Opinions on "Kill Bill" Vol. 1 [Archive] - Audio & Video Forums

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Worf101
04-19-2004, 12:35 PM
I rented this movie over the weekend along with "Somethings Gotta Give" and "Gothika". I'm only gonna touch on this film here though. I thought KBV1 was a hoot. I loved it from stem to stern. The S.O. was too busy yelping and hollering "oh s**t" to get much out of the film. I felt the action was great, the mixture of genre styles was phenominal, I mean everything from Anime to Spaghetti Western and lastly the sound track was amazing. The fights between Thurman and her two fello female asassins was incredible. I don't know how she missed her with that pistol, but I can't quibble. Great movie. Now onto Vol.2

Da Worfster :D

dean_martin
04-19-2004, 05:52 PM
I saw it at the theater. It's been a while so bare with me. I enjoyed the fight sequences, the imagery and music (especially the music - I'm a big fan of Ennio Morricone's music for movies like Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once upon a Time in the West, etc.) I thought the anime was cool too. That's something I've never really explored, but I liked it.

The only distraction for me was some of the dialog. I found it contradictory that they would express so much praise, admiration and respect for their enemy and at the same time display no respect at all for human life through their actions. Don't get me wrong. I don't mind disprespect for human life in the movies, but the character should say "I'm going to get that a-hole" before going out and chopping off heads rather than expressing deep, heartfelt admiration. Oh well, I've always thought that Tarrantino likes to have his characters "philosophize" almost to a fault, but on the other hand I've enjoyed his films. He has a knack for putting little forgotten or ignored nuggets of pop culture on display in a cool way, e.g., surf music, Kung Fu films, John Travolta, etc. I think I'll rent Vol.1 before seeing 2.



"Hey Chef, not too well. Our dads are using women's haircare products and hand lotion."

Troy
04-24-2004, 07:40 AM
Yeah, just caught the DVD for the first time myself.

Really a blast. It was a little empty-headed and just a little too over the top for my taste. I'm just not that much of a fan of kung fu movies. Still, I enjoyed it a whole lot.

The anime sequence was outstanding. I've never seen so much animated blood.

Yep, great soundtrack. That had been hyped to me a lot and it still managed to live up to my expectations. There was one song that reminded me of Art of Noise that ran during the scene where O-Ren and her gang are walikng into the restaurant where the 5, 6, 7, 8's are playing. What a monster hi-fi track!

People seem very polarized over Vol 2. It's a love it or hate it kinda thing. Hopefully I'll get out to see it this week.

okiemax
04-24-2004, 09:09 AM
I rented this movie over the weekend along with "Somethings Gotta Give" and "Gothika". I'm only gonna touch on this film here though. I thought KBV1 was a hoot. I loved it from stem to stern. The S.O. was too busy yelping and hollering "oh s**t" to get much out of the film. I felt the action was great, the mixture of genre styles was phenominal, I mean everything from Anime to Spaghetti Western and lastly the sound track was amazing. The fights between Thurman and her two fello female asassins was incredible. I don't know how she missed her with that pistol, but I can't quibble. Great movie. Now onto Vol.2

Da Worfster :D

I was bored by the movie, but then I'm not a fan of action movies. Although my girfriend doesn't always like action movies, she loved this one. So I might as well resign myself to watching Vol. 2.

kexodusc
04-25-2004, 05:10 AM
"Kill Bill Vol.1" was a terrific movie, and erases any bad memories left over after "Jackie Brown". Vol. 2 was even better. Nice to see something different once in awhile. And yes, the soundtrack was great too!

Kam
04-26-2004, 06:28 AM
hey worfster,
saw this in the theater way back when and just caught it again on dvd last night and enjoyed it even more. very fun movie and can't wait to see the conclusion of it next.
one of my nwe fav lines now from the movie:

"I can tell you with no ego that this is my finest blade. If, on your journey, you should encounter God... God will be cut."

