catapult magazine

Random thoughts.

Visually the movie is spectacular.
I liked the anime.
It’s hard to tell whether the story will have any substance until Vol. 2 comes out.
Loved Uma.
Cool soundtrack as expected.
If I cut off someone’s arm does it really spray blood in all directions like that?
In Pulp Fiction, it seemed like there was actually less violence in the movie than the audience thinks there is (much of the violence was implied – left to the audience’s imagination). In Kill Bill, it seems like there is more violence than the audience thinks there is (much of the violence is cartoon-like or shown in black and white or shown as silhouette).
Don’t anyone dare compare the fight scene in this movie to the fight scene in the Matrix Reloaded.

I haven’t seen the movie—those of you that have, what do you think of this commentary? (below the quote)

“If you are a 12-year-old girl or boy, you must go and see ‘Kill Bill,’ and you will have a damn good time. Boys will have a great time, girls will have a dose of girl power. If you are a cool parent out there, go take your kids to the movie.”
-Quentin Tarantino

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/10/15/DD101138.DTL

I think I disagree with Mr Tarantino :) Little boys will want to cut someone arm off to see if it really squirts like that and little girls will learn that men really really like it when beautiful women fight with swords. But then again, there are worse films.

Maybe the 15 to 16 year old. I do NOT think that this film is adequate for a 12 year old…but that is my opinion only. I suppose that is why we have the feeble and worthless rating system for…
I do, however, think Tarantino believes that his movie is perfect for the 12 year old mind set. Sounds like something he would say.

FINALLY! Saw it last night. It was enormously entertaining and yes, very violent in an edgy but cartoonish way. I mentioned before that I read the script before I seeing it. Interestingly, it was a lot more violent in my head. My favorite part was the audience’s reactions. During the House of Blue Leaves scene the audience was laughing, gasping and giving up collective “ooooh!”s, as in “ooooh, that’s gotta hoit” when something particularly badass happened. Usually when someone makes even a peep at the movies I am annoyed to tears, but at Kill Bill it seemed appropriate.

And I’m no doctor but I don’t think blood sprays like that when one loses a limb. Or a head.

Are you telling me that you think the movies lie? How could you believe that? Of course blood sprays all over the place like that! Ha Ha Ha!

Heh. Actually, I really liked that QT used the gushing blood just for sheer effect. It managed to be gross and shocking and hilarious, while reminding you “it’s a movie, it’s a movie, it’s a movie!” just like the chapter title cards and the bleeps and the animation. It exploited the movieness of movies very effectively.

Interesting contrast to see Kill Bill and Mystic River back to back.

With all the gushing blood, I’m just glad that Mr T. refrained from quoting any topical Monty Python dialogue.

I read Roger Ebert’s 2-paragraph review of the film and he described the film as a “distillation of a genre…” Specifically, bad martial art movies from the seventies. As the proud owner of “Kill and Kill Again,” I’m a little confused as to why I enjoyed KillBill so much more than KillAgain. Most of you have seen KillBill, so I don’t need to describe its content. ‘Kill Again’ is the story of the world’s premier marital arts champion on a quest to rescue the world and the woman he loves from a megalomaniacal tyrant bent on global domination. Both films jump between a blurred sarcastic seriousness and both films also have shamelessly violent scenery. A typical scene in “Kill Again” will have the hero recruiting an old army buddy from a trailer park but on their way out, the buddy gets into a fight with his landlord over his unreturned security deposit. Ten minutes of honest kung fu action later, they leave the park. If you scale back Kill Bill thirty years and remove some of the technology and post, I think you’ll have the cultural equivalent of Kill Again. I suppose I’m just struggling to understand the ways that tastes change over time, but disregarding whatever that means, I want to encourage YOU, the viewer at home, to go out and rent the worst-looking movie you can find. Be it "Mr. Ice Cream Man " or Disney’s upcoming “Brother Bear,” a bad film gives you the perspective you need to enjoy good films and recognize other bad ones.

Goodness. I just inferred that enjoying a movie takes skill. If only one could get paid for enjoying a movie…..

Oh, and the spanking scene is the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in a long while.

I’ve got really mixed feelings about this film. I saw it for the first time last night, and I must admit that I totally loved it. Whenever I watch Tarantino films, I just come away with the feeling that every single scene is infused with joy. It just makes it that much more fun to watch when you know that the filmmaker is having fun.

But I find something really disturbing about his films, too. I’m not talking about the violence, or the language. It’s the attitude that gets me.

It seems like Tarantino approaches everything with a lot of irony. It’s hard to take stuff seriously when you feel like the director is always winking at you. Take the opening quote: “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” For a moment, the audience might be persuaded to take it seriously and wonder what it means, until they see that it is an “old Klingon proverb” and PRESTO!, any meaningful interpretation is diffused by the realization that it’s all a pop culture in-joke.

That’s what I think the whole movie is—an in-joke for film geeks. All the scenes have that aura, of having existed somewhere before Tarantino plucked them out of cinema heaven and made them his own.

And I guess I can’t decide if I want to simply glory in the “movieness” of the whole thing or if I want to be angry with Mr. Tarantino for making me watch a bunch of people die and then nudging me with his elbow like he expects me to laugh at the whole thing.

Silly, boring, fetishist, with a few moments of sheer brilliance. The gorgeous snowy fight scene at the end lost its effect after the comical bloodfest before it. If Tarantino loves violence, gore and blood so much, he shouldn’t have made it so overkill. I myself shared his love for violence in the first half of the film—especially the spraying head in the meeting room—but then it just got to be soooo dull and predictable and I felt like there was too much of a good thing. I found myself trying to crawl out of my skin as she started to write another juvenile wish list of people to kill for the next movie. She should have included the first little girl on her list because we know she’s coming back for revenge and then Uma’s own child (probably a girl) will have to get her own revenge so that we can have more fight scenes and more revenge! ps. Bill is God. (And I wonder what’s in that briefcase?)

I refuse to believe that you were actually, really bored at this film. I can accept that you found the showdown with Oren less effective after the crazy 88 fight, but no way were you bored. When the arc of the story became less than completely interesting, the scenery took over. Everything was so pretty. Or ugly in a really interesting way.

And Bill’s not God. Wait until part 2.