The Long Road

10/13/2003 Archived Entry: "Kill Bill"

Kill Bill is Tarantino's homage to classic Hong-Kong, Chinese, and Japanese cinema. This movie is Tarantino seeing all these other American directors messing up "asian-inspired movies" and saying "you morons, THIS is how you shoot a fight scene".

I don't really know how to describe this movie except to say that it's all style and homage. From the music, the camera angles, the "feature presentation" screen, the black and white, and the anime sequence, this movie has more style to it in any single conversation than most movies have in their entire running time. If you've seen a Quentin Tarantino movie before, you know what I mean.

While most other films would have something like "the hero needs a sword, gets one". Kill Bill spends minutes worshipping the art of sword making and giving it a respect that most movies would just gloss over. Long lingering moments like this are what make Kill Bill so different from anything else - they give the audience insight into things that Tarantino likes. What other director would spend such a large section of his movie dedicated to the hero obtaining a sword? This film is not "extruded fiction", there is tons of personality in it.

Uma Thurman is comletely believable as a badass fighter - much more so than Lucy Liu - and the fight scenes in this movie are absolutely brutal. There are an extraodinarily large number of limbs that fall off bodies here not to mention gallons upon gallons of GUSHING, GARGLING BLOOD! The prodigious amount of blood here is completely over the top and is quite amuzing to look at.

Whatever, I LOVED this film. I can't believe I have to wait 5 months to see the rest of it.

Replies: 7 comments

5 Months? Rest of it? Keep talking, you vague bastard.

Posted by Romer @ 10/13/2003 05:30 PM EST

This movie is Kill Bill Volume 1. Volume 2 comes out in 5 months.
I so want to see this movie! Me and Dan were gonna go see it this weekend but it's not in town yet. Grr. Hopefully soon.

Posted by Andrea @ 10/13/2003 11:24 PM EST

This is the first Quentin Tarantino film I've ever seen, and I can honestly say that this man is a genius.

It's how he painted his idea on the screen for viewers like us to see that makes it so amazing, every other action movie compared to Kill Bill just seems... like weaksauce now.

Another reason why Kill Bill rocked was that it was very Anime-ish in style, which is totally cool :) I never thought I'd see the day when a live-action movie reminded me of Anime.

The only thing left now is to wait five months for Vol 2! :)

-Dave

P.S: The way he wrote Bill on the window... Spectacular!

P.P.S: * Insert -GARGLING Blood Effect- here*

Posted by Dave @ 10/14/2003 03:54 PM EST

I was five and he was six
We rode on horses made of sticks
He wore black and I wore white
He would always win the fight

Bang bang, he shot me down
Bang bang, I hit the ground
Bang bang, that awful sound
Bang bang, my baby shot me down.

Seasons came and changed the time
When I grew up, I called him mine
He would always laugh and say
“Remember when we used to play?”

Bang bang, I shot you down
Bang bang, you hit the ground
Bang bang, that awful sound
Bang bang, I used to shoot you down.

Music played and people sang
Just for me the church bells rang.

Now he’s gone, I don’t know why
And till this day, sometimes I cry
He didn’t even say goodbye
He didn’t take the time to lie.

Posted by Rayne @ 10/14/2003 10:50 PM EST

Something from the movie?

Posted by Andrea @ 10/15/2003 12:48 AM EST

yea its the song from the opening credits, "bang bang" by nancy sinatra. very cool song!

Posted by Rayne @ 10/15/2003 01:06 AM EST

WOW, the Kill Bill soundtrack is amazing...

I've never liked this many songs on a disk before!

Posted by Rayne @ 10/20/2003 11:43 PM EST