June 21, 2007
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BIKES AND GRINDHOUSE PT. 2 (WITH SOME ENTOURAGE & SOPRANOS OFFAL THROWN IN AND NO BIKES)
Firstly, please excuse the fact that I appear to have temporarily turned into another internet critic, a form of life so humble that not even David Attenborough would be curious about it’s filthy rituals. OK, let’s go.
The first episode of Entourage series 4 was bad. In fact it was perhaps the worst episode of the show so far. They’d done it as if it was a documentary about the making of the film they were working on. Unfortunately the badly observed conventions of the genre acted like a giant wall between the audience and all my much-loved Entourage buddies! We were left with a weedy sounding British guy providing a fake voice over that failed to parody any recognisable film show or behind the scenes documentary maker I’ve ever heard of, shots of people having dramatic plot based freak outs that would NEVER be caught on camera (let alone cleared for use in a behind the scenes piece), and unfunny interviews with Entourage protagonists being indiscreet in a way that you simply never, ever see on an interview of this kind.
Now, obviously I’m taking all of this much too seriously and Entourage doesn’t pretend to be surgically accurate with it’s portrayal of Hollywood life, but if you’re going to fuck with such a great formula, at least stick to the flipping rules! I’m sure they’ll be back on track next week. After all, for my money the Sopranos took a bit of a dip at the beginning of their sixth and final season, but the last 8 or 9 episodes were right back on target and the controversial finale was absolutely what you’d hope for from a show that was very seldom didactic or simple minded. OK, so it was no Lenny’s Britain, but the Sopranos was an extraordinary show and I’ll miss it very much. If you’ve never seen it, well, I wish I was you and I still had it all ahead of me is all I can say.
If you’ve never seen Grindhouse, er well, your nerves are possibly a little less shot than mine. Edgar Wright organised a screening at London’s trendy Soho Hotel last week so that he could show both films with fake trailers in between (one of which Edgar directed) the way Tarantino and Rodriguez intended. Indeed, this non stop double bill format was the way American audiences saw Grindhouse but I believe the two films are being split in the UK, which seems a shame as part of the genius of the whole thing is the way you respond to various kinds of tension after spending such an unusually long time in the cinema (or not if you’re one of the millions that stayed away in the US).
First of all the screening itself was fun because half the world of British comedy was there, including various members of League Of Gentlemen, The Mighty Boosh, Garth Merenghi and Little Britain. Also Peter Jackson! When we’d all been reminded not to go to the toilet during the trailers in the middle and risk missing Edgar’s contribution, the lights dimmed and the first film, Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, began.
It was pretty good. It reminded me a lot of the kind of films that Joe and I would go and see of a weekend at school, for example Reanimator, The Hidden, Return Of The Living Dead, The Stuff etc. As with those films, I was sort of amused and slightly grossed out a couple of times but it was never really terrifying or really funny, which is the problem with a lot of genre splicing outings for me. The scene in Dusk Til Dawn where it looks as if Tarantino’s character might rape Juliette Lewis’s character has more grimly real tension in it than anything in Planet Terror. Also it’s weird how seeing a girl with a machine gun attached to the amputated stump of her leg is much less exciting than being told about it.
Planet Terror finished and the fake trailers rolled. I’m biased but I thought Edgar’s (’Don’t') was quite easily the best. As a properly funny spoof of the imagery and tone of those kinds of late 70’s, early 80’s horror trails it was head and shoulders above the others. Eli Roth’s effort was OK, albeit revolting and not that funny.
Roth turns up in the first section of Tarantino’s contribution, Death Proof. As I said before, part of the effectiveness of this film may well have been down to having just sat through Planet Of Terror and being totally immersed in the Grindhouse experience subsequently, but I came out of Death Proof feeling completely shredded in a way that I have only been a few times going to the cinema. E.T. and Schindler’s List spring to mind. And Harold & Kumar Get The Munchies.
It starts inauspiciously with a long scene in a bar featuring some unappealing young women and a couple of unappealing cameos from both Eli Roth and Tarantino. It’s all self indulgent to the point of parody. Then it goes beyond parody and into boredom. Then Kurt Russel turns up as a gnarled stuntman with a scary black car who sits at the bar and eyes the unappealing women. Then he seems fairly nice so any tension there is dissipated. Then, seemingly aware that the audience will be getting quite bored by now, Tarantino pretends to drop a reel (a joke which, along with some deliberately ropey edits, is used a lot for the first part of the film then abandoned) so that the film literally, cuts to the chase. I won’t spoil it by going into too much detail but for about 5 minutes the tone suddenly darkens considerably and I found myself completely gripped and unbelievably tense!
5 minutes later, it was all over and the film seemed to begin again with a new set of slightly more appealing young women. This time there’s no jokes about dodgy edits, scratchy prints or dropped reels, there’s just these women on a road trip. Then they stop off for some lunch at a café and have a lady chat. Ooh! It’s Kurt Russell at the bar again! What’s he going to do!? Well, we’ve got a pretty good idea what he’s going to do but how long are we going to have to wait before he starts doing it this time? The answer is A VERY, VERY LONG TIME INDEED. The scene in the café with the women talking in sassy, super modern, empowered Tarantino-ese about, er, gosh I honestly can’t recall, must have lasted about 20-25 minutes. The sassy chat was again, banal to the point of parody. Then again, it waddled past parody into profound, suffocating torpor. But it’s Tarantino, I thought, he must know what he’s doing, though what can he possibly do to enliven such utter dullociousness? 10 minutes later I found out. The final minutes of Death Proof are as relentlessly exciting as anything I’ve seen for a long time, maybe ever. The question is, would I have felt that way had I not been so fucking bored for so long beforehand? Was it all a masterclass in deconstructive pacing? A brilliant cat and mouse game being played out not only between the characters on screen but between the director and the audience? Or was it a shit film with 2 really fucking good bits? I’ll leave that up to you, and if you can, go for the double!
Right, now back to dealing with frigging Facebook requests. No doubt I’ll telling people how wonderful and fun Facebook is in a few months, but right now I’m still in the very early hate and denial stage.