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shadowkatGot a little more done this weekend than this week, odd that. Managed to study for test, plow through most of the regency romance and see the film Kill Bill. Also had a very nice weekly babble fest with cjl on ATS, Hell Bound, where the season is going and well other matters.
Kill Bill - interesting flick. More for film buffs or rather film geeks (like myself) I suspect than mainstream movie goers. I saw a certain artistry behind it. As cjl mentioned - it was more about recapturing and splicing together different artisitic action movie styles than telling a story. In discussing it, we found ourselves analyzing the filter Quentin Tarantino used in a specific scene, trying to figure out exactly which movies he homaged and action styles, and commenting on the symmetry and flow of the styles. Like I said - a film geek/buff movie, which means it will do moderately well but not brilliantly.
The theater we saw it in was small and relatively empty and this was in Brooklyn. Considering how incredibly violent the movie is, it was disturbing to see several unchaperoned thirteen year olds sitting in the front row. It makes Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs look like Saturday Matinees by comparison.
Spoilers for Kill Bill
Kill Bill is probably the most violent movie I've seen in a while and I tend to like and watch a lot of violent movies/tv shows (Nip-Tuck, Angel, Alias to name a few on the TV end, Bonnie&Clyde, The Godfather, The Killer, Face/Off, Battle Royale to name a few on the movie end). It was in some ways a homage to some of the most graphic and innovative action sequences I've seen on film.
The story concerns a woman, The Bride, we never really get her name, who is out for revenge. Four years earlier - The Bride's old assassin team beat her up, killed her fiance, killed everyone attending her wedding, and shot her in the head. She was 9 months pregnant at the time. Four years later she wakes up with one thing on her mind - revenge.
There is very little dialogue in the film. And outside of maybe two or three scenes - the film is fight sequences and every single fight sequence ends in a bloody deaths. You feel the violence in this movie. Taratino uses film techniques, actually pays homage to, techniques that portrayed violence on film in a graphic and meaningful manner.
The first one is Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah, the men who changed the Western. They revolutionized violence in film with the slow-mo bullet shot, the twang of the guitare string, and the twist of the body as it impacted. When you watch Once Upon A Time in The West or The Wild Bunch you feel the pain of that bullet in your side. You flinch. This style was later utlized by Francis Ford Coppola in The Godfather movies, and the director of Bonnie and Clyde. If the violence in those movies horrifies you - than the director/cinematographer did their jobs. Taratino brilliantly recaptures this style in the first section of Kill Bill - when Bill shoots the Bride in the head.
Her face is swollen from a beating. You feel her pain.
And the scene is intensified by David Carradine's voice stating - what I'm doing isn't sadistic so much as masochistic...and the Bride shouts just before he shoots, "Bill it's your baby!" The music is Sono Bono's wonderful 1970s ballad as sung by Nancy Sinatra, "Bang Bang You Killed Me".
We shift to 1970s blaxeploitation film style - the style of the old Foxy Brown and Shaft movies, with bold bright colors, the Shaw o Vision Scope...the soundtrack ...The Bride shows up in a garish yellow 1970s car, comes into a picture perfect house, and engages housewife Vivaca Fox in a fight right out of a Foxy Brown movie. Actually it reminded me a little of Spike's fight with Nikki on the subway. During the fight, Vivaca's kid shows up and The Bride played by Uma Thurman, pauses. She plans on killing Vivaca and we are shown why via a black and white flashback, but she doesn't plan on killing the kid nor does she want to do it in front of her. The whole fight, including pauses, color scheme, everything is right out of those movies and action style - perfectly recaptured, with one slight varification - no wa wa wa on the guitare (according to cjl).
Then we leap back in time - the film is shown out-sequence sort of - we jump ahead, then back to explain everything and time goes normal from therein out.
The next person on The Bride's list is played by Lucy Liu. This segment is inventive, violent and takes up the rest of the movie. Without going into too much detail - the stylings of this section jump from:
1. Violent Japanese Anime (Very Good by the way, but reminded me of some of more violent forms - it even may have exaggerated it - when someone gets stabbed they don't just bleed, they spout fountains of blood, soaking the murderer and the room. If someone shoots someone's arm - the whole arm comes off. I found myself wincing at times.)
