BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Grindhouse

  
  

Page: 12(3)

 
 
CameronStewart
22:57 / 23.09.07
>>>May I ask why?<<<

Sure, but your post above was so passionate that I could type for an hour and at the end of it I doubt I'd have convinced you one bit - particularly after the statement that your girlfriend said she never wants to watch another movie ever again (a claim that is so hyperbolic that it's unfortunately rendered kind of meaningless).

I'll try to keep it short - I enjoyed it. I It pleased me. I like how the first half is a new take on the slasher genre (forgive me if I'm wrong and it's been done before, but as far as I'm aware the idea of a stuntman who uses his custom car to kill people by crashing is an original one) while still adhering to its conventions. Tarantino's dialogue is, as usual, all written with the same pop-culture-nerd voice, but I don't think that it's any less interesting or substantive this time around than anything in Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs, and I'm always surprised when people suggest that it is. I listened to it while I worked the other day and it kept my interest and made me smile. I like that Earl McGraw character and it was fun to see him and his son again. I like how the second half does an about-face in genre and turns into a 70s carsploitation film. I like how the stunts are done with real cars and real crashes, unlike the CGI of the Fast and the Furious. I really like Zoe Bell, who I thought was very charming (this is augmented by the interviews with her on the dvd features). I found the car chase at the end with Bell on the hood genuinely stomach-knotting, which I'm sure was a result of the drawn-out dialogue scenes earlier which allowed me to spend time with the characters. I thought Stuntman Mike's abrupt shift from menace to shrieking, blubbering wimp was really funny and well-performed by Russell. I like the beatdown he gets from the girls and the hilarious "The End" title card. And as I mentioned on the previous page, one of the things I really adore about Tarantino is his choices of music to score the action - I think that scene of the horrific car crash with "Hold Tight" blaring is truly electrifying, the pounding beat and hand claps mixed with the roar of the engine as Stuntman Mike speeds towards them gives me the tingles even now as I think about it.

So there you go, that's why I liked it. Tarantino is one of my favourite filmmakers though, so if that's a strike against me then feel free to disregard everything I've just written. To guage your own tastes against mine, my favourite movies of 2007 were Death Proof, Inland Empire, and Ratatouille...
 
 
Bandini
06:35 / 24.09.07
"it made her want to never watch a film ever again"

She has obviously watched films again but i wanted to express how exhausting this film felt and to provide an antidote to the reviews that have stated that this will make you high on movies again.

In contrast, the week previously we watched Inland Empire and we both loved it and i was re-enthused about American cinema. A long time fan of Lynch but this got me excited all over again.
 
 
ibis the being
20:52 / 23.12.07
I just saw Death Proof and completely agree with Janeane and Bandini's reviews.

(I'm not sure which version I saw but it did show the lapdance if that's any indication.) I have no familiarity with the Grindhouse genre at all and so I can't make any comments on that front. However, I don't think I have to know anything about the genre references to know that this film was profoundly boring. Although it's been several years since I smoked pot, my viewing experience was a little reminiscent of my old potsmoking experiences... having the vague idea that I'm being entertained, but not really absorbing, following, or retaining anything that's going on, focusing intently on the spectacle but failing to connect with any of the plots or characters, and feeling numbness toward any of the supposed excitement taking place.

18 hrs later I can hardly recall a single line of dialogue from Death Proof (you certainly can't say that about any previous QT flicks) and only broadly recall the female characters describing their makeout sessions in detail, and really, who does this? I found QT's attempt to glorify women's power as oddly clunky, when he pulled off the same with so much style in Kill Bill.

Mostly I really, really, really did not understand the structure of this movie. Maybe this is where my ignorance of Grindhouse fails me, I don't know. But why in christ's sake does someone spend 3/4 of the film just setting up the premise of the movie - Stuntman Mike kills girls with his car for sexual thrills - only to proceed with another forty hours (I think) of character development and then two minutes of climax? Why? I mean this is the oddest, most upsettingly unsatisfying plot structure I've ever sat through.
 
 
Aha! I am Klarion
23:54 / 24.12.07
I don't know what the hell some of you folks are talking about. I thought Death Proof was great and that Planet Terror was very enjoyable. I think Death Proof is worth watching at least twice and Planet Terror was good for a single good evening.
 
 
Triplets
18:16 / 25.12.07
Yes, but... sigh... why? Dude.
 
