Proof the he has far too much time on his hands...

[MacGuffin]

Tarantino brings Kill Bills together
Source: iol.ie

Movie-maker Quentin Tarantino is planning to re-release his Kill Bill movie saga as one complete film with an intermission.

The cult director plans to start work on merging Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Kill Bill: Vol. 2 once the holiday season is over and hopes to release it in selected cinemas late next year [2006].

He says: "I want to cut the whole movie together like one big epic with an intermission in the middle like a 60s film. It'll be coming out in theatres.

"I've been holding off because I've been working on it for so long that I just wanted a year off from Kill Bill and then I'll do the big supplementary DVD package."

[modage]

On Nov 9th at 9pm, Quentin Tarantino will talk to(?) Fiona Apple (or something) on the Sundance Channel Show ICONOCLASTS. 

In this six-part original series, some of today's most provocative personalities explore the passions and aspirations of the innovators, rule breakers and ground shakers who inspire them....

http://www.sundancechannel.com/iconoclasts/

REMINDER: this is THURSDAY at 9pm. 

clip here:

[MacGuffin]

Tarantino makes the cut for ACE

Quentin Tarantino will receive the ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year Award at the 57th annual Eddie Awards ceremony, set for Feb. 18 at the Beverly Hilton.

Tarantino was voted the honor by the board of directors of the American Cinema Editors, which said in announcing his selection, "His rich and original body of work represents the best that our creative community has to offer. He has also been a proud and vocal supporter of the contributions of editors to filmmaking and shares a long and close relationship with editor Sally Menke, A.C.E., with whom he has collaborated on seven films."

Tarantino's most recent features include the two "Kill Bill" movies as well as "Sin City," on which he was billed as special guest director. Along with Robert Rodriguez, he directed "Grindhouse," which the Weinstein Co.'s Dimension Films will release April 6.

[MacGuffin]

Tarantino's Grindhouse Festival Announced
Source: Dimension Films

In anticipation of the eagerly-awaited theatrical release of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's double feature Grindhouse on April 6th, the New Beverly Cinema will host Quentin Tarantino Presents the Los Angeles Grindhouse Festival 2007 from March 4th – April 30th, 2007, it was announced today by creator and curator Tarantino. The event will be a showcase for the risqué films exploiting sex, violence and extreme subject matter from the 1970s that inspired Grindhouse, with prints directly on loan from Tarantino's private collection, many of which are unavailable on DVD and have not screened for the public in theatres in decades. With double and triple features of roughly seven different films in rotation per week, the ground-breaking fest will screen over 50 historic films throughout the eight-week run, all personally selected for audience re-discovery by the director.

"'Grindhouse' is a tribute to the movies I have loved for decades that have mostly been under-appreciated and forgotten," states Tarantino. "I'm thrilled to have this chance to show the original works for a new generation to discover, and to give Los Angeles the rare opportunity to see these gems on the big screen."

During the course of the festival, Tarantino has scheduled various theme nights including the "Euro Sex Comedies Triple Feature," which will feature screenings of Sex with a Smile, Sex on the Run and The Oldest Profession; "Back-To-Back Kung Fu Superstar Angela Mao Double Feature," presenting two of the actress' greatest classics Return of the Tiger and Stoner; "Regional Double Feature," with screenings of Hot Summer in Barefoot County and Redneck Miller; and the "All Blood Triple Feature," showcasing Blood Spattered Bride, Asylum of Blood and Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary.

Favorite filmmakers of Tarantino's highlighted during the festival include famed cult director John Hayes with the double feature Grave of the Vampire, written by David ("The Sopranos") Chase and Jailbait Babysitter; sexploitation filmmaker Roger Vadim, who will be represented by his Pretty Maids All in a Row; Al Adamson, whose Female Bunch will screen; Fernando Di Leo's Wipeout and Cirio H. Santiago, director of the classic The Muthers.

