MYST Post #2 Quarter 4

After watching Kill Bill Volume I for my formal film study, I decided to watch Kill Bill Volume II shortly after. What I found was a movie I wasn't sure how I felt about. It definitely wasn't as good as the first one overall, however the end of the second one from about 75% In (where her training with Pai Mei begins), is amazing. This sequence from the movie is way better than any other sequence in the first one. The second movie starts off with the same opener as Part 1 and as if seeing the same scene again in a week wasn't bad enough, this time it was in black and white. The wedding is explained better in this movie, giving some pretext to the first movie. It pulls this off pretty well and is also the first time you see Bill's face. Now a few boring scenes occur and she gets shot, and for almost 15 minutes we're watching Uma Thurman get burried alive, however the effect of the black screen with the loud noise of the dirt falling is somewhat cool. Then the good part of the movie comes where we learn some more backstory of Beatrice and Bill and learn of Pai Mei and begin her training in China. Some impressive special effects in the flashback happened and now she is escaping from the coffin using a technique she never mastered in the flashback scenes. A great fight scene happens and Beatrice heads off to Kill Bill after all the girls are dead and Bill's brother. When she gets to Bill's house gun drawn she catches him playing with their daughter, something briefly mentioned at the end of the first movie that I guarantee the audience had forgotten about. This made the end of the movie amazing because you could tell it wasn't going to end with her just storming in and shooting him like you would think. A long scene of them talking and getting to know each other agian occurs and them once the daughter goes to bed they talk seriously. They decide to fight and she does Pai Mei's Five Point Exploding Heart Texhnique.

FFS2: Quentin Tarantino Throughout the Decades

For my formal film study I chose to watch 3 Tarantino action films throughout the decades, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bill Volume I. There are many factors that make up Tarantino films including, non-linear story telling, excessive talking, long scenes and shots, vulgar language and extreme gore. Some common styles I noticed were that almost all of his films are action movies. The famous thing with Tarantino films is the non-linear story telling. The stories are told in no particular order nor from start to finish, making everything segmented, but come together at the end. Another key thing between the 3 that I watched is that they didn't follow any particular order. For example in Reservoir Dogs the story was told from what appeared to be the beginning restaurant scene, but in fact is somewhat towards the middle of the movie. The movie then breaks off into backstories of each character spliced in the middle of the present scenes. In Pulp Fiction, something similar happens where the movie starts off at what appears to be the beginning at the coffee shop scene, but is actually the ending of the movie. However, the last scene in the movie isn't the last scene in the storyline, but actually towards the beginning. See how this can get confusing? It actually isn't if you are to watch the movie, it just seems this way when you read about it. The way that the movie is set up flows beautifully and Pulp Fiction was definitely my favorite of the 3 to watch. One more characteristic of those 2 movies is they both end (storyline wise) in a tragedy where everyone, or the main characters die ironically. *Spoiler Alert* In Reservoir Dogs all of the main characters were set up by Mr. Orange who was actually an undercover cop the entire time. You find this out during the middle of the movie which is very different then how other directors were doing things. The boss walks in and pulls a gun on Mr. Orange saying that he set them up. Mr. White pulls a gun on the boss saying there is no way that Mr. Orange could have done it. This causes the bosses son to pull a gun on Mr. White. They all shoot and Mr. Orange confesses to Mr. White that he was a cop just as the police are entering the warehouse to kill all of them. This is someone similar to the ending of the storyline in Pulp Fiction where Vincent is killed after stepping out of the bathroom. This is apparently common in Tarantino films. On a side note he makes a few cameos in Pulp Fiction as Jimmy and in Resevoir Dogs as Mr. Brown. As mentioned above the movies are'nt told in a particular order, rather in chapters or parts. Resevoir Dogs is told in backstories of the main characters that are woven into the present story. Pulp Fiction is told in the different stories of the character pairs and Kill Bill is told in Chapters of the difference women Beatrice plans on killing. Tarantino uses titles of text on screen to start the different sections which is strange because almost no other director does this. The next thing that is popular in Tarantino films is his use of excessive conversation. Some scenes go for almost 10 minutes of straight conversation. It plays out almost like the Godfather trilogy  where most of the time it's conversations and you rarely have any action. This gives the characters deeper emotions and gets you connected to them on a more personal level. The last thing in Tarantino films is his use of extreme violence. He quotes, "I refuse your question. I'm not a slave and you're not my master... It's none of your damn business what I think about that... I have explained myself many times over the last twenty years, I just refuse to repeat myself over and over again."