 
This Sunday
22:21 / 25.12.07
I watched Planet Terror again today. Still dig it. This time, though, it was less the blood and 'splodey that worked for me as just watching it for the interpersonal reaction stuff. There's some really good moments in there. Still surprised he didn't go for the Instant Hook Up with the two surviving primaries, Dakota and Cherry.

And it's John Carpenter all over the fucking place, which had not previously smacked me in the face like an acid-soaked shovelblade.
 
 
CameronStewart
06:28 / 26.12.07
You honestly didn't notice that? The whole thing is a huge Carpenter homage.
 
 
This Sunday
08:21 / 26.12.07
You honestly didn't notice that?

I noticed it was there, but, I admit, I did not - for a variety of reasons - notice it was there that much. I was taking it as moments, as allusions, but yes, this was the first time (second time I've watched it) that I noticed it was all-over-Carpenter-homage with a movie threaded through it.

I should turn in my geek badge, but I won't. And I'll shoot the first person that tries to take it by force. With my endless-ammo geek gun.
 
 
Aha! I am Klarion
10:14 / 27.12.07
Okay, the reason I liked Death Proof was the tension on the first view and the layers on the second.

Tartino has a talent for drawing the viewer in, because you never known when it is going to turn violent or make a hundred-and-eighty degree turn. So some scenes, for me, have this incredible sense of danger, which is so rare.

Second, I admire it just because it has layers to analyze, which is rarer and rarer these days. I like the fact that it is an autobiographical meditation on the simultaneous male desire to be a make a commitment ("Hang Up the Chick Habit, or you'll be alone in a fix"), to became an uber charming and charismatic seducer (you don't like Mike because he is a killer, but damn don't wish you were that smooth, he makes it work despite being an anachronism), the male place of loneliness (the creepy but harmless guy learing at the girls in the bar), the fantasy object of female desire and male power(the two off screen film directors--its the fantasy of being a fantasy), and the harmless father but still sexual father (or uncle, or brother, or friend, etc.).

Deathproof is kinda a "Don't Look Back" of masculine identity (think about it. it makes sense!). Just replace Bob Dylan with QT.

--Cause many guys, including Tarantino have gone through those phases or inhabited those parts (albeit Quentin never killed anyone). The girls, who are awesome and cool (but only the way that Wonder-Woman, 70s Jamie Lee Curtis, and Emma Peel are cool, as sexualized images of female maturity and power), aren't what's interesting about the film. It's the male ego that is defined through them that is.


I mostly like the fact that its use of a particular pop genre isn't retarded. I for one wished that every crappy movie on Sci-Fi was good like this. Wouldn't the world be a better place. Tartino's stuff is better than 95% of the mainstream hollywood stuff. And better than 75% of the arthouse, indie realm. It's his C-level material, but those numbers (which I totally made up!!) hold out.

--

Planet Terror is just cool John Carpenter homage. It's got Tom Savini! It's got Michael Bean! It's got Jeff Fahey! It's got Michael Parks! All being cool. Plus the stuff with kid shooting himself is genius on a level I can't comprehend. It's the funniest single moment I have seen in a film this entire year. It's a Coen Brothers level of sublime brilliance.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
02:42 / 29.03.08
FINALLY (having waited until AFTER both movies were released separately here, AND having downloaded the full thing and then gone... "but what if it actually GETS a release?")... saw Grindhouse tonight.

I'm glad I waited.

And I'm glad I sneaked booze in. And I'm glad it was a late show. It all helped make it work.

Overall, I thought Planet Terror was better. But I think a LOT of that may be to do with me liking zombies more than car chases. I liked Death Proof, but I thought the pacing was a bit off. I'm not sure how (if I was I'd be an award-winning screenwriter or some shit, but it seemed "off", like the build wasn't buildy enough and the unexpected, while unexpected, wasn't happening when the build would have made it work better... or something...) but all my misgivings about the movie were forgiven with the last minute or so. 'Twas utterly joyful. I loved it.

The great thing about Planet Terror was that it reminded me of THE WORST ZOMBIE MOVIE EVER MADE (so far as I can tell... the director issued an official apology!)- Children Of The Living Dead- which would have been AMAZING had it not been so dull. And Rodriguez, doing the whole "Grindhouse" thing, made a FAR BETTER MOVIE. And somehow, in actively going for the funny, STILL managed to make it a fuck of a lot less cynical. And Savini got to to ALL the shit he wanted to do in that film, without having to just be cool for ten minutes and then die.

