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Preview by: Jack Foley
IT'S been almost five years since Quentin Tarantino directed
his last movie, the disappointing (by his standards), Jackie
Brown. After the giddy excesses of Reservoir
Dogs and Pulp Fiction,
critics were beginning to question whether the former video store
worker had begun to lose his touch.
Not so, it would seem. Tarantino is back, firmly casting aside
any fears that he was suffering from a case of severe writer's
block, or was still smarting from the critical reaction to Jackie
Brown.
Kill Bill, his return to the limelight, has already got critics
rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of another Tarantino
classic. Why? Well, read on.
Tarantino, himself, recently described the project as 'the movie
of my movie-geek dreams' and it is difficult to disagree. The
film reunites him with several former collaborators, most notably
Uma Thurman (Pulp Fiction) and Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs),
while Samuel L Jackson is rumoured to crop up in a cameo, as is
the director himself.
The plot concerns Uma Thurman's character, a pregnant assassin
named the Bride, who is shot by her boss, Bill (Keith Carradine),
and her co-workers at her wedding, who subsequently awakes from
a five-year coma, and decides to hunt down and kill every single
one of the assassins who were responsible, saving Bill for last.
The ensuing tale of retribution is said to be one of the bloodiest
revenge tales to date, with one scene allegedly requiring 100
gallons of blood.
Tarantino has never been one to shy away from ultra-violence
(witness his ear-splicing in Dogs, or several sequences in Pulp
Fiction), but for Kill Bill, it looks set to be splashed about
by the bucket-load.
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The scene which required the 100 gallons of blood, for instance,
finds Thurman laying waste to a total of 76 attackers armed with
only a Samurai sword and a newfound agility made possible by the
presence of Master Yuen Wo-Ping on-set. Wo-Ping, of course, is
the wirework wizard behind The
Matrix and Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and his work on Kill Bill is said to
be nothing short of amazing.
As Tarantino puts it in an interview with Empire Online, the
sequence will 'either be the greatest thing anyone's ever seen
as far as this shit's concerned, or I would hit my head on the
ceiling of my talent'. It is his intention for the sequence to
'be to kung fu fights what the Apocalypse
Now 'Ride of the Valkyries' scene was to battle scenes'.
Thurman shed 50 pounds for the role and gained plenty of martial
arts training and certainly looks the part, if the stills on this
page are anything to go by.
Incredibly, Tarantino said the idea for the film was formed between
himself and Thurman over a game of shuffleboard during the filming
of Pulp Fiction. Owing to Tarantino's busy schedule, however,
it took some time before the director was able to lock himself
away and shape it into a movie.
The result is already drawing rave advance word from the likes
of Harry Knowles, of Aint It Cool News fame, while Entertainment
Weekly sounded suitably excited during a recent set visit to China.
Tarantino is also purring - although his love for movies, particularly
his own, is well-documented.
Kill Bill co-stars the likes of Daryl Hannah and Lucy Liu and
is due for release in both America and the UK in October.
But, in the absence of any review notices, the final word goes
to Tarantino (taken from his interview with EW).
''What I always tell people is that I have two universes, okay?
'There's the Quentin universe, the 'movie' universe that 'Reservoir
Dogs,' 'True Romance,' and 'Pulp Fiction' take place in. That
universe is realer than real life. Then I have what I call a 'movie
movie' universe. Basically, okay, when the characters in 'Dogs'
or 'Pulp Fiction' go to the movies, these are the movies they
see. So that's 'From Dusk Till Dawn' and 'Natural Born Killers.'
This is the first time I've directed a movie in the 'movie movie'
universe. I just wanted to do something fun...''
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