Grind House

Started by MacGuffin, May 26, 2005, 12:11:11 AM

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ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ

SPOILER

I wasn't sure exactly when the film lost its scratchy, subpar value, but it seemed like in the second half of Death Proof.  Planet Terror was made to look like 70's kitsch and didn't deviate from it that much, but Death Proof was cleaned up when the next four girls were introduced.  The ending was very surprising for the mood (little was done with any supernatural elements of Kurt Russel being some mysterious loner). 

What the latter half till the ending shows is the triumph of modern horror over the 70's grind house motion pictures (Rosario Dawson putting her foot through Kurt Russel's head).  This really put a lot of emphasis on the transition of old to new, but was this the point?  Did they want to establish that slasher flicks were just a phase from a long time ago?  It's pretty clear we still have a lot of formulaic summer blockbuster scary movies, so it's not like we've evolved from the grind house days. 

In the context of the films, Planet Terror was on point.  Shit blew up for no reason, pistols cause explosive wounds, almost every character's relationship doesn't need to be explained because of how little it contributes to the zombie swarm.  The trailers also helped keep this mood going (especially Werewolf Women of the SS and Machete, Thanksgiving and Don't were funny, but played themselves out too quickly).  Then Death Proof comes on, which started out very promising, but Tarantino wanted to be Tarantino too much and as a result, we weren't watching campy 70's in grainy, dingy film but rather a clean movie with shallow dialogue of flat characters.

The car chasse were badass, though.
"As a matter of fact I only work with the feeling of something magical, something seemingly significant. And to keep it magical I don't want to know the story involved, I just want the hypnotic effect of it somehow seeming significant without knowing why." - Len Lye

last days of gerry the elephant

Quote from: Walrus on April 09, 2007, 02:28:20 AM
Then Death Proof comes on, which started out very promising, but Tarantino wanted to be Tarantino too much and as a result, we weren't watching campy 70's in grainy, dingy film but rather a clean movie with shallow dialogue of flat characters.

I thought the exact same. A promising start, then steering into unfamiliar territory. I won't say it sucked though, I just enjoyed Planet Terror way more.

ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ

On the whole, I would've enjoyed Death Proof more because the concept was just much cooler.  Rather than a stock zombie story where things blow up, which is easy to make fun of, Death Proof was an original concept that still felt very played out for some reason.  If it wasn't mucked up through the technical issues, I probably would've liked it more.
"As a matter of fact I only work with the feeling of something magical, something seemingly significant. And to keep it magical I don't want to know the story involved, I just want the hypnotic effect of it somehow seeming significant without knowing why." - Len Lye

modage

Elvis Mitchell's "The Treatment" Podcast featuring 30 minute interviews with:

Quentin Tarantino
&
Robert Rodriguez

Quentin discusses his hesitation in filling Death Proof with so much dialogue...and more!
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

MacGuffin

EXCLUSIVE: Harvey Very Disappointed; May Re-Release 'Grindhouse' As 2 Pics
Source: Nikki Finke; Deadline Hollywood

Harvey Weinstein told me this morning that he's "incredibly disappointed" with the half-than-expected $12 mil weekend box office for Grindhouse. So much so, that he's considering abandoning the double feature as a single feature concept and re-releasing the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez movie around the U.S. "in a couple of weeks" as two separate feature-length movies with additional footage put in. That's what Harvey says The Weinstein Co. is already intending to do with the film's release in Europe: split it into two separate pics, Tarantino's Death Proof and  Rodriguez's Planet Terror. "Quentin's movie goes out first in competition at Cannes. He'll do an extensive 4 to 5 month tour. And the trailer will be all Quentin's," Weinstein told me about his European plans. "Then we'll release Robert's a couple of months later. By splitting it up, we're going to do a hell of a lot better internationally than we did here." Weinstein noted that, even in Grindhouse's video deal as well as its TV deal with Starz Entertainment Group, it's been sold as two separate movies. "Our deal with Encore is that they can play it any way they want." So this is why The Weinstein Co. is now deciding to suck it up and do in this country what it probably should have done all along. "First of all, I'm incredibly disappointed. We tried to do something new and obviously we didn't do it that well," Harvey told me today. "It's just a question of how is it going to hang in there. But we could split the movies in a couple of weeks. Make Tarantino's a full-length film, and Rodriguez's too. We'll be adding those 'two missing reels' that's talked about in the movie." (At one point in Grindhouse, a sex scene is interrupted because of "two missing reels".)

