than his other films (maybe he achieved it?) (due to less dialogue?).

Getting back to the point of the puritans howling about the film, well, even if I agree with you to a point, you've already lost. Any nimrod can point out the line of violence - even fantastical, senseless violence - in film (Hollywood or otherwise) streching way further back than oh say Un Chien Andalou or Blood of a Poet or whatever. To decry violence in fantastical film because it's "not realistic" is a bit like saying Flaming Creatures "is sick" because "I couldn't even get aroused." Reality is not the point in Kill Bill, even less so than most "realistic" Hollywood movies (in quotes because it's dubious to think that anything Hollywood produces is realistic), just as arousal was not the point of Flaming Creatures.

So does that mean there shouldn't be a cinema of realism? Where violence is portrayed in the most accurate, realistic way possible? Sure, I think there's room enough for that. Why not go make it then?

this thread is a bit abt gender but mainly abt tarantino (who is seen as an arthouse director working for a major studio).

so this is actually an indie type thread.

Okay, I've seen all of these but 'Dressed to Kill' (I have seen 'Body Double', possibly the worst film in the history of the world.)

NNW is great, but don't believe for a minute it's an action movie!!
Alien and Alien are good, too, though the first is best. Viz. McSweeneys 'Ann Coulter dissects Aliens'. I feel these films connect with real emotions and situations we've all experienced. Kidding.
Starship Troopers is averagely funny, but mainly as a self-hating piss-take of stupid movies. Overrated.
Ronin is just plain wack, unless your criteria for film involve 'good car chases'. There's something orientalist about the fetishising of Japanese 'codes of honour', too.

I did enjoy 'The Rock' for sheer idiocy.

xpost, hstencil is completely, 100% OTM.

Momus, are you a college sophomore? < /Chris Ott >

Yes, obviously, Julio. Do you have a filter that gets rid of all of Momus's posts or something?

You didn't need to include the "kididing" there in regards to Aliens; all horror movies connect with real emotions and situations! that's their power!

And why exactly is NNW not an action movie? What about the crop-duster scene? Mt. Rushmore? The guns? The chases? The pratfalls?

It's the use you put it to, you know?

Anyway, NNW is a masterpiece, but the action (esp cropduster) don't work. The comic acting is golden though.

(xp)

The crop-duster scene doesnt' WORK?! are you nuts?

(i don't believe this is always true, and his acknowledging it doesn't really explain what he's using it FOR - ok so we flinch, but to what end? - by the end of the House Of Blue Leaves sequence we are as numb to it as we ever have been to mobfilm violence anyway)

the discussion would still be occuring as long as it was a tarantino film, but Momus wouldn't get to pretend Japan isn't just as riddled with hyperviolence & sexual hangups as the US is, so he wouldn't want to play

yes America has a weird aversion to sex and love of killing, but how do I read this rather obvious statement as a critique of Kill Bill? couldn't you say that about any American movie?

Except that it appears that 'Kill Bill' is the most 'American' film ever made. I mean, 'American Psycho' could at least pose as a critique of yuppie materialism. 'Kill Bill' is simply... Metallica turned up to 11.

Go check upthread what the Miramax spokesman said (and Julio the statement about 'going for the mainstream' pretty much indicates how 'indie' Tarantino isn't, as does my guilt-by-association parallel between Tarantino and Oasis). I admit I made up the bit about Niagara Falls, but the rest is Miramax. They are positioning Tarantino in the mainstream, hence the lack of complex character development that disappoints many reviewers of this film.)

What's the problem, Momus? Violent Japanese schoolgirls ruin your wank fantasies?

Are you saying that because I don't kill my love objects I am some kind of macho anti-feminist?

Momus, are you a college sophomore?

Sorry, forgot the golden rule: never mention Marx after graduation!

Hmmmmm.

Personally I'm going with Dude, Where's My Car? as most American movie ever made.

I agree. Posted in the other thread about this, basically I think it boils down to either being into watching the results of a filmmaker getting off on cool visual and stylistic motifs, or not. Not sure why anyone would look for deep philosophical answers - at least at first. If I loved it enough, it might start to resonate there too!

"To say that the movie is violent is not taking into consideration what movie you're seeing," said Ms. Liu, interviewed recently at a Midtown hotel. "It's like watching a horror movie and saying the movie's gory. Of course that's the case. It's a horror movie."

oh BULL SHIT Momus if you believe that then I'm a radical Shiite. Fuck off.

