This Had Oscar Buzz - 257 – Kill Bill – Vol. 1

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

We’re here celebrating a 20th anniversary for a beloved film this week, listeners! After his longest break between movies to date, Quentin Tarantino delivered a samurai epic while trying to crack the script for another epic, Inglourious Basterds. That ultraviolent actioner, Kill Bill, would also reunite Tarantino with his Pulp Fiction star Uma Thurman, given a major showcase as … Continue reading "257 – Kill Bill – Vol. 1"

Oh, oh, wrong house. No, the right house. We want to talk to Marilyn Hack, Maryland Hack and French. Dick Pooh. One ticket to Tokyo, please, one more. That woman desires her revenge. And we deserve to die. No kidding, I heard it was kind of hard.

Silly Caucasian girl like. to play with samurai swords. Yeah. Any more subordinates for me to kill? Hi. Hmm. Hello and welcome to the This Head Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that's Sue Sheffing for Sienna Miller. Every week on This Had Oscar Buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had Lofty Academy Award aspirations, but for some reason or another, it all went wrong.

The Oscar hopes die. and we're here to perform the autopsy. I'm your host, Chris Fyle, and I'm here, as always, with my blood-soaked bride, Joe Reed. I was going to say it's your baby, but, like, that didn't seem quite appropriate. Yeah.

Oh, God. What's a quote? What's a quote that I can pull that isn't like, I don't know. Siddhi rabbit, tricks are for kids. The opening that this movie is, do you find me sadistic, is really hard to not, you know,

read as Tarantino commenting to the audience and then giving them the bloodiest movie in the world. We're going to have to have like Tarantino caveat corner where we just sort of purge the whole thing of like I'm not spending

one whole episode asterisk perhaps more. Are you already spoiling what's coming to next week to listeners? Maybe. I think by the time they're listening to this they probably will already know?

Who knows what we're talking about? Next week, we find out that our daughter is still alive. But there are ways in which people talk about Kill Bill nowadays where like every 30 seconds they have to be like, but Quentin Tarantino tried to kill

Luma Thurman in a car, and we can't like enjoy this movie anymore. And like, I just want to like get it out of the way. I see people talking that way about this movie. If anything, I see people talking praise for Uma and that this is actually such a fun fucking movie.

It's so fun. It's so fun. And it's always regularly available on streaming, which I think helps. But like, did Quentin Tarantino try to kill Oma Thurman in a car? Yes, we all saw the footage. It's, you know, shitty and it sucks. It's shitty and it sucks. It's, there's, there's, whatever.

Don't make me go down the rabbit hole of, like, creative relationship. relationships and partnerships are complicated, because, like, I could, but I won't. We should also say... Creative partnerships are complicated. This is the 20th anniversary of this movie, which is kind of why we're doing this today. We thought it would be fun to, you know, talk about also a 2003 movie, which our first mini-series was... I know. The 2003 year, and...

Yes. And this movie dominated the year 2003 in terms of... of, if you were in any way plugged into the movie scene online back in 2003, this was the movie. Remember how I talked about before, about how, like, Batman Forever dominated all the youth-focused discourse in 1995? One million percent. That's what this was to anybody who had a, you know, who was on a message board for him.

I was trying to think of, like, what exactly, how exactly did people exist online back in 2003? Like, everybody had email addresses. We were past the point of, like, America Online by this point. Sure, sure, sure, sure. But it was still, like, a good few years pre-Twitter. So I feel like I got most of my movie knowledge around this time from message boards or, like, the film experience. Or. Fan sites, et cetera.

You sent me an even an Oscar watch link. and I thought that that whole entire website had been burned to the ground like it should be. Here's what I say. Like, even at the time, the tone of Ain't at Cool News was too much for me. It was too breathlessly fanboy too much. And yet, I haven't. Too, too, too online. Too all of it.

