Grindhouse
On Thursday I went to a preview of Grindhouse. It was clearly amazing. I mean I am pretty much obsessed with exploitation film so I knew I would love it. I did. In case you live underground Grindhouse is two feature length films, Planet Terror by Robert Rodriguez and Death Proof by Quentin Tarantino. The film also features several fake “Coming Attractions” directed by film makers such as Eli Roth and Rob Zombie. The movies are digital scratched and the sound is distorted in order to give the films a 70’s exploitation feel. In both films reels are “missing”, which caused some of the biggest laughs of the film.
Although I am a much bigger fan of Tarantino than I am Rodriguez, I thought Planet Terror was the best of the two. It was pretty much a zombie genre picture with tons of action and over the top violence. Freddy Rodriguez was great as Wray, a tow truck driver with a secret past. The movie has every thing you need in a movie, zombies, dismemberment, half naked women with guns, Tom Savini… Also it answers the question “What happened to Bin Ladin?” evidently Bruce Willis killed him.
Death Proof had a lot more sound distortion and a lot less grain and scratches than Planet Terror did, and it was a lot more distracting. Tarantino’s sound track was pretty superb again, but the sound distortion made it nearly unlistenable. On top of that I felt the film was a bit masturbatory, even for QT. It was mostly hot girls and car chases. Contrary to what I just said I think it was too dialogue heavy to feel like an authentic grindhouse film. And my final complaint was that Kurt Russell shouldn’t cry. Ever. Snake doesn’t cry. Captain Ron doesn’t cry. The girl I saw the film with liked that part the most because it was so unexpected, but fuck that, Big Trouble should have killed all the girls one handed. That being said, I still loved the movie. The car chases were great, Kurt Russell has been brought back from the dead like QT did for Travolta and Carradine. The soundtrack is amazing and casting a real stunt woman to do real stunts in the film was a great choice.
Anyway, see Grindhouse ASAP. It was way dope.
