Kill Bill: Volume One

Started by Satcho9, January 19, 2003, 10:18:06 PM

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

finlayr

Does anyone else agree with me here?  I think Kill Bill (well, Robert Richardson) is a serious contender for the Best Cinematograhpy Oscar next year...  The film is beautifully shot--just look at it--AMAZING pictures... and the film isn't even out yet...
Filmmaker

MacGuffin

Quote from: ebeamanJust read a great little (kinda big I guess) article on Kill Bill in the new Premiere magazine. They had their big fall preview and gave Quentin's comback a whole article...pics and a whole little interview within it, it was really pretty nice to read. Anyway, I don't if people already know this but I didn't and I still can't really believe what I read but...there was this little blurb in there about how he likes to dress up according to the scene or scenes that he's filming for the day...like they had a picture of him shooting a scene at a hospital with scrubs on...it was really really weird. My scanner isn't working, I'd scan it if I could. There's some other cool pics in there too.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After six years, the director who redefined movie violence returns with Kill Bill - a wild, bloody mix of campy comedy and kickass kung fu.

"Uma Thurman versus Daryll Hannah - that sounds a bit like a Japanese monster movie, you know!?" sais an excited Quentin Tarantino, calling from the editing room. "Like Godzilla versus Rodan. It's War of the Blonde Gargantuans!"

Everything you've heard about Tarantino is true. His enthusiasm is boundless, his film references wide-ranging, his sense of humor mischievous. The longer the 40-year-old writer-director talks about Kill Bill, his $55 million-plus revenge epic (and first film since 1997's Jackie Brown), the faster and more flustered his speech becomes. He sounds just like what he is: a former video-store clerk turned-Oscar-winning toast of Hollywood-turned-missing-in-action director, who is now realizing his dream project - and is a little shocked that they haven't shut the door on him yet.

"You've got this two beautiful women and they just keep fucking each other up, getting kicked in the crotch, faces smashed into a wall, lamps cracked over their heads," he sais. "I want every blow to hurt."

The pain has to be real, because the Bride (Uma Thurman) couldn't be more serious. Once member of the Deadly Viper Assasination Squad (or Di.V.A.S), she tries to leave her life of mayhem behind by marrying a square. A few uninvited guests show up with machine guns - her former colleagues (Hannah, Vivica A. Fox, Lucy Liu and Michael Madsen) and the boss of them all, Bill (David Carradine). "Bill," the Bride pleads. "I'm pregnant. It's your baby." Bang!

When she wakes up in a hospital five years later, she embarks on an adventure that takes her from Texas to Okinawa, Beijing, and Mexico, spilling blood with one singular purpose. "When I arrive at my destination," she sais, "I'm gonna Kill Bill!"

If the buckets of blood at the center of the story weren't enough to give Miramax pause, there was the yearlong delay when Uma Thurman got pregnant in early 2001. Tarantino said he never considered replacing the actress, who earned an Oscar-nomination for Pulp Fiction. "This is my Josef von Sternberg movie," he sais, "and Uma is my Dietrich." Martial-arts legends Sonny Chiba and Gordon Liu signed on for pivotal roles, and though Warren Beatty decided not to play Bill, '70s Kung Fu icon Carradine took the part instead. "I've always thought of him as one of our great mad geniuses," Tarantino sais of Carradine.

The film is a starnge brew of the B-movie elements its director loves and twists that can only be described as ... well, Tarantinoesque. And as the genres (lethal-femal blaxploitation-style revenge, samurai swordplay, spaghetti western, Japanimation) change with each chapter of the story, so does the movie's look. "We used to joke that [Uma's] fighting her way through the multiplex," Tarantino says. "When we go to these different genres, it should look as if you're looking at reels from different film prints. At one point, I even thought about using four cinematographers."

All he needed, though, was one Bob Richardson. "I do feel that it is the role of a director of photography to be a chameleon," says Oscar winner Richardson (JFK). "Quentin carried this film in gestation, and he knew virtually every shot. If it didn't match, you could see this look on his face, like a young man being hurt by a lover. And you went at it differently."

