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Offramp
Altar Boy of Jabootu
8 Posts |
 Posted - 04/19/2007 : 10:52:31 PM
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It'll probably make money in the end. For Europe they might cut the film in twain. I read that in the USA people were leaving ½-way through because thay thought it was over.
What puzzles me is that Quentin Tarantino tries to make it seem genuine by scratching the film and leaving out reels - and then he films a 10-minute conversation... Which 'grindhouse' director would have done that? |
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2007 : 10:36:54 AM
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I knew it was a two-part movie, but I nearly left after listening to what seemed like a 15 minute conversation about who almost and who eventually did fall into a ditch during a film shoot.
It's bad when the movie has you wishing you'd brought something to read in order to pass the time.
For me, the best parts of Grindhouse were the "Coming Attractions". Machete, Thanksgiving, Don't. That was some pretty funny stuff. Reminded me of The Kentucky Fried Movie, which I probably haven't seen in close to 20 years. |
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hbrennan
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Philippines
1455 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2007 : 11:01:43 AM
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They seem to have forgotten about the short attention spans of the audiences of the grindhouse era and the need for good pacing. Years ago, boring parts were a good way to get the audience to throw popcorn at the screens for the movie house staff to pick up, later.
"...yet it hadn't destroyed his brain."
re: Charles "The Butcher" Benton (1956)
http://www.henrybrennan.com/
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R. Dittmar
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
420 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2007 : 4:51:54 PM
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Hope you guys will forgive a rant here, but the snippiness has been building in me and some recent posts have convinced me that I’m not all wet on the subject of Tarantino. Though I haven’t and most likely never will see this movie, I’m more convinced than ever by what’s been said above that – if you’ll excuse the sort of salty language Alec Baldwin uses when speaking to his daughter – Tarantino has turned into a self-indulgent ass.
I think its all well and good that the man spends every waking moment in a darkened room watching every cheapo B-movie made in the last 40 years over and over rather than, say, interacting with real human beings. And I understand his desire to show off all this knowledge in his movies. But if you are trying to do a remake or re-imagining or homage or whatever else these Hollywood fancy-pants are calling it nowadays, at least do it in the spirit of the original rather than turning it into an excuse to show how clever you are.
The last few posts are 100% correct. The point of the original grindhouse movies was to deliver the audience a reasonably diverting plot on a shoestring budget, not stage 15 minute conversations about Big Macs or ditches or whatever the heck else some geeky screenwriter dreamt up. A lot of those films might not have even had a screenplay written down when they began filming. And I can guarantee that none of them were planned to run for 3+ hours just so the geeky director could show off all the neato-geato stuff he learned at film school.
What really tore it for me with Tarantino was Kill Bill – the first half. This is the only movie I’ve ever walked out of completely P.O.’ed. I love chop-socky fare as much as anyone, but here again those old Hong Kong directors managed to bring their extremely simple storylines to a conclusion in an hour and a half at most. When the plot of your movie is hero attacked and left for dead, hero recovers, hero gets revenge against his attackers, there is absolutely no reason to stretch that out for 4+ hours straight just so you can sneak in a rip-off of a scene from every completely forgotten movie ever made in the last 50 years. You can catalogue the indulgence endlessly (and probably have the shooting script for Tarantino’s next 8 hour movie finished at the end of your chore). There’s the scene when Thurman lies low in a van an looks at her toes for 10 straight minutes! There’s the 20 minute Anime vignette about a character that’s been on screen up to that point all of 5 seconds! An ill-timed trip to the can and you wouldn’t have known what the heck the cartoon had to do with anything! How about the classic “going to Okinawa scene”? There’s a title card – “Man From Okinawa”. Thurman walks up to the counter – “Can I have a ticket to Okinawa?”. A big Indiana Jones-style map pops up showing the path to where? Okinawa, or course! And for the piece de resistance, a subtitle “Okinawa, Japan”. Wonderful! I now know we’re in Okinawa and it only took Tarantino 10+ minutes to pound it into my head. And of course the martial arts equivalent of the endless conversation complained about above. When the big showdown between Thurman and Lucy Liu arrives, they both spend it standing around motionless for 15 minutes with their arms in the air. Be still my heart! An old man like me can’t take that kind of pulse-pounding action!
For you Tarantino fans out there, let me speculate that this film turning into a disaster might actually be the best thing that ever happened to him. If the film is truly a turkey of massive proportions, maybe someone will take the guy aside and tell him that the purpose of making a motion picture is to entertain the audience not prove how conclusively you’ve wasted your life watching crummy movies. |
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 04/21/2007 : 08:58:43 AM
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You left out the parts where whenever somebody spoke her name, it was beeped out so that we wouldn't find out it was "Kiddoe" until the end.
The humorous payoff (?) for that gag wasn't worth the constant censoring beeps that reminded the audience the movie was insufferably self-conscious. |
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Ambrose Bierce
Diocesan Ecclesiarch of the Sacred Order of Jabootu
USA
53 Posts |
Posted - 04/21/2007 : 11:21:29 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by R. Dittmar
I think its all well and good that the man spends every waking moment in a darkened room watching every cheapo B-movie made in the last 40 years over and over rather than, say, interacting with real human beings.
I feel really defensive now for some reason.
Nature makes mistakes. It's proven every day. |
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