Fair enough, guv'nor. Do you like Gavin McInnes's work? Oh, but he showed a lot of remorse after making his gung ho statements. Actually I kind of liked that -- the confused posts to bulletin boards, the promises to be ultra-left wing in future. I would fucking love to see Tarantino show any similar signs of humanity. I might even go to one of his films if he 'recanted' like that.

That's exactly what I'm talking about--I said this to my mom, it's basically not that violent a film, comparitively speaking, yet the reviews made it sound like it was the most violent film ever made. Pulp Fiction seemed just as violent, if not maybe more so, for comparison, and this isn't even entering the world of films like Scarface, which honestly Kill Bill doesn't even compare to in terms of unrelenting violent machismo fantasy world. Basically, from what I saw, unless I somehow missed an enormous chunk of the film (which is unlikely cos I was totally enthralled by it to the point of ignoring my companion almost completely), the only difference in terms of violence in this film and approximately half of the films of the past 20 years is that the violence is almost entirely perpetrated by and aimed at females.

I mean, if someone here wants to offer reasoning besides that as to why the climax to Kill Bill is somehow more disgusting and/or rentlessly violent than the climaxes of Scarface or Taxi Driver, or the battle scenes from Lord of the Rings or The Matrix, or like 2 of the 3 hours of Goodfellas, I'd be interested to discuss it.

I can't think of any other film-maker who could have a scene in which someone accidentally gets their head exploded all over the back seat of a Honda and it have HUMOROUS impact. And it's these moments of confrontation* between opposing parts of my mind ("oh my god how horrible he just got shot in the face why the fuck am I laughing?" vs. "ha ha ha ha" cerebral-reaction vs. visceral reaction) that I often find my favorite thing about all the films he's made.

*"confrontation" (that's a good thing)

Enrique, what is the "point" of the senseless violence in Un Chien Andalou? What is the "use" behind, say, the male hands slicing the female's eyeball?

(Arguing about "point" and "use" is pointless and useless. You can say one serves art, the other commerce, I say what's the difference?) (Not that I don't differentiate between art and commerce, I do, but that's not MY point.) (Get it?)

also i dont think people are saying tarantino is MORE violent, just that his violence is completely devoid of moral content.

I didn't bring Godard into this discussion, but I'm glad someone did. I think it is relevant and it is well thought-out to bring Marx into this discussion as one reason why Tarantino is not and never will be Jean-Luc Godard. When will we get Tarantino's decision to put a protest against the Iraq war into every one of his films? When will Tarantino risk his commercial career (and the support of Miramax marketing execs, whose glosses are also relevant) by making a film like 'La Chinoise' or founding a radical video co-operative and renouncing commerical film-making altogether? NEVER. Tarantino doesn't have the right to clean Godard's shoes, just as the Gallaghers should be banned from talking about John Lennon, because they have never and will never take any of the risks which were their lip-service heroes' lifeblood.

Lady, if you have to ask...

I disagree to a certain extent (with both sides of the statement; a lot of reviewers made the film out to be a horrific nonstop gore fest) but:

A) What is "moral content"?
B) Why is it necessary?
C) What about the films previously compared makes them "moral" and Tarantino "immoral"?

(general questions, not necessarily directed at ryan)

let's repeat these questions because i think they deserved to be answered! (i can't do it, however)

(xpost: thank you ryan!)

The funny thing is that in movies which more realistically protray the fact that no violence is victimless, like this one in certain scenes, people have a problem.

Chaki, I'm not dissing Inuyasha! I'm saying that the violence reminded me of the Inuyasha battle scenes where dude is hacking demons to bits with his fuck-off sword. It was rather obviously not meant to be a realistic portrayal of violence.

Also, Lucy Liu is OTM (because I said something similar earlier).

Amongst other things, the artist's attitude to power and justice.

B) Why is it necessary?

Because without a critique of power you serve the status quo (or, in the case of Oasis, become Status Quo).

C) What about the films previously compared makes them "moral" and Tarantino "immoral"?

Godard has deep political convictions, his whole vision is rooted in them. This is one of the good things about Godard, though clearly conviction alone counts for very little.

One of the critics on Late Review made a nice parallel with Michael Winner. Winner made films in which an act of brutality against a woman started a film (playing the same 'titillation / moral crusade' game that tabloid newspapers know so well) and justified a whole trail of vengeful mayhem which re-established the status quo.

TOMBOT OTM!!!!! The violence is cartonnish but the attendant fallout is not.

so "if you're not with us, you're against us"? (honest question)

I don't know. Kill Bill seems to be an example of how there really isn't a status quo anymore. Is there any status quo that would *choose* to have QT running around making movies like this (besides the guilty consciences of Miramax)?

