Flicks: Sci-Fi and Fantasy

*Doubtless on the Web there's various guides to the Iconography of both volumes of Kill Bill; here's "Charting the Tarantino Universe" from The New York Times 4/11/2004 by Dave Kehr:
Ever since Kill Bill Vol. 1 was released last October, Internet movie message boards have been buzzing about the numerous references that Quentin Tarantino's action revenge film makes to the rich tradition of Asian genre filmmaking — both Hong Kong kung fu movies and the Japanese swordfight flicks. With the release on Friday of Kill Bill Vol. 2, Mr. Tarantino's grand design becomes clear: where the first part of his epic took place under the sign of the East, the second is largely devoted to the West — that is, the American and European traditions of revenge movies, particularly the American western.

With the dense network of references in Kill Bill, Mr. Tarantino is at once playing a game and making a point, demonstrating how Eastern and Western popular culture have so strongly influenced each other over the years that the new style in action filmmaking is an inseparable blend of the two. Just as the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa acknowledged borrowing from John Ford's American westerns for his 1954 epic The Seven Samurai, so did the Italian director Sergio Leone borrow from Kurosawa's 1961 swordplay film Yojimbo for A Fistful of Dollars, the film that gave rise to the spaghetti western. Kill Bill closes the circle, bringing Asian, European and American influences together into a glorious, crazy, rousing and finally quite poignant meta-movie.

It isn't necessary to get all of Mr. Tarantino's references — many quite esoteric — to enjoy Kill Bill, but a little background information does enhance the experience. The notes below are meant to suggest a few points of entry into Mr. Tarantino's sprawling work. They are by no means exhaustive.

THE EAST (Vol. 1)

SONNY CHIBA In Mr. Tarantino's screenplay for True Romance, Christian Slater's character sneaks off to a double feature of Sonny Chiba films — The Streetfighter and The Return of the Streetfighter, two of the most violent gangster movies ever to come out of Japan. Mr. Tarantino has matured since then, and Mr. Chiba's glowering presence in Kill Bill — played brilliantly for comedy as well as menace — now seems more of a reference to Mr. Chiba's long association with the Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku, who discovered him and with whom he made several dozen samurai dramas (a snatch of music from one of the best, The Yagyu Clan Conspiracy, can be heard in Kill Bill). Mr. Chiba's character in Kill Bill, the master swordmaker "Hattori Hanzo," who provides the Bride (Uma Thurman) with her weapon of vengeance, is named after a real-life samurai of the Tokugawa shogunate, first played by Mr. Chiba in a 1970's series for Japanese television.

GORDON LIU A gifted and popular star of the Shaw Brothers' kung fu films, Mr. Liu rose to fame under the direction of his brother, Liu Chia Liang, in favorites like The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Kill Bill references 36th Chamber by casting Mr. Liu, not as the pupil he played in that film, but as the fighting master — "Pai Mei," who teaches the Bride the "five point exploding heart technique." With his outrageously long white facial hair that is as firmly associated with fighting masters in kung fu films as black mustaches are with the villains in American cowboy movies, Mr. Liu is barely recognizable in Vol. 2 — though he also appears in Vol. 1 with his familiar shaved head as the leader of Lucy Liu's Yakuza army, the Crazy 88.

LUCY LIU As "O-ren Ishii," former member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad and current ruler of the Tokyo underworld, Lucy Liu plays a character of mixed Japanese, Chinese and American ancestry — which is, of course, the genealogy of Kill Bill itself. The look of her character seems based on Lady Snowblood, a stylish Japanese swordplay film of 1973 directed by Toshiya Fujita, whose heroine is a young woman born in prison and sworn to avenge the death of her family at the hands of a group of swindlers. The haunting imagery that concludes Vol. 1 — blood spilled in softly falling snow — comes directly from Mr. Fujita's film, as does the use of chapter titles and a cartoon sequence (Mr. Tarantino's is animated; Mr. Fujita uses the still frames of a Japanese manga comic book).

