Kill-a Bill-a Volume Two-a (Page 1 of 2)

K, just started watching, but I'm at the part where you guys are talking about the subtitles being different...  you say there's a difference between the two with the word "baby", where one of them says "ba..."

This is something that I noticed on the DVD version... I dunno about the bluray cause I don't have that, but on the DVD she says the whole word and the gun goes off right after.

When I saw this movie in the theater, I distinctly remember that she doesn't finish that word. She says "ba-" and then gets shot. I remember this because the first time I saw it in the theater I almost had a heart attack and lost like $4.00 worth of popcorn all over the floor of the theater.

The DVD version is cut slightly different there. I swear to god. I have to see this on bluray to see if that's different from the DVD or not. I saw this flick three times in the theater and that part always made me cringe. When I got the DVD it stuck out to me. Anyway, back to the movie.

EDIT:

OK, you guys all need to watch both Buried and Jackie Brown. Seriously.

As far as the buried alive conversation, Buried doesn't have a scene where he gets sealed in and buried, he just wakes up buried. The only thing you ever see is him in a box, but he's got some stuff on him and he's pretty clever about dealing with his situation. There are also some really really neat shots, which is saying a lot considering that the whole movie happens inside a box. Movie ups the ante pretty consistently throughout. Go watch it now.

Jackie Brown is Tarantino's best movie, but it's probably only like that for two reasons: It's based on a book, and he originally wrote it with the intention that someone else would direct it. That other person (I forget who it was going to be...) ended up unable to do it or QT decided he liked the script too much and asked to make it himself. That flick more than any of his others is really well put together and smart. I'm sure it has a lot to do with the book being smart, but I dunno how much of it is QT and how much of it is from the book. I like to imagine that a lot of the dialogue is QT's... I don't expect the phrase "When you absolutely, positively gotta kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes" works as well on the page as when Sam Jackson says it. QT definitely has his own way of making movies.

You guys also talk about the fact that a lot of young film people end up going through a Tarantino phase now where they try to write like him or shoot like him or do the music thing or whatever in an attempt to copy the style, and it never works. QT's movies feel like QT movies, but they also feel natural, like he's just making the movie the best way he knows how. I would compare that to someone like Tim Burton, who lately seems to always be trying to make Tim Burton movies and failing. Sweeny Todd was the first Tim Burton movie I'd seen in forever where I wasn't constantly thinking "yup, there's some more spirals and oddly skewed architecture and weird abstract sculptures...  this is definitely a Tim Burton movie!" QT's stuff never feels like that to me. Even though he does do a lot of the same stuff in his movies, it never feels forced or like it would have been better if he had done it normally. The Pai Mei sequence is a good example. He could have shown that before, but you would have lost the tension of the burial sequence, and then he could have shown her succeeding at the board breaking during training, but it would have weakened the next bit where she uses it to get out of the coffin. He could have done it in a more typical fashion, but it would have made the movie less tense and fun. He's still thinking about making a really good movie first. He just cheats a lot, and the cheats have basically become his style, only people apparently don't get that he's cheating for a reason and not just to do cool stuff with the sequential order of the film. He usually does it because you only need a certain bit of the story before you watch this other one, or he doesn't want to show you this bit before this other bit cause it'll ruin the surprise, etc. This paragraph is really long and I'm not sure if there's a good place to break it up. Sorry.

But yeah, when I think about it I guess I'm one of those people who liked Part Two a bit more than Part One. They're both fucking awesome, tho. It's hard to pick a favorite. It's like choosing between Alien and Aliens. They're both really good at what they do, but they're doing very different things.

EDIT AGAIN:

What I said before about QT's style... obviously there's more to it than just shuffling the order of the film around, but that's something he does in all of his movies. Even stuff where characters just walk into a room in a really cool way... only certain characters do that sort of stuff, but a lot of younger film people just do that stuff with all the characters. Watch "Shoot first and pray you live". It's like Lance Doty watched Kill Bill volume one and thought "I'm gonna make a western and it's gonna have cool stuff like that in it, and it'll only cost me $10K to make and it'll be awesome!!" He's copying the kind of stuff that happens, but not putting that stuff into a context where it's useful to the story or character development. QT has reasons and stuff.

Eddie, I hope you're not related to that Lance Doty fella cause I'd feel kinda awkward...

Last edited by Squiggly_P (2011-09-06 12:19:51)

With regards to subtitle accuracy, from the old Star Trek Nitpicker's Guide's we learn that at least for TV, subtitles often are based on the shooting script. This means that any on set or post production changes might not make it in there. At least for Next Gen, the closed captions told you where last minute plot and name changes occurred. You'd also see this in some anime where to be cheap they just used the translated script the Japanese sent as the subtitles, meaning any lines ad-libbed by the Japanese actors have no translation. Streamline was famous for this.

In PIRATES 2, whenever the guy with the hermit crab head starts speaking in Cantonese, the subtitles declare it "gibberish."

re: subtitles... The subtitles on the DVD release of Bullitt had the trauma surgeon saying "get some balm" rather than "Metzenbaum" which are surgical scissors.

In the 2002 DVD release of Casablanca, the English subs say the letters of transit were signed by "General de Gaulle" (free French), which is stupid. The French subs say "General Weygand" (Vichy French), which is correct. (Roger Ebert complaining about the screenwriters' "mistake" in his commentary is one of the main things that made my close personal friend Tysto want do to fan commentaries.)

Those two things tell me that—at least sometimes—subtitles are created by watching the movie and guessing at the dialog.

Tarantino originally intended to play Pai Mei himself, then Gordon Liu asked to do it so he naturally said yes, but planned to re-dub it with his voice, in English, deliberately poorly as in the classic kung fu movies. But ultimately he let Liu use his own voice and went with subtitles.

My friend saw Volume 2 at the cinema and when the film was finished, the left he cinema behind two older women(they were over 60 at least, apparently). Their conversation was this-

Woman 1- What did you think?
Woman 2- It was alright, a bit confusing though.
Woman 1- Aye..... maybe we should have watched the first film before seeing this one.
Woman 2- Aye......

I was going to write it in 'Scottish' but decided against it, it wouldn't have been as adorable

You could have subtitled it Speaking Adorable Alien Language.

One of your team was trying to come up with a movie that built things up to a great payoff goodie -vs-baddie battling thing at the end (I'm précising it bit). What sprang to mind was Equilibrium, with its ending being a number of fights with ever increasingly skilled opponents, until the finale uber-boss (so to speak) and the gun-kata tangling.  - Oh yes, and howzabout Jason vs Freddy. 

I always got the feeling from the second one that Quentin was like; "Yeah, I got to make f*cking cool fight scenes and now I have to make the story complete. Damn!" Even thought they were filmed as one. As I understood.

I think Quentin was at his best at those fight scenes and all because he loved them. The second one is good movie but lacks the momentum and energy of the first. There is few great moments but I think it drags a little.

NOTICE that I will watch them at the weekend for the first time in years so I might remember wrong.

The more I watch Kill Bill's, the more I like Vol. 2, although I still prefer Vol. 1.

Pavlich I agree about the end scene being some of the best Tarantino dialogue. That scene really makes Vol. 2 for me; it's so good.

Thanks for doing these, hope for some Jackie Brown, Death Proof (I'm an apologist) and Basterds commentary, though from comments, Basterds hate, for shame

Last edited by Mr. Pointy (2011-09-12 05:23:03)