MOTUS IMAGO: GRINDHOUSE

By Nightdreamer

Oh my G! Where G stands for Grindhouse. I was lucky enough to belong to one of the few people who had the chance to watch an advance screening of Grindhouse. The movie theater was packed and I think people would have happily killed for the small magic blue ticket. 

Tarantino is back for good, along with his old friend and usual collaborator Robert Rodriguez. They‘re both back to back with a double-dose packed to the gills with guns, guts and gore. Robert Rodriguez -- the creator of Sin City, From Dusk till Dawn and one of the Four Rooms -- directs a thrilling film, Planet Terror, which works as a dedication to the old zombie-movies school, while Quentin Tarantino (QT) has created a bloodthirsty murderer whose weapon has four wheels and is Death Proof.   

Planet Terror has everything a good splatter zombie movie ought to have. It has an incredible set of sexy women: Rose McGowan, Marley Shelton and of course Mrs. London-London-My-Humps-Fergie. It has QT with his testicles melting and dripping as he tries to rape the half leg-half stick (it was before the machine gun ‘implantation’) known as Cherry. And of course ... the trademark of the whole movie is the iconic machine-gun-legged Cherry.

Death Proof is proof of QT’s new way of making films. It’s his first linear movie, and those of you who do remember his past films you might be taken aback by this fact. Known for his love of forsaken actors and in sight of Jesus’ Resurrection this past Sunday, QT chose Kurt Russell and literally resuscitated him. (With Planet Terror, the cast is similarly great: Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Vanessa Ferlito, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rosario Dawson and, again, Rose McGowan.)

The first half of Death Proof proves that QT loves writing and that when he’s in the mood he can create sharp-minded and breathtaking dialogues. The second half is definitely one of the most sweaty-palmed and tense car chase scenes in the movie history. With direct references to Vanishing Point, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry and the original 1974 Gone in 60 Seconds, and by reminding us of the great French Connection¸ Death Proof contrives to create an unforgettable car chase scene of the old-school kind, without CGI, to raise the audience’s suspense and to make everyone in the theatre burst out in cheering at the final scene. 
Right in the beginning of the film, as well as between the two parts of it, we also see five fake coming attractions. First, and instead of a prologue for Planet Terror, it's Machete by Robert Rodriguez (there's a big controversy on whether it will actually be one of his next films). Before Death Proof, we have three more fakes. There's Thanksgiving by Eli Roth, which gives a new meaning to turkey lechery, the sluggish British-style Don’t by Edgar Wright (creator of the Shaun of the Dead) and the slightly Nazi, slightly lesbian, slightly hairy Werewolf Women of S.S. by Rob Zombie. Whether you see it as a tribute to Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS or to Fraulein Devil or to Love Camp 7, it’s still a bad-ass trailer that differs from all the others (and in which Nicolas Cage stars as Fu Manchu)!

If I were to choose between the two parts I would definitely pick Death Proof, without wanting to underestimate Robert Rodriguez’s part in any case. I just think QT presented something more consistent and well elaborated, while Rodriguez made a film for the fun of it, placing in it whatever (and whoever) was crossing his mind, creating a quite diverting film. And if I were to concentrate the whole 191 minutes of the film into one sentence, I would definitely say, like Myrrah, “The whole thing was a fucking thrill ride”.

MORE MOTUS IMAGO

add to del.icio.us     |    e-mail the editors

Comments

[Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg]

"It has an incredible set of sexy women: Rose McGowan, Marley Shelton and of course Mrs. London-London-My-Humps-Fergie."

Way to ignore the blatant sexism in a movie like this... Everywhere I turn I see the Grindhouse girls naked on the cover of a magazine. I'd expect a more intelligent and feminist critique from a City Belt film reviewer. I can read this sort of thing in Entertainment Weekly.

