FROM THE GRINDHOUSE- "THANKSGIVING!"

Sure I'm bootlegging copyrighted material. But that's how I got into most of these movies to begin with.

Chinese Pulp Fiction....

The Lyric Theater in 42nd Street Lives On...

The sprit of my youth lives on with a twin kill billing of PLANET TERROR and DEATH PROOF. This is the film I've been waiting for.
Citizen Kane, The Godfather Series and even Early Speilberg can kiss my ass.

GRINDHOUSE creates the atmosphere and spirit of the crummy 42nd Street theaters that I saw most of the AIP, Roger Corman, and later Golan Globus cannon of films. From "ALLIGATOR" to "MOTEL HELL" to "THE EVIL THAT MEN DO"; for better or worse my father had the good sense to have a multiplex babysit me and my brother every now and then when we were younger.



Conversely, my mother generally took me to more standard fare like "Star Wars", Woody Allen films and strangely enough, "ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK" and Chuck Norris in an "EYE FOR AN EYE". So I learned early on what the difference between safe summer blockbuster audiences and ones that can kill you if you laugh at the wrong joke.

The latter always fascinated me, partly because the Black guys in the audience were always talking to the screen. Now if I could only get a few Black dudes to watch "Schindler's List", "The Piano" or "The English Fucking Patient" with me to cackle in the back of the theater just to mess with that audience of unholy pretension.

The Lyric theater is on 42nd street in NYC. I saw a ton of movies there, the last being "SURVIVING THE GAME" with ICE-T. Sure enough as soon as the film started a Black family of 5 or six sat a few rows ahead of me and my buddy Chris. The adult was a Grandmother and the kids seemed to range in age from 10 - 17. Everytime someone got blasted into bits, these kids would laugh like DeNiro in CAPE FEAR; add to this the CONSTRUCTION going on while the movie was playing INSIDE the theater... ....funny stuff.



Well Keegs and Shelley, went with me to this and from frame one I was floored. "PLANET TERROR" - Rodriguez's picture harkens back to the Italian Zombie gore splatter fests (thank you!) where not one ounce of Karo Syrup is wasted. Lucio Fulci (director of ZOMBIE) and Dario Argento are somewhere smiling, as is John Carpenter, who's scores are paid homage to here.
Did I mention the gore? Every character is expendible. When their time's up, it's spectacular. I haven't seen such splatacular head wounds since "MANIAC" and "SCANNERS".

Even goremaster / Special EFX maesteo TOM SAVINI (who's horror make up book BIZZARRO I bought as a kid) is in it for fun. Add to this scratches and audio pops in the film and you genuinely feel like the film's about to snap in the projection booth.
Rose McGowan remided me of Sybill Danning's badass nature with her machine gun leg and kill 'em all attitude. Look for MsDanning in one of the phony trailers by the way. I'm glad to see that they threw her a part in all this.

In "DEATH PROOF" it's nice to see Kurt Russell be a badass again. After shit like "Dreamer", "Poseidon" (which I loooved by the way) it's nice to see MacReady throwing the dynamite back at the audience and screaming "Fuck you too!"

As Keegan mentioned on her blog, Tarantino gets way involved with dialogue with the women in this one. It reminded me of Reservoir Dog's opening in the diner, except with chicks rambling on about girlie shit. I guess that was the set up, because it goes 250 MPH after that. I don't want to give anything away, but not since "RONIN" has there been a car chase that actually had me on the edge of my seat. Also thank you Quentin for mentioning "Vanishing Point!", although my favorite car chase flick is "THE DRIVER"

Kudos to Quentin's DP debut too.

A lot recently's been said that Tarantino's hasn't been making films up to his expections since "PULP FICTION" but not too many directors have complete autonomy to make their own movies with their own signature style. What other director in the last 15 years actually created an adjective to describe their films? I was lukewarm at first to JACKIE BROWN (even being a fan of Pam Grier and the Blacksploitation genre) but after watching it again recently, it really addresses great themes of aging, love, and honor. The same for "KILL BILL" which I think is one of the important films of this decade...also one of the bloodiest...

Did I mention that Citizen Kane can kiss my ass?



and now PHANTASM:





PS - look for "GREAT WHITE" cereal, as an homage to the Enzo G. Castillari fantastic Jaws rip off "GREAT WHITE" which I saw at an advaced screening back in 1982...I put the trailer up on YOUTUBE...

Just ACCEPT your BALLS to the WALL

Take power metal. Add some boys from Germany. Make the lead singer a psuedo-midget named UDO....and get your BALLS to the WALL!

Be sure to stay 'till the end....

PS- KORN and INCUBUS both suck.

APRIL FOOLS

How about a little Louis CK for yuks.....