Weinstein pointed to several reasons why Grindhouse did so poorly in theaters over Easter weekend. "Our research showed the length kept people away. It was the single biggest deterrent. It was 3 hours and 12 minutes long. We originally intended to get it all in in 2 hours, 30 minutes. That would have been a better time. But the movies ran longer, the [fake] trailers ran longer, everything ran longer," Harvey told me. Weinstein also criticized his own marketing plan. "We didn't educate the South or Midwest. In the West and the East, the movie played well. It played well in strong urban settings. But we missed the boat on the Midwest and the South." But he denies other's thinking that the Grindhouse subject matter was too foreign for mainstream audiences. Yet The Weinstein Co. wouldn't give the film to actual Grindhouses, or even the Grindhouse Film Festival, to screen and create buzz. That may be one reason the advance tracking on the film prior to Friday was only so-so. The hype seems to have been all Internet-generated, which is why New Line's Snakes On A Plane flopped.

Weinstein admitted spending at least $30 million on U.S. promotion and advertising for  Grindhouse, which, added to what I'd already heard was a $67+ mil budget and not the low-50s cost he has claimed, makes this a $100 mil movie. So the first weekend's take of just $12 mil is all the more disastrous. On the other hand, Harvey (and independent observers) says the movie is heavily pre-sold overseas and expects it to do well there. That's not surprising, since many movies recently (Babel, Apocalypto) have run out of gas here only to pump up the total with international box office. But a re-release in the U.S. could prove almost prohibitively costly for The Weinstein Co.: new prints, new marketing, new everything. It may nto be worth it, especially with Spider-man 3 and the rest of this summer's tentpole onslaught is just around the corner.

Weinstein admits that he thought the film would do much better than it did and sees the failure of Grindhouse's U.S. release as a rap on his reputation for movie savvy. He can't blame the directors. After all, he is closely tied to Tarantino and Rodriquez personally and professionally and, what's more, he and brother Bob made that relationship and Grindhouse a cornerstone of their fledgling company's financing. (No doubt, that's why Harvey, who has a long history of imposing his iron will on filmmakers, gave the two directors a pass when it came to Grindhouse's extreme length.)

But Harvey is adamant that the flop will not be a body blow to The Weinstein Co., even though it's still a fledgling firm in business since only 2005. "We're smart businessmen. Thank God, we protected ourselves economically. I've spent the last year diversifying the company. We're making profits everywhere but the movie business. But on DVD sales, we're doing well," he claims.

The Weinstein Company's diversified investments include the home video company Genius Products, the private online community aSmallWorld, the cable TV hit show Project Runway, the independent cable channel Ovation, and, most recently, the Halston fashion brand. Harvey admitted to me that his attention may have been too diverted from the movie biz as a result. "This Cannes, I'm going to change all that. I'm back to being me. We wanted to diversify immediately. Now I have to go back to being Harvey."
"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

Ravi

http://www.filmwad.com/film-students-accuse-tarantino-of-grindhouse-theft-2139-p.html

Film Students Accuse Tarantino of "Grindhouse" Theft

A group of poor student filmmakers apparently talked to Tarantino about their exploitation exploiting Grindhouse movie before he and Rodriguez had even considered their own, and now they're pissed.  Do the two movies have any similarities other than their title?  Hard to say without shelling out the 99 cents it costs to buy the "original," but there are no accusations in that regard.  The lower budget Grindhouse's director, Stephen Tramontana:

It sucks, because now I'm that guy. I'm that guy stating that a big Hollywood player ripped off my idea. We all know how that looks. But, a. I made the movie – anyone can see it. and b. he's constantly referenced the day in 2003 when he got the idea to make a movie called Grindhouse. My bet is that it was the day he opened my Fed Ex. Maybe he didn't even watch the movie, but he had to have seen the poster, and maybe that was all it took.

Not that we don't feel for the guy, but if Tarantino's/Rodriguez's movie is better, then it really doesn't matter who originally conceptualized it.  History is full of credit given based on the improvement upon the ideas of others, and many times it's only the improved idea that ends up being noteworthy.  May we suggest to Stephen that he take the idea of Tarantino's next project, Inglorious Bastards, and make it better.




http://www.therealgrindhouse.com/

Will I Be Watching Tarantino's Grindhouse? No.

Quentin Tarantino is a thieving piece of shit and he knows it. He stole Grindhouse from a bunch of kids who were just asking for his help and he helped them by stealing their title and concept.