KINJI FUKASAKU The Japanese prints of Kill Bill Vol. 1 carried a dedication to Mr. Fukasaku, a major figure in Japanese genre filmmaking who died in January 2003 after directing some 60 features. Mr. Fukasaku's work ranged from courtly period dramas (like The Yagyu Clan Conspiracy) to outrageously violent and anarchic gangster films, like his masterpiece Battles Without Honor and Humanity. The pounding theme music from Battles introduces the Crazy 88 in Vol. 1, and feeds into the spectacular massacre that is Vol. 1's finale. Chiaki Kuriyama, who played a murderous Japanese schoolgirl in Mr. Fukasaku's last completed film, Battle Royale, appears in Kill Bill in virtually the same role, the teenage killer, "Go Go Yubari."

'LONE WOLF AND CUB' Kill Bill represents a rare attempt to blend the Chinese and Japanese styles of martial arts, and if Gordon Liu represents the bare-handed Chinese kung fu tradition, Sonny Chiba stands for the Japanese tradition of swordfighting, as practiced by the warriors of the samurai class. Much of the highly stylized violence in Kill Bill — the surgically clean decapitations, the thin, fizzy blood that sprays out from wounded bodies like cherry soda from a shaken can — comes from the ultraviolent tradition of Japanese series like Lone Wolf and Cub (six titles to date) and Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman (25 films, not including Takeshi Kitano's recent remake of the first installment, Zatoichi). Lone Wolf and Cub, about a masterless samurai who wanders the countryside, pushing his infant in a booby-trapped baby carriage, resonates in Kill Bill with the repeated theme of innocent children bound to violent adults. And Shogun Assassin, a 1980 dubbed digest of the first two Lone Wolf movies, makes a surprise appearance in Vol. 2 as one character's dubious choice for bedtime viewing.

THE WEST (Vol. 2)

JOHN FORD The director of Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine, and The Searchers is an important presence in Vol. 2 from the opening minutes, in which Mr. Tarantino lovingly recreates one of Ford's favorite shots: a vast, blindingly bright Western landscape as framed through the doorway of a dark interior. As one of the creators of the classic American western, Ford established many of the thematic concerns and visual tropes that Mr. Tarantino builds on in the second installment of Kill Bill. The wedding chapel where the attempted murder of the Bride takes place recalls many of Ford's lonely outposts of civilization, like the white frame church in Clementine. It is also possible that the eye patch worn by "Elle Driver" (Darryl Hannah) is a reference to the eye patch Ford wore in his later years, though this image (see below) has multiple sources.

BUDD BOETTICHER A protégé of Ford, Budd Boetticher brought the American western into its ironic, absurdist phase with a series of westerns he made in the 1950's with Randolph Scott — the first of which, Seven Men From Now (1956), provides the model for the serial-revenge plot structure of Kill Bill. The rocky desert landscape around Barstow, Calif., the backdrop for many of Boetticher's films, is in Kill Bill the natural habitat of Michael Madsen's fallen swordfighter, whose name, of course, is "Budd." Like many Boetticher heroes, "Budd" is a disillusioned fighter who has tried to retire into a solitary, private life, only to be forced into action again by unfinished business.

SERGIO LEONE Leone admitted that he was influenced by Boetticher's black humor and mercenary heroes when he created A Fistful of Dollars (1964), the cynical, violent and often very funny western that established Clint Eastwood as a star. The Leone work most often referenced in Kill Bill is Once Upon a Time in the West, Leone's 1968 epic. Henry Fonda played a mysterious, all-powerful gunman not unlike "Bill"; Charles Bronson played a vengeful character named "Harmonica" (so called because he's always playing one) who stands behind many of the Bride's actions (themselves underlined by the harmonica theme composed by Luis Bacalov for the 1972 Italian western Il Grande Duello). Apparently a passionate cinephile, "Budd" has a poster from Richard Fleischer's 1974 Bronson vehicle, Mr. Majestyk, hanging in his trailer.

