Mind Your Language

A quick story before I get to my review of Grindhouse.

Yesterday at work, I walked up to the cashwrap and greeted our head cashier. Rather than the usual, "hello" I opted for "bonsoir!" To my surprise, a customer who had been hovering in the general area comes over and starts enthusiatically speaking French to me! MERD! I quickly explained that my greeting encompassed about 1/3 or what I remembered from 4 yrs. of French in high school. Luckily, she spoke English so I was able to help her. Oops.

So, 3 hours and 15 minutes later I can recommend going to see Grindhouse. I think. Here's the deal. If you aren't a fan of the genre, you may want to skip seeing this double feature. Rodriguez honors/makes fun of everything inherent in the typical "grindhouse" picture. The cheesy lines, the stereotypical characters and plots, the look and feel...hell, he even calls upon his inner John Carpenter for the score. His film, Planet Of Terror was the more enjoyable of the two flicks. There's humor and tons of gore covering everything from zombies, to flying body parts to "medical terror." I was really pleased with Rose McGowen's performance as the dancer who ends up having her leg replaced with a gun (I didn't say this film made a whole lot of sense people).

Equally as fun are the fake trailers that come before and inbetween the films. I think my faves were the Rodriguez directed "Machete" which was sort of a stab at a Charles Bronson-esque anti-hero flick featuring Rodriguez fave, Danny Trejo. I also enjoyed Edgar Wright's "Don't" which was quite funny. Rob Zombie's "Werewolf Women of the SS" was pretty good and Eli Roth's "Thanksgiving" did a great job of poking fun at the whole "holiday horror" genre, but had the most disturbing scene involving a half naked woman on a trampoline doing a split and a large knife. Let's just say I let out the sort of sound guys make when they see another guy get whacked in the crotch during a film.

Tarantino's "Death Proof" was disappointing. It pretty much goes like this: talking, car stunt, talking, car chase, foot in the head. Seriously, that's it. Granted, the car stunts are really impressive, especially the big chase at the end. And, the dialogue is typical Tarantino, quick and full of cussing. Still, it took too damn long to get to the destruction in my opinion...which I'm sure Tarantino is anxious to hear.

One final note:

There's a free HBO thing going on with my cable company for the next few days. Last night I got the chance to watch King Kong, the Peter Jackson version that is. I ended up seeing the last half first then flipping over to HBO2 to see the first half. I liked the second half better. I actually cried when Kong was fighting with the planes and then died. I could have lived without the prehistoric beasts action sequences though. I almost laughed watching the giant bugs crawling all over Adrian Brody. Which is not to say that I wouldn't mind crawling all over Adrian Brody so I understand their motivation. HA.

Ooooo--almost forgot. If you care go over to www.yearzero.nin.com to listen to the new NIN album. I can't wait till it's out and I can listen to it in my car on the way to work. Life will be lovely then.

Happy Easter.

Kiss kiss, Bunny.