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| Tyler Stout's poster artwork for Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair. Oooooh! |
I've written before about Quentin Tarantino's alternate universe IMDB page, the one that sadly exists only in his head and in press conferences, the one that features Britney Spears in a remake of Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, so it's pleasing to see him actually deliver on one of those promises. After talking about it for the best part of three years, Tarantino has finally let loose the unified four-hour version of Kill Bill, called The Whole Bloody Affair, programming it as part of a season at The New Beverly Theatre in Los Angeles. Differing from the version that was shown at Cannes back in 2006, this new version features an extended O-Ren Ishii manga sequence, a tweaked House of Blue Leaves scene, incorporating the full-colour Japanese cut, and other such claret-hued moments. For a more solid description of what to expect, head over to Movieline.
Clearly, I'm hyped for this, but equally, it's a source of some meh-ness. Kill Bill was originally announced and trailed as one movie, before QT and Harvey Weinstein announced it as a two-parter. At the time, Tarantino said, "There was something bothering me about releasing a three-hour grindhouse movie. It seemed pretentious, like an art film meditation on a grindhouse movie. But two 90-minute movies coming out fairly rapidly, one after another, that's not pretentious, that's ambitious and that's the proper scale." One of the reasons I love KB1 is because it stuck to that assertion - its punchy, tight, dynamic pacing felt so finely honed and fat free that it carried no passengers. Conversely, when KB2 checked in at 2hr 15min, it felt to me that, despite its merits, QT had lost sight of the original grindhouse ethic and got self-indulgent, creating an imbalance that left me a tad deflated. Maybe now, seeing it in one piece, I can see if I was a stupid twat to think like that.
No confirmed details of the DVD/Blu-ray release or UK screenings yet, but safe to assume that something's in the post.
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ReplyDeleteI'm with you on this up to a point. It is good news, but like all extended cuts this will be the double edged sword that you touched on. It'll be a more flabby film, just the running time alone tells us that, only someone like Altman can manage a three hour plus film and have it whizz by. And QT ain't no Altman/Kurosawa/PTA.
ReplyDeleteThe good thing is that Pt 1 will always be there, for those times when you want the 'Game of Death' structure. I'm well looking forward to this, I wish Grindhouse would make it onto DVD at some point though.