Anya ,'Storyteller'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
A student's father, who would never choose to watch a "foreign film," came in while she was watching, loved it, and decided he wanted to see more movies by this Melville dude.
My dad, who was very averse to anything non-Hollywood previously, watched The Seven Samurai with us one night and joined Netflix to rent Japanese movies, Kurosawa flicks in particular.
Oh man, Matt, I've been re-watching the syndicated episodes of, um, that certain thing that you mentioned that isn't a movie. So awesomely bad. S6 is great because you can tell exactly when it was cancelled from the way all the peripheral characters abruptly vanish. Plus, Jensen Ackles.
To regain some small shred of credibility: I love Diva! I couldn't sit through Delicatessen, though. But that quite was a long time ago.
I own Diva. I liked it enought to track down Delacorta's novels (one of which is the basis for the movies). Girodish (obviously based on Serge Gainsbourg) and Alba had many adventures.
Though Alba is a blonde French girl, not Asian, in the books.
Kill Bill Vol. 1 is playing on TNTHD right now.
And can I just say that, even though I've seen this movie all of twice before now (I'm waiting for the "Ultimate Criterion Super-Secret Special DVD with your own personal Tarantino Sperm Packet Included" before buying the Kills Bill), I can perfectly recall almost every. single. scene. it's pretty much perfectly done in that respect.
Why didn't this movie win best director, or cinematography, or... something the year it came out? No movie this memorably great should go Oscar-less.
ETA:
"For Ridiculing you earlier... I apologize."
"Accepted..... Ready?"
I really liked the first Kill Bill. Though I did come to realize that as much as QT likes action, he's not a great action director. Even the Crazy 88 sequence falls far short of what Walter Hill or George Miller (much less John Woo or Ringo Lam) can do.
Quentin's really good at iconography. It's something Mark Romanek talks about on his video collection - finding those crucial/key/iconic images.
Oh yeah, the action scenes are there as tribute, not as the point, in my head. They're fun, but the things that stick in my head are the gimmicks - the switch to black-and-white, and back to color, for example. I love the lack-of-action-in-action of the fight with O-Ren, though. Beautiful. The fountain doing it's thing as they fight is beautiful.
Honestly, I liked the second movie better. Tarantino is somewhat better at expansive than action, I think. But, God, I love them both so very much.
The second movie doesn't have the anime sequence, though. I love that bit so very much. "W...h...i...m...p...e...r"
I liked it enought to track down Delacorta's novels (one of which is the basis for the movies). Girodish (obviously based on Serge Gainsbourg) and Alba had many adventures.
Oh, me too, and the books are so screwy. I own four or five, and I've read a few that I don't have. So bizarre. I think it's the one that's riffing on The Collector that really weirded me out. I enjoyed them, but I also spent some time wondering how much of what was happening required cultural context that I didn't have.
But Alba's love letters are always incredibly beautiful.
that's riffing on The Collector that really weirded me out.
The one where he captures Alba and dresses her up in a dragonfly outfit and strings her from the ceiling?
They are totally screwy, but I always buy the paperbacks and give them to friends when they're going on a vacation.
The one where he captures Alba and dresses her up in a dragonfly outfit and strings her from the ceiling?Yeah. And that part is creepy, but in a cartoony way. But at the end.. it's been a while, but what I remember is that she escapes, gets caught by, like, inbred rednecks, is almost gangraped, and then while she's traumatized, Gorodish starts blasting people with a shotgun. I may be misremembering the details, but I'm positive there was a abrupt shift in tone. I mostly remember feeling like, "Is he satirizing action movies or something? I think he probably is, but holy crap."
I'm waiting for the "Ultimate Criterion Super-Secret Special DVD with your own personal Tarantino Sperm Packet Included" before buying the Kills Bill
Yeah, me too. I think there was an interview recently where he'd said he was still too wiped out from doing it to look at it again for a special edition, but he was planning to do one.
I don't know about Oscars, though. It's a beautiful pastiche collection, but even in my ideal world where Oscars are based on merit, I'm not sure that's what they should reward. I do think Tarantino should get some kind of special achievement award for having some kind of savant-y skills when it comes to picking music, though.
Oh, anyway, TNT is running both movies back-to-back on Sunday.
My strongest impressions of French cinema come from Amélie and Techine's Wild Reeds. And, I guess, With a Friend like Harry, which made me sympathize with my mom's utter loathing for the fantastic. Considering my all-time favorite TV shows include Buffy, Wonderfalls, Farscape, and Due South, exceeding my surrealism tolerance in 90 minutes is quite an accomplishment.