In other words, a Tarantino with a conscience might just be the new Godard. I don't say he's not talented when it comes to editing etc. But what he needs is to think out his relationship to power. To put guns in the hands of girls is about as radical as making Angie Dickinson 'Police Woman' (Shock horror! A female enforcing the status quo!)

(I've read Vice and seen Kill Bill, they're both okay but not like the bees knees or anything.)

Fuck yeah! Guns, girls, fast cars! If Tarantino didn't exist they would have had to invent him. Maverick my ass. He's Hollywood when it looks in the mirror. ('You talking to me? Like my toupe?')

I was answering the question about 'what is moral content'?

Every film has a relationship to power. I personally prefer works of art which 'subvert' power. I'm not one of those people who says of 'Triumph of the Will' 'but look at the travelling shots!'

If I do see 'Kill Bill' I'll make sure it's a pirate copy from Chinatown. He owes it to the Chinese anyway, the amount he's ripped off from them.

But what he needs is to think out his relationship to power. To put guns in the hands of girls is about as radical as making Angie Dickinson 'Police Woman'

In what context does Tarantino find this "radical"? Stating that people have aversion to this /= Tarantino himself finding it to be some kind of mythical empowerment beast.

xpost jesus we've brought in Triumph of the Will the terrorists have already won.

TS: http://www.iheartny.com/yourenotthere/handt/6momus.GIF vs. http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/virtual/portrait/foucault.jpg

And Charlton Heston is against the status quo of having some kind of restriction on gun sales.

No, Zhang's too typically cute. Everything that you need to know about Go-Go's character is in her nose.

now go away and read some bukkake already.

2) I'm just going to throw this one out there and we'll see if someone else can make use of it, because I'm about to get off my lunch break and don't have time to:
In the Bedroom

Thank you! Good night!

i guess what i was asking was: does it matter WHAT status quo is being challenged? or is simply challenging status quos a good thing no matter what? (because i think tarantino challenges plenty in his way.)

The fact that you keep calling Kill Bill by its old title only underscores your ignorance about the film.

Interviewer: What movies did he ask you to watch?

Chiaki Kuriyama (Go Go): Certainly during the training period, we had lots of downtime and in those moments, Quentin would show us snips of different movies and anime films which I’m not able to remember because we never saw the whole thing. (my emphasis)

Hypnotized!

http://www.jdseeber.com/graphics/acrylics/movie2.jpg

(nor do i believe that making a balls-to-the-wall exploitation film which announces "i am going to celebrate the greatness of the violent genre pictures i have loved, and trust my fellow film geeks not to rush out into the street and maim each other with swords afterwards" is a necessarily apolitical statement)

My Japanese flatmate adds 'I also don't like narcissistic directors. When the director himself doesn't define anything, just tells a story. No responsibility, just escape into visual work.'

The problem with this is that if you've ever been an idiot and/or junkie, or been around them, you don't really want to see his movies at all. Maybe Tarantino doesn't build movies to model one's life after, but I think Korrine crosses over into needing his audience to be voyeurs and sadists.

Momus's Japanese roommate OTM.

Tarantino/Godard - so it's okay to namecheck Godard to justify Tarantino's validity, except that when someone brings up the thorny point that you therefore should be approaching Tarantino politically, you get to shout off "why can't you just have some fun and enjoy the movie?". Well, why do you have to namecheck Godard, then?

(Oh and I don't remember where that painting came from, I just did google image search again)

The anti-side namechecks Godard, the pro-side responds, and then the anti-side yells at the pro-side for bringing up Godard. CLASSIC!

http://www.posztershop.hu/stars_images/mmpost054.jpg

http://khal-ed.ifrance.com/khal-ed/taxidriver/taxi.jpg

http://www.bergen-filmklubb.no/cinemateket/h02/img/travis.jpg

Now I feel better. Fuck Godard.

>>The B&W thing was a little inexplicable.
>
>Yeah, well, it was a last minute change, I believe.

That wasn't a change, that was marketing misdirection. Look at those scenes in the commercials again; The Bride's outfit looks like it's smeared with oil, not blood. It was another anime trick, much like the actual anime section and the silhouette scene.

http://www.openix.com/~danb/godard.jpg

no offense to enrique, but i don't think anyone is gonna win an argument with someone who goes to the movies to have the world explained to them. they are looking for something other than entertainment or even a good movie.

Jonathan Romney (The Guardian): In the 90s, no one would have been terribly surprised if Quentin Tarantino, who raved about Godard to anyone who'd listen, had wangled him a deal with Miramax.

Godard (shrugs): Tarantino named his production company after one of my films. He'd have done better to give me some money.