Let me explain. For those who don't know, I made a film called Grindhouse in 2003. We actually started shooting it in 2002, but went to the festivals and got reviews in 2003, winning BEST HORROR FILM in the New York International Film and Video Festival. We also got many favorable mentions from established publications such as Fangoria and Rue Morgue. The movie was low, low, low budget. Which made sense, because that's what Grindhouse films were – really low budget movies that had little artistic merit. Most of the reviewers got that. They realized what we realized – if you're going to make a horror movie with $4,000 – the smart bet is to redo a Grindhouse film where the low budget and all that comes with it are celebrated.

We approached Tarantino twice during the life of Grindhouse. The first time is when producer Lenny Shteynberg and I were at the premier after party for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back in Westwood. Tarantino was there, and to his credit, he was very approachable. I told him that we were going to shoot a new kind of Grindhouse movie, and asked if we could show it to him when we were finished. He politely declined, and
we parted friends.

It would be two years later – November 2003- after we finished production (and won our award), that we again approached Tarantino. We knew the movie was too tiny for a theatrical run, but thought maybe we could get a direct to DVD deal. Through industry contacts, I found the business address for his production company, and Fed Ex'd a copy of the film and the poster. It was signed for by a "C. Hill." or Chill. I knew he received it, and just hoped that got what we were trying to do. Kill Bill was on the radar, so I thought it was good timing for us. We never heard from Tarantino or anyone in his production company.

Cut to 2005. I was now working for a production company as a Post Coordinator. I picked up an issue of the trade publication Variety, announcing: Tarantino was making a film called GRINDHOUSE. Not our Grindhouse, something he was teaming up with Robert Rodriguez on.

I was heartbroken. One of my heroes had ripped us off. And it wasn't like we were anybody. We were nobodies, trying to get ahead with our tiny film like he had almost a decade before. I had our entertainment attorney call Dimension Films, where Tarantino was setting the film up. I tried to stop them from using the title Grindhouse because I own it. I am the only person with the title Grindhouse registered with the copyright office. Dimension came back and said that Tarantino's was called Death Proof, not Grindhouse. Yes, we retorted, but you're not releasing it as Death Proof, you're releasing it as Grindhouse. They came back with, essentially, take us to court and see what happens to you. I didn't want to take them to court; I wanted them not to use the title.

It sucks, because now I'm that guy. I'm that guy stating that a big Hollywood player ripped off my idea. We all know how that looks. But, a. I made the movie – anyone can see it. and b. he's constantly referenced the day in 2003 when he got the idea to make a movie called Grindhouse. My bet is that it was the day he opened my Fed Ex. Maybe he didn't even watch the movie, but he had to have seen the poster, and maybe that was all it took.

Tarantino has fucked over people before – just ask his old writing buddy Roger Avary, whom he destroyed and left for dead in his post-Pulp Fiction rise. But I never thought he would turn on other indie filmmakers. And what's sad is, there were sacrifices on our end, too. My Grindhouse cost me two long-standing friendships over a business dispute. That was a regrettable situation, and one that burns me even more now that we really have nothing to show for it, and probably won't be able to. It takes away from their hard work, as well as everyone who sweated out weekends and endless time to try and make our little movie work.

People could say that there have been numerous movies with the same title. Gladiator comes to mind. To me, there's no way on God's green earth, that two movies called Grindhouse devoted to the idea of those old films, could be released. And it's weird that it happened after our film was released and got a fair amount of press in the genre circles.

So am I going to see it? No. Do I want you to not go see it? No. If you want to see it, please do. I knew someone who worked post on that show, and for what they went through to deliver Tarantino's film, I hope the movie does well. They deserve it. What Tarantino deserves is to be called out for the thief that he is. He's a complete piece of shit with no code of ethics for the industry that gave him his start – the indie industry.

If there's any justice in the world, he'll fall out of favor and have to watch as his long, long-gestating World War 2 epic, Inglorious Bastards, gets handed over to Lloyd Kauffman to produce and Uwe Boll to direct.

-Stephen Tramontana

Satcho9

boo. fucking hoo.

If only there were more similarities than the title.

RegularKarate

This guy doesn't even deserve a link to his website listed.
What a shitbag.

