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CINEMA SEEN - "Grounddown by Grindhouse!" By William Margold I guess that I should feel honored that the vastly overrated director Quentin Tarantino once told Brian Sebastian---my industrious Movie Reviews & More cable access show partner---that he has been reading my Hollywood Press/LAXPRESS columns for well over 30 years. According to Brian...Q.T. (whose "work" includes the violently flatulent "Reservoir Dogs," the sporadically interesting "Pulp Fiction," the tedious "Jackie Brown," and the homage heavy handedness of the "Kill Bill" duo) apparently wondered why I didn't like his movies. I told Brian to tell the aggravatingly imitative film fellow that if he made better films---"perhaps I would!" Lamentably, by attaching his deadweight effort called "Death Proof" to the buoyant slaughter showcase that is Robert Rodriquez's "Planet Terror"---Tarantino has managed to ruin GRINDHOUSE---an ambitious attempt of what coulda, shoulda been lots of feverish fun and foolish frolic for filmgoers who like to wallow in the carrion of intestinal cinema. I should have suspected the worst after watching a show called "The Iconoclasts" on The Sundance Channel--- wherein the nauseatingly geeky Quentin salivates all over the much more talented Rodriquez (his "Once Upon A Time in Mexico" is a deranged delight) to the extent that I'm surprised that there aren't outtakes of him shining, if not kissing, Robert's boots (etc.) being shown the internet. But even the best of us make mistakes when choosing and/or tolerating associates, and in the remarkable Rodriquez's case, his albatross is the tragic Tarantino---who hopefully will never be allowed to clutter up a screen again. Violating the subjecting of myself to the extreme viewing coda of seeing grind house movies during the Sixties and Seventies in the appropriate discomfort of a theater that smelled as bad as it looked, if, in fact, you dared to look at your surroundings in the first place---I decided to visit The Grauman's Chinese in Hollywood---for the Saturday afternoon matinee of what would become over three hours of movie viewing that ranged from the gleeful highs of sanguine, sinew and searing soul provided by Rodriquez's "Planet Terror" to the rock bottom blabbermouth sluggishness (despite not one, but two overcooked car chases) of Tarantino's "Death Proof." Along the way...some grind house era-vocative trailers, mostly amusing, with "Machete" being the best, were run, along with a few other screen images capable of making those who had endured them during their less responsible period, when they could disappear into the moldering darkness for half days at a time, to nod their shaggy heads appreciatively. Combining the zombie-zaniness of George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" with the enigmatic heroism of John Carpenter's "Assault on Precinct 13"---"Planet Terror" is a visceral rollercoaster ride with no safety bar to hang on to aimed at those who think that eating a couple of hot dogs that have been revolving on a movie theater's concession stand cooker since "Birth of a Nation" will satisfy of their daily nutritional needs. Featuring a glowering heroine (Rose McGowan, whom I'd choose first on my playground game team), brandishing a weapon of maximum destruction where her right leg used to be---the action is wonderfully repellant all the way up to its bittersweet end. On the other mangled hand, the end doesn't come soon enough in Quentin's "Death Proof" the tired tale of a demented stunt car driver (Kurt Russell) who gets his kicks knocking off carloads of bimbos...until one carload fights back. And as we get to see Russell whining, and then getting being beaten to death by the Mascara Mob, I was tortured by what Tarantino was trying to bray about his own masculinity. And that...dear reader...is what amounts to feeling sorry and helpless for a person with serious self-esteem problems. Or maybe...it's feeling sorry for myself for taking the time to feel sorry in the first place. end NOTE: Originally published in L.A. Xpress, May 10, 2007. |