Kill Bill-arghhhhhh
 

Kill Bill is being split into two parts. Apparently, three hours of happiness is too much for the american movie audience. First 90 minute part will be released on Oct 10, with no date for the second, but supposedly 2-6 months later. I'd much rather have just one installment, no cuts. A lot of movies lately are coming in around three hours. Anyone elses thoughts?

damn thats not cool at all. i wish they would of kept in one part. maybe they will add more stuff though to each part that they otherwise would of had to cut if they made the movie 3 hours long. that would be a good thing.

nooooo, my stupid father made me sit through Gods and Generals twice! (~178 min). eh...gonna have to wait even longer for this damn movie...

if a movie's good, i don't mind it being long... and a tarantino kung fu flick qualifies as good. this is a disappointment to hear, but i'm sure the movie studio supports the idea fully... more money in their pockets.

That sucks! I seen the previews this movie is gonna rock!

That kind of length scares a lot of people away. More people will see it this way, but more people (like myself) will be pissed off, too.

Well I'd have to say that as long as a movie is good I don't care how long it is. Tarantino does some very creative stuff with his characters so I have a feeling that regardless of how long the film is it will not feel like, "Ok when is this going to end?" Perhaps after it is released in the theaters (both parts) it will be released as one film on DVD.

I'm getting to the point that unless a movie is an absolute must see on the big screen I can wait for pretty much anything to come out on DVD. The one trailer I've seen for Kill Bill looks intriging but I'm not sure if it warrants seeing it in the theater or not. I'll need to wait for more hype to truly garner my interest.

I've heard that there are sequences in this movie that are shot in black and white. Why? Because they are so violently gory that full color would cause most audience members to either leave or throw up.

Really? That's odd...never heard that.

I saw the preview of this on the "Equilibrium" DVD.

I must see this movie. I must see the B&W scenes, if there's any.

Uma Therman doesnt get enough action roles.
She is a great actress that needs more recognition, hopefully from Kill Bill.

I'd rather they not split up the movie, but they could make up for that by having a double feature where you could see the first part before you see the second part.

Uma Thurman doesnt get any roles anymore because she is a horrible actress. And don't believe they are spliting this movie up because moviegoers couldn't handle a 3 hour movie. I mean, look at Titanic for chirst sake! Top grossing movie of all time, and was longer than most tv mini-series. Its because they saw how Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions was being handled and new if they split the movie up they could draw people in to paying twice to see a single flick. They spend the normal amount of money it takes to make 1 movie, and the public spends twice as much to see it. If this type of flcik is successful, it will become a new trend in Hollywood, mark my words. I refuse to see this movie in theatres, and may not watch it till I can purchase a previously viewed DVD so that my money in no way supports this horseshit.

IMO, Uma Thurman is a great actress. Have you seen "Tape"? or "Mad Dog and Glory?"

Uma is definitely on my Cock Mobster Hitlist... :)

Of course, I think that everyone is forgetting that Tarantino is a freak (a brillant, wonderful freak) and that he had to have some say so, so just maybe it'll be better this way. I'm going to wait till i see it to freak out about the split.

Could not have said it better. And the worst, is that they try to make us believe is to preserve the integrity of the movie. That's making me puke.

I wonder if it'll be released on 2 DVD's?

This shit is ridiculous. Some of you guys are right, its just the newest Hollywood moneymaking ploy.

I've read an early draft of the script, and it sounds awesome. If they actually film it the way it is written , it should be amazing(and as someone has said, shockingly violent). I can't wait for it.

Although I would much rather see the entire film at once, it doesn't upset me too much to have to wait for the second part.

And that is exactly why they will be splitting it up, because they know they can get away with it. Everybody is still going to be dumb enough to shell out the dough twice to see 1 movie because its Tarantino. I dont care if it had Michelle Yeoh in it instead of Uma, i still wouldn't pay to see it. And they wonder why people pirate movies.

That's what I love about TFP. There will always be contridicting opinions. Somebody likes Uma Thurman, somebody doesnt.