This whirlwind festival features many uncensored and uncut, not to be missed cinematic experiences such as the sexploitation films The Girl From Starship Venus and The Legend of the Wolf Woman; the blaxploitation films Brotherhood of Death and The Mack; the teen summer comedies The Van, Pick-up Summer and Summer Camp; and the martial arts classics Fearless Fighters, Super Man Chu, Chinese Hercules and Black Dragon; as well as the ultra rare 35mm prints of Slithis, Shame of the Jungle and Chinese Hercules, just to name a few.

In addition to showcasing the "Grindhouse" films from his own vault, the New Beverly Cinema will exhibit a number of original posters and lobby cards of the films from Tarantino's personal collection as well throughout the run of the festival.

For show times, check local listings or visit the New Beverly Cinema website or call for program information (323) 938-4038.

Dimension Films' Grindhouse consists of Tarantino and Rodriguez's two feature length films screened back-to-back: Rodriguez's "Planet Terror" and Tarantino's "Death Proof."

Films scheduled at the Los Angeles Grindhouse Festival 2007 include:

3/4-3/6 - The Mack, directed by Michael Campus; The Chinese Mack, directed by Lai Chien.

3/7-3/8 – "Italian '70s Crime Films." Machine Gun McCain, directed by Giuliano Montaldo; Wipeout!, directed by Fernando Di Leo.

3/9-3/10 – Triple Feature of The Van, directed by Sam Grossman; Pick-up Summer, directed by George Mihalka; Summer Camp, directed by Chuck Vincent.

3/11-3/13 – Rolling Thunder, directed by John Flynn; The Town That Dreaded Sundown, directed by Charles B. Pierce.

3/14-3/15 – Chinese Hercules, directed by Choy Tak; Black Dragon, directed by Chin-Ku Lu.

3/16-3/17 – "Euro Sex Comedies Triple Feature." Sex With A Smile, directed by Sergio Martino; Sex on the Run, directed by Franz Antel; The Oldest Profession, directed by Claude Autant-Lara and Mauro Bolognini.

3/18-3/20 – Brotherhood of Death, directed by Bill Berry; Johnny Tough, directed by Horace Jackson.

3/21-3/22 – Autopsy, directed by Jose Maria Forque; Eyeball, directed by Umberto Lenzi.

3/23-3/24 – Triple Feature of Coonskin, directed by Ralph Bakshi; Shame of the Jungle, directed by Picha Boris Szulzinger; Tunnel Vision, directed by Neal Israel and Bradley R. Swirnoff.

3/25-3/27 – Pretty Maids All in a Row, directed by Roger Vadim; Revenge of the Cheerleaders, directed by Richard Lerner.

3/28-3/29 – "Kung Fu Double Bill." Fearless Fighters, directed by Man-Hung Mo; Super Man Chu, directed by Yang Hsiang.

3/30-3/31 – "All Blood Triple Feature." The Blood Spattered Bride, directed by Vicente Aranda; Asylum of Blood, directed by Fernando Di Leo; Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary, directed by Juan Lopez Moctezuma.

4/1-4/3 – The Lady in Red, directed by Lewis Teague; Bare Knuckles, directed by Don Edmonds.

4/4-4/5 – The Female Bunch, directed by Al Adamson; Wonder Women, directed by Robert Vincent O'Neill.

4/6-4/7 – White Line Fever, directed by Jonathan Kaplan; Return to Macon County, directed by Richard Compton.

4/8-4/10 – "Sexploitation Night." The Girl From Starship Venus, directed by Derek Ford; The Legend of the Wolf Woman, directed by Rino Di Silvestro.

4/11-4/12 – "70's Low Budget Horror Combo." Slithis, directed by Stephen Traxler; Screams of a Winter Night, directed by James L. Wilson.

4/13-4/14 – "Regional Double Feature." Hot Summer in Barefoot County, directed by Will Zens; Redneck Miller, directed by John Clayton.