(Dan, we're not subservient Japanese women so of course we're invisible to Momus)

and i started writing a reply to your morality Q's upthread but i can't type fast enough for these threads :(

(my answer involved the inbuilt moral quandry of all exploitation films ever and would have been boring, but would have included a walk-on by Larry Clark wherein i make fun of him as usual)

jones, I'd love to hear the reply though, whether or not you type fast enough--a good xpost is worth about 400 of my "frighten the shit out of Momus" violent Japanese schoolgirl photos.

xpost, Momus, don't play fucking coy. I'll drag up the thread if you like, it was great how you managed to offend every single woman on ILX simultaneously with your bullshit on how "adorable and sweet and quiet" Japanese women are and how "brutish" western women are. I have a nasty, vomitous taste in my mouth over the fact that you actually have the gaul to try to pretend you're some kind of profemale activist on this thread and that Tarantino is somehow some kind of debaser of womankind after you had the nerve to say anything like that.

Like I said, I can see why films featuring Japanese schoolgirls kicking the shit out of various men and women would give you the tremors.

http://www.ifrance.com/cineguigui/Battleroyale006.jpg

(AKA Fuck Godard in the ear.)

(x-post I see Momus has sauntered off into Selective Memory Land.)

(haha xpost again - ok Ally i'll have it ready by thursday at the latest)

i wonder if the answer to question B is "to make sure that art and literature MATTER ." And that's why Kill Bill necessarily makes a political statement, because otherwise that's just empty formalism, right? That's my suspicion anyway.

x-post: exactly jones, i suspect the film does have a moral position, and it's hinted at in part one.

three sides here:
1) Kill Bill makes a political statement and it is feminist/subversive/whatever
2) Kill Bill makes a political statement and it is pro-violence/reactionary
3) Kill Bill makes no political statement, don't be stupid.

Like I said, Momus, I didn't put my foot in ANYTHING. I'm calling you on your pro-women bullshit and "Asian fetish" slandering of Tarantino. Please see my pot:kettle::Momus:Tarantino post earlier. You have said some of the most offensive comments about Asians and women that I have seen made in a long time right here on this board and I find it absolutely disgusting that you'd even have the nerve to come and slag off another artist for doing the same thing.

Except when Tarantino does it, he does it in the context of a work of art instead of the context of his own personal opinion being thrown all over a message board.

And yes, I'm aware this is futile, people, which is why I just started posting photographs. (massive xpost)

they're not looking for art, either. I mean, I don't watch Brakhage films expecting to "have the world explained" to me.

(xpost: To take hstencil's point to its offensive extreme, I am deeply wary of people who view entertainment as moral guideposts as it displays a singular inability to distinguish between doing something in a fictional context and doing something in real life.)

Hello, thread title to thread!

radical idea of moral content = the film subverts dominant ideologies by...how exactly?

does that make sense?

I was referring to the very quick scene in the trailer that was from the big O-Ren fight, where Uma kicks someone near the top of the stairs. In the film, it was in black and white. In the trailer, it's in color. That, it seems obvious to me, was changed at some point (last minute or not I can only speculate). I wasn't talking at the wedding party scenes.

Ally: what resonates in Scarface as a theme? Corruption of the American Dream. Taxi Driver? The desparation of loneliness. I'm not saying that you have to take these things consciously in and use them to justify these films, per se, but I think that a strong case can be made that those themes are indeed why those films have stood up so well and been able to have resonated deeply among large cross-sections of the moviegoing public.

...

I'd also like to address the "Tarantino series" of films (like Chungking Express). I find it highly insulting and egotistical beyond all measure by directors who do this. I'm lookin' at YOU, Scorsese! And obviously Tarantino, too. Don't get me wrong, they've made a lot of wonderful films available to large audiences, but I usually feel like it's more that they're doing it to show us what "great film lovers" they truly are and not just so that other people can fucking watch these movies too. Look, you're a director - I assume you're a film lover! Stop trying to fight for the crown of #1 - it's another stupid geek-knowledge-uberhipster race for a "cool" factor. Sorta like I hate having people put their names and or corporations on a charity - if you really want advertisement, advertise! There is no charity or magnamity in showing off how great you are. Just pathetic conceitedness. *sigh*

That is the exact scene I was referring to. In longer form:

The trailer scene is in color but the substance smeared all over The Bride is black, not red. This indicates to me that:

A) The scene was meant to be in black-and-white from the get-go and Uma's make-up was black on purpose so that the contrast would show up better;

B) The switch from color to black-and-white for the action sequence is a common anime technique; when the artist/animator wants to highlight an action/image/sequence, the coloring will often go monochromatic and the background sort of fades out (compare with the grainy quality to the main restaurant fight and the way the silhouette scene was filmed).

