THIS WEEK’S DVD shelf-topper is Kill Bill, Vol. 1, which, conveniently, was released just ahead of the theatrical launch of Kill Bill, Vol. 2, and has already made $47 million. Quentin Tarantino originally intended for his action-packed homage to genre cinema to be seen in a single, nearly four-hour-long sitting. Miramax shot down that ambitious proposal as being an unreasonable burden on exhibitors and audiences alike, no matter how fond they might be of the maestro’s gory excesses.
Instead, the original’s fans can refresh their memories with the DVD, while those who missed it can move smoothly from one volume to the other, as Tarantino intended.
Above all else, Vol. 1 was a revenge flick, pitting the Bride (Uma Thurman) against members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, who left her beaten, a heartbeat away from death on her wedding day. After a four-year-long coma-induced rest, the Bride goes on the attack, borrowing martial arts techniques Tarantino learned from watching hundreds of Hong Kong fuey and samurai masterworks, as well as classic spaghetti westerns and animé. It’s all of that and a bag of chips. Tarantino has never been shy about stealing from his cinematic heroes, and Vol. 1 overflows with references to the films that most influenced him.
Vol. 1 was admired for its audacity and exquisitely choreographed fight scenes, but met detractors who found it too derivative and violent. Then too, many found its R rating charitable and yet another example of the Motion Picture Association’s tendency to judge sexually charged movies more harshly than those awash in violence.
It would be hard to find a filmmaker more in love with movies than Tarantino. He’s only directed four features, 4 12 with Vol. 2, but his name already has become synonymous with pictures which combine rock ’n’ roll swagger, stylized violence and richly profane dialogue. You either dig it or you don’t—neutrality isn’t an option.
Judy Garland was a diva in every sense of the word, whose tortuous life played out before millions of adoring fans, here and abroad. Before succumbing to her personal demons, Garland starred in a flock of musicals that have stood the test of time, and are now being rereleased on DVD by Warner Bros. The two-disc special edition of Vincente Minnelli’s Meet Me in St. Louis is especially welcome, with its immaculate transfer and abundant extras. Also, newly available as part of the Judy Garland Signature Collection are A Star Is Born, The Wizard of Oz, For Me and My Gal, In the Good Old Summertime, Ziegfeld Girl, Harvey Girls, Love Finds Andy Hardy, and next month from MGM, I Could Go on Singing.
Fours years before Charlton Heston came down from the mountain with God’s Top 10 Commandments or rode a chariot in Ben-Hur, and long before he became the poster boy for the NRA, he was an aspiring leading man, working in the long shadows of Gregory Peck, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper. Heston got his first big break in Cecil B. DeMille’s circus thriller, The Greatest Show on Earth, in which he played the manager of a disaster-prone branch of the Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey Circus. It’s really goofy, but a lot of fun nonetheless, going backstage of a real circus with Heston, Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Dorothy Lamour, Gloria Grahame, James Stewart and the legendary clown, Emmett Kelley.
Paul McCartney gets top billing in The Music and Animation Collection, for all the obvious reasons, but by all rights, the ex-Beatle ought to be sharing the marquee with animator Geoff Dunbar. McCartney served as executive producer, composer and voice artist for this whimsical trio of shorts: Tropical Island Hum, Tuesday (based on David Wiesner’s book) and Rupert and the Frog Song (originally produced to accompany McCartney’s 1985 film, Give My Regards to Broad Street). The shorts are loaded with dancing frogs, curious bears and other wonderfully conceived critters to delight children and their mop-top parents.
Recently, pieces of a Lockheed Lightning P38 aircraft that vanished July 31, 1944, during a reconnaissance mission, were discovered off the coast of Marseille, France. The plane had carried author and adventurer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry to a watery grave, one year after he had written The Little Prince, one of the most beloved literary works of the 20th century. Last week, the The Little Prince DVD arrived in video stores. Coincidence or marketing ploy? Scored by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, and directed by Stanley Donen, it features Gene Wilder as the fox and Bob Fosse as the snake.