I know I’m like 3 weeks late, but yesterday I finally got to see “Kill Bill Volume 2“, or simply, as the British Board of Film Classification called it, Vol. 2. So I figured I’d give my thoughts on both volumes at the same time, kinda like the way it was meant to be seen.
Kill Bill Volume 1
I’ll assume that most people have seen this, but if you haven’t, might as well look away now.
Kill Bill opens with a shot of a bloody and beaten bride (Uma Thurman) talking to a disembodied voice before she gets shot point blank in the head which doesn’t kill her, but puts her in a coma for 4 years, when she finally comes to she sets out on a “roaring rampage of revenge” against the DiVAS (Deadly Viper Assassination Squad) who put her where she is today. In typical Tarantino fashion the movie then starts jumping about the timeline like no ones business as the first target, Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), is really the second.
The opening fight is a pretty intense, if a little catty, affair broken up by a funny moment when Green’s infant daughter arrives home from school in the middle of a knife fight. If you think that’s good, it only gets better as it goes on… We flashback to the aftermath of The Bride’s wedding massacre and her time in hospital, and it wouldn’t be a Tarantino film if there wasn’t something sick going on, like say a hospital worker renting out her comatose body to guys to have sex with… Of course, she wakes up as the latest guy climbs on top of her and the blood begins to spill like no-one’s business. Fast forward to Japan as The Bride tracks down O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Lui) who runs the Tokyo underworld, cutting off people heads for fun, we see a bit of back story on O-Ren done in an Anime style which was probably the best decision as it deals with a few disturbing moments, paedophilia for one.
So we get to the big hyped fight between The Bride and O-Ren’s personal army, The Crazy 88. And is it worth the wait and all the hype? Of course it is… The Bride literally cuts a swathe through The Crazy 88 with a samurai sword, limbs are sliced off, jets of blood stream everywhere as, one-by-one, everyone meets the business end of The Bride’s Japanese Steel.
Well that’s the plot outline, the movie it’s self is simply fantastic. Completely differing styles merge together seamlessly, like the anime bits, the fight scene with The Crazy 88 cuts to black & white halfway through as well as various slow motion bits. It also has a great soundtrack as well as original music by Wu-Tang Clan member The RZA, plus what not to like when it has a special appearance by The 5,6,7,8′s?
Highly recommended.
Kill Bill Volume 2
If you haven’t seen Volume 1, don’t even consider seeing Volume 2 as, like the Lord of the Rings movies, there is no recap of what’s happened (as such) at the start, but we do find out the Wedding Massacre wasn’t a wedding at all, it was a wedding rehearsal…
Anyways, 2 down, 3 to go on The Bride’s list, next up is Budd (Michael Madsen), brother of Bill, who is now living in a trailer out in the middle of nowhere in Texas, bouncing a titty bar for a living, but Bill tips him off about The Bride’s recent events and he’s ready for her as he unloads a few rounds of rock salt into her as she breaks into his trailer, he then takes her to a graveyard and buries her alive. We then cut to the Bride’s brutal training in China some years before with Pai-Mei (and his comical beard stroking).
She, of course, breaks out of the coffin and escapes the grave and makes a beeline straight to Budd’s to finish the job, but Budd has made a deal with the only other member of the DiVAS left, the one-eyed Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), who double crosses him and kills him. So The Bride breaks in and the two fight it out… Needless to say, Elle is beaten in a really wonderful, yet sickening, way… So all that is left is Bill (David Carradine) and the small matter of The Bride’s & Bill’s daughter (which she thought she lost when in the coma). The title of the movie gives the ending away.
This movie is totally different from Volume 1, which was more of an oriental feel, this one is more of a spaghetti western (with a touch of 80′s martial arts movie training montages thrown in for added measure). In retrospect it was probably better to split the movie into 2 movies as the pace would probably have been totally screwed up at the join (of course, a bit of sly editing could eliminate this) but as a movie on it’s own, Volume 2 is probably better than Volume 1, both are fantastic and I’m hoping that Tarantino and Miramax see sense and release a single cut of Kill Bill on DVD in the not-too-distant future, probably with a bit of editing in the way scenes are played out but it would be good to see the whole thing.
Highly recommended, if not more so, but again, you’d be stupid to go see this without seeing Volume 1.
If you’ve already seen both, why not check out the Kill Bill Reference Guide to see where the inspiration for some places came from…
Ahhh yes, it’s a good time as the Beastie Boys finally end a 4½ year hiatus (well, technically they released “In A World Gone Mad…” on their website last year, but I’m overlooking that… OK) since they dropped “The Sounds of Science” Anthology in late 1999.
Amazon has “To The 5 Boroughs” listed as a June 15th release and I’ve been able to bag the new song “Ch-Check It Out” on iTunes and it’s pretty cool, but most importantly it’s good to hear new material from the B-Boys.
And to top it off, Radio 1 is running a contest to win tickets for a secret London show on Saturday…
Schweeeeeeeet.
A fantastic bit of eBay shilling.
This auction includes a lot of books. Over eighty of them, in fact. Enough rare, vintage “Star Trek” books to get you more Trekkie tail than Harcourt Fenton Mudd.
But that’s not the best bit…
But boy howdy … when you’re at a convention, and you mention to a woman in a Troi uniform about owning such a fine collection of vintage, out-of-print paperbacks, she’ll whisper in your ear, “Mount me, you stud trekkie!” and the two of you will be doing the Vulcan Groin Meld all night long.
How can you not think about bidding now.