The title isn't even clever, it's just what it is.  Unless the films were exactly the same, he has nothing to even begin to bitch about.

grand theft sparrow

Quote from: Stephen Tramontana on April 09, 2007, 11:46:51 PM
Tarantino has fucked over people before – just ask his old writing buddy Roger Avary, whom he destroyed and left for dead in his post-Pulp Fiction rise. But I never thought he would turn on other indie filmmakers.

Right, because he's so much more trustworthy towards people off the street than friends of his.   :doh:

I think it's perfectly fair.  Tarantino steals the title of Grindhouse and this guy steals the syllables and emphasis in Tarantino's name.  It's obvious this guy made it up for his career or at the very least figured he would wow Tarantino by informing him that their names sound the same.

Fuck this guy.  He's probably actually throwing a party this week because Grindhouse only did $12 million.


EDIT: Grindhouse is definitely reaching someone.  Vanishing Point went from being available "now" to "long wait" on netflix today.

Stefen

This movie reminded me of that store in the mall that sells those re-created Led Zeppelin tour t-shirts, that are all pre-faded where some of the letters are difficult to make out cause of peeling, but the whole shirt costs like $70 brand new and when you think about it you realize how silly it is.
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

©brad

yeah that kid needs to get over it.

Quote from: MacGuffin on April 09, 2007, 04:08:36 PM
EXCLUSIVE: Harvey Very Disappointed; May Re-Release 'Grindhouse' As 2 Pics

laaaaame. i may have thought this was too long, but that doesn't mean i'd ever want to see it as separate flicks. the double-feature aspect is what makes it fun.

my guess on the poor box office performance - GIRLS. this is a 14-year old boy genre. every chica i've talked to – many of who are avid tarantino fans – have no desire to see this. i doubt splitting it into 2 is going to change their minds, nevermind the fact that every tarantino-crazed fanboy already saw it opening weekend.


grand theft sparrow

Two of my friends dragged their girlfriends with us to see it on Friday.  My girlfriend, my friend's girlfriend, and my other friend's wife declined to go (no, I'm not making this up, all of our girlfriends really exist) and the girls who did go weren't so happy with it.  In fact, one informed her boyfriend that they will be going to the upcoming 20th Anniversary screening of Dirty Dancing as payback.  So the girl thing is a factor but the length is as much of a problem, as well as releasing it on fucking Easter weekend.  Knowing now what happened, they should have held it off until early August or so, when people need a place to sit in air conditioning for as long as they possibly can, on top of the high school/college fanboys being off from school. 

The Weinsteins have to know that it's already too late to release them separately.  Death Proof will only make money with the people who already saw it and liked it but didn't like Planet Terror; otherwise, why pay $10 for one movie when you already paid $10 for two?  Planet Terror has the better word of mouth of the two and is the more accessible, but even that won't bring in that much more money.  If they're going to send them out separately, do it in the summer.  Put Planet Terror out towards the end of the summer in 1000 or so theatres, and put the longer version of Death Proof in the arthouses.  But set the DVD release for sometime in 1st quarter 2008 so fewer people will say, "I'll wait for the DVD.  It's only out in a month."

modage

Blood on the Asphalt
An interview with Quentin Tarantino on the eve of his latest movie, the horror-flick double feature 'Grindhouse'
Source: Newsweek

April 5, 2007 - People are always eating and drinking in Quentin Tarantino's films, and he always makes sure to give them cool places to do it. The 44-year-old filmmaker loves colorful banter, and restaurants and bars are the ideal setting. Over the course of his career, he's given us the diner at the beginning of "Reservoir Dogs," Jack Rabbit Slim's and Big Kahuna Burger in "Pulp Fiction" and the glamorously serene House of Blue Leaves in "Kill Bill, Volume 1." He gives us two more hip establishments in his new movie, "Death Proof": a Tex-Mex joint named Guero's and a dumpy roadhouse bar called the Texas Chili Parlor. So frankly, it's a little disappointing when Tarantino asks a NEWSWEEK reporter to meet him for an interview at his local Starbucks. It's just down the street from his apartment in New York's West Village, but still. Fortunately, when Tarantino shows up, he's exactly the guy fans have come to expect: a manic, mile-a-minute talker in blue jeans and a vintage T shirt. For his latest project, "Grindhouse," opening on Friday, he teamed up with longtime pal Robert Rodriguez to deliver a double feature of horror flicks. Rodriguez's zombie movie "Planet Terror" leads the way, then "Death Proof," a sly twist on the classic slasher movie, follows right after it. Tarantino spoke with NEWSWEEK's Devin Gordon.

