Kill Bill Vol. 2

[Barcik]

Or is it Disney???


Ah, the conspiracy.  

[LGM]

Exactly why I don't buy DVD's very often.

I already bough Kill Bill 1, and was very dissapointed of the content.. So when they all come out together in 1 special edition pack, I'll pawn my Vol. 1 copy and buy both.

[Barcik]

Oh, what a great movie that was. Right now, I have a feeling that Tarantino can do no wrong. There is so much style, essence and heart in Volume 2. By making Vol. 2 the opposite of Vol. 1 in many ways, Tarantino in fact adds new dimensions to both films which can't be seen there on their own - Volume 1 receives more depth, Volume 2 receives more vividness. Together, this is a full and complete saga.
First, what a visual feast that is. Darkness, Light, Color, black and white, ratio changes, QT throws in all of his arsenal. But, unlike other film makers with no sense of style, he knows what to do and when to do it. The grave scene is one of the most thrilling and intense scenes I have ever seen. The audience could just feel the terror.
The action scenes, despite there being considerably less of them, are fantastic. The choreography in the Elle vs. Beatrix fight was inch-perfect. The short fight on the chairs was a great piece of imagination and execution as well.
The character development is surprisingly astonishing. These little QTish dialogs show us that these are more then stereotypes, but true people, who love, hate and regret. The wonderful performances by Thurman and Carradine produce two unique captivating characters.
My only two complaints are that the editing in the last chapter could be tighter, and that the soundtrack is considerably worse than in Volume 1. Besides this two point, this is a masterpiece, near perfect movie. Which one did I like better? I jus't can't tell.
I can't wait to see Tarantino's attempt at WWII. Sometime next year...

[Timosity]

I just saw it last night, I refrained from reading this thread till now just incase I got a spoiler.

I enjoyed it better than the first one, I'm not a big fan of overdrawn fight scenes.

The first was good in it's own ways but I was glued to my seat the whole way through vol.2, it wasn't too slow. Infact the ways she finished off the rest of the crew were way more inventive, I loved what happened to Elle, I can't believe it wasn't so obviously going to happen.

I've never been able to decide if Uma is attractive or not, she is sometimes and isn't others but that's what I like about her, she's closer to an average looking person but there's still something about her. She has unusual proportions, but it's hard to tell as I've never seen her in real life. Is she tall or short?

Carradine was great I thought, and was probably mainly chosen for his voice.

What is great about the movie is that you know exactly what is going to happen before you even see the 1st movie, yet you have no idea how it's going to fit together, so how can you spoil it by putting things out of sequence, I guess the training during the grave scene could have been put somewhere less obvious, like in vol.1 but appart from that the sequences were spot on.

and as usual QT has all his Cameo performers, I bet he loved the fact he got Sonny Chiba for vol 1, and If only he had Samuel L Jackson in Reservoir dogs he'd be in all the ones he directed, he was also in True Romance which QT wrote and Sonny Chiba was mentioned in that too.

I'd like to see it all in one showing, I'll probably do that on dvd.

I also thought Vivica A. Fox was pretty sexy, The way QT operates, she'll probably star in one of his movies down the line. Her name almost sounds like a pornstar name, aah so that's where I've seen her before.

[Esseb]

I came over this review which sums up my opinion on volume 1 and 2 perfectly. Apart from the eloquent wording it's as if I'd written it myself.

http://groups.google.com/groups?&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=108e5h1l463vt2c%40news.supernews.com&rnum=1

[Barcik]

Two more comments that sprang into my mind while looking back at both films.
1) Vol. 1 has more scenes which feel stretched then Vol. 2. The Hatori Hanzo segment, for example, dragged on quite a bit. And, as a person who rather dislikes anime, that animated sequence was really too long. The only place in Vol. 2 where I think QT could have used tighter editing is the last chapter.
2) It's a good thing the film was divided in two. One of the best things about Kill Bill is how different both volumes are, and yet how perfectly they fit together and complete each other. As Grundislav said, both volumes are the Yin and Yang of Kill Bill. And could the good old Yin-Yang be nearly as cool if it consisted of one whole piece instead of two halves?  

[LGM]

Esseb, if that's exactly how you feel, you need to see the movie again.. no plot? Puh! So what if there's a 20 minute fight scene, the rest of the movie still has plot. Who is the bride, what happened to her, who are the deadly viper assasins, the whole anime segment, the talking between Black Mamba and Beatrix. I dunno about you, but I believe those are all pretty good examples of plot.