Ethan Hawke wants to kill both of them.

Like the fact they both were/are seen as outsiders of their respective "systems": Thurston on the music scene; Quentin isn't truly accepted as a "studio" player

Ryan already answered this:

i think Momus is saying that it IS necessarily political though, and im not sure he is wrong. (i want to believe in apolitical statements though, just not sure whether or not this is a fantasy)

TRANSLATION: It's okay when a man does it.

Bullshit! Now you're just pulling the sexism card.

Now that would definitely be a great documentary.

The original posting, just in case anyone forgot - the link goes to home.real.com - what did you mean to send this to?

Quite the opposite: they're both consummate insiders using what they have in terms of power (both "unreal" i.e. influence and "real" i.e. dollars) to help those outside their respective systems.

Anybody who believes that Tarentino isn't the consummate Hollywood insider or that Miramax is an "indie" (even tho it's a division of either AOL Time Warner or Disney now, I forget which) doesn't really know much about basic economics or film or hell much of anything. Which is not to discount either, but to say let's just take "indie" out of the conversation because it's absolutely irrelevant (at least to where Tarentino and Miramax are now).

But that box reads 'QUENTIN TARENTINO'S CHUNG KING EXPRESS (directed by wong kar wai)'!

Actually, I'm baldly and rudely restating what Ally's been saying to Momus for this entire exchange.

(not necessarily the kind of morality I agree with, but that doesn't discount it as a moral code.)

(speaking of moral codes, duh, it's kind of a samurai movie.)

Momus, is your assertion that violent films beget violent societies? Or that violent societies beget violent films?

No it reads "Quentin Tarentino's Rolling Thunder Pictures Presents Chungking Express." Which still bothers me, but only because I saw Chungking Express long before he reissued it, but that's neither here nor there.

That sort of thing happens in music all the time, too. Do you think, Momus, that people who buy the records of artists they've never heard of on your label don't do so because it's YOUR label?

I just wanted to point out that this is the best post ever.

jones's last post is OTM, I fail to see why the Bride's situation is not a vulnerable/sympathetic thing while TRAVIS FUCKING BICKLE is some kind of tearjerker here.

Um. I, personally, cannot *wait* to see Kill Bill, because I Like Action Movies. With lots of blood, and gore, and explosions, and martial arts, and swords, as there's a lot more art to them than there is to guns. And that's it!

Does this make me a bad person?

[insert images from Takashi Miike's Audition here: violence done to men by a woman, a seemingly passive good-girl type, and pretty fucking terrifying if you sympathise with the Japanese male protagonist in any way. And a great film, IMO.]

Anybody who believes that Tarentino isn't the consummate Hollywood insider or that Miramax is an "indie" (even tho it's a division of either AOL Time Warner or Disney now, I forget which) doesn't really know much about basic economics or film or hell much of anything. Which is not to discount either, but to say let's just take "indie" out of the conversation because it's absolutely irrelevant (at least to where Tarentino and Miramax are now).

Absolutely right. And an important reminder that position can also determine the meaning of a film. Borges once said that if 'Don Quixote' were written today, word for word the same, it would be a different novel. And if 'Kill Bill' were on the art house circuit, or came from Japan, it could be frame for frame the same and yet mean something totally different. This is the number one grossing film this week in Bush's America and, as I said before, Tarentino is what Hollywood majors see when they look in the mirror.

Fair enough, but both weren't always welcome on the inside. Any influence both have now had to be earned over time. They didn't necessarily have someone more influential to usher them in, at the beginning.

"Interestingly", as I recall the Taxi Driver thread(s) featured lengthy discussions as to whether or not Taxi Driver was actually Scorcese's blunt ode to Republicanism (ie Travis Bickle has not been wronged by anyone nor is his problem ever explained besides the fact that foreigners/illegal behaviors/beautiful women/etc etc have disenfranchised him and now he shall seek his glory via violent "cleansing" of society).

(I'm not saying I personally advocate this viewpoint of the film)

I also hate Takashi Miike. Last year I was commissioned to remix one of his films for a Tokyo art exhibition. I took all the violence out, which just left a scene of two people slurping noodles.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE EVEN ARGUING ABOUT CHRIST JESUS

Hentai?