4/15-4/17 – The Muthers, directed by Cirio H. Santiago; Fight For Your Life, directed by Robert A. Endelson.

4/18-4/19 – Dragon's Vengeance, directed by Ng Loo; Kung Fu: The Punch of Death, directed by Chai Yang-Min.

4/20-4/21 – Triple Feature of The Swinging Barmaids, directed by Gus Trikonis; The Swingin' Pussycats, directed by Alexis Neve; The Swinging Cheerleaders, directed by Jack Hill.

4/22-4/24 – "John Hayes Double Bill." Grave of the Vampire and Jailbait Babysitter, both directed by John Hayes.

4/25-4/26 – "Back-To-Back Angela Mao." Return of The Tiger, directed by Jimmy Shaw; Stoner, directed by Feng Huang.

4/27-4/28 – "Barbara Bouchet Double Feature." Death Rage, directed by Antonio Margheriti; Cry of the Prostitute, directed by Adelchi Bianchi.

4/29-4/30 – The Real Bruce Lee, directed by Larry Dolgin and Jim Markovic; Lee Lives Within, directed by Tam Kai.

[MacGuffin]

Tarantino's Grindhouse Fest celebrates cinematic cheese
If you want to know what made Quentin Tarantino the man he is today, look at the L.A. grindhouse life he's loved.
Source: Los Angeles Times

Some kids love Disneyland, but for little Quentin Tarantino, the happiest place on Earth was always a scabby L.A. movie theater. That's where he could sit in the dark with bloodied samurais, dangerous pimps and zombie brides. His search for the next matinee took him to every freeway and to distant neighborhoods, which is why Tarantino now knows the city like the back of an amputated hand.

Sometimes, it's even hard for the filmmaker to say where the movie screen stops and the real Los Angeles begins.

"I was watching this blaxploitation movie called 'Death Force' at the World Theater, which used to be on Hollywood Boulevard just up from Gower. I'm there watching this movie about these two gangs fighting to take over L.A. They're pulling a 'Scarface,' just killing everyone. Well, two gang members are walking down Hollywood Boulevard and a car pulls up and guns them down right in front of the theater that I'm sitting in! I was like 16, and it remains to this day one of the great moments for me."

No one mixes art house and butcher shop quite the way the 43-year-old Tarantino does. And now he is sending a valentine back to the vintage exploitation films that have been his lurid muse: This Sunday marks the start of his Los Angeles Grindhouse Festival 2007, a tenderly titled, eight-week retrospective of five dozen deliriously bad films, among them "Autopsy," "Jailbait Babysitter," "Chinese Hercules" and "The Legend of the Wolf Woman." For the uninitiated, "grindhouse" is a nickname for the creaky theaters that would "grind" away their projectors for triple features filled with second-run films, exploitation flicks and foreign-film curiosities.

The films at the New Beverly Cinema are all from prints in Tarantino's personal film library and, more important, from the reels that grind on in his head and heart. Last week, the director took a break from his labors on his own upcoming film project (that would be "Death Proof," but more on that later) to talk about the festival and also give a quick tour of his Los Angeles — the one he lives in and the one that lives in his films.

Not the silent type

Tarantino drives a hulking Ford Mustang that's painted yellow and black to match the famous fighting togs of Uma Thurman's character in the "Kill Bill" movies, and the director himself is about as subtle as his ride. While scavenging for a parking spot along Sunset Boulevard, he paid roughly equal attention to the radio and the road.

He talks fast and loud, his synapses are set on rapid-fire mode, and silent places seem to make him itchy. That's one reason he does much of his writing at Toi on Sunset, the spiky Thai restaurant that is about as serene as a mosh pit.

"It's the best place to eat after 2 a.m.," Tarantino said, after parking the Mustang and ordering a steaming plate of veggie curry and a cup of warm sake. Tarantino was fresh from his more official office, which is in a converted house just north of Melrose Avenue. Toi is a hub for Hollywood hipsters, but the place that Tarantino really wanted to talk about was a long-gone movie theater in Carson.

