{"id":1878,"date":"2003-10-26T09:23:42","date_gmt":"2003-10-27T01:23:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/10\/26\/kill-bill-vol-1\/"},"modified":"2019-12-06T10:13:23","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T18:13:23","slug":"kill-bill-vol-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/10\/26\/kill-bill-vol-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Kill Bill, Vol. 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:12200,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/us.imdb.com\\\/title\\\/tt0266697&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/us.imdb.com\\\/title\\\/tt0266697&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:13054,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/u.dailynews.com\\\/Stories\\\/0,1413,211~23516~1687018,00.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:13055,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.livejournal.com\\\/users\\\/kalyx\\\/113057.html?nc=4&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;m going to keep my comments here fairly brief, as this is only the first part of a two-part story. So, briefly, first impressions of the first half of <a href=\"http:\/\/us.imdb.com\/title\/tt0266697\/\" title=\"Kill Bill, Vol. 1\">Kill Bill<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Much<\/em> butt-kicking fun.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>There is far less dialogue than you might expect from a Tarrantino film, but in this case, I can&#8217;t see it any other way.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>There&#8217;s also a very bitter, sorrowful tone to the film that is easy to overlook during the fights and general carnage, but is very present, and very important to the tone.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Yes, it&#8217;s violent. Very violent. But two points on that:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>It&#8217;s Quentin Tarrantino. Did you really expect anything else?<\/li>\n<li>How can you take it seriously when every severed limb or head (and there are many) is apparently attached to a high-pressure firehose?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<li>Best line (delivered by The Bride while spanking the last living henchman &#8212; a sixteen (?) year old boy &#8212; with the flat of her katana): &#8220;<em>This<\/em> is <em>what<\/em> you <em>get<\/em> for <em>fucking<\/em> with <em>Yakuza!<\/em> Now go home to your mommy!&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>I hope that Vol. 2 gives us more of The Bride&#8217;s background. But if it doesn&#8217;t, that might not matter &#8212; in an almost zen-like way, she simply <em>is<\/em>. More background might actually detract from this.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Using anime for O-Ren Ishii&#8217;s background: very nice touch.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>The fight scenes were deliciously over the top. Unrealistic, but enjoyably so.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>One shot in the mass battle royale towards the end &#8212; a grainy, black and white travelling shot of a spinning hatchet &#8212; was almost a mirror of a shot in the diner scene of Natural Born Killers.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Favorite sequence (at least right now, immediately after my first viewing): the blue background silhouetted section of the battle in the restaurant.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>I know I&#8217;m not catching the majority of the references Tarrantino is making throughout the film. That&#8217;s okay, though. I&#8217;m guessing there&#8217;s enough to fill an entire book &#8212; which will probably be at your friendly neighborhood bookseller not long after Vol. 2 is released.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/u.dailynews.com\/Stories\/0,1413,211~23516~1687018,00.html\" title=\"U-Daily News: Kill Bill, Vol. 1\">This review<\/a> (which I found thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.livejournal.com\/users\/kalyx\/113057.html?nc=4\" title=\"It's Finally Here\">Kalyx<\/a>) may sum it up the best:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  Gratuitous in the most passionate, brutal and aesthetically exacting way, this first half of Quentin Tarantino&#8217;s blood-drenched mash note to the eclectic, disreputable genres he grooved on as a kid is a remarkably pure orchestration of imagery and attitude. The content of those magnificently moving pictures is whatever the opposite of pure might be: an endless orgy of degradation, dismemberment, cruelty and bile. The \\&#8221;Pulp Fiction&#8217; auteur has ratcheted it all up into a fantasy realm, and he has a point when he claims that anybody who thinks this disturbing stuff is happening to anything like a real person is crazy &#8212; or, at least, crazier than he is.<\/p>\n<p>  Still, there&#8217;s nothing wrong with avoiding \\&#8221;Kill Bill&#8217; if you&#8217;re easily offended by violence to women, violence by women, violence observed by traumatized children or lots &#8212; LOTS &#8212; of violently detached body parts scattered all around the screen.<\/p>\n<p>  But if you&#8217;re not like that: Man, is this movie cool.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m going to keep my comments here fairly brief, as this is only the first part of a two-part story. So, briefly, first impressions of the first half of Kill Bill&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2037],"tags":[23,2425],"class_list":["post-1878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tv-and-films","tag-film","tag-kill-bill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}