Sure you're not.

here again i agree, but it doesn't follow that its failure to be from Japan makes it bad

(have you seen Jackie Brown, Momus? i think it's a pretty nuanced picture)

Absolutely right. And an important reminder that position can also determine the meaning of a film. Borges once said that if 'Don Quixote' were written today, word for word the same, it would be a different novel. And if 'Kill Bill' were on the art house circuit, or came from Japan, it could be frame for frame the same and yet mean something totally different. This is the number one grossing film this week in Bush's America and, as I said before, Tarentino is what Hollywood majors see when they look in the mirror.

-- Momus (nic...), October 13th, 2003.

proves exactly what everyone's been saying about you, Momus! I mean, I agree to an extent that context determines everything, but you're absolutely determined to prove (rather Quixotically - coined after Quixote of course) that every American cultural product supports the American government, but you'd never claim the same about any other culture. Does Berlin Alexanderplatz, say, support the rise of Nazism because it was written at the same time? And does the fact that you're typing all this from the capital of a country that at one time killed 12 million people in concentration camps delineate any other context onto your posts?

(the answer is "no and no" if you ask me, but if you were consistent Momus in your positions on other countries as you are on America, you'd say "yes and yes.")

Fair enough, but both weren't always welcome on the inside. Any influence both have now had to be earned over time. They didn't necessarily have someone more influential to usher them in, at the beginning.

True, but grunge "broke" and Pulp Fiction did well at the box office. "Indie" is relevant to a discussion of their past but not really to their presents.

Hello, thread title to thread!

Gimme a break, you're interpreting the movie and passing judgment on it. And you haven't seen it. Thread title defense = weak.

Also, regarding the colour/b&w issue: it's fairly common practice to include stuff in trailers that either a) doesn't appear in the movie at all or b) is markedly different from the way it's presented in the movie. Most B&W stuff in movies nowadays (the entirety of The Man Who Wasn't There for example) is first shot on colour film and then transferred.

That's actually exactly what Mark Kermode said. 'Jackie Brown' had shown that it's actually relevant to think of Tarentino as someone capable of mature and nuanced films, but 'Kill Bill' failed to fulfill the 'promise'. Now, perhaps (as I think Stencil said) it's irrelevant to even ask that of Tarentino, or perhaps he's like Graham Greene and is going to alternate his 'serious' works with 'entertainments'.

and yeah what Dan said.

I didn't say that at all! I think decrying violence because it's not "realistic" is silly, but I don't think it's a problem to ask Tarentino to be moralistic. In fact, I said that there's aspects to Kill Bill that clearly are. The problem is, Momus, that you don't buy into those moral codes, not that they're not there (but how would you know since you haven't seen it?).

(xp)

xpost wif dan

it was me who said that, and i think it's silly to take ANYONE's films as a "promise" to make more just like them

Tarantino is actually very like Greene in that respect! He has a whole convoluted alternate-universe system worked out wherein he makes movies and "movie-movies", which might be seen as worlds within worlds, of which Kill Bill is the first i think (tho i think he was possibly more stoned than GG was when he worked this out)

Silly me, I like Brakhage movies and think they're entertaining.

(I know you're joking, Ally [at least I hope you are], but on the other hand it really bugs me when people say that anything complex is not entertaining. Reminds me of Talking Barbie saying "Math is hard!" cf. the thread on Van Dyke Parks's Song Cycle on ILM.)

DO NOT MENTION THE PINK ELEPHANT

(I'm not one of them - I'm strictly a movie hobbyist.)

(But I can still reference underground filmmakers from 40 years ago that Momus has never heard of!)

If you consider reboiled spaghetti western and corny split screens 'nuance'.

Look, I'm 'anticipating Kill Bill'! Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing on the thread?

...but then again, it sucked anyway.

So, two major American films depict Japan this year, Lost In Translation and Kill Bill. Comment?

Or have you just not seen ANY of these films? Why is Travis Bickle's situation "sympathetic" to you but The Bride's situation is not?

"...Also occupying the sex industry outskirts, Masato Harada's 1997 teen odyssey Bounce Ko Gals follows a gaggle of harried, kogyaru-styled schoolgirl hookers who score in their school uniforms, sell their soiled underwear, do amateur porn in empty office spaces, and stun-gun suckers. Casting Tokyo as a neon wilderness thick with aged "perverts" and teenage pimps, the movie frames a critique of socially permissible pedophilia as indelible as Harada's eavesdropping mise-en-scène. The characters—savvy man-hater Jonko (Hitomi Sato), blithering abortion vet Maru (Shin Yazawa), lanky manipulator Raku (Yasue Sato), unlucky innocent Lisa (Yukiko Okamoto), whose stolen passport and cash initiate the others' long night of salvation—are often photographed from a natural distance, as they navigate man-heavy crowds. (Playing against type, Koji Yakusho co-stars as a flesh-peddling hotelier.) Filthy with on-location details and urban qualm, Harada's movie has the micro-apocalyptic bite of an Asian-millennial If . ."