"The Carson Twin Cinema, that was pretty much the perfect grindhouse theater. It was family-owned, this cool old Italian guy ran it, and it was in the Scottsdale Shopping Center," he said. "They would show 'Enter the Dragon' and 'The Five Fingers of Death' as a double feature three times a year, because it would always sell out."

The theater had sticky floors, Samoan ushers and plenty of fights. It's the place that, once he could get into R-rated films, Tarantino would spend his weekends soaking up Italian horror films, pompom-girl flicks and an endless parade of kung fu fights. The dialogue Tarantino heard from the other patrons stuck with him as much as the cheesy lines from the movies; the racial epithets, drug talk and leering blue chatter taught him the celebrated idioms of his characters in "Pulp Fiction," "Reservoir Dogs" and "Jackie Brown."

"I'm never going to be shy about anything, what I write about is what I know; it's more about my version of the truth as I know it," Tarantino said. "That's part of my talent, really — putting the way people really speak into the things I write. My only obligation is to my characters. And they came from where I have been."

Tarantino's mom was only 16 when he was born, and when he hit that age himself, he dropped out of Narbonne High School in Harbor City to chase a career as a filmmaker. A dozen years later, he catapulted to fame with "Reservoir Dogs" in 1992 and, along with Alfred Hitchcock and Spike Lee, is one of the few directors who have shaped a pop-culture persona as big as their films. Whether popping up as an actor in his own films or as a presenter at the Grammys, Tarantino is recognizable as a frenetic, slightly buggy character — the perfect combination of Lenny and Squiggy from "Laverne & Shirley."

His true romance with film began at a young age, and it was a little scary from the get-go. "The first movie I went to see, that I remember going to see, was 'Airport.' I was like 4 or 5 years old. It was a big, big deal, right? My parents took me. They were very young. We went to Hollywood and we walked up and down Hollywood Boulevard, and it was scary. I mean, to me it looked like there was a lot of danger, so I was staying really close to my parents. But then there was this moment where I stopped to look in a window and they kept walking...."

At this point Tarantino shakes his fists. His eyes get big and crazy, even more than usual. "They came back and got me. But man, if I had turned around and they weren't there!"

Grinding away

The New Beverly Cinema is like a dive bar without a liquor license or the stools. Tarantino dropped by the revival house after the meal at Toi, and there was a curvy young woman standing on the sidewalk randomly flashing strangers. Inside the theater's lobby, Rudy Ray Moore, the star of blaxploitation movies such as "Dolemite," was giving autographs to young hipsters who had come to see a screening of one his movies that night.

Tarantino said he would love to be at the venue every night to introduce each of the films in the coming festival, but he's in crunch time on "Death Proof," which is his half of a two-film collaboration with director pal Robert Rodriguez that will be in theaters on April 6 under the umbrella title of "Grindhouse." While Rodriguez's "Planet Terror" deals with aliens on a rampage, Tarantino's "Death Proof" is a juiced-up tale of muscle cars and fistfights. Though its sleekness and irony separate it from the cheesy movies that will be screening at the New Beverly, they all spring from the same sordid cinema ethos.

In fact, the festival is a way for Tarantino to draw attention to not only his new movie but also the scruffy works that inspired it. And he scheduled some of his favorites for late April, so he could introduce them and explain why they are so wonderfully bad.

Tarantino said a full third of the films in the festival were made here in the Los Angeles area and that watching the backdrops is a sort of history lesson.

"The exploitation films were made in such an artless way with these big wide shots of Sunset Boulevard or of Arcadia or downtown L.A. or wherever," he said. "In mainstream films, especially in the 1980s, the Los Angeles you saw wasn't the real one; it was a character with this back-lot sort of atmosphere. They tried to luxuriate it. In exploitation films, you see what the place really looked like, you see the bars and mom-and-pop restaurants."

