meester tarantino

finally went to see KillBill Vol.1 at the cheapies last night. good thing because it was the last day; it has been replaced by 'The Butterfly Effect.'

did you guys see it? i thought it was pretty good. you just hafta laugh at the egregious amounts of spraying blood. gore can have a cathartic effect on some moviegoers (sick ones like me ;). ever see Dead Alive (aka, Braindead)? there's some major blood flyin' in that flick. and believe it or not, it was directed by Peter Jackson...about nine years before he directed Lord of the Rings.

if anyone is intrigued enough to go rent Dead Alive, make sure that it's the unrated version. the R-rated version is 19 minutes shorter and lacks the full effect and humor. at least the unrated version is only cut by seven minutes. and if you actually like it enough, i can lend you my uncut copy :) and Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 2:Dead By Dawn is a great cult movie with copious amounts of blood too.

back to KillBill though. Tarantino is a master with the use of flashbacks. Pulp Fiction is his flashback masterpiece. and although he didn't direct it (but was the writer), Natural Born Killers incorporated flashback almost seamlessly.

i was surprised by how many people attended the movie though. i thought i would be one of a handful of viewers since vol. 1 came out in october. instead, there must've been at least 40 people...

i wonder if some people walked out of the theater, completely hating the movie. i think when it comes to Tarantino, you have know what movie genres he prefers to fully appreciate his filmmaking efforts. in Kill Bill, he borrows heavily from HK martial arts (especially Shaw Brothers) movies from the 70's (aka chop socky...even though i hate that term), spaghetti westerns of the late 60's (think Good/Bad/Ugly), blaxploitation flicks of the 70's (Superfly, Shaft, Across 110th St.), and Samurai movies. oh yeah, he's also a huge fan of Bruce Lee...whom he pays homage to with Uma Thurman's yellow and black jump suit (same style used in Lee's last film, Game of Death).

i also think it's cool that Tarantino used past stars such as Gordon Liu, Sonny Chiba, and even David Carradine. why not honor these hardworking actors, who were once huge stars, with a role. after all, look what Pulp Fiction did for John Travolta's career. prior to Pulp, he was stuck doing the Look Who's Talking movies with Kirstie Alley and bombs like Staying Alive and Perfect. in fact, in the ten years before Pulp, he was in nine movies...but the ten years after Pulp, he's been in 19 movies...many of them blockbusters (sprinkled with some piles of poo too though ;)

of course, all this rhetoric is only relevant if you give a flying fuck about the movie or Tarantino ;) but hey, his moviemaking is better than 70-80% of the stuff out there. i mean, really, how many people flocked to see the Full House twins in their latest movie? too many, if you ask me.