NEWSWEEK: Why was a 1970s-style exploitation flick about a guy with a killer car the movie that absolutely you had to make next?
Quentin Tarantino: I always feel like I'm going for my professorship in cinema, and the day I die is the day I graduate. So when Robert and I had this idea, I had just gotten done watching all the slasher films from the late 1970s to mid-1980s. But I realized that if I did my own slasher film, it'd just be too self-reflective. So I decided that I should do it the way I did "Reservoir Dogs," which was my weird version of a heist film. So this is my weird version of a slasher film.

And where did the specific idea for "Death Proof" come from?

About 10 years ago, I was talking to a friend about getting a car. And I wanted to get a Volvo because I wanted a really safe car. I remember thinking that I didn't want to die in some auto accident like the one in "Pulp Fiction."

You don't strike me as a Volvo guy.

[Laughs.] Yeah, I know. But it really was all about the safety. So I was talking to my friend about this, and he said, "Well, you could take any car and give it to a stunt team, and for $10,000 or $15,000, they can death-proof it for you." Well, that phrase "death proof" kinda stuck in my head.

It seems like "Grindhouse" is arriving at an ideal time—horror movies are doing incredible business, and there's no sign of it slowing down. What do you think is driving this trend?
It hasn't happened in a while, but every now and then, there's a wave of them. This one has really been brewing for about six years now, and it started with ultragory movies that were coming out of Japan, by guys like Takeshi Miike, movies like "Battle Royale." What's changed this time is that the mainstream audience is absolutely loving it. There was a time when that kind of extreme violence was the thing that would stop a movie from being mainstream. If you did that kind of gore, you were putting your movie in a little box. Now it's totally different. Back when Robert and I did "From Dusk Till Dawn," the studio would've sent us to our rooms without dinner if we even uttered the word "horror." They wanted to say "thriller" or "roller coaster." Their notion was that "thriller" or "science fiction" was commercial. Horror wasn't. But now? It's horror, horror, horror. A little $6 million horror film beats some $150 million studio blockbuster on opening weekend.

To me, one of the charms of "Grindhouse" is that it's an unusual theatrical experience. People are still going to movies in droves, but the thrill is diminished-we go more out of habit now than out of raw excitement. A double feature like "Grindhouse" seems to offer a new way of doing things, even though it's actually a throwback to an old way.

I hate being the old guy who's always saying how everything was better 10 or 20 years ago, but in the past two decades, there's definitely been a cheapening of the theatrical experience. Back in the late 1970s when these movies were at their peak, every theater wasn't a multiplex. There were gigantic, 20-foot murals in the lobby, movie posters everywhere, candy all over the place, there were wild trailers, maybe some cartoons in the middle. It was a f----n' night. So for us, there is an aspect of "Grindhouse" that's trying to back that ballyhoo about going to the movies.

Both movies run over 80 minutes, which means the experience, though unique, is a long one. All together, "Grindhouse" runs over three hours. I know you and Robert can watch movies all night, but was there any concern that the audience might prefer something shorter?
To me, if you're gonna make an omelette, you've gotta break some eggs. It is a double feature. It's not "Twilight Zone: The Movie."

Some critics seem to wish you'd leave behind the genre movies and do something more serious. They often say, "When is Quentin going to grow up?" How do you feel about that notion—that there's something insubstantial or adolescent about the movies you're making now?
To me, if I were to announce after "Grindhouse" that my next movie would be some biopic, that would be the worst thing I could do. That would be me selling out. That would be me getting flaccid. That would be me turning into an old man.

So we should stop expecting you to go serious on us, especially since you're having fun?

Well, look, I'm not just having fun. I'm an artist, all right? I'll put my dialogue up against Preston Sturges's. I'll put my dialogue up against Mark Twain. I'm still writing. I'm still doing my thing. I'm just doing it in the genres I'm feeling.

"Grindhouse" attempts to do an A-list version of B-movies. But is it tricky to do a "good" version of genre defined by its crumminess? How do you decide where to go for quality and where to go for kitsch?

I know what you mean, but it's hard to define how we went about it. I'm really proud of the conversations among the women in "Death Proof." I think it's the best dialogue I've ever written. And we had six weeks to shoot our car chases as opposed to six days. But the genre also let us be a little more punk rock than usual. Things that would ordinarily be a bad thing on another movie, we embraced for this one. Like, you're moving in on a zoom and the focus puller doesn't quite land it right away—the shot is out of focus for half a second—but then you get shit together for the end of the shot. For this movie, that's cool, you know? It fits. [Laughs.] We'd just say to each other, "Hey, it's grindhouse!" That actually became a catch phrase on the set.