The films of director Al Adamson, for instance, are "almost anthropological," Tarantino said. The man who made "Brain of Blood" and "The Naughty Stewardesses" may not have had true talent, but his camera caught reality in a way the bigger budget films did not. "I was watching one, and it was this scene at the parking lot of where the ArcLight is now. And I couldn't believe it. Man, that Kentucky Fried Chicken on Vine near Sunset, that's been there for 25 years!"

Tarantino used to take the bus to the far corners of L.A. in search of the gritty movies that taught him about violence, sex and culture. He still gets around a lot, but now it's usually to see one of his own films in different cultural echo chambers.

"I like to go down to the Magic Johnson Theatres to see my movies there. I like to see them in the suburbs, and downtown, just to see how the audiences take it all in."

Tarantino is as much a fan as he is a filmmaker, and he's even flirted with buying a Chinatown theater so he can have his own place to run reels of kung fu movies. He revels in dropping by award shows, industry events, film festivals and conventions, any setting that puts him in proximity to an audience that he can pitch his version of pop culture to. Standing in line at the Starbucks across the street from the New Beverly Cinema, he was asked why he spends so much time in front of the camera. "Hey, this is my time. I think in years to come too, people will say that guy got it right. His movies are the ones that still matter."

The real L.A.

Tarantino is not a good singer, but that doesn't stop him. Asked his favorite L.A. song, he chews on the question and then warbles an old Ry Cooder tune, "Bop Till You Drop."


Going down in Hollywood

You better hope that you don't run out of gas

Down in Hollywood

He'll drag you right out of your car and kick your ass

Down in Hollywood


Raymond Chandler created a fictional Los Angeles that somehow helped make the actual city more real. Tarantino has done that with his films. In "Jackie Brown," for instance, nearly every scene was within a 15-minute drive of LAX, and Tarantino scoured Hawthorne to find just the right apartment for his title character, a stewardess who pulls in $16,000 a year. "I needed a place she could afford the rent on but that was also big enough for us to shoot in. The details, man, the real things, that's what I want."

One of his proudest moments: In "Reservoir Dogs," two of his killers discuss Ladera Heights, which one describes as the Beverly Hills for blacks. His partner corrects him: No, it's more like the black Palos Verdes. "I was watching that in Rome, in a theater, and I'm just laughing. That movie played all over planet Earth, and how many people got that joke? L.A. people got it, and I loved it."

But sometimes you learn more about a place by leaving it.

Tarantino spent a year in Tennessee one summer. ("That's what it felt like.") The whole place gave him the creeps. There was only one theater, a drive-in. It was 1973, the summer of "Walking Tall," the archetypal hixploitation knuckle movie, which would have been fine, except its hero, Sheriff Buford Pusser, was based on a real lawman from McNairy County, Tenn., and, unlike in L.A., the locals in the Volunteer State weren't accustomed to seeing themselves up on the screen.

"It played all ... summer ... long." Tarantino moaned, still clearly exasperated. "Not only did it play all summer long, but after the first night, the projectionist or the owner or whoever, cut out the big baseball bat scene.

"He thought it was too violent! Too violent! Thank God I was there the first night! And then after that, every weekend I would go and expect the scene to be back and it wasn't there. I didn't even know you could do that. I didn't understand what had happened until later. So not only am I stuck in Tennessee watching a movie about Tennessee, but it's a compromised version of 'Walking Tall.' "

Apparently, it never occurred to young Tarantino that he might simply skip a weekend at the theater instead of undergoing this extended private torture. Regardless, it did leave an impression: "I couldn't get back to L.A. fast enough."