But I have. Very different than being too online now. Two online now. It's a different flavor of two online. 3, 2002, 2 online. But so I sought out this, and we'll talk about the trailer, the initial teaser trailer for Kill Bill before it was split into two movies in a second, because it's one of the greatest things I've ever seen in my entire life. But I do have nostalgia for this era when news was a little harder to come by, and the presentation of it could be so, like, niche. focused. Like, the Ain't a cool news people were all sort of like that. And then the Oscar

watch people were all sort of like that. Like, everybody had their sort of, like, way in to the conversation. And it is not lost on me. It is not lost on me that most of the people who were like gatekeepers of these sites, your, you're Sasha Stones and your, uh, what's his face from who is the, they're all bad people. They're all bad people. Devon Farachi. All of these people are just like bad people who have done bad things and support bad causes. And yet, there was something to the idea that, like, this person was at some sort of a screening where they leaked the Kill Bill teaser and nobody else heard about it until he emailed

Ain't It Cool News and was like, I have the scoop. And it's just this liminal internet period, pre-Twitter, pre-social media, when, like, these days, that news would stay secret for 0.004 seconds. And not only that, but the leaking, like, things are also pre-reddit, we should say, too, because, like, now, that's big, like, the way that it, these things work, it's like, this is what Reddit is now. Right. And things, things that are leaked are always leaked to build a buzz. But in, but in that day, Buzz built like a sort of smoldering fire where you would get like little wisps of smoke. And then it would sort of like, Now it's just like kerosene everywhere, and you just throw a match onto it, and immediately

it's sort of like, you know what I mean? And now everything is immediately memed. Immediately memed. These audiences are, which have always been curated, but are like now curated for the sort of loudest and most, you know, have the biggest social media followings. There was this ain't a cool news post that I dug up about the Kill Bill teaser, literally described the teaser shot for shot, which I found both annoying and charming.

In a way, I find a lot of that milieu, sort of annoying and charming at the same time. But this person also, and this is going to annoy the both of us, did not know who Vivek A Fox was. They were like, it's Lucy Lou and Daryl Hannah and someone else and Michael Madsen. Burn in hell.

But like, I also find that a little bit, not necessarily charming, but like, it's interesting that people just had those kind of blind spots, and this blind spot is problematic, probably. But, like, you know what I mean? That, like, they're... Well, especially because it's like... It was like a game of telephone.

Most of this stuff was obviously studio plants. So it's like, if you're describing even a teaser trailer, literal shot for shot, like, someone gave you access to watch it more than once, despite whatever you say. So it's like, the studio couldn't tell you who the cast of this movie is? But here's the other thing, Chris. is maybe that is true, but there was a time when they would just sneak this shit in front of an audience in Austin or an audience in L.A. or like audiences that they knew would be like friendly and communicative about it without being quite so overdetermined and doing what you say,

which is that like we're going to leak you the actual full trailer. Like there was a time when this thing was done a little bit more lo-fi. And I find that I do find nostalgia for that moment, which that moment pretty much was 2003. Listen, we who are also annoying and charming, that's our tagline. Do have patience for some of that, the vibe of that era, if not the actual sources. The people, right, you know.

Right, right. I feel like the Cloverfield teaser was the end of that era, you know, because we heard whispers about the Cloverfield teaser before, you know, people actually saw it. And then when people saw it, it was like, this is, you know, it was its own, you know, thing. But this. Well, and also, the Cloverfield teaser came around in the early days of Twitter. And, like, not to, like, blame all of society's downfalls on Twitter.

I'm like that meme of, like, society of Twitter never existed. And it's, like, gleaming future scape and, you know, all this sort of stuff. But, like, it's not necessarily not true. But it did change the way that, like, information could no longer sort of snake its way out of anything. Now it's like, you know, I don't know, it's too instantaneous. It's too much. It's all too much. Speaking of movies that are all too much, Kill Bill, Volume 1, in the best way possible.

