Random Notes: Film notes

November 18, 2003

Film notes

Guardian has an idiosyncratic list of 40 best directors. Like any such list, it made everyone unhappy. Om notes that there is no Indian in the list. Greg Allen is puzzled that David Lynch is at number one and that Michael Moore is there at all (the latter shocked even me).

Talking of movies that I watched lately, I loved, LOVED 'Lost in Translation'. And in case you are interested, the cinematographer for 'Lost in Translation' also worked for Spike Jonze's 'Being John Malkovich' and 'Adaptation'. Somwhere in my notebook I had also scribbled down Sophia Coppola's top 10 movies. But I can not find it right now.

I also saw Kill Bill. I am not a martial art movie fan. I watched 'Kill Bill' simply because it is a Quentin Tarantino movie. I thought it was very stylish, but unlike 'Pulp Fiction' I won't pay to watch 'Kill Bill' again. It was more interesting to read about, than to watch:

Tarantino begins with the logo from a 1970s Hong Kong production company, Shaw Brothers, the curtain-raiser for innumerable fan references. The heroine's yellow jumpsuit alludes to Bruce Lee's Game of Death; the Kato masks presumably to Lee's TV series The Green Hornet. Tarantino has cast veteran Japanese action star Sonny Chiba as a legendary sword-craftsman, and, in an equivalent spirit of homage, brings in 19-year-old Chiaki Kuriyama in her schoolgirl-killer persona from Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale and Jun Kurimura from Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer. Of course, significant casting reaches its apex with David Carradine, the Caucasian who notoriously denied Bruce his rightful starring role in the TV show Kung Fu, and so is here naturally the ultra-villain Bill (though we don't actually clap eyes on him until Volume 2 comes out next year). Tarantino compresses it all into a stratum of pulp. And now is as good a time as any to reflect how thoroughly since 1991 he has persuaded a generation of moviegoers that, all along, they have known and cared as much about this cult world as he does.

While it is a completely different film in terms of genre and storyline, I am surprised that no one has brought up Truffaut's 'The bride wears black'.

Links:

Lost in Translation website
LIT Story in Guardian
NYT article which is now behind price wall.
Greg.org's whimsical Sofia Coppola interview

A chat between Quentin Tarantino and Brian Helgeland on scriptwriting
An earlier version of Kill Bill script
Greg.org has links to all Quentin Tarantino scripts online here

Posted by Kaushik at November 18, 2003 09:10 PM | TrackBack

Comments

Thank you! I was almost sure that I wont be able to find another copy of the magazine to look it up again ....

Posted by: Kaushik on November 22, 2003 9:23 AM

Hey, thanks for the links and the mention. I just happen to have Sofia Coppola's favorite movies list in front of me.

From the current (Fall 2003) issue of Filmmaker Magazine:
All That Jazz
Badlands
Darling
Goodfellas
The Heartbreak Kid
Lolita
The Piano
Rumblefish
Safe
Tootsie

Posted by: greg.org on November 21, 2003 11:19 PM