Der Stuff

Hey, kids!  Last night I saw Grindhouse by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino so I'm gonna tell you what I thought about it and some other stuff.

First of all, let me say that I LOVED the fake movie trailers that both preceed and fell between the 2 films.  The trailer for Thanksgiving can be found in my comments.  Each of them would make entertaining films of absurd and satiric content.

That being said, I would've rather watched any of those films than "Planet Terror" (Rodriguez) and "Death Proof" (Tarantino).

I am a fan of both directors.  I liked almost everything Rodriguez has ever done (exceptions being the Spy Kids movies and Once Upon A Time In Mexico) and I've loved every Tarantino film.  So this only added to my disappointment.

Now I know that these to movies are supposed to be bad, a la 70's-B exploitation films.  And all the scenes you've seen in the trailers for Grindhousevery much live up to that wacky slapstick violence and punchline dialogue.  The problem is in everything else.  I feel like things are very well setup by the filmmakers but they aren't followed through.  The amount of dialogue also felt indulgent rather than satirical or ironic, which is how I expected to feel about it all.  There were definitely moments where I went, "YES!" with glee but those moments were often followed by minutes and minutes of "Get on with it!"

There were moments in both films where I was like, "Shut the fuck up and do something!"  Seriously, shut the fuck up.  I never thought I'd say that, especially during a Tarantino film.  I know that B movies are supposed to be bad but these two directors are so much better that I didn't figure they'd put form above content.  In other words, I expected them to make great B movies, and not movies that are just as shitty as they were back then.

In "Planet Terror," you've got zombies and they're killing people and people are killing them.  That's cool.  I'm down with that.  But there were too many moments where the characters were just going places and not getting things done (i.e. discovering the cause of the zombies, or figuring out how to kill them).  When those moments came, the content was good.  But far too much time was wasted.  It didn't help that there was about 10 minutes where the sound went out in the theater.  I couldn't tell at first if that was part of the show.  But I don't think we missed anything that would've corrected any of these issues.

In "Death Proof," Tarantino spends about an hour setting up a confrontation between these 3 chicks and Kurt Russell's character, making the audience wonder, "Who is this guy" and then "Why is he doing this?"  Then all of a sudden the movie becomes about these 4 other chicks and Kurt Russell becomes very much secondary (or fifthdary?).  And we never get the answers to the previous questions, that are set up pretty fucking well.  And the dialogue between all of these chicks is hardly worthy of Tarantino, again because he could've made agreat B movie out of this.  After all the set up, I don't give a shit about anybody but Kurt Russell!  Hello?!

And then the missing reels... Uuugh.  I read on IMDB that films of the grindhouse era didn't actually have missing reels so RR and QT put them in (or took them out, whatever) for their own indulgent reasons.  It really was a bit more frustrating than anything, as I'm sure it would be if it really happened during a real film.  They cut out scenes that would be visually satisfying and had plot implications to boot.  Argh.

And that's all I have to say about that.

In other news, have you seen this Major League Direct TV ad with Charlie Sheen?  It kills me.  Kills me like death, suicide, stab in the gut bad.  If you're paying attention, which Direct TV hopes you are not, Charlie (as Rick Vaughn) throws his first pitch ("Juuuuuuuuuuuuust a bit outside...") to a left-handed batter, number 39.  Then they cut to the Charlie of today, plus the horrible wrinkle-removal effect.  Then they cut back to what should be the same at-bat and Viola!  The batter is now right-handed and wearing number 48.  It fucking disturbs me. 

All of this could've been corrected digitally.  They should have flipped the first batter and changed his number.  Then the only sign that something is amiss is the catcher's glove hand.  But no, they're dumbshits and that's inexcusable.

Finally, I hate basketball coaches.  I find something very wrong with men in suits, yelling at people, be they players or referees.  It's also ridiculous because they are constantly yelling, all game.  What the fuck are you yelling about?!  Is this a Little League game and one of the players is your kid?!  Shut the fuck up.  It's only made worse with female basketball coaches.  I've got no problem with women athletes, nor women coaches, refs, etc. but that shit is horrendous looking.  Basketball should be played without coaches, or coaches should wear uniforms or sweatshirts or something.  Otherwise, they just look like grumpy-ass old people.

That's it.  Good-bye!   :-P  Pbbbbbbbbbbbbth!!!