kill bill: tarantino's fourth koldo almandoz
Revenge. The director, whose cheek bones twitch up and down like a speed freak’s, is back with a film that’s all about revenge from the start straight through to the finish. It all starts with bloody mayhem at a wedding. Everyone gets pumped full of lead and dies screaming. Well, almost everyone. The bride survives, albeit in a coma... until she wakes up four years later that is. Uma Thurman had been the bride-to be back then, but now her only companions are a yellow tracksuit, a yellow car and a razor-sharp Katana. The mad bitch is out for revenge and she knows who she’s looking for: Bill. And who, you might ask, is the “baddest” of all the baddies in this DolceGabana-Kung Fu flick? (Drum roll in the background...) Why, the one and only Grasshopper, David Carradine. I mean, who else could it be? Uma Thurman and Carradine are joined by Daryl Hannah, Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen and Vivica A. Fox.
Tarantino doesn’t come up with anything new in this, his fourth film. Let’s face it, he didn’t come up with anything new in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction or Jackie Brown either. In fact, the ex-video club employee has absolutely never thought up something of his own. Ever. His merit, and merit he does have, has been his great ability to neatly balance different styles together: his never runof- the-mill narrative structure, snappy dialogue and intelligent use and direction of the actors in his films. Tarantino sees cinema as a spectacle, but he also knows how to give his films that special touch, and that is what enables his films to stand on their own two feet. Another thing: even though he’s worked as a producer in many films, he’s known how to pace himself as a director.
Kill Bill was filmed on location in L.A., Mexico and China. In China, it was filmed at the famous Beijing Film Studios, mythical home to many Kung Fu style films. Tarantino is well aware of the current success of Oriental cinema. The film is chocabloc with wonderfully filmed colour and violence. There are plenty of the martial arts and special effects that we saw in Tiger and Dragon. The baddies spend the whole film trying to plug our heroine, but there isn’t a man alive who is a match for a “jilted” bride on a bloodlust revenge buzz. There’s no one who can look Uma in the eyes and hold her stare.
Uma Thurman’s eyes
They’re there. At the bus-stop beside my house. They’re on a poster for some perfume or another. And those eyes can stare right through you. I know because I observe them from my window. If you look carefully enough, you can see her flutter her eye-lids every now and then. They’re strange. But don’t you think the strangest ones are your own? They’re an unknown quantity. When a person fixes their eyes on somebody, that look is coming from somewhere; it’s the culmination of something. There’s a secret message hidden in there. The only person who knows what our look means is the person it’s directed at. We never know. I like indecipherable, moving, painful and soul-baring eyes. The ones that look at me from a poster at the bus-stop. Uma Thurman’s eyes...
Tarantino doesn’t come up with anything new in this, his fourth film. Let’s face it, he didn’t come up with anything new in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction or Jackie Brown either. In fact, the ex-video club employee has absolutely never thought up something of his own. Ever. His merit, and merit he does have, has been his great ability to neatly balance different styles together: his never runof- the-mill narrative structure, snappy dialogue and intelligent use and direction of the actors in his films. Tarantino sees cinema as a spectacle, but he also knows how to give his films that special touch, and that is what enables his films to stand on their own two feet. Another thing: even though he’s worked as a producer in many films, he’s known how to pace himself as a director.
Kill Bill was filmed on location in L.A., Mexico and China. In China, it was filmed at the famous Beijing Film Studios, mythical home to many Kung Fu style films. Tarantino is well aware of the current success of Oriental cinema. The film is chocabloc with wonderfully filmed colour and violence. There are plenty of the martial arts and special effects that we saw in Tiger and Dragon. The baddies spend the whole film trying to plug our heroine, but there isn’t a man alive who is a match for a “jilted” bride on a bloodlust revenge buzz. There’s no one who can look Uma in the eyes and hold her stare.
Uma Thurman’s eyes
They’re there. At the bus-stop beside my house. They’re on a poster for some perfume or another. And those eyes can stare right through you. I know because I observe them from my window. If you look carefully enough, you can see her flutter her eye-lids every now and then. They’re strange. But don’t you think the strangest ones are your own? They’re an unknown quantity. When a person fixes their eyes on somebody, that look is coming from somewhere; it’s the culmination of something. There’s a secret message hidden in there. The only person who knows what our look means is the person it’s directed at. We never know. I like indecipherable, moving, painful and soul-baring eyes. The ones that look at me from a poster at the bus-stop. Uma Thurman’s eyes...
