For your information, the following post is Restricted. No admittance to persons who might be disturbed by graphic images of sex, violence, or other aspects of real life.
Well, I finally saw "Grindhouse," and, although I enjoyed it thoroughly, being a big fan of both Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, my first thought when it was all over was, "Man, I really want to see the flick in the first fake trailer." http://youtube.com/watch?v=HpKfN3V-44k Well, it looks as if I'm not the only person to have reacted that way: http://www.slashfilm.com/2007/03/12/grindhouse-rodriguez-to-turn-they-call-him-machete-into-feature-length-movie/ or http://tinyurl.com/2335lg I couldn't be more pleased. I love Danny Trejo. I met him once briefly in Santa Fe, and a nicer, sweeter, funnier guy you'd have trouble finding anywhere else. It's just that he *looks* so mean! This could make him a star, in the mold of other not-particularly-good-looking stars like Charles Bronson. And I just can't wait to see Cheech as a...uh... priest with a mission. I actually enjoyed the film a lot. And although Taratino's is the better movie as movie, I enjoyed Rodriguez' film more. He's funnier, and often gets better performances from his actors, because they love working with him so much. They're having FUN, and that comes through in the final product. I mean, few would list Rose McGowan as a great actress, but the sight of her camping it up as a one-legged avenger with a submachine gun as a replacement limb was To Die For. Lots of blood and gore, natch, because the whole thing is an homage to the genre of the grindhouse films, made with low budgets and no stars and hoping to recoup their investment on sex and violence alone. But because actors love working with both Tarantino and Rodriguez, they got to make these grindhouse flicks with actors like Bruce Willis and Naveen Andrews and Nicolas Cage and Rosario Dawson and Kurt Russell. That said, my favorite performance in the film is by a first- time actress (or at least one of her first performances *billed* as an actress), Zoe Bell. Zoe is a stunt woman. Suffice it to say she does all of her own stunts in the driving sequences of "Death Proof." It brings an element of credibility to the flick that is missing in many others. The other "Grindouse" fake trailers: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ka83i_e_v8M http://youtube.com/watch?v=XQifXaOboMU And a few of the real grindhouse trailers for the 70s films that inspired this one: http://youtube.com/watch?v=sNfNevVeebc And you wonder why I'm so weird. This is the sorta stuff I grew up on. They'd be playing every weekend in a double feature at the local grindhouse theaters. Oh, for the good old days of cinema... :-)
