Back in Time

I felt like a teenager back in the seventies. Although it was before my time I hear stories of kids playing hookie and sneaking in to theaters to see the B-Movies that their mother and father probably knew nothing about. It was 1:00 in the afternoon and the heat was almost unbearable, so I went to a theater in Charlotte and bought a ticket for Grindhouse--don't tell my mom.

Bad editing, bad image quality and bad sound were the recurring aesthetic and what a wonderful aesthetic it was. However, I should say that much like the films that Rodriguez and Tarantino were paying tribute to this film too was heavily flawed (and I don't just mean the missing reels).

Tarantino's Death Proof was a different story, but Rodriguez's film ended up being just another bad film. In my mind an homage should sift through the rubbish and celebrate the remnants of artistic ingenuity, unfortunately for Tarantino, Rodriguez simply showed us the rubbish. In a combination of ultra-violent zombie flick and cheap sexploitation Planet Terror hit on many of the technical themes, but overall he simply made a new bad movie. The exploitation of women and the cheap thrill of exploding zombie goo was not considered or studied, instead it was just the vision, a vision that I don't really care to see anymore. Rodriguez should have consulted his buddy Quentin for some tips on the homage film.

Perhaps, it is unfair to compare the two films because it is is hard to find redeeming qualities in the films that Planet Terror was charged with emulating, whereas, the car chase films that Tarantino undertook have become art-house fair. But, still Tarantino's film (like all his films) possessed something different. It was first and foremost a Tarantino film, sure it was made in the affecionate memory of old, B-movies, but in the end he made a film that was his own, that nostalgiacly recalled a type of filmmaking that has passed. On point writing, superb acting from Kurt Russel (if you can believe it) and the ever-charming Rosario Dawson. Real stunts, real stuntmen, making movies used to be real work, for a lot of real people. Movies used to be a lot of blood, sweat, and metal. Now they are a lot of money, megabytes, and sequels.

There has been talk that Grindhouse will be relesed as two separate films--I hope so, I want to watch Death Proof again, but would like not to take another trip to PLanet Terror.