TRANSLATION: I don't like Tarantino.

I do think that's significant. It may be because LA is 'Pacific Rim'. Or it may just be because Tarentino and Sofia Coppola are 90s kids and in the 90s America found Japan cool (see 1998 style mags).

...

Or not.

There is the possibility, Ally, that he is ignoring you and you only (and not because you're a woman). Just a possibility.

"Cute Formalism" (iirc) to thread

I quote: "At least I'm not a BOT!!!!"

Or maybe possibly signify a cultural import/export shift that America (gasp) might be becoming culturally influenced by outside cultures (the popularity of other Asian & European films in recent years, hip-hop incorporating bhangra & dance-hall elements into the mix)...like OH MY GOD MAYBE THE GLOBALIZATION OF CULTURE ISN'T JUST AMERICA SHITTING ALL OVER EVERYTHING DEAR GOD COULD IT BE TRUE!?!

First of all, I prefer being called simpering sycophant. Thanks.

What exactly is so goddamned sympathetic about Travis Bickle? And if one of you uses the term "oh the nuance of the film" one more fucking time, I'm going to go back to merely posting photos from Battle Royale. I want it laid out without lazy critic's bullshit: why is a completely insane male macho figure more sympathetic than a completely insane female figure who is given the benefit of a backstory?

Where is the macho-ness? I don't think you can find that in the film - what you have in the film is a desperate, lonely, and sad man who has no life, friends, family, or companionship. (Don't even bother to cite the mirror scene, because anyone can be macho by themselves.) The macho factor comes from the silly-ass men who saw the movie and thought Bickle was the shit.

...

Kill Bill is a rather knavish film, methinks.

Points not worth acknowledging:
- Why do you find Travis Bickle and Tony Montana sympathetic characters?
- Why do you feel if violence is perpetrated by women, it invokes this response?

Points worth acknowledging:
- "Conan the Barbarian says YOU ARE TOTALLY HYPNOTIZED."

This should clear up all confusion in the future for everyone.

(Girolamo: So wy is "being lonely" a better backstory and excuse for wanton, excessive violence than "everyone in your life being murdered"? I'm in total agreement that Taxi Driver is a better film, but I haven't seen a good explanation for why Kill Bill is so "pornographic" other than "you don't like it".)

(And still no one is bothering to touch Tony Montana!)

Koizumi's Japan supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Koizumi's Japan releases movies like Bounce Ko Gals that exploits women, girls even, and shows how decadent that society is (even though I haven't seen it). The status quo of Koizumi's Japan is not challenged by Japanese filmmakers working in the mainstream of that evil, imperialist culture.

Boy, that was fun!

bang bang

This is the best part of this thread btw!!!! Next I want you to compare Goodfellas to Fathers & Sons, ok?

I hate to say this but the number one way to spot a troll on ILE is to go find a 500 post thread and see whoever Blount is still arguing with. It's the fucking truth.

Momus, it wasn't the Bride -- it was another character. And this exchange was not included in the film. Which is why it might have been helpful for you to see it before discussing it.

Someone tell me why Tony Montana is a more sympathetic character than the Bride.

btw, people are starting to be redundantly OTM here.

Bill and those responsible for killing Black Mamba's wedding party and leaving her in a comatose state obviously have extreme cases of bad attitudes.

I kiss this reviewer.

FERCRISAKES!!!

It's not about Tony Montana the man! It's about what he represents!

I want to know why when Tarantino has girls beat the shit out of each other, it's a disgusting wank fantasy, and why when DePalma/Scorcese/etal do it with Boys, it represents the denoument of the American Fucking Dream.

Scarface is just as focused on stylistic nuance as Kill Bill.

"I have this poster on my wall because Al Pacino does such a great job of portraying to me the perils of the absurdist gangster immigrant lifestyle, which is precisely what I'm not!"

uh, isn't that what I just said, Tom? Please don't turn into Momus, it would really suck if you did.

xpost Joel I take strong offense to the concept that I could turn into Momus

Jones, you gotta see Year Of The Dragon. It's SOOOO the flipside of Scarface. Written by Stone, dir. by Michael "Big Balls" Cimino.

That would be the Transformer that no child wanted.

(Lest I confuse stence, that's totally hypnotic sarcasm)

"Yo mang, don't you see how I am the physical embodiment of how the American dream was shattered for immigrants by the drug trade?"

