taratino's 'death proof'

very first post on a site i'll no doubt rarely update, but i'll have a go anyway.

currently i'm in china, on a teaching course. as such at night i have a fair amount of free time, and dvds are cheap here. i've been in my placement in north china for about 2 and a half weeks now and i've already bought 14 films for less then it would cost to buy one film back in the UK. the latest film i watched was taratino's new film 'death proof'. sadly the dvd didn't include tarantino's and rodriguez's films, but you can blame those evil weinstein brothers for that, they decided the concept of having two films one after the other was too difficult for the average public consumer, but enough about those two bastards, onto the film.

death proof in essence, is a definite tarantino film, and he's back up to standards ever since the two part farce that was kill bill. it has all the typical signs of a taratino flick; organic dialogue which doesn't develop the plot, but instead develops the characters, plenty of racist terminology, incredibly violent...violence, information about old american films and the back side of movies, retro looking locations in backwater america and of course references to his previous films.

a few of them to mention is the cigarettes 'red apples' probably most prominent in a poster in the first kill bill film, the made up fast food joint big kahuna burger (first used i think in pulp fiction), and even the kill bill whistle, you knows the one :)

admittedly reading the blurb on the dvd i was expecting it to be from stuntman mike's perspective and how a girl gang beat the shit out of him and he gets revenge, i was wrong. it's the opposite way round

the structure of the film is slightly odd to be honest, the best way to look at the film is to split it into two pieces. the first half concerns itself with the construction of stuntman mike's character. although saying that the most important information is only discovered at the end of the first half, via a very unbelievable policeman. though really i suppose you could say that's another taratino cliche, a pointless or ineffectual police presence when they occasionally feature in his films.

anyway back to the first half. as always the characters are developed through the dialogue, rather then some films where actions or events define them. the actions in death proof occur later on in the film, with the dialogue acting as a reason or even excuse for the occasional ghoulish violence. the main cast are females, all young, attractive and quite happy to show off a bit skin (one of the first shots in the film is off jungle julia's arse. all the females are sassy and in control of their lives and events, and most of the male characters (very few of them) are pricks. are friend stuntman mike seems ok at the beginning of the film, just a bit of a creepy old man with a lot of stories under his belt. in fact the sudden change in him does take you by suprise, specifically when you've got the wrong end of the stick. i won't mention much more other than one scene in the first half will make you cringe and shudder, i know it did to me and i'm usually ok with screen violence.

the second half of the film is almost identical in it's structure to the first film, lots of dialogue between the females, and then lots of action. yet again i won't detail to much otherwise i'll completely ruin the film.

right onto the visible aspects of the film. tarantino used some interesting ideas, things that pretty much only he can get away with. to keep in the spirit of 1950's american 'grindhouse films' he has pretty much completely ignored continuity. there's scenes where you know it doesn't completely fit with the previous one, with giveaways such as arm placement, cigarettes, even the way a character is facing. since these sort of films were shown in B movie cinemas there are occasional drop outs of colour and sound. some scenes either jolt and repeat a second of the footage twice. one of my favourite aspects is the cigarrete burns. you can see them as massive black marks on the top right side, and at some parts of the film either the end or beginning of a scene will be jumped and at one point the whole film drops out as the projectionist takes to long to load the next reel. in some parts of the film you'll get strolling lines across the screen as if the film has been damaged. all in all the visual editing and post production does give it the feel of being a really cheap grubby B movie

as for entertaining, i'm not so sure. several times i found myself checking my phone to see what the time was, other times looking around the room etc. at other points i was ignoring everything around me. i don't taratino has managed to create a flowing film, it can be quite hit and miss.

right that's enough from me, look out for my next review, irreverisble, a film i shall never ever ever watch again