Elizabeth

[Cora Ovid]

The pervasiveness of sexism in Grindhouse is no more abundant than any box-office wonder looking to return a buck these days. The film is playing off on the sex appeal of its characters because, frankly, it sells irrespective of the lack of inherent grand societal benefit. Not right, yeah. The film has not set up a master plan to deliver a message of cultural inspiration or ingenuity. City Belt very well is a progressive outlet, but for QT/Rodriguez fans (which I sense the reviewer is...hurray), trying to bust chops for being anti-feminist defeats the film-making going on in this movie. I appreciate the thrill ride that the film strives to be, nothing moral or socio-political about it, as I believe is the reviewer's point. And sometimes, you have to shake your head as to who comes up with what gets produced these days, but sometimes even a feminist can watch Rose with a machine-gun for a leg. Its entertainment, not for those looking for a movie with a purpose. I don't buy Entertainment Weekly and I only started hearing Aguiliera again after she stopped being naked to sell a record, but hey, I'll still spend my dollars to go see Grindhouse.

- Cora

[Dimitrios (aka Nightdre@mer)]

We define as a grindhouse a theater that mostly shows exploitation films. The whole thing with the grindhouses was about exploitation movies and here we go: Blaxploitation, Sexploitation, Nazisploitation, Nunsploitations, Cannibal films, Zombie films, Splatter films and the list of sub-genres simply never ends. Also the majority of the grindhouses were exclusive pornographic. Now if you just have seen any of these films, you’ll see for yourself (firsthand) that there is a common factor in all these: naked women. Why? Because that was the product. Horror combined with cheap eroticism. QT&RR just created a tribute film for this forgotten for many years cinematographic era, just for the fun of it. Just to make us have a good time and to rise a little bit our adrenaline levels. Now if you Elisabeth, can only see in that attempt sexism in all its magnitude, then I bet you see it everywhere. You see it at your work, when you are going for shopping, when you are going out to have fun, when you are walking on the street. I’m sorry but I can’t do anything for auto-suggestion. As far as it concerns your comment on my review and whether it’s intelligent, I’d be happy to say that "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." Therefore my review was limitedly intelligent. In any case, your comment is accepted and I’ll do my best not to break your heart again with my phallocratic reviews. In the meantime you can continue writing about TV (which I happily don’t own).
• I have never read Entertainment Weekly, but obviously you did, since you compare my writing to its articles.
• I might write for City Belt, but I’m just a reviewer and not a City Belt reviewer. As I wouldn’t be an X-reviewer if I was working for an X magazine. Meaning that I carry my own opinion and view of things.
• Grindhouse reached already (and only 5 days after its opening date) in number 108 in the Top250 movies of all times in the Internet Movie Database.

[Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg]

So is the exploitation of women and sexism(which, yes, is pervasive) part of this movie because it's a part of the genre or because it sells? And if it's simply part of the genre, it still needs to be accounted for. Being part of a genre is not defense enough.
Also I suggest any film/tv reviewer read other reviewers (like Entertainment Weekly) -- reading what others write is the best way to improve the craft.

[Shane Smith]

