Hello Fellow Travelers!
As you might have guessed from the title I am a big Quentin Tarantino fan. Pulp Fiction changed my cinematic viewpoint forever, and when we still had Blockbusters, after I saw “Pulp Fiction” I immediately went into a Blockbuster and rented anything he had to do with. Whether he directed it, wrote it, acted in it or just stopped by for an impromptu soliloquy (Top Gun was a “gay” boys’ movie according to Mr. T.) I was down with it. One of my very favorite QT efforts is 2003’s “Kill Bill, Volumes I & II”. I always liked these movies for the usual reasons; snappy dialog with lots of humor, violence with-a-purpose, strong female characters and very little gunplay. Guns are portrayed in a brutish light. All the main characters use really special Samurai swords that most of them cherish, covet and at some point, use on each other in some balletic fashion until death. It’s a decidedly adult adventure about a young woman who is left for dead after being badly beaten up and shot in the head. Did I mention Beatrix Kiddo was really pregnant (yes, that’s really the character’s name) Now, I am a brain trauma survivor this film looks really different to me. I think at first Kill Bill was just one long movie. Now it’s two plenty long movies. When Quentin wants to tell you a story, he’s all in and you’d better be too. Anyone who whines or preens usually faces the business end of a big gun or a really sharp sword in Tarantino Land, he has no patience for anyone whining about the length of his movies.
Of the two films Before Surgery I much preferred the second of the two parts. So when I came across Vol I. this week, uncut and just beginning, I gave it a look and it played totally differently for me. Post Surgery, the deadliest female on the planet now just looked like coma victim who awoke after four years and discovered her baby stolen and a plate in her head. We know this because she spends exactly ten seconds feeling her flat stomach and knocking the plate in her her head. While she's in a coma an orderly assaults her and takes money from other men who want to assault her. Beatrix wasn't just a talented hitwoman with a neat Samurai Sword, she was a brain trauma victim! Uma Thurman looked amazing after four years in a coma which we all know doesn't happen. First, Beatrix flies to Okinawa to get a neat Samurai sword for herself. Then Uma/Beatrix gathers her multi-colored Sharpies and flies to Tokyo. On the plane she uses her colored pens to make a to do list of people that need to be killed. As she kills she revises the list She has a list of people that she views as putting her in a coma and she needs to kill them to get to the guy who shot her in the head and has stolen her baby! In the real world she would have co-parented with Bill and been really grateful that her child was so well looked after by her father. However, since she's the deadliest woman in the world (and she's Uma Thurman) when she wakes up she's really mad ! So when the disorderly orderly (appropriately named Buck, he likes to f___!) comes back into her room, he's very quickly dispatched so he's not in the film very long anyway he's lucky to have a name at all!
She's a head trauma victim who recovers really, really quickly. Like the sushi/fancy sword making fellow Beatrix visits on Okinawa "I am sympathetic to your aim" and I am sympathetic! She's reacting the only way she knows how! Beatrix's reaction seems rather extreme I know but she's just working with the skill set she was given, like we all are. At the end of the day we are all after the same goal. How some us of get there might be more extreme than others but we all have to start somewhere. Even movie stars.
Before I couldn't watch Kill Bill Vol. 1 because I initially found it too violent for no apparent reason. Now I totally get why Uma/Beatrix is repeatedly smashing Buck's head between the steel door and the metal door frame after cutting his Achilles Tendon. (to make him fall, of course). After each slam she screams, "Where's Bill?" She was gathering intelligence to locate her child. And Buck deserved it. He had a vehicle that looked obnoxious but was thankfully handicapped accessible. As I mentioned earlier coming out of a four year coma doesn't make the comatose patient look like they just returned from an extended spa visit. However I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for the story, and it is, after all,, Uma Thurman. Maybe she would wake from a four year coma looking like that. I very much doubt it, but if anyone could look refreshed from a coma it would be Uma Thurman.
She's a head trauma victim who recovers really, really quickly. Like the sushi/fancy sword making fellow Beatrix visits on Okinawa "I am sympathetic to your aim" and I am sympathetic! She's reacting the only way she knows how! Beatrix's reaction seems rather extreme I know but she's just working with the skill set she was given, like we all are. At the end of the day we are all after the same goal. How some us of get there might be more extreme than others but we all have to start somewhere. Even movie stars.
Before I couldn't watch Kill Bill Vol. 1 because I initially found it too violent for no apparent reason. Now I totally get why Uma/Beatrix is repeatedly smashing Buck's head between the steel door and the metal door frame after cutting his Achilles Tendon. (to make him fall, of course). After each slam she screams, "Where's Bill?" She was gathering intelligence to locate her child. And Buck deserved it. He had a vehicle that looked obnoxious but was thankfully handicapped accessible. As I mentioned earlier coming out of a four year coma doesn't make the comatose patient look like they just returned from an extended spa visit. However I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for the story, and it is, after all,, Uma Thurman. Maybe she would wake from a four year coma looking like that. I very much doubt it, but if anyone could look refreshed from a coma it would be Uma Thurman.
PS – re: More Crap My Mom Sent Me: So my mom reads the blog about her sending me red fur in a baggie from her newest cat, Jed Clampett. I get this hysterically funny response where my mother attempts to assert that in some bygone era gentlefolk clipped and kept fur of their cherished pet. She
cited '’historical evidence” as pet fur being saved like locks of hair in baby books. Now I’ve seen lots of baby locks in baby books. I’m familiar with a creepy Victorian fad of making odd object d’art from a departed person’s hair (Icky). I’m even familiar with the mercifully short fad (also Victorian) of photographing the dead, especially children (even creepier). Clipping cat fur? Never heard of anyone collecting kitty fur. Or doggy fur. If people did collect pet fur they hopefully locked up those individuals and kept it a family secret (Also a fine Victorian tradition). Nice try, Mom, but that dog won’t hunt. It was hilarious that she thought this explanation would suffice. It’s even funnier to learn she believed it! My mother actually believed there was some “genteel old-timey” society where there was rampant fur collecting. And she seriously thought members of this long ago as-yet-to-be-determined-exactly-where-and-when-era were furiously collecting pet fur and gently pressing it for future generations to discover (with horror? Disbelief?) in baby books (human babies? pet babies? what?! Do they make baby books for pets? They should.
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