And that was how it was received, that this movie is too much. Even, I think, the highest praise at the time was like, oh, this is just, just an action movie or like I think some people at the time were even correct that like this is a superhero movie you know that's what this is but like it's a good time but we shouldn't take it that seriously but it was also criticized for being not enough in that a lot of people didn't like the fact that it was only part one of a two part movie right and it wasn't a full sort of emotional the emotional journey was not complete and all of that and while I don't disagree with those points sort of academically, I do feel like there are certain

movies that you have to judge sort of outside of context and like Kill Bill and kind of all of the Tarantino movies. You almost have to like judge a special case in and of themselves because there just is no other movie like Kill Bill, either one of the Kill Bill's, and trying to sort of be like, well, you know, I would have liked it better if I had gotten like the full resolution. And it's just like, well, yeah, well, you get that in part two. And no other movies are going to sort of just like slice themselves in half this way. And you just have to sort of take it as, as it comes. I don't know. I mean, I'm going to say this without having watched volume two yet, or rewatched, I should say. Sure, sure. I do actually think that there's a

complete narrative arc to this movie, and I think that there is a... They're very different movies. There is a thematic thread to this movie and one that I think, you know, looping back to the things we've been saying so far, I think makes this movie even more fascinating than I was kind of expecting it to be on this rewatch. I don't think I've seen this movie since college. Oh, wow. And there's a, I think, completed, interesting and satisfying narrative arc about, you know, this is a really. revenge movie, but I think very much this is a movie that's interested in, uh, comeuppance. And the idea that your actions, uh, whether in your own justification or not, will, uh, come back to roost and, uh, greeting that graciously and, uh, accepting your fate, uh, as it were.

Because I think you even get it in O'Rinishi E, who's at the apology moment where she's like, I'm sorry for making fun of you. And now we have to, I, you know, I have to accept that I did this wrong in the moment. And here is my apology for it. And now we can move on and keep fighting. Right. Vernita has the same thing where she says, Vernita essentially apologizes. And it's just like, I wish I hadn't done the thing that I had done to you.

But here we are. And now let's plan a knife fight at 2 a.m. at the base. And then she kills her in front of her daughter and immediately sets into this legend of maybe there'll be a Kill Bill Volume 3 because she says to her, if you still feel raw about it, I'll be there, you know, so that you can come and kill me. We're about, well, ironically, we're about around the time where that would be, that girl would be, you know, about 30 years old right now. You know what I mean? Interesting, interesting. Or like 25, maybe. Yeah.

It is an interesting narrative element that this movie is explicitly about that in the way that, you know, the culture that this movie was brought into the Weinstein of it all, the fact that Uma Thurman was in a car accident on the set of this movie, it all makes it so rich on rewatch in a way that I wasn't expecting. and I thought was satisfying in terms of just the movie. Let's do our promotions, and then we'll talk about the trailers, and then we'll get into the plot. How about that? How about that, Joe? How about that? Guess what we're off to the races about, though.

This had Oscar Buzz turbulent brilliance. That, too. Oh, were we going to do Vulture Fantasy League first? Yes. All right. Okay. Yes, we are off to the races on the Baltimore Movie Fantasy League. The drafting is now closed as of this episode being out. I really hope you drafted your team, Gary's. I really do. If you were attempted, if you were attempted assassination plot by four of your best friends slash coworkers and have been in a coma and missed the drafting of your league, reach out. Let us know. We will need proof that that is what happened to you and that that is why you missed the deadline, but otherwise, sorry. No need to go to Japan. No need to get a sword.

Hattori Hanzo will draft your Vulture Movie Fantasy League team for you just as once and then never again. However, if you did draft your name as Hattori Hanzo, I feel like they should get an automatic 10-point bonus. Yeah, no, that's true. That's true. We'll talk to Fultura about it. I need Japanese steel. Why do you need Japanese steel to draft a Fantasy League team? Exactly. All right, Chris, now we can say what movies we've drafted, though, which is my favorite part of promoting the Fantasy League, is sharing.