Just pissed there won't be any Lucy Liu in Vol.II :(

peace
k2

Worf101
04-26-2004, 10:17 AM
hey worfster,
saw this in the theater way back when and just caught it again on dvd last night and enjoyed it even more. very fun movie and can't wait to see the conclusion of it next.
one of my nwe fav lines now from the movie:

"I can tell you with no ego that this is my finest blade. If, on your journey, you should encounter God... God will be cut."

Just pissed there won't be any Lucy Liu in Vol.II :(

peace
k2

I loved that line. It was soooo audacious. That and Lucy Liu's solliloquy on subjects "on and off limits" was hilarious. BTW, please give me a list of movies to see, Shaw Bros, grindhouse and Japanese, so I'm better versed. That homocidal schoolgirl is from another film and I'd LOVE to see her again.

Da Worfster :cool:

yamdsp-a1
04-27-2004, 04:16 AM
KB V1 gets a full throated "Oh Yeah" from me. I loved this movie. It was even better the second time around (I watched it again on DVD last night). I must admit I either didn't notice or didn't get the "spagetti western" reference in this film first time round (guess I was tired that day!) but certainly noticed them last night. Lots of tributes to Sergio Leone and Ennio Marcone in the movie and I love Sergio Leone movies.

Gooing to see KB V2 this evening. Will let you know my thoughts on the completed works.

Yam

poneal
05-02-2004, 02:14 AM
I rented this along with Gothika about a month ago. I liked Gothika better. KB1 was kinda weird. It had that 50's music mixed in with 1 person killing 100 people all by herself. Not really much to the movie, but the soundtrack, especially the lead in song was great. Me and wife laughed and laughed when we heard that track.

Gothika on the other hand was engrossing.

andrus
05-03-2004, 02:20 AM
KBV1 sucked monkey ass.

Worf101
05-03-2004, 07:04 AM
KBV1 sucked monkey ass.

Not knocking your opinion but I'd really like to know why you thought it "sucked simian posterior"? Just curious.

Da Worfster :confused:

Woochifer
05-03-2004, 12:03 PM
Back from L.A.! Saw Kill Bill v.2 over at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood (this time I thought the sound and projection quality were very good; before, I thought the sound was overly harsh and grating), and when putting the two parts together, it makes for IMO a phenomenal flick. In general, I thought v.1 had some cool set pieces, but it obviously wasn't complete. As a standalone, I thought v.2 was a better overall movie, even though it didn't have any fight scenes to compare with the huge swordfight in v.1. But, taken together I thought Kill Bill made for a great flick. I've heard that a continuous edit that combines both parts is on the way for future DVD release.

It was so obvious that Tarantino just loves these old b-movies and I think while Kill Bill's a decent enough action pic, you definitely get more out of it if you pick up on all the various thematic and visual elements that Tarantino lifted from other genres. I grew up with those old Shaw Bros flicks, and could see bits and pieces from all over the genre. I thought the violence in v.1 got a bit over the top, but I never really followed Japanese samurai and yakuza flicks, and from what I've heard, the blood splatter is part of those genres. It's ironic that Tarantino dusted off the old Shaw Bros. trailer in v.1, yet the themes from those flicks (well, aside from the revenge motif) didn't really show up in full force until v.2.

I saw v.2 with a friend of mine who works as a film editor and both of us came away looking at Kill Bill as basically a masterful celebration of some offbeat film genres and filmmaking in general. If you look at the film as a whole, it audaciously churns together all these different genres together, and includes a lot of great nuggets for people who are into stuff like animie, the yakuza and samurai genres, and of course the old Shaw Bros. films. My friend was making note of all the different camera techniques and film stocks that Tarantino was meshing together, and I was just laughing at all the various lines that got lifted straight out of the old Hong Kong kung fu pics.

Worf-

If you want to see a selection of vintage Shaw Bros. flicks, actually you should start with some of the movies starring Gordon Liu (who played both Johnny Mo and Pai Mei in Kill Bill). Probably his tour de force film is "36th Chamber of Shaolin". Most of his film roles depict him as either a Shaolin monk or as Wong Fei Hung (a sort of Chinese folk hero that Jet Li played in the Once Upon A Time In China series, and Jackie Chan played in the Drunken Master flicks). And he's done a ton of other movies that were released by the Shaw Bros. Another guy you should look up is Jimmy Wang Yu, who's known for his role as the one-armed swordsman (one of them "Master of the Flying Guillotine" I know is available on DVD).