Okay, so QT, RR, and you find "horror combined with cheap eroticism" to be worthy of homage. That's your business, and a perfectly legitimate motive to write a glowing movie review, as you did. But when a film becomes hollywood business, being made into iconography to sell copies of EW and other magazines, new series on FX, Coca Cola, and a whole host of other products, there's something more at stake.
I'm not saying there's something wrong about making or liking a movie like this, or that it isn't any fun, or that I wouldn't go and see it. I'm just saying the things that happen as a result of the movie, or more to the point, the way it's marketed, might be more corrosive in the long run than Rose McGowan to a pair of testicles. And that's a perfectly legitimate motive to problematize a glowing movie review, as Elizabeth did.
Imho, in addition to the transitory thrills and chills it provides its viewers, what a film does outside the theater (even to those who will never see it) should be of concern to any film reviewer.
To show that these lines are difficult to draw, I'll put myself under the microscope now. When my new "Film User's Guide" gets posted, you'll note that Grindhouse is listed, but Blades of Glory is not. Why?
Both have merits: Grindhouse is a sure stunner with Tarantino and Rodriguez at the wheel, a full-tilt-geek-boogie sensory sexperience; Blades stars two of the best comedic actors working right now and is an undoubted knee-slapping, well-intentioned good time.
Both movies also raise concerns: we've already been talking about some of the icky aspects of grindhouse films; Blades runs entirely on the motor of one joke that in turn depends on the discomfort of watching two men cavort together and touch 'inappropriately'.
So why is Grindhouse on the list and Blades not? This was a personal choice I had to make. I was personally more comfortable with Grindhouse because it's so self-conscious: it puts its exploitativeness right in front - the issues it brings up are the marketing draw, part of the ad campaign. This doesn't mean we don't have to be careful, just less careful than we do with Blades, which never seems to own up to its problems. It happily skates along on its homophobia, letting millions of viewers join in on the fun without ever once having to examine their complicity in making the cultural and institutional structures that make the sight of two grown men skating together and enjoying each other funny and uncomfortable instead of banal and unworthy of comment.
Or maybe I just happen to be more sensitive to creeping homophobia than to insidious exploitation of women. Subjectivity is funny that way; can't be objectively sure about too much. But I comfort myself with the notion that at least I'm actively engaging the issue, which will get me closer to a right answer than ignoring it or attributing critique to "auto-suggestion" or some other similar delusion.
I'll be the first to point out that my "Film User's Guide" doesn't provide any insight into my thought process about what to include and what to omit: it's just a list paired with pithy distillations of my best guesses about movies, based loosely on a combination of critical consensus and my own personal idiosyncratic movie-watching history and tastes. I think it still has some value as a practical guide.
But I definitely hold a film review to a higher standard of completeness - this is the reviewer's chance to tell us something about the movie we couldn't get just by watching the ads or reading the other reviews, or even by watching the movie ourselves. It's a way for the reviewer to tell us what they think we should be thinking about before, during, and after the reel runs through the projector.

Just as a point of clarification - I know, I know: I'm annoying - I want to follow up on the last paragraph of my comment.
I'm not saying your review did not contribute anything new to the discourse about Grindhouse. Your discussion of the casting choices, the fake(?) trailers, and the relative merits of the two parts were thoughtful and interesting.
The bone that I'm picking with you is your reaction to Elizabeth's critique, which reminds me of the inadequate way you responded to some of the critiques of your review about 300.

[ANTS4DINNER]

I wouldnt imagine that the success of Tarantino or Rodriguez is mainstream nor that is based on explotation. I also dont appreciate women beeing naked for no reason BUT I respect it like I respect other combinations (for instance, being not naked but incredible sexy). Where do we hide our sexuality and our sense of humor? What is the matter with us and we see naked people everywhere? I saw beauty with one leg being efficient and aisthetic.I also saw beauty in other parts of the movie that people were fully clothed.

[Shane Smith]

Tarantino and Rodriguez' success not mainstream? Gimme a break.

Grindhouse made $11m in ticket sales just over the past weekend. As Nightdre@mer pointed out, IMDB users have already voted it #108 of the top 250-list on that site. Be prepared to see a LOT more about this movie in avant-garde places like MTV, "The Today Show", and one of 2624 theaters near you.

Kill Bill, Vol. 1: $70m total box office. Won three MTV Movie Awards. Nominated for a few BAFTAs, a Golden Globe, and a Grammy.
Kill Bill, Vol. 2: $66m. Won an MTV Movie Award and was nominated for two others. Nominated for two Golden Globes, three People's Choice Awards, four Teen Choice Awards, and a Grammy.

Pulp Fiction: $110m total box office. Palme d'Or at Cannes. Won an Oscar and was nominated for six others. Won two BAFTAs and was nominated for seven others. One Golden Globe win, five other noms. Two MTV Movie Awards, four other noms.

Sin City: $75m, nominated for a Palme d'Or at Cannes as well as a number of nominations and wins at the MTV Movie Awards and the Teen Choice Awards.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico: $56m. Teen Choice Award nomination.

Spy Kids: $112m.
Spy Kids 2: $85.5m.
Spy Kids 3: $112m.

The Faculty: $40m.

From Dusk Till Dawn: $24m, and an MTV Movie Award win.

Desperado: $25m, and an MTV Movie Award nom.