2. Go Go - a girl dressed in a school girl outfit - is the same actress and may actually be the same uniform, from the violent yet successful Japanese film: Battle Royal. Battle Royal is banned from open distribution in US, you can get it through the undergound video store market though. I found a copy sometime back. Interesting movie - based on the book of the same name which is available at Barnes and Noble. The story is about a futuristic society which is having troubles with its rebellious youth, so each year it holds a contest on an island - teens are selected by random lottery, deposited on the island with collars and each given a weapon - the teen who survives wins. If you attempt to leave - your collar goes off like a bomb and you die, if you try to disable it? The collar goes off. If you are in a zone that is declared out of bounds? It goes off. There can only be one survivor. If there is more than one - they'll kill everyone. The movie isn't as graphically horrible as you think - because what it deals with is how we each handle a situation like that. One group attempts to out-wit the controllers by hacking into the system, one group tries to band together but is broken apart by distrust and jealousy, some go mad, some find a way of outwiting others by working together. Violent in places, but very interesting psychologically and says some very interesting things about video games and human behavior. If you can find it? Worth a watch. And considered innovative in how it portrays action) Obviously Taratino found it and watched it. The fight with Go-Go in some respects is directly from Battle Royal.
3. Samurai films - just about everyone ever made.
Then back to the themes of Peckinpaugh and Bonnie and Clyde.
Watching the film feels a bit like watching QT's love affair with pulp action films, you can almost feel him lovingly bringing each style to life. Say what you will about QT, but the man loves films, particularly the ones that sit on the back rack at the local video outlet, which only a true film buff ever sees or appreciates.
Will say this, the movie kicked my urge to bite people with words for a while.
Off to fix dinner, do a little more studying, maybe a little reading, and perhaps watch Alias. Not a bad weekend all in all.
Kill Bill - interesting flick. More for film buffs or rather film geeks (like myself) I suspect than mainstream movie goers. I saw a certain artistry behind it. As cjl mentioned - it was more about recapturing and splicing together different artisitic action movie styles than telling a story. In discussing it, we found ourselves analyzing the filter Quentin Tarantino used in a specific scene, trying to figure out exactly which movies he homaged and action styles, and commenting on the symmetry and flow of the styles. Like I said - a film geek/buff movie, which means it will do moderately well but not brilliantly.
The theater we saw it in was small and relatively empty and this was in Brooklyn. Considering how incredibly violent the movie is, it was disturbing to see several unchaperoned thirteen year olds sitting in the front row. It makes Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs look like Saturday Matinees by comparison.
Spoilers for Kill Bill
Kill Bill is probably the most violent movie I've seen in a while and I tend to like and watch a lot of violent movies/tv shows (Nip-Tuck, Angel, Alias to name a few on the TV end, Bonnie&Clyde, The Godfather, The Killer, Face/Off, Battle Royale to name a few on the movie end). It was in some ways a homage to some of the most graphic and innovative action sequences I've seen on film.
The story concerns a woman, The Bride, we never really get her name, who is out for revenge. Four years earlier - The Bride's old assassin team beat her up, killed her fiance, killed everyone attending her wedding, and shot her in the head. She was 9 months pregnant at the time. Four years later she wakes up with one thing on her mind - revenge.
There is very little dialogue in the film. And outside of maybe two or three scenes - the film is fight sequences and every single fight sequence ends in a bloody deaths. You feel the violence in this movie. Taratino uses film techniques, actually pays homage to, techniques that portrayed violence on film in a graphic and meaningful manner.
The first one is Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah, the men who changed the Western. They revolutionized violence in film with the slow-mo bullet shot, the twang of the guitare string, and the twist of the body as it impacted. When you watch Once Upon A Time in The West or The Wild Bunch you feel the pain of that bullet in your side. You flinch. This style was later utlized by Francis Ford Coppola in The Godfather movies, and the director of Bonnie and Clyde. If the violence in those movies horrifies you - than the director/cinematographer did their jobs. Taratino brilliantly recaptures this style in the first section of Kill Bill - when Bill shoots the Bride in the head.
Her face is swollen from a beating. You feel her pain.
And the scene is intensified by David Carradine's voice stating - what I'm doing isn't sadistic so much as masochistic...and the Bride shouts just before he shoots, "Bill it's your baby!" The music is Sono Bono's wonderful 1970s ballad as sung by Nancy Sinatra, "Bang Bang You Killed Me".
We shift to 1970s blaxeploitation film style - the style of the old Foxy Brown and Shaft movies, with bold bright colors, the Shaw o Vision Scope...the soundtrack ...The Bride shows up in a garish yellow 1970s car, comes into a picture perfect house, and engages housewife Vivaca Fox in a fight right out of a Foxy Brown movie. Actually it reminded me a little of Spike's fight with Nikki on the subway. During the fight, Vivaca's kid shows up and The Bride played by Uma Thurman, pauses. She plans on killing Vivaca and we are shown why via a black and white flashback, but she doesn't plan on killing the kid nor does she want to do it in front of her. The whole fight, including pauses, color scheme, everything is right out of those movies and action style - perfectly recaptured, with one slight varification - no wa wa wa on the guitare (according to cjl).