Sharing is caring, sharing is fun. First of all, Chris, I need to know what was your team name? My team name is Rikowski Crop Top. Uh, shocking, shocking. In honor of my favorite costume item of the year from the movie Passages, Franz Rikowski in a crop top inspired my team name. So, I have a sad story about my team name. The sad story of the umlaught that was not allowed. The umlaught that will never be. Um, I had been hanging on to the team name, the Owls of Gohuler for a

while. I was very excited about it. I knew nobody else was going to do it. I wanted it. I did not want a Barbie name. God bless you, if you chose a Barbie name. I did not want a Barbie name. I wonder how many Mojo-dojo Casa houses.

I can find out. Mojo-dojo Casa House. Casa Delos Babes House. Mojo-Dojo Casa House of Blue Leaves. Aha. Anyway, so I go to enter in

Owls of Gohuler properly punctuated with the apostrophe after gah and then the appropriate umlaut over the U in Huller because that makes it funnier. It just does

umlots make things funnier. So I find out that it did not allow me to have special characters in the field so I had to enter it in as owls so I considered other things I was like, well, do I bail on the joke? Because it's not as funny if it's not properly presented.

But I thought about Martha Marcy May December, but I saw that two other people had already chosen. That is their team name. Shout out if that is one of you. We clap to you. We clapped to you. I thought about Tin Roof Rustin, but nobody ever seems to respond to that joke the way that I want them to, which is handing me a million dollars and saying it was the funniest joke they've ever heard. So I laughed. How dare you?

You chuckled. You politely chuckled. Listeners go listen to a B-52 song for once in your life. Okay. Anyway, I decided to trudge through and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And so now my team name is the Owls of Gahuler. No apostrophe, no umlaut. Just to just picture it there in your head, in your mind's eye.

When you see that team name, just put those two little dots over the U and really put some Bavarian. into your you when you see Huler Sondry Hewler and you'll be fine. Anyway. Anyway, we have our, we have our

rosters. Let's hear it. Okay. I said my name, my team name first. So why don't you get here? Oh, okay. So, philosophically, I knew I was

not going to allow myself to not have Oppenheimer. I saw how much having the best picture winner. it was. Well, it was expensive on purpose because I knew that Oppenheimer was the big dog in the yard. But I spent big on everything everywhere all at once last year, and that paid off because to win the league last year, you had to draft everything everywhere all at once. It won so many awards by the end. I do not know if Oppenheimer will be that much of a steamroller by the end, but if any movie is going to be, it's going to be that one. So then I was like, do I do Oppenheimer? And then maybe spread the wealth on three or four upper mid-tier picks and then just like fill in a couple cheapies or do I try and shoot the moon and do the Barbenheimer double, which would spend,

which is 50 for Oppenheimer, 25 for Barbie, and leave myself only $25 for six other movies. That was a challenge I decided to accept for myself. It's risky. I do think Oppenheimer and Barbie. I do know how many people did it. Me too. So I did that. I did Oppenheimer and Barbie.

and then with my remaining $25, I got Poor Things for $10, American Fiction for Five. I drafted Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem as my animated outsider for $3. You know what? Good movie. Two foreign language movies that are their country's selection for international feature. I drafted The Taste of Things, formerly La Potafoo, and Perfect Days, which is my favorite movie out of Tiff. And then with my $1 remaining, I pulled the trigger and I drafted Dix the musical,

which I do think is going to probably get like one weirdo critic award somewhere. You know what I mean? So I think that's a dollar well spent. All right. So that's my roster, Chris. Let's hear yours. All right.