Hey, Unknown Poster, where'd you read the script? I MUST READ!!! *shakes violently*

I rather have it as one long movie. I hate interruptions in a movie. And this being a Tarantino film, I wouldnt want to miss something because I had forgotten what happened earlier.

eh anything to make an extra 8 bucks a person

Good one Mr.Deflok! You always crack me up!

this is really retarded. Honestly, i can understand something like the lord of the rings or the matrix.. but this is only a 3 hour long movie. Movie tickets are so bloody expencive these days it hardly seems fair that we should have to pay to see only an hour and a half, and then pay again to see the last hour and a half.. The thing that anoyies me the most is that miramax is letting torentino get away with having his movie split up. They think he is one of their best directors, and dosn't want to lose him to some other studio. If you ask me, his movies really arn't as great as everyone would have us believe, and there is no way that spliting one into two parts is going to make it a better experence for the audience...

Kill Bill reviewed
 

Review of Quentin Tarantino’s new movie, “Kill Bill” from the Village Voice.

Back from the dead with the new Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino exposes the dick drive, movie ultraviolence, and his foot fetish

Faster, Pussy Wagon! Kill! Kill!
by RJ Smith
October 1 - 7, 2003

Quentin Tarantino holds the keys to the Pussy Wagon. Of all the reasons why it's good to be the king, surely being able to drive the Pussy Wagon is up there in the top five.

"It brightens up everybody's day," says Tarantino. "When you drive a Pussy Wagon, people see you coming."

He's coming. After six years of self-imposed exile, Tarantino is re-emerging with a movie that's going to sell a mountain of popcorn, one so over-the-top it might bring Bill Bennett out of his self-imposed exile. Tarantino's new Kill Bill, in theaters next Friday, is probably the most violent movie ever made by an American studio. It's definitely the first one to merge the talents of Uma Thurman, David Carradine, and Zamfir the Master of the Pan Flute, precariously balancing them all on a sword's edge.

There it is, parked in front of the Beverly Hills Four Seasons, a pimped-out yellow Dodge Ram with the cheesy '70s lettering on the back: PUSSY WAGON. Tarantino tosses the valet his keys to this memorable prop from Kill Bill and heads inside to the press junket. He's looking pretty stoked these days, but his actors are still licking their wounds. Kill Bill pushed its estimable cast to the breaking point, its mix of Japanese sword fighting styles and martial arts acrobatics and months of training turning them into welt farmers. It went way over budget, off schedule, and then Tarantino took a saber and sliced the baby in two parts—Kill Bill Volume One opens October 10, the second half February 20.

His last movie, Jackie Brown, came out in 1997, followed by six fat years of nothing. Tarantino was at the center of American culture in the '90s, but it was starting to seem that his influence might amount to precisely this: two guys in a beer commercial arguing about Ginger versus Mary Ann. The absence was making him look smaller. Tarantino was, take your pick: (a) polishing his World War II epic so long that Kilroy went home and took the war movie fad with him; (b) loading the bong and watching Jim Varney movies at 6 a.m. in his Hollywood Hills house. People wondered if he was ever going to make another movie again—if he'd lost it, even how much he ever had it.

"I didn't really necessarily assume he was stuck," says Thurman. "But you know, creative life and work is kind of mysterious like that. People do get lost. People do lose the fire. People's energy does go elsewhere. But that's just the mystery of being alive."

Jackie Brown was a mature, talky movie, sweet and loopy for all its swagger. But it was hardly an adrenaline shot to the heart, like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction administered, and the reception was downbeat. During this period, Tarantino was everywhere in the culture, and the exposure made him unable to surprise anybody. If you were ever going to be stuck, this was the place. He had his fortune; he could have continued to hibernate for six more years, clocking Terrence Malick time, Axl Rose time. But what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, then forfeit the Pussy Wagon? With Kill Bill, Tarantino wants back in.

When he re-emerged to start filming Kill Bill (in Mexico, China, and Japan), the reports were hardly reassuring: Tarantino packed up Thurman, martial arts choreographer Yuen Wo-ping (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Sonny Chiba, Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah, Carradine, and at least a hundred more to Beijing, where daily he would tear up the script and "improvise" incredibly complicated fight scenes on the spot. The script was 222 pages (twice the norm); cast and crew partied when they'd bagged their first 1,000 reels of film; Harvey Weinstein was headed for another heart attack. That's not even getting into the Ecstasy rave at the Great Wall.

Which is to say, after six years off, Tarantino's thinking huge, looking to open a whole new franchise. "I want to give the fans shit they can't even believe they're seeing
in a Hollywood film," he says. "I'm an arrogant man, and when I throw my hat in the ring, I want to be up there with all the big boys. And I wasn't gonna leave until I was satisfied."