Then we leap back in time - the film is shown out-sequence sort of - we jump ahead, then back to explain everything and time goes normal from therein out.
The next person on The Bride's list is played by Lucy Liu. This segment is inventive, violent and takes up the rest of the movie. Without going into too much detail - the stylings of this section jump from:
1. Violent Japanese Anime (Very Good by the way, but reminded me of some of more violent forms - it even may have exaggerated it - when someone gets stabbed they don't just bleed, they spout fountains of blood, soaking the murderer and the room. If someone shoots someone's arm - the whole arm comes off. I found myself wincing at times.)
2. Go Go - a girl dressed in a school girl outfit - is the same actress and may actually be the same uniform, from the violent yet successful Japanese film: Battle Royal. Battle Royal is banned from open distribution in US, you can get it through the undergound video store market though. I found a copy sometime back. Interesting movie - based on the book of the same name which is available at Barnes and Noble. The story is about a futuristic society which is having troubles with its rebellious youth, so each year it holds a contest on an island - teens are selected by random lottery, deposited on the island with collars and each given a weapon - the teen who survives wins. If you attempt to leave - your collar goes off like a bomb and you die, if you try to disable it? The collar goes off. If you are in a zone that is declared out of bounds? It goes off. There can only be one survivor. If there is more than one - they'll kill everyone. The movie isn't as graphically horrible as you think - because what it deals with is how we each handle a situation like that. One group attempts to out-wit the controllers by hacking into the system, one group tries to band together but is broken apart by distrust and jealousy, some go mad, some find a way of outwiting others by working together. Violent in places, but very interesting psychologically and says some very interesting things about video games and human behavior. If you can find it? Worth a watch. And considered innovative in how it portrays action) Obviously Taratino found it and watched it. The fight with Go-Go in some respects is directly from Battle Royal.
3. Samurai films - just about everyone ever made.
Then back to the themes of Peckinpaugh and Bonnie and Clyde.
Watching the film feels a bit like watching QT's love affair with pulp action films, you can almost feel him lovingly bringing each style to life. Say what you will about QT, but the man loves films, particularly the ones that sit on the back rack at the local video outlet, which only a true film buff ever sees or appreciates.
Will say this, the movie kicked my urge to bite people with words for a while.
Off to fix dinner, do a little more studying, maybe a little reading, and perhaps watch Alias. Not a bad weekend all in all.
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I LOVED Kill Bill!
Date: 2003-10-26 05:45 pm (UTC)Completely agreed. It's funny, because, based on the plot alone, it doesn't sound like the type of film I'd love. In fact, from the plot, it could be a real downer of a film. And yet it's not. There's just this amazing kinetic energy and sense of playfulness to the film, and also, paradoxically, an absolute conviction on the part of the actors, particularly Uma Thurman, which completely sells the piece. When we get that shot of Uma staring directly into the screen, demanding, "Wiggle your big toe!" like an drill sargeant barking out an order, I completely bought it. That is the point where I realized what an amazing performance she was giving. It is easy to ignore, since the film is primarily a group of action set pieces. Another moment that really knocked me off my socks was Lucy Liu's don't-f***-with-me monologue after taking her place as the head of crime in Hong Kong.
Also, this is the most visually stunning films I've seen since "Moulin Rouge," and interestingly has a similar operatic flair, despite the divergence in subject matter and the fact that nobody actually breaks into song. Even the bloodiest scenes are completely artistic; in fact, there is a poetic beauty to the gore in this film. Rather than be shocked by the huge amount of blood, I noticed how beautiful the bright red of the blood complimented the yellow of The Bride's outfit, against the blue of the sky and the white of the snow, and how gracefully the blood sprayed. Quite odd, actually, but so is QT.