Actually, the GREATEST thing about Planet Terror was that this all happened because BRUCE WILLIS KILLED - (fucking hell! Bruce Willis killed HIM? Jesus!)


Planet Terror was fucking awesome. Death Proof was pretty damn cool, though flawed. Rob Zombie's trailer for Werewolf Women Of The SS, or whatever it was called...

...fuck, if that had been the only thing they showed I wouldn't have felt TOO ripped off. Although I dream of a world where Rob Zombie gets to make a double-header, and gets that much cash for it!
 
 
iamus
16:01 / 14.04.08
Just got the chance to watch Death Proof the other night, and it was pretty much as I expected it to be. Some parts were fucking incredible, but it's absolutely chock-full of the stuff about Quentin Tarantino that I really don't like. And that's the man's really uncomfortable stuff with women.

It's really not a movie about female empowerment as it is a movie about male punishment. The first half of the movie gives us a character that QT creams himself into in Stuntman Mike. Great dialogue, cool, cruel bastard, gets lapdances off of hot girls. There's the horrible scenes in the car. And the crash which takes Tarantino foot-porn to levels it really didn't need to go to while also really repulsing me through the combination of wheel/face/lapdance girl.

The second half, as Seth pointed out on page one, is a gaggle of Tarantino wet dreams taking him to task for the crying, whinging mess he's just made in his pants. Dude's got some major mother issues, I'd wager.

That's not to say I didn't like bits of it loads. Zoe Bell is fantastic. The bonnet chase is probably the most thrilling action scene I've seen since T2 (though it wouldn't surprise me if there's a part of QT that thought it would be pretty cool if this incredibly dangerous stunt went wrong). The bit where she jumps back out of the bushes, bright eyed and not a scratch on her is probably my favourite part of the film.
 
 
grant
17:28 / 14.04.08
I just watched Death Proof on DVD a week or so ago. I can see where many people might think it's boring, but I think that's part of the genre. You might believe that exploitation films have to be a thrill a minute because they're made to be sensational, but really the vast majority of them are fairly dull until suddenly something unexpected happens.

(My better half kept flashing back to The Legend of Boggy Creek while complaining about how long it took anything to happen in Death Proof. And then, in the last 30 minutes, the payoff.)

Which is just my way of saying that I think, to a degree, the "weird" pacing is really part of what makes this a grindhouse film. Things like Two Thousand Maniacs or Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! sound great when you talk about 'em and might have a few things in them you just won't see (or wouldn't have seen) anywhere else, but they all have these long, drawn out sequences that set things up or just sort of wallow around in telling-not-showing. That's one of the conventions of the genre. The mind-numbing anticipation. That thought that drifts in - "Have I just been ripped off by a movie that just doesn't deliver?" And then, if it's done right, the movie delivers.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
15:23 / 15.04.08
Actually, you could be right there. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things? A "classic" zombie movie. But for most of it you're going "this is shit! It's got no sodding zombies in it!"
 
 
Whisky Priestess
15:04 / 18.04.08
Saw this at the Prince Charles (super cheap central London cinema) last night in a proper double-bill-with-trailers showing that was packed to bursting, just like it should be. Tragically, no time to get popcorn. I am made of sad.

Came in about a minute or so into Planet Terror and although I squick out a bit at zombie films and don't really like them, I'm sufficiently aware of the conventions of the genre (and of the B movie in general) to appreciate and feel the love for what a great, well-constructed piece of brain-eating nonsense it was. What I especially enjoyed was the wonderful way Rodriguez managed to make it both a loving homage to, and a pitch-perfect pisstake of, the whole genre.

For example, one of my favourite bits (aside from the whole of Michael Biehn, the sausages-for-guts scene in JT's rib shack, the REEL MISSING waterbed sex scene, and loads of others I can't recall right now) was the payoff when El Ray gets shot in the last reel and Gunleg Lady is doing the deathbed scene beside him:

"It's just us Ray! Two against the world!"
"It will be," he says, putting his hand on her (pregnant after their sex of 2 hours ago, we are to assume) stomach.
"I never miss," he adds (he's a sharpshooting wizard). BRILLIANT, beautifully timed, convention-perfect CHEESE.

Also, the fabulous babysitting twins were great. And wasn't Doctor Lady's llllllesbian lover played by Fergie out of the Black Eyed Peas? Surely she was?