Reservoir Dogs, so unassailably 'outsider', earned a meager $2.5m at the box office. The only major award nod was a nom for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. But there are precious few americans under the age of 35 who can't identify Messrs. White, Orange, Blonde, Pink, Blue, and Brown.

Some other things these numbers are missing: video/dvd sales and licensing agreements, cable and network royalties, and tons of non-monetary indicators of popularity and general mainstream acceptance, such as Nic Cage agreeing to show up in one of your fake trailers and people dressing up as Honey Bunny and Pumpkin for Halloween.

Tarantino, and increasingly Rodriguez, have made careers out of being outsiders who are safely in the mainstream, and quite successfully, too. Regardless of their individual talents as filmmakers, which are substantial, they're also very good at selling their images to the public.

As much as they'd like you to believe it, they are not grindhouse directors. They're not even arthouse directors. They're hollywood directors.

[ANTS4DINNER]

I see. Well I am not defending these Directors if they are being accused for something. I see mainstream like something that has to do with mentality and not with money. I wouldnt imagine that the only reason that they use what they use in their movies is because they lack imagination and they just want to make some money. If you now things better and you think that this is the case then you are absolutely right. They are mainstream grindhouse directors...

[Nightdreamer]

• “Also I suggest any film/tv reviewer read other reviewers (like Entertainment Weekly) -- reading what others write is the best way to improve the craft.” A film reviewer is a reviewer of the seventh form of art, while a TV reviewer is a reviewer of something as flat as the Sony KDE61XBR950 61 Inch Flat Panel. So, allow me to do my reviews in the way I think better, and if you don’t like it, you can just let me know, so I can just go on with the same writing.
• In 300 I just had a comment, in which I agreed with Justiceiro and I praised the extent of his knowledge. I don’t know how an extolling attempt could be marked as inadequate, but as Ants4dinner put it, if that’s the way you see it … that’s the way it is (by the way where is Celine Dion??)
• According to your comment Shane, mainstream equals to the incomes from each film, as we can more than clearly see by your convenience with numbers. Thus, in your opinion Gigli or Waterworld or Barbwire is not mainstream. Am I losing something? Maybe my s(h)anity. When Mrs. Mia Wallas takes an adrenaline shot in her heart, when Mr. Blonde cuts off an officer's ear (the right one) while we listen to the “"Stuck in the Middle With You”, when the Bride rips out Elle Driver’s eye and later steps on it, then we can stop talk about mainstream and this is my humble opinion.
• “It's just a list paired with pithy distillations of my best guesses about movies, based loosely on a combination of critical consensus and my own personal idiosyncratic movie-watching history and tastes.” You said it all mouthfully. I don’t get how one writes a film guide (which is supposed to be local, but contains also movies in NY), about a majority of movies that he hasn’t watched and also isolates movie from this list, based on his personal taste or thoughts. When censorship gets a new meaning.

[Shane Smith]

You review movies incompletely, and you respond to comments incompletely. I doubt that any further discussion would bear fruit, so I'm checking out. Have fun.

[Justiceiro]

Nightdreamer is a film fan, not a sociologist of gender nor a academic proponent of critical theory (as far as I know), so I find it a tad to jump on him for dwelling on these elements in his film review. I myself do not go to a film reviewer so he can "tell [me] what they think [I] should be thinking about before, during, and after the reel runs through the projector." I'll figure that out on my own, thanks. I read film reviews because I want to know if the movie is worht spending thre hours of my time and twelve dollars of my money seeing. I like Motus Imago precisely because it does that, and rather effectively. Every reviewer, "higher standard" or not, is neccessarily incomplete. It's a review, not the movie. All encapsulations, surveys, and the like are necessarily at a higher lever of abstraction than the actual thing or an in-depth analysis of that thing. That's a rather easy attack to make, Shane. And a rather ignoble one to make- best save it for the Academy (and I don't mean Hollywood).

What a film does outside the theater should rarely be a concern for the film reviewer, unless you think that this flick sinks to the level of Der Ewige Jude or blackface. I doubt that this will cause rioting in the street, or hordes of testosterone pumped adolescents to pour out of the theaters and immediately commence to beating up women. That's a tad histrionic, don't you think?

