Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2004-08-21 03:17 am
tenlittlebullets) wrote2004-08-21 03:17 am
All the movies my parents never let me watch
So, my friend and I went and borrowed Kill Bill vol. 1 today, only she learned that I'd been deprived of gratuitously violent movies for most of my life so we wound up borrowing Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs as well and having a Tarantino marathon. Tomorrow we're going to try to get our hands on Kill Bill vol. 2, From Dusk Till Dawn, and Natural Born Killers.
Kill Bill was just fun, in the way that cartoon or video game violence is fun: massive amounts of splurting fake blood, samurai swords, one character up against legions of faceless 'bad guys.' It's one of those movies where you can just turn off your brain and watch the pointy objects fly without worrying about character complexities. She's kicking ass and taking names (or rather, taking names and THEN kicking their asses), and that's about all you need to know.
Reservoir Dogs was the opposite. I actually found a lot of the violence in this one rather horrifying, because instead of random joes you don't care about getting beat up and shot, there are so few characters that you have a face and a personality and a story for every guy who gets turned into raw hamburger; it's the very opposite of cartoon or video game violence. Pink seemed like a guy after my own heart, but Blond freaked the living shit out of me--disregard for human life is one thing, but active, personal sadism frankly creeps me out. I can't help but feel that Orange did a really shitty thing, but he didn't deserve what happened at the very end. The other guys either didn't provoke a strong reaction besides annoyance in me (White) or didn't have enough personality to care about (Blue, Brown, and the ringleaders). This movie also marks the first time I've ever felt sorry for a cop, although I have the feeling I'd feel sorry for anyone who had Mr. Blond sicced on them.
Pulp Fiction was just fun of a different sort, in that you never had any fucking idea what Tarantino was going to pull out of his ass next. In a 'normal' movie you'd be able to predict who'll become a major character and who won't, who'll be evil and who won't, you'll have nice plot conventions like the gun in the first act getting fired in the third act, and so on... but it was a lot like real life in that nothing was neat or clean or predictable, and a story you thought was about a particular thing will just run off in a completely different direction, and completely random shit happens, and minor characters like the taxi driver make scene-long appearances that imply they'll be important and then are never heard from again. There were scenes in every subplot that made you crack up and then think 'I'm so going to hell for laughing at this,' and the ending kicked unbelievable amounts of ass. There was also a rather sheltered guy watching it with us for the first half, who covered his eyes during all the graphic drug use scenes while me and my friend argued over whether that little bag of white powder was coke or heroin. *chuckle... was going to say "snort" but could be taken in the wrong context*
Oh, and Tarantino likes Uma Thurman, doesn't he? Heh.
Um, it's approaching four in the morning. I should probably sleep now, huh? But before I go, some random, monthly TMI whining that you should probably skip.
I am bleeding heavily out of parts of my body that aren't even supposed to EXIST on me. In the middle of the day I was going through a tampon an hour, alternating between shakes and hot flashes, with the cramps from hell dogging my every step. These cramps, I've learned from long experience, laugh in the face of ibuprofen; they eat acetaminophen for lunch; and naproxen sodium eventually subdues them with great effort but gives me stomach problems. I've gotten into the habit of binding my chest in the past week or two, but today it was seriously too painful, which fucking sucked although it afforded a well-needed opportunity to wash my binder. But the Midol I took did little to suppress the cramps, and made me all woozy and stoned during lunch, which it's never done before. *tears uterus out of body* Die, fucker, DIE!
Kill Bill was just fun, in the way that cartoon or video game violence is fun: massive amounts of splurting fake blood, samurai swords, one character up against legions of faceless 'bad guys.' It's one of those movies where you can just turn off your brain and watch the pointy objects fly without worrying about character complexities. She's kicking ass and taking names (or rather, taking names and THEN kicking their asses), and that's about all you need to know.
Reservoir Dogs was the opposite. I actually found a lot of the violence in this one rather horrifying, because instead of random joes you don't care about getting beat up and shot, there are so few characters that you have a face and a personality and a story for every guy who gets turned into raw hamburger; it's the very opposite of cartoon or video game violence. Pink seemed like a guy after my own heart, but Blond freaked the living shit out of me--disregard for human life is one thing, but active, personal sadism frankly creeps me out. I can't help but feel that Orange did a really shitty thing, but he didn't deserve what happened at the very end. The other guys either didn't provoke a strong reaction besides annoyance in me (White) or didn't have enough personality to care about (Blue, Brown, and the ringleaders). This movie also marks the first time I've ever felt sorry for a cop, although I have the feeling I'd feel sorry for anyone who had Mr. Blond sicced on them.
Pulp Fiction was just fun of a different sort, in that you never had any fucking idea what Tarantino was going to pull out of his ass next. In a 'normal' movie you'd be able to predict who'll become a major character and who won't, who'll be evil and who won't, you'll have nice plot conventions like the gun in the first act getting fired in the third act, and so on... but it was a lot like real life in that nothing was neat or clean or predictable, and a story you thought was about a particular thing will just run off in a completely different direction, and completely random shit happens, and minor characters like the taxi driver make scene-long appearances that imply they'll be important and then are never heard from again. There were scenes in every subplot that made you crack up and then think 'I'm so going to hell for laughing at this,' and the ending kicked unbelievable amounts of ass. There was also a rather sheltered guy watching it with us for the first half, who covered his eyes during all the graphic drug use scenes while me and my friend argued over whether that little bag of white powder was coke or heroin. *chuckle... was going to say "snort" but could be taken in the wrong context*
Oh, and Tarantino likes Uma Thurman, doesn't he? Heh.
Um, it's approaching four in the morning. I should probably sleep now, huh? But before I go, some random, monthly TMI whining that you should probably skip.
I am bleeding heavily out of parts of my body that aren't even supposed to EXIST on me. In the middle of the day I was going through a tampon an hour, alternating between shakes and hot flashes, with the cramps from hell dogging my every step. These cramps, I've learned from long experience, laugh in the face of ibuprofen; they eat acetaminophen for lunch; and naproxen sodium eventually subdues them with great effort but gives me stomach problems. I've gotten into the habit of binding my chest in the past week or two, but today it was seriously too painful, which fucking sucked although it afforded a well-needed opportunity to wash my binder. But the Midol I took did little to suppress the cramps, and made me all woozy and stoned during lunch, which it's never done before. *tears uterus out of body* Die, fucker, DIE!
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