You could fold Kill Bill's plot into a fortune cookie. Left for dead on her wedding day, Thurman's The Bride seeks revenge on the bootylicious DiVAS—Deadly Viper Assassination Squad—who did the deed. The DiVAS fit into a tradition of male-led bands of lethal women, from the Manson family to Charlie's Angels to Fox Force Five. But please, don't invoke Girl Power. True, Thurman fights through hordes of men and women for the ultimate battle, against Lucy Liu's O-Ren Ishi. Both have their dignity, and one of them leaves with it. But Girl Power's been used to sell everything from Lucky magazine to Britney Spears, and maybe it's time we found a new name for the license to kick ass.

Kill Bill is the most film-referential film Tarantino has made yet. It's as if he pulled back from the world after Jackie Brown, curled up with his inner geek, and went a little comatose. Kill Bill references the kung fu movies that flowed from Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers studio in the '60s and '70s, spaghetti westerns, Japanese anime, and the ultra-bloody films of Japanese master Kinji Fukasaku, who died in January. Daryl Hannah says there's even the influence of Jackass, which Tarantino was watching while choreographing a fight scene with her.

Tarantino calls Fukasaku's last film, Battle Royale—a disturbingly bloody teensploitation film set in a slightly futuristic Japan—a movie impossible to overpraise, and says he is stunned that it was made by a 70-year-old man. Old directors rarely have this much juice, he says. "It's a sad cliché that most every director ends their career with a whimper," says Tarantino, who was friends with Fukasaku over the last 10 years of his life. "You know, it's like, 'The sex drive goes, great! Now I can devote myself to my art.' They didn't realize the dick drive is connected to the art drive." He's either about to break into "Dem Bones" or embarrass himself, so he stops. For the moment.

A child raised by a single mom grows up to direct a movie in which women open cans of whup-ass from Mexico to Mount Fuji. And then he has to go and start spouting about the dick drive. Kill Bill deserves more than talk about Girl Power, deserves more than talk about the big boys. Maybe he should hand over the keys and let Uma get the Pussy Wagon home.

What Kill Bill comes down to in the end, perhaps, is a very small thing and a very large thing.

The small thing—things—are Thurman's feet. When Tarantino was meeting with her about Pulp Fiction, he reportedly proffered a friendly foot rub. In that movie, mobster Tony Rocky Horror got tossed out of the window by Ving Rhames for giving Thurman's character a foot massage. When Thurman's The Bride wakes from a coma and escapes from the hospital in Kill Bill, she struggles to get her paralyzed feet to regain sensation. For what seems like minutes these totemic toes fill the screen.

"He shot the whole movie on feet," laughs Thurman. "He could have put the entire story together on feet."

The guy digs her dogs, and he turns them into something huge and pure pop on the screen—you want to shout at them toes to start a-wiggling. It's not just that he's a foot fetishist, but that he takes what he cares about—personal, quirky stuff—and transforms it into art. He hooks you in, too.

The other thing—the large-scale thing—is the last scene in the picture, about 20 minutes long. It's set in a Tokyo nightclub called the House of Blue Leaves (no word whether playwright John Guare will follow through on his threat to go medieval on Tarantino's ass for copyright infringement). The scene is destined to be taught in film schools and ripped off in hip-hop videos for the next 20 years.

This movie isn't about story: It visually establishes a series of hyper-vivid places, then unleashes frenzy in them. The most hyper-vivid place of all is the House of Blue Leaves. And it's the greatest scene in the movie because it isn't just a series of fights—it tells a story through battle, it has rhythm and punctuation while being practically wordless. Writing mannered, dazzling ribbons of words—fully engaged with the real-world dialogue—is arguably what Tarantino does best. So it's worrisome that he pulls back from the world and coops up in the video store of his cerebellum. Or, it would be worrisome, if he didn't make that nonexistent place seem so cavernous. There's more structure and narrative in the House of Blue Leaves scene than in the rest of the movie.

Uma Thurman enters a nightclub where a garage band wails. There's a glassed-over Zen garden below the dancefloor. Upstairs, Lucy Liu is hanging with her yakuza gang, the Crazy 88s. Before it's all over, black-masked 88s storm the screen in tribute to Fukasaku and the Green Hornet, raging like hormones, all eventually mowed down by The Bride. They lie limbless, gushing hoses of blood, so much General Tso's chicken across the deserted dancefloor.

