The early word from Cannes about Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds seems to echo what we’ve already seen with his previous movies: the man needs an editor. In Death Proof, Kill Bill, and Jackie Brown what could have been great movies slipped into only slightly better than average territory due to sloppy editing. Its as if due to his early success, the suits or whoever are unwilling to tell Tarantino to cut his movies by 30+ minutes.
For what it’s worth, I LOVE Kill Bill. Especially the first one.
Planet Terror could have been an hour shorter. Just the scenes with Rose McGowan and her gunleg would be fine.
I’d still rather have Tarantino editing his own work than Spielberg. While Tarantino can let things go a little long, he at least manages a flow, Spielberg just can’t end a damn movie anymore. AI? Minority Report? And don’t even get me started on “Indiana Jones and I won’t be satisfied until I destroy all good memories of your childhood”.
That said, if I was worth $3 billion, I would end my movies when I damn well felt like it, too.
Matt, “Planet Terror” was the Robert Rodriguez half of “Grindhouse”…and, in the DVD version, the far better half. QT’s “Death Proof” (DVD) never really got going, a major disappointment.
I’m faithful to “Pulp Fiction,” as it almost literally saved my life (I first saw it after a major heartbreak). “Jackie Brown” was destined to be a letdown in the adrenalin-rush wake of “Pulp Fiction” (and Tarantino’s segment of “Four Rooms”). That picture does tend to drag in places. “Kill Bill,” OTOH, is QT’s masterpiece, best appreciated if you’re familiar with the 1970’s action and kung-fu flicks that inspired it. (The Shaw Bros.’ Shawscope logo opens “Vol. 1″ for a reason!)
And only QT could make it cool to listen to Georghe Zamfir…
I think Jackie Brown is highly underrated; possibly his most mature film (then again, he was working from material he hadn’t originally written). I could have watched an entire movie of just the chemistry between Robert Forster and Pam Grier.
As for Kill Bill…about the only thing I would cut out would be the scene with Bill’s father-figure. Which is well-acted, but doesn’t tell me as much about Bill as what we’ve already learned and will learn shortly.
And I rather wish they’d included the fight between Carradine and Michael Jai White.
Actually, I think ‘Jackie Brown’ was perhaps his best film overall from a technical standpoint while ‘Pulp Fiction’ is the masterpiece that’s a little more raw. I also did not believe that ‘Jackie Brown’ was too long. When I first saw it I thought so, but not after subsequent viewings.
I did not like Kill Bill. Or Pulp Fiction. The only one of his movies I really like is Reservoir Dogs.
Oh and how would I edit Kill Bill? Well, for one, it should have been one 2 hour movie.
Oof, OW… you didn’t like Pulp Fiction? I didn’t know that was possible…
I wonder exactly what attracted Tarantino to “Jackie Brown” given that the source novel it’s based on (”Rum Punch” by Elmore Leonard) is (IMHO) so mediocre.
What attracted Tarantino was, I’ll bet, the idea to cast Pam Grier.
Oof, OW… you didn’t like Pulp Fiction? I didn’t know that was possible…
“Pulp Fiction” is one of those movies you either really like or really hate. No middle ground.
While we’re on the subject of movies, allow me to plug one I saw a few weeks ago at the MD Film Festival: “Funny Bones” (1995). A failed American comedian goes to Britain, where he spent part of his childhood, to find new material – and learns interesting things about his family. (Jerry Lewis plays his dad, also a comic.) He also discovers a British comic who makes Andy Kaufman look tame. Despite the title, this is more of a drama than comedy. Almost nobody saw this in theatres, and it’s a damn shame…
Oh c’mon, Kill Bill 1 and 2 were the shiz.
Jackie Brown was terribly boring.
Am I the only one who really liked Death Proof? (I did watch it in the theater as Grindhouse along with Planet Terror, which added to the atmosphere in a big way). The long, seemingly inane but thoughtful conversations are always something I look forward to in Tarantino’s movies, along with great soundtracks, and this movie had both.
I don’t want to get myself into an endless Kill Bill debate, but I did kinda love that movie.
But Jackie Brown? Fantastic film. That movie didn’t need an editor, it needed about 100 awards. I’ll accept a “Pulp Fiction was a better film” argument as a matter of taste, but otherwise, Jackie Brown is the hsit.
Ben, you’re not the only one, but I won’t join you on that boat. I will say that Kurt Russell always kicks ass and that the last twenty minutes were great thrills.
But here’s the thing about Death Proof w/r/t Grindhouse. Tarantino cheated. I went to see a film that reveled in the exploitation of the bad drive-in double feature. Planet Terror took the assignment and ran whole hog with it, turning the camp into joyous, splattery art.
Death Proof has a gem of a 70s exploitation concept, and then squanders it on meandering Tarantino dialogue about nothing. Grindhouse wasn’t supposed to be about slow burn. It was supposed to be about the adrenaline. QT figured it out in the last twenty minutes, but before that? I just wanted to see Planet Terror again.
SpiderJ, gotta disagree with you on Death Proof. It’s paced not entirely unlike a car flick in the 70’s, like Vanishing Point which it references an awful lot. Except unlike those films it replaced long stretches of nothing with long stretches of dialogue, so I think it was less easy to space out than it was in the films it was referencing.
Of the two, Death Proof was more authentic and less tongue in cheek about its source material. I can’t argue if you enjoyed Planet Terror more, but Death Proof wasn’t paced incorrectly for its intentions.
I read through this whole thread, get ready to make an insightful comment about Death Proof, and then realize that Eric Sipple beat me to it.
The only other thing about Death Proof is that QT sets it up so you don’t realize it’s a 70’s car flick until about 2/3rds the way through… then you get a big moment of realization.
The only thing I really didn’t like about Death Proof was watching that Charger get destroyed.
The only thing I really didn’t like about Death Proof was watching that Charger get destroyed.
But surely that it got destroyed with Rosario Dawson inside of it blunted the blow a bit, yes?
I realize now that I just made it sound like I was happy that Rosario Dawson was crushed in a car.
I assure you I meant to say “staring at Rosario Dawson as any other painful event occurs would make that event less painful.”
I will now go back to talking to my computer in Javascript.