I know that a few of the Shaw Bros. movies like "Five Fingers of Death" have made their way onto DVD now, so they should be a lot easier to find now than before. In general, the Shaw Bros. worked like an old Hollywood studio, where they would just crank out one movie after another. They were pretty much all low budget, had many of the same stars, and the plots got recycled. But, as bad as some of those movies were, it made for a pretty cohesive and readily identifiable genre.

Also, you should look up "Snake In The Eagle's Shadow" which was Jackie Chan's starmaking role that broke Bruce Lee's box office records in Asia when it first came out in the late-70s. Tarantino liberally borrowed from that film in Kill Bill v.2. That and the original "Drunken Master" are available on DVD, and I believe come with the original Cantonese dialog (unlike a lot of Jackie Chan's other classics, which have unfortunately been released in the U.S. only in heavily edited and dubbed versions).

Worf101
05-03-2004, 07:43 PM
That's exactly the information I was looking for. You've helped make me a zombie for another bunch of nights now!!!! :D

It's amazing that with Tarrantino you now have to not only "watch" the film you're seeing but you also have to "study" other's to "get it" all... I'm not complaining mind you. I definately believe you can teach an ole dog new tricks.

Da grateful Worfster!!!! :D

Woochifer
05-03-2004, 08:46 PM
That's exactly the information I was looking for. You've helped make me a zombie for another bunch of nights now!!!! :D

It's amazing that with Tarrantino you now have to not only "watch" the film you're seeing but you also have to "study" other's to "get it" all... I'm not complaining mind you. I definately believe you can teach an ole dog new tricks.

Da grateful Worfster!!!! :D

Believe me, those suggestions were just the tip of a huge iceberg! I think at one point in the 70s, the Shaw Bros. were cranking out movies at the rate of more than one every week, and most of them were period piece martial arts pics. Hong Kong remains the third most prolific film industry in the world (behind only India and the U.S.), there a ton of stuff from there that most U.S. audiences haven't seen yet. It's really too bad that they do such a horrible job of preserving their film history. Those old Shaw Bros. flicks were just viewed as disposable crank 'em out by the dozens stuff, back in their 70s heyday, no one ever thought that people would someday view them as classics. Typically, they would get released into theaters, play for a couple of weeks and then get bumped out by the next feature.

At least now, with more people curious about the old Shaw Bros. flicks, they've started getting wider release on DVD. Previously, the companies that held the U.S. rights to those vintage pics had no interest in marketing to anything beyond Chinese video stores, so you had to pretty much find an independent video store with a manager that loved martial arts pics as much as Tarantino does, and was willing to deal with sales reps who had no idea what the English titles for the various films were! Fortunately, while HK was a British colony, all films by custom had English subtitles (Chinese subtitling is pretty much mandatory because the Cantonese dialect spoken in Hong Kong is a minority language elsewhere).

Now, after watching Kill Bill in its entirety, I've gotten curious about the Japanese samurai and yakuza genres, especially the bloodier post-Kurosawa samurai flicks that Tarantino was lifting from in Kill Bill. Actually, I saw a trailer for a new film from Takeshi Kitano (aka Beat Takeshi, who did that gangster movie set in South Central L.A. "Brother" a few years ago and who's known as the maverick filmmaker in Japan, sort of like how Tarantino is viewed in the U.S.), looks VERY interesting! I saw a few of his gangster pics like "Violent Cop" and "Sonatine" and they're also worth checking out if you want to give the Japanese gangster genre a whirl. Yup, I blame Tarantino for this! (Jackie Brown got me curious about Pam Grier's other movies and other blaxploitation "classics" like Blacula and Cleopatra Jones when I saw that a few years ago)