[modage]

Is "Death Proof" Tarantino's John Wesley Harding?
Source: Rolling Stone

Record store clerk turned zeitgeisty film director Quentin Tarantino has a wide variety of interests (American Idol, Uma Thurman) and apparently one of them is boxing. In the new issue of GQ Tarantino said that he used to box at Bob Dylan's gym. Tarantino dishes on the singer's skills in the sparring ring. "He [Dylan] nailed me with a really good one. We were sparring together, and he got one in there when I wasn't paying attention. I think it was a right jab. I let my guard down for a second, and he just thumped it in. It was a good punch."

Tarantino went on to gush about his love for Bob, saying that while working on his new film Death Proof, he listened to Dylan's new album every day, also spent a lot of time with Self Portrait, and pondered the ways in which Death Proof is like John Wesley Harding. "I wouldn't go so far as to say that this film is my John Wesley Harding, but it accomplished some of the same things to me that John Wesley Harding did," the director said. "I turned a corner with this script ... and I think that it's going to lead to other interesting things down the line."

Perhaps Tarantino will find God, wear a series of decade-appropriate leisure suits, and make several more genre-bending, career-defining, totally genius pieces of work? Cool.

[MacGuffin]

Tarantino Takes Pedicab in Manila Floods

Quentin Tarantino was forced to hop into a pedicab to escape gridlock on flooded Manila streets Wednesday as he made his way to the presidential palace to receive a film award.

Tarantino's limousine had been stuck in traffic for about 2 1/2 hours on a bridge close to Malacanang palace when Filipino filmmaker Amable "Tikoy" Aguiluz suggested they take separate pedicabs (cycle rickshaws).

About 15 minutes later, they reached a street corner near the palace gates where a car picked them up, Tarantino said.

"It was a lot of fun. It's the way it is, I guess. ... It was wild," he told reporters. "No worries. I've done more serious things than that."

Tarantino was 40 minutes late for the ceremony but 30 minutes ahead of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Pounding rain from Typhoon Sepat flooded parts of metropolitan Manila, prompting authorities to suspend classes, briefly stopping a commuter train and slowing Arroyo's convoy.

Tarantino, director of "Pulp Fiction" and the "Kill Bill" movies, wore a traditional Filipino formal shirt and sandals.

He was handed size-13 black leather shoes because sandals and rubber shoes aren't allowed inside the palace during presidential ceremonies, said a staff member of the National Commission on Culture and Arts.

Tarantino, 44, was among three Lifetime Achievement award winners in the 9th Cinemanila, a film festival featuring foreign and local movies.

He is writing a book about Philippine films, particularly the horror and action movies he saw in his youth.

[MacGuffin]

What the f*** is Heroes?
Source: The Star

FILMMAKER Quentin Tarantino has dabbled with psychos in Natural Born Killers and assassins in Reservoir Dogs - but it seems he can't suspend his belief enough to work with superpowers.

The cult director has turned down the opportunity to direct an episode of hit TV show Heroes - because he's never watched the series.

Quentin - who also gave us Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction - admits he has snubbed numerous offers by bosses of the superhero programme because he isn't a fan.

He said: "They were trying to get me to do one. I haven't even seen the f***ing show.

"What the f*** is Heroes?"

[Pubrick]

so he hasn't completely lost his senses.

[Pozer]

however, if they offered him a guest starring role, he'd be all over the show's nuts.

[ElPandaRoyal]

What the fuck is heroes indeed... I mean, I know the show, but c'mon... is it as good as some people say it is? I really don't think so. However, I can imagine Tarantino saying the same thing about "Lost", and in that case chere wight be blood.

[Pozer]

huh?

[MacGuffin]

[Sleepless]

Best thing he's done since Jackie Brown. Shame there's no inside-the-trunk shot.

[cinemanarchist]

I love his films but damn Tarantino makes me uncomfortable. He seems like one of the guys in Hostel that would kill someone if they could do it legally...or at least get away with it. Perhaps he was always like this or perhaps it's all the weed and coke? Though I don't get this vibe from PTA so it must be more than the drugs.