Day Off with KILL BILL & Tarantino

So today was a "fun" (read: wasted) day. I went to bed at 3:00AM woke up at 7:00...made it to my first (and only) class--and it was canceled. This is the fifth time this semester (that's over two weeks) that this class, my Linguistics class, has not met. My teacher is a spaz, if you remember I've complained about her before. It's a senior (4000) level class...and boy does it feel like junior college. We take forever to get started, then once we're going she lets the class take over/monopolize the lecture. I haven't learned a single thing in this class...I bought the book, but I don't touch it. I simply don't care, and frankly--it's my teacher's fault. She doesn't think it's important, so I don't think it's important.

Anyway, I wandered over to the student center (MSC) and did some homework. My other English class is really taking off!! We had to read the first two chapters of THE CRYING OF LOT 49 (by my man, Thomas Pynchon). It's about a woman whose first husband (a millionaire) dies and names her as the executor of his estate. I'm only two chapters in, but it's already really freaky. So I did that, and then I worked on some Spanish homework (because you have to do it sometime) then I went back to the dorm. Just in time, too. It started raining really, really hard. There was hail and lightning, the whole bit.

With everything done at 11:00AM I was about to waste my day wandering the internet (or the like) when I got a notion to watch KILL BILL. The whole thing (both two hour movies VOL. 1&2). So I sat down and watched the first one. Now, I'm consider myself to be a pretty big Tarantino fan...but for some reason I forgot all about the KILL BILL movies. They're fantastic artifacts of filmmaking. As a somewhat creative person (who can't decide what he wants to do) I have always admired people who literally do it all. Quentin Tarantino, Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplain...these directors wrote (in Tarantino's case writes), directed, produced, and sometimes starred in their own films. Fantastic. Have all your wildest dreams come true, do it all. What better preson to make your vision come to life...than you!

KILL BILL is epic, eye-poping cinema. Sure, it's bloody and violent...but so is the Bible (note I am not comparing KILL BILL directly to the Bible). I like Tarantino because the world's he constructs are always complete, living, breathing things. The characters in his movies (while not "realistic") are much more life like than anything else on the screen today (or ever). I'm so stoked about his latest project GRINDHOUSE (which opens on Friday, and I am SO going to be there, right in the front row!). People say that movies are a dying thing...which it is...but Tarantino's new films are always an event for me. I used to go on opening night for almost every movie I wanted to see--but now I take my time getting there. Maybe it's because he makes so few movies...maybe that's what makes it so special. Anyway, his movies always have so much flair! Seeing them on the big screen is almost the only way they can truly be enjoyed.

Case in point--KILL BILL (vol. 2). In a pivital scene, the heroine "The Bride" is buried alive. As her captors nail the wooden coffin shut, the light fades on the screen. All that is left, after the final nail is driven into the hard wood...is black. Then we hear The Bride panting, sobbing...as the booming sound of dirt rains down on the outside of the coffin. NOW, when I saw this for the first time, I was in a dark movie theatre. It was a mid-afternoon show so there was hardly anyone there (I think it might have been the first show on the first day Vol. 2 came out). Sitting next to me was my good friends "no" and "one." I'd come alone because, well frankly...I didn't know too many people who were into movies like KILL BILL (my little sister Amber became a convert once she saw Vol. 1 on DVD...we both saw Vol. 2 in the theatres together a few days later). Anyway, the point of my story originally was...I was all alone, sitting in pitch black dark...just like the main character. For a few seconds, I got a taste of the horror of being buried alive. It was fantastic (and really fucked up).

Tonight, after Leah got off work, we sat in my dorm and ate dinner. I popped in Vol. 2, and it wasn't nearly the same as it was sitting in the inky blackness of a darkened movie house. Tarantino's magic works, but it works best in the theatre. Which is why on Friday night I'm going to get the crap scared out of me at GRINDHOUSE. If you haven't heard, GRINDHOUSE is a homage to the B (C?) movies of the 1970's--the hyper violent, sexy, girtty, cheaply made slasher/horror pics. Tarantino cut his teeth on this shit and has faithfully recreated the feel of going to a crappy 70's movie house. It's actually two pictures in one--the first is directed by Tarantino's long time friend Robert Rodriguez, who some of you may remember directed SIN CITY (a film I saw because it was rumored that Tarantino had directed a scene (he had...all two minutes of it) and that it carried the familar Tarantino thumbprint). His half of GRINDHOUSE is called "Planet Terror" and is about crazy zombies. Tarantino's half is called "Death Proof" and is about a stunt man who's car makes him (while he's driving it) death proof. In between the two flicks are going to be fake trailers made by other directors (Eli Roth of HOSTEL fame and Rob Zombie to name two). All of this footage has been aged and tarnished and scratched to make it look old. I've heard too, that "Planet Terror" has some scenes that are "missing" and that this effect (quite common in the old days) helps to heighten the tension (crap! what happened! did our hero die? what's going on? what did we miss!). Adding to the fun are the crap load of cameos (two words: Nic Cage (as Fu-Man Chu in Nazi/werewolf gag trailer shown in between the two films).


I'm a geek, I can't help it. This film, this entire amazing package is the kind of thing I wish I could do. Tarantino is one of those directors that makes me wish I'd had rich parents who could have sent me to film school. Spielberg used to do it for me...but then he went all WWII on me and well...he's kinda lost it for me (though I always make a point to see him work). Another movie I'm excitd about seeing is TEARS OF THE BLACK TIGER. I'm going with some dorm people on Thursday night to the Tivoli to see it (last showing before it heads off to that DVD press in the sky).

TEARS OF THE BLACK TIGER is a Thai action/western from 2000. Go GOOGLE the tailer...it looks amazing, the entire movie is all pastel and surreal...I'll probably go see that and come home and post a mini-review of that one, but expect a FULL review of GRINDHOUSE late Friday/early Saturday.