A film ought to serve the interests of the film itself- ars gratia artis- and nothing else (to a point, I'm no fan of "Birth of a Nation.") I personally thought Elizabeth's attack totally unwarranted. It's impugning the reviewer for not doing something that he never claimed to be attempting to do, it has little depth to it (being essentially a paragraph), and is in fact mostly about marketing of the film and not the film itself. It's a bit of a drive-by, sort of like your last comment Shane. If by "responding to comments incompletely" you mean "not agreeing with me" then I guess Nightdreamer is guilty. As am I. Let's all just stroke each other and parrot the same line, shall we? That'll definitely make this site worth visiting.

And as for whether "even a feminist can watch Rose with a machine-gun for a leg", well, I certainly hope so. A better question would be "why do some feminists seem to have a loathing for the carnal that rivals Torquemada?" Interesting that this criticism of sexism should come up now. Just 2 weeks ago I was in Boston for the PCA/ACA conference in Boston with a professor of Gender Studies from Poland (a woman). Most of the talks there had the same line on sexism and popular culture that seems to be taken here. My friend's question to me was why American feminists refused to admit that female sexuality was powerful, and empowering. Why did they equate every demonstration of sexual attraction or attractiveness with denigration and subjegation? I had no answer. Do you, Elizabeth?

[Nightdreamer]

"The cause for all incongruity lies in the last line of Sliver."
~Dimitrios
Just to get out of my anonymity to agree with Justiceiro and to attempt to address his 'wonderment' :)

[Elizabeth]

Right, right. Feminists are anti-sex, anti-porn. No, that's not the case at all. I'm all for showing women in movies -- all types of bodies, not just the teeny tiny Rose McGowans -- enjoying sex, having orgasms, being the actors, being tough as nails. But Grindhouse and its ilk are not about empowerment anymore than those sexist American Apparel ads are. It's about objectification, about selling a soda/movie/magazine/car/t-shirt. It's anything but feminism.

[Justiceiro]

Some feminists certainly are anti-sex and anti-porn, although you may not fall into that category. Or you may. Simply claiming oneself as a feminist isn't an automatic "cetogrization" as feminists and feminisms are diverse. And you are correct, grindhouse isn't about empowerment. It's about being a fun movie. That's it. If the quality of a film is directly corellatable to its feminist nature, then it is a terrible film. Then again, so is the documentary they show on discovery channel, the one about wildebeasts. That isn't feminist either. Is this a standpoint whereby it can be legitimately critiqued? I don't think so.

Selling is about marketing, and marketing is about reducing things to simple, iconic, attractive concepts. Is this objectification? Perhaps. But if it is, its not clearly a feminist issue- because the same sort of objectifications involve selling hamburgers to hungry people or fancy sportscars to dermatologists with erectile dysfunction. To categorize problems of marketing as feminist problems is to conflate feminism to such a level of abstraction that the term becomes meaningless.

But, back to the criticism of Nightdreamer and his supposed lack of intelligence. I don't think its a fair criticism, because Nightdreamer is addressing the experience of watching the film, not the gender implications of T-shirts being sold around the film (where does one find these t-shirts anyway? I'm afraid I haven't seen them). You shouldn't get upset because your cell phone doesn't work well as a can opener. They have different functions.

Likewise, Nightdreamer's interest in things other than feminism doesn't mean (s)he isn't intelligent. Just that Nightdreamer is interested in different things. Probably a number of different things. And that's a good thing.

[Nightdreamer]

Just to clarify some things...
• As Bo Diddley best sang it….

Now when I was a little boy,
At the age of five,
I had somethin in my pocket,
Keep a lot of folks alive.
Now I’m a man,
Made twenty-one,
You know baby,
We can have a lot of fun.

Im a man,
I spell m-a-n...man.

• You know Justiceiro, these t-shirts actually DO exist…

http://img265.imageshack.us/my.php?image=rosejp2.jpg

And for those that the 10c actually rings a bell,welcome aboard!