[JonZ]

James Bs review..........

http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/mo...ill_bill2.html

And from DH....

"DavisDVD reports that filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has some major plans for his latest opus, Kill Bill. While promoting the second volume of the series, opening theatrically on April 16th, Tarantino revealed that he plans to recut both films together for a special theatrical release later in the year.

"We did a special version [of Volume 1] for Japan that's only been shown in Japan and Hong Kong, and I kept the rights to that," Tarantino said. "I'll put the Japanese version together [with Volume 2] like I would if it was one complete movie, and then I'll release that throughout America and Europe in arthouse engagements."

Tarantino also promises more extensive DVD plans for the revenge films. "I'm going to do a special collector's edition of both of them once I'm finished with both of them," he said. Also in the talking phase, Tarantino is considering the possibility of releasing stand-alone supplemental discs. "One of the things that I saw that I liked... was what the American Pie guys did with their 'Beneath the Crust' documentaries. I want to do the same thing [for Kill Bill]."

[Lou Sytsma]

Poland over at the Hot Button really lays it on KB2 today.

[Chuck Mayer]

Lou,
I just read that. To be fair, he didn't like the first one much, but I give him the props for digging in on #2, in light of the overwhelming praise it's getting.

He certainly isn't gentle.

Take care,
Chuck

[JonBoriss]

Sounds like sour grapes to me. I don't think I have seen any proof of critics giving a good review to a film just so the director does more work. His comments about Carradine may be right but then I have heard countless reviews saying the contrary, that he should get oscar consideration. Is there a mass critic conspiracy of Kung Fu fans to get Carradine more work that he just wasn't apart of? It sounds like he just wants to go against the grain and get noticed. Its easy to critisize a film that everyone loves because you get more attention for it. He didn't like the film, thats fine, opinions, I respect his opinion. What I don't care for is when people write reviews of films and don't even talk about the film for half of the review. Reminds me of a time when I read a Return of the King review and about 80% of it was the reviewer critisizing New Line and Jackson for releasing multiple versions of the film

[Chuck Mayer]

Jon,
Dave doesn't seem the kind of critic to be contrary just to be contrary.

That said, I do believe he has a real hard spot with splitting one film into two for profit, and he has that first and foremost on his mind when he watches the film. I feel it might color his opinion. As I stated, he disliked the first movie was well. And I loved the first film, so I'll be seeing the second regardless.

But based on his comments (putting all the action in #1 to establish a fanbase), and James B's review mentioning what should have been culled, I wonder it DP isn't right about Miramax's plan. No matter. I do think this could have been a legendary 3 hour film. Maybe it will be in one of it's DVD iterations.

Take care,
Chuck

[JonBoriss]

Well when I say contrary I guess I mean that a critic gets excited for a film and doesn't think its that good but then everyone else around him likes it and that makes him hate it even more. Like when I saw Donnie Darko I thought it was a pretty OK movie, nothing great. But all these people around me kept singing its praises like it was the best film of the last decade and that made me dislike the movie a little bit more. All the hype and reviews arond the Kill Bill franchise I'll bet affected his review in some way which turns into him critisizing other critics.

[Quentin]

I think Poland's vehemence comes from two places - first of all, he is very pissed that QT and Miramax are taking us to the bank with two "volumes". It does smack of greed (or at least trying to best cash in on an overbudget film), and I see his problem. Didn't keep me from enjoying Vol. 1.

But, I think the other problem gnawing at Poland is that this FILM (that is, in one volume) should have been great. Like Chuck said, I think it would have been a LEGENDARY 3 hour vengeance/genre epic if the "volumes" had been combined and about an hour of garbage trimmed. I do believe him when he says he really wanted to like it. He's a big "Pulp Fiction" fan, and this film could have challenged PF as QT's best, if it had been one big badass.

[Dennis Pagoulatos]

I personally wouldn't have wanted anything in Vol.1 edited out, and I'm sure the same is true for Vol. 2, and it's LONGER than Vol.1 at over 2 hours...so we're actually talking about a 4 hour film when it's all stitched back together. NO WAY you can expect to release that and make any money, not even if it were called "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship Kills Bill".

I think 4 hour films are for hard core fans (very small %) and for DVD (regular fans and everybody else)

-Dennis

[JonBoriss]

If anything I think that Miramax took a risk. There was no guaruntee that people would show up for vol 1, I thought it was gonna flop. He seems mad after the fact that vol 1 made money. Yeah it sucks but I would rather have it this way then 2 hours on the cutting room floor.

[tyler payne]

Something kind of interesting, I was going through some of my old Entertainment Weekly mags and... what? No I don't subscribe, really I don't, it got delivered to my house by accident, yeah, yeah that's the ticket. Anywho, they did a story on Kill Bill Vol. 1 on there October 3, 2003 issue. Here is an interesting blurb in the article...

Quote:

If you look at that script, it was massively overwritten, especially for a movie that he (Tarantino) said he wanted to be 90 minutes," says Thurman. "You suspect various things. Quentin had gone mad, or was playing with lives, or playing with money. It made no sense. Whether he had intentions to separate the movies from the begining or it was unconscious, I don't know. But it would have been difficult to include even half that material in one movie.

It's true. As production dragged on, it became clear that there was no way that what Tarantino had shot could be contained in a single film. Soon whispers started to be heard on the set that Kill Bill had actually been planned as a two-movie epic. Weinstein made an appearance in Los Angeles and suggested the idea himself- but really what could he do, having already gone on record saying that Tarantino built Miramax and could have whatever he wanted? And, besides, there was absolutely no way they could release Kill Bill at three-plus hours. It was too violent. To intense. To giddily over-the-top. (Weinstein declined to comment for this story, but it will be interesting to see what he will do if Tarantino returns to The Inglorious Bastards -- which would certainly have to be a two if not three movie venture as planned.)

"I didn't ever bring up splitting it up, because I had to wait for it to be Harvey's idea for it to ever work," remembers Tarantino. "But the minute it happened and Harvey suggested it, all right? It was, like, within an hour I had it all figured out. Literally an hour. It wasn't hard at all."

It doesn't really give any definite clarification as to who had the idea of splitting it up first. Tarantino, or Harvey? I just thought that is was an interesting blurb.

As for Inglorious Bastards ( I know it is off topic). It will be interesting to see if Harvey will greenlight a three picture deal for Tarantino, when they wanted to condense Lord of the Rings to one movie.