I have actually heard that Volume 2 is where the story actually begins to deepen characterwise, and that it is a more psychologically complex film than Volume 1. Whereas Volume 1 is mostly a kung-fu flick, Volume 2 is a spaghetti Western. I am especially interested in seeing both parts of the film together, so that the psychological insights we gain in the second can help add more depth to the events of the first. For now, I'm almost revelling in the fact that this is one of the few films I've seen recently that I can honestly say is brilliant, despite the fact that its story is (for now) intentionally one-dimensional. Writing it out almost doesn't seem to make sense, and yet there it is. Artistically, its directing, acting, editing, composition, chronological jumps, animated sequences are just so amazing...It is one of those rare films that elevates and transcends the genre to which it is an homage. We haven't seen QT in a long time...no new films in years and already almost 2 years since his ultra-hip guest star appearance on the first season "Alias" 2 parter. I'd forgotten how cool he is.
Re: I LOVED Kill Bill!
Date: 2003-10-26 08:40 pm (UTC)Agreed. You almost have to have seen the film styles QT uses though to completely appreciate what he accomplished.
In the "samurai" films and this really is more of a tribute to samurai than kung-fu - the kung-fu/spaghetti Western Tribute is coming, the story is more simplistic, the focus is on the fight, the slash of swords, the brutality, and the intensity of the emotion. Those films from the 1970s blaxeploitation (Shaft, Foxy Brown) to the japanese anime, to the samuri genre - more artistic (Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon, to the brutal Battle Royale) focused on the fight - the fight itself revealed something about the characters, the weapons they use - the little girl with her spiked ball and chain (who is insane) to the pristine assasine in her white komono and her long elegant sword. UMA's yellow biker outfit and yellow jumpsuite causes her standout like a target in the Japanese landscape. The shift between color to black and white to blue screen to delicate snow and soft romantic textures - shows in turn a shift from the older samuri movies of the 70's to the more recent - Crouching Tiger. And with each transistion, QT tells us something about the characters journeys. Ori-Ren, Lucy Liu's character has come too far to allow herself to be easily taken, she forces The Bride to go through stages, prove herself worthwhile adversary, a true samuri warrior before she fights her. And with each adversary - from Viveca A Fox's Vernita Green (similar to the names of the characters in the Shaft movies) to Sophia (the french assistant) to Ori-Ren - we see why the Bride wishes to kill them. Each flash is kept in black and white, except in Ori-Ren's it is anime like Ori-Ren's own tale of revenge.
You're right it is not a story that is violent for violence sake. I hate those films - gratuituous violence, car chase here, fight scene there...video games. This film made the violence count - it came out of the characters and it was in many was anti-violence as I believe all QT's films are. You feel it. Prior to Peckinpah - you didn't feel the violence so much, people barely bleed or seemed wounded, they just fell down. Peckinpah felt that it weakened it, made audiences desentized, so he turned it into a type of dance - made us feel it.
QT does more than just copy action styles though - he exaggerates them, he celebrates them - the anime is almost a parody, yet not quite. He also carefully casts the film - including the role of Bill - Bill note is played by David Carradine who in the 1970s played Kung Fu - a hero who traveled from place to place on a quest and was a martial artist. Note we see him with a samuri sword. She goes to the Man in Okinawa - a tribute to the 60's revenge films,
and askes for a sword made by the teacher of Bill. The painting the name in the glass is right out of Sergio Leon.
QT's films are interesting - b/c you feel his knowledge of film in each of them, it's what literall would happen if a video store geek was given a budge and the chance to remake his favorite genre films the way he felt they should have been made - or was given a chance to honor them and pay tribute to the genre yet at the same time have a heck of a lot of fun with it. QT has fun. Pulp Fiction - paid homage to the gangster pics of the 60's, 50's, 40's and the noir tradition. Resevoir Dogs? Same thing. Jackie Brown - the 1960s and 70s. The characters are gritty, dark, ambiguous and complex anti-heros. QT isn't interested in pristine, he wants to get dirty, he likes the pulp tradition, he likes the anti-hero.
Oh the next part will probably be a combo of James Bond (Darly Hannah), Kung Fu (David Carradine), and Spaghetti Western (Michael MArsden).
no subject
Date: 2003-11-03 09:31 am (UTC)That was a really fantastic review of Kill Bill. I, too, couldn't take my eyes off of it, and kept playing the name-that-influence game.
Obviously Taratino found it and watched it. The fight with Go-Go in some respects is directly from Battle Royal.
Yes. Her character doesn't even seem all that much different, though her nifty little slicing-dicing ball and chain was a pretty damn cool weapon. And Tarantino's actually been extremely effusive in his praise to Kinji Fukasaku, the director of Battle Royale. He acknowledges Fukasaku as a heavy influence in his work. (And Battle Royale's not at all difficult to come by if you have the internet. eBay always has the special edition - with much superior captioning to the original and more scenes with plot - for under $20.)