See it. Really.
It’s hard for me to feel satisfied after seeing a movie in theaters lately. $9.50 a ticket? Those seats better have Fleshlights built into them at that price. When I saw Children of Men I thought it was an anomaly: here was a movie I felt was actually worth paying that money for. I figured that wouldn’t happen again for years. Grindhouse is either an anomaly as well or the movie industry is waking up and smelling the coffee.
I loved the tribute to the old exploitation flicks. People that don’t get this don’t get the movie itself. The hype only friggin’ broadcasts that it’s a tribute to 70’s exploitation films; if you didn’t get that you deserved to lose the $9 in my book. But I’m an asshole. It’s supposed to be campy with bad editing. It’s all intentional. And I loved every friggin’ second of the thing. The purposeful bad editing was hysterical at times (you’d have to see it to understand what I mean), and the “ick” factor had the whole audience screaming and yelling the whole time. Like the actual 70’s exploitation flicks sans the bad haircuts. It literally was a grindhouse style flick: two different movies back to back with some previews in between. Each movie ran about an hour and 40 minutes I believe. The previews before and in between the movies were nothing short of brilliant. Machete was my favorite and if internet rumor is true (I made a funny), that one is being made into a full length for the next Grindhouse.
What made the whole experience more enjoyable was how different the two movies were. “Planet Terror” was a campy tribute to bad zombie flicks, full of gore, one-liners and ass-kicking. “Death Proof” was a tribute to those old car chase murder movies. Death Proof was evidence that you can still do fuckin’ AMAZING car crash scenes and stuff without any CGI. None what-so-ever. That was all real and knowing that made you appreciate it all the more. As a matter of fact, I’d say that knowing that was critical to fully enjoying the movie.
I’d see Grindhouse again. Hands down. What made it great was that we had a crew of around 14 or 15 people. Seeing it with a posse is part of the fun. Having an awesome audience is also pretty important, and I suggest seeing it at whatever local indie theater you have in your hometown: a lot of the time they have better crowds.
Let it be known that for the first time ever, I thought Rose McGowan didn’t look nasty. Must be nice having professional lighting and make-up artists making you look snazzy. When I become emperor of this pitiful planet I shall partake of this…
-=Grim=-
from what i heard machete is it’s going to be a straight to DVD movie (which makes it even more awesome in my book)
and in case you didn’t know this is the stupidity of americans… the overseas viewers are excused.
http://www.kottke.org/remainder/07/04/13202.html
and…
“Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s double-feature “Grindhouse” tumbled in its second weekend. Released by the Weinstein Co., “Grindhouse” fell to No. 10 with $4.2 million, down a steep 63 percent from its surprisingly weak debut of $11.6 million over opening weekend.
Harvey Weinstein _ the company co-chairman whose previous outfit, Miramax, had great success with Tarantino and Rodriguez’s films _ said last week he might re-release the two filmmakers’ chapters of “Grindhouse” as separate movies down the road.”
Ohhhhh, those fleshlights look like fun!