(for the record i luv AP, but it's TUFF LUV)

Mickey: The first time I saw you, I hated your guts. I think I even hated you before I met you. I hated you on TV. I hated you in Vietnam. You want to know what's destroying this country? It's not booze. It's not drugs. It's TV. It's media. It's people lie you. It's vampires. I hate the way you make your living sticking microphones in people's faces. You lie every night at 6:00. I hate the way you kill real feelings. I hate everything that you stand for. Most of all, I hate rich kids and I hate this place. So why do I want to fuck you so bad?

(woman slaps Mickey, Mickey throws her on the bed rips her shirt off and they fuck)

I AM TIRED OF BEING THE ONLY PERSON WHO HAS SEEN THIS MOVIE.

http://www.mohaacrew.com/images/scarface.jpg

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I'm getting this tattooed on my ass!!)

http://www.moviemaker.com/issues/08/images/twomen.jpg

I don't care who could've played what roles in Kill Bill, it fucking sucked, and that's that. Why? There was no substance whatsoever OTHER THAN the references. Nothing wrong with referencing things, so long as it does something other than just function as a pure reference. Otherwise, why not just edit a supermovie together out of your favorite bits of other films, Quentin? Huh?

This is not a gender thing - witness Aliens, every 1970's Pam Grier blaxploitation film. I would even mention a few Verhoeven films, if not for the fact that it would put a few other more obviously risky dice into play.

(Anthony's totally OTM about Year of the Dragon, btw)

Given that the movie itself was perhaps half a step away from being precisely that ("a supermovie together out of your favorite bits of other films") and I still loved it, I don't think your initial assertion (references for the sake of referencing = bad) is true.

Hey, I liked Men at Work and Bullseye!. But that doesn't mean that I didn't know that they were really shit movies. They are called guilty pleasures for a reason.

Like I said on one of the other 47 Kill Bill threads, I'd rather watch Tarantino/DePalma brand of self-congratulatory style exercise than any number of other directors' version of the same.

This is even more pretentious than the post I made about how cute it was to watch confused, bored suburbanites try to digest Tarantino.

play them off as underappreciated gems

What, I need to have the "common working man's" approach to everything? Do I look like Bruce Springsteen?

I'm not afraid to admit that I saw Ski Patrol in the theater and enjoyed it.

That alone is frightening.

Difference: neither Stone or DePalma were solely obsessed with cool-factor.

I do have the technicality in that I saw it when I was eight. But nonetheless, I'll stand by the statement.

I'm trying to think of any "guilty pleasures" I have. The closest I can think of is The Spice Girls, and that's less of a "they're so bad, they're good" and more of a "they're so bad, I laugh at them" and even then they've got some songs that genuinely resonate with me.

Does everyone now understand why I dropped out of film school and decided to attend real school instead? Jesus god.

xpost: I don't think Tarantino was solely obsessed with cool-factor either. And DePalma was a whole helluva lot more obsessed with cool-male-behavior than you're giving him credit for.

BULLSHIT! I just saw a VH1 special on Scarface (mentioned upthread in a different context) where Pacino, DePalma and Stone all talk about how COOL the fucking original was and how they wanted to recapture that!

OH NO!! Tarantino is the P. Diddy of genre violence OH NO!!

hey, does Tarantino give himself a cameo in this one? And does he wear an all-white suit, dance in the rain and then release doves from his armpits? And if not, WHY NOT?!?!!

(I mean, the answer is clearly NBK but when comparing the two only the anti-KB people would equate them as having the same goals.)

(xpost Ally and hstencil making a more explicit and useful point than mine I HATE YOU oh I take that back really I kiss you)

I'm very confused as to how some people keep this 'fun but crap' thing in their head for so long without eventually going insane.

That said, I'm going to go buy the largest box of PBR I can find and get some fast food for dinner before you all drive me insane.

Just as soon as I finish ripping this japanese technopop record I had to spend weeks tracking down on the internet.

DePalma was wrong, it was missing chicks with swords.

It was a "feminist" film in the sense that it shows a good amount of equivalence between the male and female characters. Other than that, gender politics are pretty much whatever you want to read into it (film imitates life SHOCKAH) (Dan in "what you see is what you think" SHOCKAH).

Why didn't the thread end there?

You guys should also blame yourselves for not ignoring Momus.

That's not what I meant. I'm just tired of having to appeal to the straw man example you seemed to be placing there.

And, yes, I loved Natural Born Killers, but I'm an unapologetic Oliver Stone fan. There.

And miss the political-entertainment saga for the day? That can't be done