Worf101
05-04-2004, 06:12 AM
Now, after watching Kill Bill in its entirety, I've gotten curious about the Japanese samurai and yakuza genres, especially the bloodier post-Kurosawa samurai flicks that Tarantino was lifting from in Kill Bill. Actually, I saw a trailer for a new film from Takeshi Kitano (aka Beat Takeshi, who did that gangster movie set in South Central L.A. "Brother" a few years ago and who's known as the maverick filmmaker in Japan, sort of like how Tarantino is viewed in the U.S.), looks VERY interesting! I saw a few of his gangster pics like "Violent Cop" and "Sonatine" and they're also worth checking out if you want to give the Japanese gangster genre a whirl. Yup, I blame Tarantino for this! (Jackie Brown got me curious about Pam Grier's other movies and other blaxploitation "classics" like Blacula and Cleopatra Jones when I saw that a few years ago)

I got curious about this stuff too. Particularly in the fact that the Crazed Schoolgirl character "GoGo" something or other, was from another film I found this website though that seems to fill in a lot of the blanks for me about recent Japanese cinema and genres.

http://www.midnighteye.com/index.php

Go here and see what you think.

Da Worfster :D

dean_martin
05-04-2004, 01:08 PM
I got curious about this stuff too. Particularly in the fact that the Crazed Schoolgirl character "GoGo" something or other, was from another film I found this website though that seems to fill in a lot of the blanks for me about recent Japanese cinema and genres.

http://www.midnighteye.com/index.php

Go here and see what you think.

Da Worfster :D

The school girl character reminded me of a series of films or made-for-tv episodes from either Hong Kong or Japan known as the Sukeban Deka (sp?) series. The series featured four reform school girls turned government agents/crime fighters. Of course they wore the classic school girl uniforms. Each specialized in a particular weapon (one had a deadly yo-yo). I purchased one of the films from Video Search of Miami in the mid 90s which had a huge catolog of Asian films. My copy is in a box that I haven't unpacked from a move. I recently searched the internet for VSoM but couldn't find them. They sent a trailer video with your order that has some awesome stuff. One trailer showed a scene that was almost exactly like the Uma vs. Lucy Lui face-off in the drifting snow from KB1.

Anyhow, if you've found the inspiration for the school girl character and it's not the Sukeban Deka series, please share!

Woochifer
05-04-2004, 01:54 PM
I got curious about this stuff too. Particularly in the fact that the Crazed Schoolgirl character "GoGo" something or other, was from another film I found this website though that seems to fill in a lot of the blanks for me about recent Japanese cinema and genres.

http://www.midnighteye.com/index.php

Go here and see what you think.

Da Worfster :D

Wow, lots of stuff to mine through! I'll have to look it over and see if they got any recommendations. Checking out The Digital Bits' upcoming releases list, it looks like some more samurai pics are coming out on DVD soon.

Woochifer
05-05-2004, 01:16 PM
In going through the various critic reviews posted on Rotten Tomatoes, I noticed that all the various critics picked up on different films that Tarantino was lifting from. Most of the critics liked both movies, and I suspect it's because all of them have some offbeat genre or guilty pleasure that Kill Bill paid homage to. Like I mentioned, I absolutely loved how Tarantino almost line for line lifted a scene from Jackie Chan's "Snake In The Eagle's Shadow" (it's around that scene where Pai Mei and The Bride are practicing in shadow against a red background), yet none of the reviews I'd read so far picked up on that. However, most of the reviewers referenced some obscure film that Tarantino inserted into Kill Bill, and the range of films I've seen referenced in those reviews is pretty big! Some of the reviews list a bunch of samurai films that Kill Bill has referenced, while others stick with the Shaw Bros. influences.

Anyway, I just found it fascinating that one film (or two parts of one film) has conjured up so many different references to obscure and offbeat movies.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/KillBillVol2-1131502/reviews.php?beg=0&int=153&creamcrop_limit=37&page=all
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/KillBillVol1-1126182/reviews.php?beg=0&int=168&creamcrop_limit=36&page=all