Death Proof, on the other hand, I thought was great - desultory girlie car conversations inclusive, although I'm not completely convinced by Tarantino's attempt at rendering Valley Ebonics* - up until just after Stuntman Mike killed the first carload of ladies. (And, by the way, I couldn't watch the entire driving-home scene because I knew that the leg Julia was hanging out of the window was going to come off at some point but I didn't know when the crash was going to come. Definite hands-over-eyes time).

The disconnect between the first and second half of the film - four female leads plus Mike, night time, bar, sense of impending threat, genuine tension SEGUES TO a NEW four about whom I, personally, could not give a flying fuck seeing as he's KILLED all the ones I've already invested in as characters - did not work for me - and I wonder whether that's because I have never seen any film in this genre (well, maybe a bit of Bullitt?? the Hitcher?) and I don't know jack about car movies.

Zoe's constantly screwed-up face irritated me quite a lot as I could never see her eyes (anyone else notice that with her prominent features she looks a leetle bit like QT himself?) Who cares what colour the goddamn car is? Why must I listen to HALF AN HOUR of pointless arguing and obscure references in order to be spoonfed the information on why Zoe cares what colour the car is?

What is Ship's Mast? I still don't care! Shut up and get in the f***ing car, you boring, boring women. This is supposed to be a driving film so drive already! Vanishing Point - WTF? Should I have seen this film? Should there be a "to watch" list before I even bother attempting to re-encounter this disappointing farrago of disposable non-characters and wasted opportunities?

Personally I felt that if any film should have been split in two it was Death Proof. I thought Death Proof Part I was witty, interesting, tension-filled, well-constructed and thoroughly gripping. Superbly played by Kurt Russell - seriously, I thought this was a wonderfully balanced and nuanced performance - Stuntman Mike was creepy-sexy in a Forbidden Father kind of way.

I didn't see the lapdance reel (boo hiss, buy the DVD) but as a viewer I did believe that he had (effectively) seduced Funny Nostrils Girl into doing it. A really brilliantly written and played character, for me. I would happily have watched the rest of the film just for him ... or so I thought.

Death Proof Part II (as I like to call it), however, came across to me as an unbelievably dull and tension-free sequel to excellent first half. Partly this is because, having created such a great character, QT then all but whisks him away: Russell is criminally wasted in the second half.

Although I must admit that I did love all the squealing and yowling about his relatively minor flesh-wound - partly because we're so used to people in films taking massive damage and shrugging it off, and partly because it's a nice example of the bully-as-coward syndrome - happy enough to cause massive physical pain and injury/death to others, Stuntman Mike is the biggest wimp in the world when it comes to seeing a bit of his own blood.

The ending - well, I suppose we are in Russ Meyer territory at this point - but WTF?

So, to summarise, I want to buy the DVD and watch it again, with popcorn this time. Especially since I now know where all the really disgusting bits are in both and don't have to spend the scenes leading up to them peeping between my fingers.

*I really really hope that "ebonics" isn't a dodgy term when referring to African-American speech patterns and styles btw - I heard it from a Canadian who's usually scrupulous about such things. Sorry if so.
 
 
Aha! I am Klarion
02:15 / 19.04.08
Don't you realize "Canadian" is a slang against black people, you racist bastard?!

Kidding, of course you didn't. Seriously though, that is f-uped
 
 
Whisky Priestess
11:47 / 19.04.08
What, the film? Or the term?

But still, now that I know both the missing reels exist, I am very seriously tempted to buy the DVD and watch the lapdance/discovery of El Ray scenes in all their glory.
 
 
Mon Oncle Ignatius
14:09 / 19.04.08
Just to note that the missing reel from Planet Terror does not exist - Rodriguez has stated that it was never made, and he doesn't want to know what is in it in any case. The lapdance scene on the DVD (and European extended standalone cinematic version) of Deathproof doesn't add a huge amount to the story in my estimation.

The DVDs are generally very good though, with some pretty good extras - including the excellent Machete trailer which opens Planet Terror. there will apparently be a combined Grindhouse DVD in June; which means basically buying the same films over again.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
15:28 / 19.04.08
I wondered what people were going on about when they mentioned Machete - that must have been the trailer I missed by coming in late. I did have the pleasure of Thanksgiving, Werewolf Women of the SS and Don't! though ...
 
  

Page: 12(3)

 
  
Add Your Reply