The only thing that set me off as I read that review was the fact that he said Tarantino split the movies for money.. Which is obviously not true. Miramax didn't want to release a 4 hour movie. Tarantino wouldn't/couldn't cut it down to even 3 hours w/out losing too much. So he had to split it, which IMO was a great choice.

The only greedy people here is Miramax and their DVD-Release plan. Which we have already discussed.

Course, I'm sure you all know about this.. And I'm just a silly fanboy defending a movie he loves.. And yes.. You're entitled to whatever you have to say.. It's just a shame you didn't enjoy it.

[DGMacphee]

Few things to note:

Timmy, believe it or not, Carradine wasn't QT's first choice to play Bill. Originally he was going to get Warren Beatty to play him. But it was Beatty who said he wasn't right for the role and suggested Carradine. QT agreed as soon as he suggested it.

Barcik, although I haven't seen it yet, I think yes, it would be as cool (if not greater) if it were a whole instead of two parts. As Roger Ebert said in his review: "Put the two parts together, and Tarantino has made a masterful saga that celebrates the martial arts genre while kidding it, loving it, and transcending it. I confess I feared that "Vol. 2" would be like those sequels that lack the intensity of the original. But this is all one film, and now that we see it whole, it's greater than its two parts."

Not only that, but we had to wait several months for it too.

[Esseb]

Alright, saying the movie had no plot was probably too harsh. I do however think that the plot is laughable simplistic and is only good for letting Uma kill people.

That said, I do like the first movie. Hopefully the rumoured one volume edit Quentin will show at the end of the Sundance Film Festival or whatever will make the bits of the second volume worth watching.

[Barcik]

Barcik, although I haven't seen it yet, I think yes, it would be as cool (if not greater) if it were a whole instead of two parts. As Roger Ebert said in his review: "Put the two parts together, and Tarantino has made a masterful saga that celebrates the martial arts genre while kidding it, loving it, and transcending it. I confess I feared that "Vol. 2" would be like those sequels that lack the intensity of the original. But this is all one film, and now that we see it whole, it's greater than its two parts."

If you put the current, two movies together, then indeed the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But, I believe it is mainly so because of the way they add-up different aspects of the story to create a complete piece of moviemaking. Was it made as one movie, I doubt there would have been such a clear difference between the two parts, if at all. It would just be one lean motion picture, consisting of plot, action, chit-chat, blood, style and character development. Personally, I prefer the current format where all these things are divided between the two volumes. It adds up to the movie's charm.

[AGA]

Few things to note:

Timmy, believe it or not, Carradine wasn't QT's first choice to play Bill. Originally he was going to get Warren Beatty to play him. But it was Beatty who said he wasn't right for the role and suggested Carradine. QT agreed as soon as he suggested it.

Odd, I watched KBv1 on DVD the other day, and I also watched the 'making of' documentary. Tarantino said Carradine was his first choice...

[DGMacphee]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266697/news

Scroll to the news item dated 29 March 2002.

[AGA]

Well Quentin Tarantino is a lying bastard then.

[bspeers100]

I was more impressed with this:

"Patrick Stewart Blasts 'Kill Bill' for Female Violence
9 March 2004 (WENN)
British thespian Patrick Stewart has blasted movies like Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill - for helping to "stereotype violent attitudes of men to women". Speaking at Friday's launch of a new Amnesty International campaign against attacks on women in London, the Star Trek star revealed he witnessed his father beating his mother and claimed movies and TV have helped to perpetuate a nasty new trend. He says, "The entertainment industry has been extremely irresponsible in perpetuating and stereotyping the violent attitudes of men to women. I condemn utterly films like Kill Bill. We are told it is about empowering women. All it does is empower a woman to kill another woman." "

It's obvious he's a little hypocritical here (X-men? Star Trek Nemesis?) but I did find it an interesting point.

[Kinoko]

Wow... Patrick Stewart's a bit of a weirdo.

Honestly, the movie isn't a daytime soap about violence towards women. People who watch Tarantino's films know very well that he invents his own universe in his films. It's not set in reality, it's set in a kind of violent/cool reality, kind of like Loony Toons.

[DGMacphee]

Aye, Stewart is being hypocritical. I'm also at-odds with his claim because demonising such films is like blaming Marilyn Manson for the Columbine shooting. I tend to think that the genesis of masculine and feminine violence lies in our perception during childhood and adolescence. Even if Kill Bill perpetrates such stereotypes (which I fail to see since it portrays the bride as reverse-misogynistic character i.e. she's out to "Kill Bill", so it seem atypical), condemning the film does nothing to curb violence in society.