DAVID CARRADINE Cast as the master assassin "Bill," a phantom presence in Vol. 1 who gradually materializes into an all-too-human figure in Vol. 2, David Carradine provides a link to both of the great traditions behind Kill Bill. His father, John Carradine, was a member of John Ford's stock company, playing smooth-talking Southern politicians and riverboat gamblers. And of course, Mr. Carradine's initial fame was as "Kwai Chang Caine," a half-American, half-Chinese Shaolin monk wandering the American West in the 1970's television series Kung Fu (itself the subject of a Samuel L. Jackson soliloquy in Mr. Tarantino's Pulp Fiction). He also starred in the oddball 1978 movie The Silent Flute (a k a Circle of Iron), in a role that Bruce Lee had written for himself before his death. In Kill Bill, Mr. Carradine is seen playing a flute, much like the one that accompanied Caine on his journeys.

DARYL HANNAH As "Elle Driver," the professional assassin who is one of the targets of the Bride's campaign for revenge, Ms. Hannah introduces references outside the western framework. Her eye patch comes from They Call Her One Eye, a 1974 Swedish (!) revenge film by Bo Arne Vibenius, a former assistant to Ingmar Bergman. Her nurse disguise in Vol. 1 is a reference to a similar costume in Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill. The imposing Ms. Hannah nevertheless recalls the heroines of surreal 1950's female-centered westerns like Allan Dwan's Woman They Almost Lynched and Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar. Though the name "Elle Driver" suggests a reference to Walter Hill's terse 1978 chase classic, The Driver, Mr. Tarantino has said that it's an inside reference to Sarah Kelly, an assistant nicknamed El Driver on the Tarantino-scripted 1996 vampire western, From Dusk Till Dawn. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

I went to see Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines at the recommendation of The Scion, who I had introduced to the "T" series.

Here's what I think are free use quotes from a column that was in the May 23rd Wall Street Journal -- TASTE COMMENTARY: 'May I?' and 'The Matrix': Why my kids won't be seeing the latest R-rated blockbuster. By Dale Buss

Why the R rating? Certainly the barrage of elegantly choreographed martial-arts violence is one reason; but that stuff is merely a modern, stylized version of the barroom fighting in a cowboy film, rough but understandable. Besides, without it there's no movie. The real cocklebur is a gratuitous scene near the beginning of this video game--er, movie--that intercuts a paganistic orgy with private, full-flesh sex between the hero and heroine, Neo and Trinity, complete with pulsating drums in the background. . . .

So while teenage boys, religious syncretists and dime-store philosophers might be in love with "The Matrix Reloaded," it isn't all that popular with some parents. The R rating and one sex scene have forced us to make an unpleasant choice: Forbid our youngsters from seeing the movie that their friends are raving about or let the coarser side of popular culture claim one more little victory. Understandably, the topic of movie-going--or not-going--ruined no fewer than three of our dinner hours last week. . .

The Dionysian vignette from "The Matrix Reloaded"--a version of what the Israelites were doing in "The Ten Commandments" before Moses came down from Mount Sinai--is bad enough in itself, but it's even more affrontive for being kicked off with a quasi-prayer, part of the alleged spiritual depth of the movie. . .

The point is that the sex scene isn't the least bit necessary to tell this story. The whole "Matrix" series is supposed to become this decade's "Star Wars" trilogy. But did those epics suffer from the lack of a scene in which Hans Solo and Princess Leia couple in the back of a spaceship while Wookies cavort lasciviously outside? . . .

Naturally, nothing in the limitless pre-opening PR for "The Matrix Reloaded" hinted at this razor blade in the apple. So it caught many parents unawares. I don't remember its being mentioned in the Time cover story, or in the new Heineken ad where Trinity goes airborne in the interest of serving up a couple of cold ones. . .

There was a time when parents could trust the media's role in the public square. That included an understanding that R-rated movies wouldn't be aimed at kids. If a movie targeted teenage boys, parents could assume that the sexual content might push the envelope--but certainly not burst it open.

------------------ I then sent in this letter to the editor to the Opinion Journal Online:

As the mother of teen and just past teen boys, I was so angry at Dale Buss's "Taste Commentary", "'May I?' and 'The Matrix': Why my kids won't be seeing the latest R-rated blockbuster" on May 23rd that I went to see the movie a second time to make sure we had seen the same movie. I realized it wasn't the movie that was different, but the gender lens of the parent.