The actors went through rigorous training - three months, five days a week, eight hours a day - with a crew supervised by fight-team master Yuen Woo-Ping (the Matrix films), and Tarantino trained alongside them. "It was just like, unless I suffer with these girls, I'M going to have no authority when I tell them, 'It's not right, it's not right, do it again.'"

"When the guys that we trained with left, we were in tears," says Hannah, who sports a wardrobe of eyepatches in the movie and used a see-through one when fighting. "They're really pure and beautiful people."

Filming began in Beijing in June 2002. Because of the many painstaking action shots, Richardson says that "virtually everything was difficult to shoot." But Tarantino's passion carried them through. "My crew has never had a better experience, " Richardson says. "Quentin was making the film with absolute love."

Maybe too much love. In July, Miramax announced that Tarantino's footage would be turned into two movies, the first due October 10, the second probably two to six months later. The plan had always been to make a longer, more explicit cut for the Japanese audience, but, Tarantino says, Miramax's Harvey Weinstein liked what he saw and told him, "'Quentin, I don't want you to have to cut anything. So, uh, what about the idea that we release it as two movies?' Withing, like, two days I had it all worked out. This movie is kind of set up so there is no such thing as one version of it."

One movie or two, six-year layoff and pundits be damned - Tarantino's going to do exactly what he wants to do. "I consider myself an artist. I'm not trying to keep up with the Joneses," he says. "I've followed a lot of directors, and you do a lot of apologizing for those last 20 years when you look at their filmographies. I want my fans to be full of the same piss and vinegar when I make my last movies as they were when I made my first."

"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

MacGuffin

"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Pedro


mindfuck

It's okay. I'm pretty sick of having every bit of marketing for the film mentioning that "this is the next QT movie" though. It mean, c'mon. That's almost as bad as the "From the creators of..." shit.

Cecil

i love it

the 1795th post by cecil b. demented

Alethia

"here comes the bride" is a nice little tagline, though, donchathink?

finlayr

This is the best teaser poster I've ever seen.  'Here comes The Bride'.  Is there any end to Tarantino's brilliance?  I think not.
Filmmaker

Pedro

Quote from: finlayrThis is the best teaser poster I've ever seen.  'Here comes The Bride'.  Is there any end to Tarantino's brilliance?  I think not.
How is that at all brilliant?  I think it's fuckin' stupid, personally.   :?

Gamblour.

Yeah...bout as good as "Even Cops Dial 911." That tagline for SWAT was stupid.
WWPTAD?

RegularKarate

I wouldn't call it "Brilliant", but I like it... it's very B-horror movie.

edison

I also hate how everything has to say, "The fourth film, blah blah" crap, its like ok, thats great, hes on number 4, wonder if when he gets to 12, the saying will be, ".....and now the exciting 12th film from Quentin Tarantino"

finlayr

I think there's a few people here that are very very jealous of Tarantino's success as a filmmaker.  It's very sad..  Awww...  It's okay, you'll get to make yours someday...c'mon now...let's not rag on a film we haven't seen.. and remember the function of a teaser poster is to make people say "Hmm, what's that about?  Is it about a wedding?  Who's The Bride?"  And not only does it look great but it satisfies peoples curiosity.  So eh...that's why it's brilliant and the movie's gonna rule...
Filmmaker

Pubrick

tever fyags, tarantino's fuckin awesome.
under the paving stones.

©brad

Quote from: finlayrI think there's a few people here that are very very jealous of Tarantino's success as a filmmaker.  It's very sad..  Awww...  It's okay, you'll get to make yours someday...c'mon now...let's not rag on a film we haven't seen.. and remember the function of a teaser poster is to make people say "Hmm, what's that about?  Is it about a wedding?  Who's The Bride?"  And not only does it look great but it satisfies peoples curiosity.  So eh...that's why it's brilliant and the movie's gonna rule...

totally. i dont really get why ppl (and by ppl i mean film geeks) r whining so much about the '4th film by tarantino' thing. he's really the only director that could pull it off. besides, he's just teasing his avid fan boy population.