It took months to film this scene in Beijing, and Thurman says she almost didn't survive the experience. "I had a big meltdown one day. And you don't want to see me have a meltdown. I'm swinging a sword that close to someone's face, and it's all well and good to say [she does Tarantino's booming mook voice], 'Hey let's do another one! Ha ha! It's great.' But after hour 14 or 15 of that, it's scary. You don't want to have your eye taken out."
The cast members largely do their own stunts, and much of the action is shot in long takes. "They would just make up stuff on the spot, and I would have to learn 10 or 12 combinations of moves and then shoot it at full speed, full strength. Five guys! Ten guys! Four guys! Up, down, five ways! And at some moment my nervous system just said . . . " Her hand drifts up in the air like a balloon escaping.

"I was only safe from stuff I thought an insurance company wouldn't let him do it. That was the only time I would be safe—when it was definitely, positively illegal."

How did Liu feel seeing herself walk around the set made up for her final scene, in which she gets a severe samurai flattop? "It was a relief," she says. Nothing else bad could happen.

The House of Blue Leaves scene will be what people remember from this movie—it will keep their heads ringing. Tarantino says it's meant to be his equivalent of the Apocalypse Now "Ride of the Valkyries" scene, and it succeeds in part because the making of Kill Bill approached the crazed, against-nature vibe of the making of Apocalypse Now.

"The hardest thing about that scene was simply capturing the movie I had in my head," says Tarantino. "Because the one in my head was as good as any action sequence I've seen in my life. I didn't do all this to be OK. I didn't do all of it to be on a learning curve all right, so that the next action movie I do will be really good.

"I've always considered action directors to be the most cinematic directors—a good action sequence is cinema in its purest form. There's other directors with more resonance, with more depth of feeling, depth of behavior, whatever, but when it comes to pure cinema it's usually a really good action sequence." For all the screams and punchlines, for the soundtrack by the Wu-Tang Clan's RZA and the incredibly well-mic'd way the swords come out of bodies, you almost don't need ears. As for the director, we may be wishing that he pipes down any day now, but he's made a vivid and livid silent movie for the 21st century.

..............................................................................

No comment from me on this one.
This is here as a PSA...for y'all.

I'm looking forward to it, and three hours of continuous action might be too much for even me to digest.I am definitely willing to give Tarantino a shot, and he still has major star power. Plus, I think he will have the right levity to make a project like this work.

I just can't sit for 3 hours in a theatre...just too long for me no matter how good the movie is.

If my friends want to see this movie, I will go with everyone. I do want to see it, but 3 hours is just too much.

Thanks ARTv! Hopefully the movie lives up to my way-to-high-and-unrealistic hopes. My eye's better have cavities like never before when I walk out of that theatre.

Kaos-It's no longer three hours, but two 90 minute films.

I think i could sit through three hours of it but oh well if they're gonna split it up. It looks really cool.

It's a marketing ploy.


The only movies that do well anymore are the ones that have sequals already finished when the first one comes out.

I'm going to see a screening on Saturday... :) hope it's as good as the hype suggests.

The Script was released a loooooooong time ago, havent read it so couldnt tell ya if it seemed legit

BTW does anyone have a screencap or link to a trailer where it shows someone being cut, and the wound is a letter in "KILL BILL", i cant seem to find it anywhere

Kill Bill :eek: I don't like the sound of that:D

Seems to be getting good reviews.

It sounds like a lot of fun, regardless of marketing gimmicks. Hopefully splitting it into two will give him another opportunity to go on the Tonight Show, get drunk backstage and then go out and make Jay Leno feel insecure and uncomfortable.:D

I too am going to see KB when it hits the big screen then will also order my DVD if the theater showing warrants it, but from preivews etc i think it will be a good one.

I can't wait.
Sorry for two parts, but at least it is coming out.

i think Tarintino is a hack.
That being said.. im going to see this movie for dumb fun, and stylish action. I'll try really hard to forget who made it while watching.. maybe i'll enjoy it more.

Re: Kill Bill-arghhhhhh
 

problem basically stemms from miramax. they apparently feel anything over 2 hours will not make them enough money. if you look at the majority of their releases i beilve this is aparent. i guess if your over 2 hours then you have problems getting enough showings in during the day. they would rather see their movies run a ton during the day and make that big boxoffice splash than see it do good over the long haul i think.