I chaperoned my mortified then-13 year old son to a half-empty matinee of the first Matrix where the only other female in the audience was on the same maternal patrol duty. I found the closing declaration of love and the kiss one of the most satisfying in cinema. Clearly, other women in the country agreed, as the two packed matinees of Matrix Reloaded I've attended were easily fifty per cent female, of all ages. There was an audible release of breath from the women at the opening casually intimate scene that demonstrated Neo's and Trinity's continuing couplehood.

I saw Matrix Reloaded as inspiring to girls and boys alike where, unlike most rigid, emotionless, sterile sci fi universes, the women of Zion are equal soldiers, captains, and counselors while losing none of their femininity, sensuality, and power to inspire loyalty and jealousy. It is key that Zion is full of non-machine feelings, and the women are constantly trying to get the men to deal with all those complex feelings.

Not only did I think the sex scene was absolutely necessary to the story, I thought it was too circumspect; I was rooting for Trinity to be as active in bed as in battle, yet another philosophical lesson boys could garner from the Matrix series.

The point is made several times that what makes Neo not just powerful as The One for this generation but a unique One for all iterations is his love for Trinity. He is inspired not by a need for an idealized lover on a platonic pedestal, which Buss seems to think is more fitting to be viewed by teen boys, but by a passionately shared commitment to each other and a cause. Which is a much more satisfying model than the superficial love 'em and leave 'em bimbo bedding in PG-13 action flicks marketed to boys.

While I do not think the movie ratings system is consistent or clear to parents, and I was taken aback by the very young children attending Matrix Reloaded with their families, I think it is very much acceptable to today's PG-13 audience.

I'll call it X2: X Men United, but I don't remember seeing the subtitle in the credits; I more remember the key letter in Fox network constantly turning into "X Men" during the barrage of ads on the TV. Turns out I should have re-viewed the prequel X Men because this picks up exactly where the last one left off and there's many references to previous happenings (hmm, what was that about those scars?) -- but then I was the oldest person at the morning showing. Director/story writer Bryan Singer has learned the lesson of successful comic book/super heroes' movies that it's the relationships stupid, though the kids in the audience do get restless during the scenes and dialogue that appealed to me (like the mutants looking longingly at warm family photographs with one who is about to "come out" to his parents) more than the predictable special effects (after all, what were we supposed to think would happen to a super secret hideaway built under a huge concrete dam?). There are a lot of good actors slumming here (Brian Cox's and Hugh Jackman's accents slip at the start but get stronger), giving the sidelong glances, sexual temptations, and repartee more gravitas than they were written with. Jackman also committed a lot of time to a trainer and nutritionist to develop that non-CGI body that fills the screen quite charismatically -- and aids the joke when he sardonically explains his teaching role at the school for the gifted. While the women get crucial plot points, the actresses don't have a lot to do; not much Famke Janssen can do with her telekinetic Phoenix power but scowl or Halle Berry cloud over her eyes as the weather gets Storm-ized. I'm sure these women would have had more ideas about mutant foreplay to respond to the ongoing guy-to-guy running query to Iceman on how he and Rogue (of the lifeforce squeezing power) manage their budding romance than "We're working on it." Alan Cummings leaving everyone in the blue dust of his teleporting mutant is fun and cool (and I enjoyed his repetition of his origins that reminded me of a running gag in Due South. I did find a couple of plot points confusing, but could connect my own dots. The music never stops pounding, but then it was written by the editor. (5/10/2003)

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers uses the best of contemporary and traditional movie magic for a rousing, romantic adventure tale of good vs. evil, loyalty and love.

"Lord & Ladies" by Barbara Ellen London Times, January 10, 2003

Women are flocking to heroic epics - our critic explains why

IF YOU GO down to the cinema today, you’re sure of a big surprise. Not teddy bears’ picnics but rows of delighted female fans watching The Lord of the Rings. Everyone is asking — well, lots of men, anyway — why so many women are raving about Peter Jackson’s trilogy.