So, incase you didn’t know…
On Wednesday, Michael Moore comes out and says Disney is blocking the distribution of his new film “Fahrenheit 9/11″… Shock, horror, Bad Corporate America… BAD!!!!
Less than 24 hours after accusing the Walt Disney Company of pulling the plug on his latest documentary in a blatant attempt at political censorship, the rabble-rousing film-maker Michael Moore has admitted he knew a year ago that Disney had no intention of distributing it.
The admission, during an interview with CNN, undermined Moore’s claim that Disney was trying to sabotage the US release of Fahrenheit 9/11 just days before its world premiere at the Cannes film festival.
Instead, it lent credence to a growing suspicion that Moore was manufacturing a controversy to help publicise the film, a full-bore attack on the Bush administration and its handling of national security since the attacks of 11 September 2001.
[...]
But in the CNN interview he said: “Almost a year ago, after we’d started making the film, the chairman of Disney, Michael Eisner, told my agent he was upset Miramax had made the film and he will not distribute it.”
Nobody in Hollywood doubts Fahrenheit 9/11 will find a US distributor. His last documentary, Bowling for Columbine, made for $3m (£1.7m), pulled in $22m at the US box office.
But Moore’s publicity stunt, if that is what is, appears to be working. A front-page news piece in The New York Times was followed yesterday by an editorial denouncing Disney for censorship and denial of Moore’s right to free expression.
Bad Michael Moore… BAD!!!!
Two weeks removed, two weeks to go… Too many crap things going on here that I could do without… Like thunder.
Too depressing, a few days ago it was heavy hail for a period of time… I can barely remember seeing rain in Atlanta.
Speaking of which…
77° and sunny… There’s a surprise, though I heard it was wet over the weekend there, threataning to washout Music Midtown, which featured a few bands I’d have loved to see…
Anyways, as I mention two weeks ago, I have a 5 hour layover in Chicago on my return trip and Robyn has decided to fly to Chicago to meet me there, must be love.
Here’s a little article about Microsoft’s “Longhorn” operating system that’s sure to raise more than a few eyebrows…
Microsoft is planning to distribute the first official alpha release of Longhorn at next week’s conference in Seattle. Its ReadMe notes, which describe a Longhorn build as “the preliminary release of Microsoft Windows Code Name ‘Longhorn’ to be distributed at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference,” leaked to the Web on Thursday.
(Microsoft distributed a “pre-alpha” release of Longhorn at the Professional Developers Conference last fall. The first full-fledged beta isn’t due out until sometime in 2005.)
The company also is expected to unveil the system and driver requirements for Longhorn during the conference.
Microsoft is expected to recommend that the “average” Longhorn PC feature a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today.
Sure, it’s not expected to be around for a few years, but damn, that’s pretty heavy spec requirements…
I suppose I better start saving soon.
But damn, doesn’t it look nice? This comes via Jason Kottke (name dropping whore I am) and Applele.com
Well… I can dream…
After complaining about my slow connection speeds, things have taken a turn for the better over the last couple of days…
Though, I think it’s lying to me as it’s still as slow as ever.
Well, a day or so late, but finally I return of news of the Barenaked Ladies gig at the Glasgow Academy last night… And what a show it was, lasting for 2 hours with 2 encores and a whole load of great songs and laughs in between. One of the, if not the best show I’ve been to…
The support band was The Honeymoon who were pretty good, and played 7 or so songs over 30 minutes but the 2,500 capacity audience was really only here for one reason… And they proceeded to go wild 5 minutes before the band took the stage and kept it up for the duration.
They kicked the show off with a song off the new CD, Everything to Everyone, “Maybe Katie”… and played every song you could possibly want, from old favourites like “Be My Yoko Ono, “The Old Apartment”, “Alternative Girlfriend”, “One Week”, “Brian Wilson”, “It’s All Been Done” and “If I Had $1,000,000″ to new songs like “War On Drugs”, “Another Postcard” and “Upside Down” as well as the usual adlibs and randomness that surrounds a Barenaked Ladies concert.
I wish I had a set list as it was quite expansive, but I’ve ordered the bootleg cd from the Barenaked Ladies Live Website…
Also, it was my first event at the Glasgow Academy, and it’s a pretty nice venue, walking distance from the centre of the city, and the floor has been split into 3 different levels, we positioned ourselves at the front of the middle level to I could take a few (hopefully) decent pictures… All in all I took about 113 pictures and 4 60 second movie clips, not a bad haul for a nights work, anyways here is more than a few pictures from the show.
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And the more than obrigatory panorama, my favourite one yet…
I always said I’d wait for Movable Type 3.0 to arrive before deciding if I should change this place over to it…
Well, it has arrived… And I think I’ll stay right where I am thankyouverymuchly…
Let’s look at the pricing schemes shall we?
So… $69.95 for the cheapest option, there is a free option, but that requires a TypeKey login and comes with complete lack of support from SixApart, no access to paid installation service, no access to fee-based services, no promotion of your weblogs through the Recently Updated list, no commercial usage and no more than one author and three weblogs… Though not all of that affects me much.
I’m still daunted by the whole installation process of Movable Type, the best thing about b2 was you downloaded the files, edited the config file and uploaded it to a directory and you were good to go (more or less), MT requires all kinds of geeky shit that’s way beyond me, and I know I’ll break shit if I try it and risk running the wrath of Erika if I do…
And I’ll wait to hear from Mark at R80o to give his verdict on WordPress before I consider moving to that.
But if it ain’t broken, why fix it?