When I was on the set with Robert, he talked about the next "Grindhouse," so it was clear he already plans to do it again. And you?

It wouldn't necessarily have to be me and Robert every time. We'd just be the caretakers of the label. Maybe next time it'll be Eli Roth and some other filmmaker we like. We could be like little Roger Cormans. We're hoping this will be successful enough that we do it every few years.

A couple weeks back, there were some gossip items about the gore in "Grindhouse." They suggested that people around the movie were worried about how much you'd have to trim in order to avoid the dreaded NC-17 rating.
All untrue. When that "Page Six" thing came out, we hadn't even screened the movie for the MPAA yet. We didn't have any problems with them at all. They totally got it. I've actually never had a problem with the MPAA in my whole career.

It's interesting that you say that, because when I read the "Page Six" item, it felt to me like a plant—that someone was spilling a few of the gory bits from the movie to entice hardcore horror fans. It wasn't about the MPAA at all. It was guerilla marketing.
I think you might be right. But it wasn't planted by us. The studios still get very nervous about that stuff. They're not convinced that sort of thing works.

Isn't it a bit weird that you didn't have any trouble with the MPAA? Much of the gore in "Death Proof" is sexuality expressed through violence. But if you had filmed the sexual themes as actual sex, instead of as violence, you would've gotten an NC-17 in a heartbeat.

That's true. But then again, the movie would also have to be called "The Rapist." [Laughs] And it would be pretty grueling to watch.

I love Kurt Russell in the film, especially the scenes where he [SPOILER ALERT] turns into a frightened coward. Did you push him to ham it up in those moments? Because it's absolutely hilarious.
No, as a matter of fact, he took that ball and ran with it. He actually asked me early on, "Does this guy turn into a coward?" And I go, "Well, yeah, kinda sorta." He ended up being really proud of that part of the movie. There's a scene at the end where the girls are pulling him out of the car and he's screaming bloody murder. We shot the first take, and I went over to him, and I said, "Kurt, do you think you could take it down just a little bit?" And Kurt goes, "Yes! I did it! I never thought I'd hear you say 'take it down a bit,' and I finally did it!" He took it as a badge of pride that he got me to say, "OK, maybe a little less." But it ended up being the shot I used.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Pubrick

Quote from: sparrowhoff on April 10, 2007, 10:24:35 AM
Two of my friends dragged their girlfriends with us to see it on Friday.  My girlfriend, my friend's girlfriend, and my other friend's wife declined to go (no, I'm not making this up, all of our girlfriends really exist) and the girls who did go weren't so happy with it.  In fact, one informed her boyfriend that they will be going to the upcoming 20th Anniversary screening of Dirty Dancing as payback.  So the girl thing is a factor but the length is as much of a problem, as well as releasing it on fucking Easter weekend.  Knowing now what happened, they should have held it off until early August or so, when people need a place to sit in air conditioning for as long as they possibly can, on top of the high school/college fanboys being off from school. 

The Weinsteins have to know that it's already too late to release them separately.  Death Proof will only make money with the people who already saw it and liked it but didn't like Planet Terror; otherwise, why pay $10 for one movie when you already paid $10 for two?  Planet Terror has the better word of mouth of the two and is the more accessible, but even that won't bring in that much more money.  If they're going to send them out separately, do it in the summer.  Put Planet Terror out towards the end of the summer in 1000 or so theatres, and put the longer version of Death Proof in the arthouses.  But set the DVD release for sometime in 1st quarter 2008 so fewer people will say, "I'll wait for the DVD.  It's only out in a month."


why aren't you working with cbrad.
under the paving stones.

Gold Trumpet

Quote from: MacGuffin on April 09, 2007, 04:08:36 PM
EXCLUSIVE: Harvey Very Disappointed; May Re-Release 'Grindhouse' As 2 Pics

Not surprised at all. And while many will complain, the films will come back together in their original visions on DVD. Europe and other countries are just getting fucked, but what Weinstein is doing isn't even that bad. Even back in the 1970s, if a cut was poorly received by the audience the studio would not only re-cut the film, but come close to destroying the original print. Some filmmakers had to go extreme measures to ensure their version would not be lost to a vault where it was likely to age and disintegrate at a very quick pace.