You can understand their confusion. Thus far with The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers it’s been Nerd Nirvana all the way. All those lovingly recreated Middle Earths, Helm’s Deeps and Enchanted Forests. All those hobbits, wizards, elves and orcs. The fact that the best clinches you’re likely to see are when orcs grapple with elf warriors on quasi-medieval battlefields. None of this sounds particularly conducive to making the chardonnay pound fly out of the average woman’s handbag. I’m pretty sure that Jackson didn’t look through his lens at shots of Gandalf battling with Sauron, their beards fluttering in the wind, their nighties billowing around their knobbly knees, crabbing to each other about ultimate power, and think: “Chicks are going to go crazy for this”. Yet women everywhere, including myself, are going crazy for it. Either that or we’re simply going crazy.

So, what’s the appeal? Contrary to male opinion it isn’t all just a terrible misunderstanding. Women don’t see the words “Lord” and “Rings” in the title and think they’re going to see some Tolkien chick flick in which some lucky girl gets married to a hairy-footed hobbit. Because actually, guys, women have heard of the books, even though we probably didn’t bother reading them, having had much more time for Max Factor than Tolkien when we were teenagers. And yes, admittedly, to an extent we are just being nosy.

Movies such as The Lord of the Rings are a good way to spy on men, see within the most primitive areas of their psyches — all those yearnings for transcendence, nobility and majesty that still tickle away deep within the male soul. In this way, Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings is not so much a sex symbol as a human symbol, a male-decency symbol. And, as any woman could tell you, that’s always sexy.

Jackson is actually lucky we’re still in the market. Considering the level of swill aimed at them, it’s a wonder that women bother to go to the cinema at all. While the guys get Pulp Fiction and The Usual Suspects, all the women get is patronised. Sometimes you get a semi-decent chick flick, a Bridget Jones's Diary or a Kissing Jessica Stein, but mainly it’s “Kissy-kissy, boo-hoo, hurrah, he loves me, the end”.

To illustrate: I caught a movie on satellite the other day — Serendipity, starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale. Billed as a “gentle romantic comedy”, it claimed to be about a couple who decide to leave love to the fates. Naturally it was aimed exclusively at women. You could tell by the way Cusack and Beckinsale kept pulling gooey bashful faces that suggested they were five years old and needed to go pee-pee. And this is what film-makers think women want. No wonder we’re all hitching a ride to Middle Earth.

Above all, though, The Lord of the Rings is just Gladiator syndrome all over again. Gladiator was the last “male” movie to hit the female spot, proving that women were just as interested as men in complicated themes such as glory, honour, destiny and valour, and, you know, the “big stuff” of life.

Just as it didn’t bother women that Russell Crowe’s widowed Maximus didn’t manage to get himself a new girlfriend (here was a man too busy grappling with destiny to make puppy dog eyes at the ladies), Liv Tyler’s brief, soppy appearances as Aragorn’s elfin love interest are just plain irritating. (Leave the man alone, he’s got forces of darkness to deal with!) Just as men enjoyed Gladiator because it reminded them of what men could and should be, women loved it because it also reminded them of what men or, more to the point, mankind could be. The same applies to The Lord of the Rings. It is refreshing to see characters tussling with notions of integrity and destiny, instead of first dates and bra straps, even if they are only 4ft tall and need electrolysis on their toes.

Where men go wrong is that they think that just because they were more likely to read The Lord of the Rings as spotty adolescents, just because they’re genuine fans, they own the concept for life. And in some ways you can sympathise. Having done their time with Tolkien, and been mocked for their sins, they must resent female interlopers barging in when it’s all been laid out in nice easy form.

What was once a safe boys’ locker room has been forced open. It has been invaded by lots of annoying “instant experts” in skirts suddenly thinking they know what they’re talking about, when they haven’t paid their dues and can barely tell their Aragorns from their Legolases.

Still, all those miffed men out there had better get used to it. Females are on to this Lord of the Rings thing now. We want in, and there’s very little you guys can do about it. Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets has better special effects than the first one.