I kind of went with, because I didn't do the Oppenheimer buy, my roster is a little bit more even in terms of the buying. structure, the buying cost of these movies, which was an intentional strategy. I drafted Barbie. I know I'm going to get good points for Barbie. Anatomy of a fall, which despite not being Francis' submission, I think Sehull has a real

good chance at a lot of those other races, including Best Picture. I do too. Yep. Perhaps more risky, even though it is the UK's submission. I even raise an eyebrow to it, whatever, it's fine. the zone of interest zone of interest sure poor things

did not resist that low dollar buy I do feel like a lot of people are going to be drafting poor things yeah yeah yeah yeah Priscilla which I feel like is maybe one of my riskier bids but you never know

you never know what is that $8 or was that a $10? It was $10 for Priscilla I did the $5 all of us strangers nice which I feel like is going to pay off

if maybe not for things like Best Picture or maybe even Best Actor that is an adapted screenplay and people are looking for that as the afterson of this year and that is the same price point so perhaps we shall see we shall see I did do the $5 American Fiction by

and then closing it out I did the boy in the heron $10 for the Miyazaki very good It feels like a safe bet for every critic's prize for animated feature. Yeah. So your most expensive movie was Barbie at 25, and your cheapest movie was American fiction at $5? That's the range?

Yes. That's not bad. Boy and Haren, I think, is also $5. I think Boy in the Haren is $10, but I could be mistaken. Anyway, actually, I have it right in front of me. I don't know why I have to be coy about it. All of the strangers is also a $5 buy. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Boy and the Heron, boom, boom, boom, boom, is a... God, that salt burn at 15 is not a... I hope you didn't do that, people. I hope you did not try salt burn at 15. That's a risky buy. Boy in the Heron was $10, yes. So, there you go. There you go.

There you go. I like that team, Chris. I like that our strategies are so different. I really went for Stars and Scrubs. You really went for a more balanced team. I'm very interested to track our relative success throughout the season. Going for a balanced team, didn't go so well for me last year, but this feels smart-balanced year.

This could be a more balanced year. Maybe also, by the time you're listening to this, the strike has been resolved, so we'll see. Hey, fingers crossed, we want a fair deal for everybody. As we recorded this, there was a lot of chatter today about, like, maybe the strike could end as soon as today. And I remember, I said to somebody, I'm like, if it ends, today, I want Warner Brothers to be like, psych, Dune is back into November, because

there's still time, there's still two months. I want, I don't know, I want Dune back. But wouldn't that be funny? Dune comes back and nobody could buy it for the Fantasy League. So, whoops. Whoops. All right. Actually, no, it would be good for the people who did buy Dune before it got taken off

of the schedule. That would be the ultimate upset, is if Dune came back to the false schedule. and those people who thought they were finished like are now really back in the ball game. That would be fun. Well, that's our rosters. We're going to be giving you weekly updates

on the Vulture Movie Fantasy League. That's right. We're all going to have fun. I'm so excited. Checking out the league name, all of us, Gary, see how you are comparing to your other this head Oscar Buzz listeners. I'm interested that neither one of us

pulled the trigger on the Taylor Swift movie, which was on my short list, but ultimately did not get picked. Yeah, I just, I didn't really rely on box office dollars. I just wonder if, like, for that price point, its box office could be just massive. I'm like, I will be interested to hear from people who did draft the Taylor Swift, I'll say that.

If you could draft just to $100 rather than eight slots, my draft leave costs $95. So, if I could have that extra $5, I would have done, Taylor Swift had gotten those box office points, but, you know. Yeah, I, I would, my spirit would not let me rest if I left any money on the table. So I made sure to spend every last dollar and we'll see how that gets me. We'll see, we'll see. I don't know about that as a strategy, I got to say.

I mean, it's, it's a strategy based in OCD tendencies, so it's fine. We'll have many weeks ahead to unpack it. We hope you're all playing along. If not, uh, you are missing. out. Indeed. Joe, what else do we have sailing right along? Well, sailing right along is this head Oscar Buzz turbulent brilliance, which has shoved off from port and is sailing the high seas for anybody who chose to plunk down $5 a month.

They are getting two bonus episodes of this head Oscar buzz per month. We are talking about exceptions, which we are calling episodes about movies that fit the general vibe of this had Oscar buzz movie, but it got maybe a couple nominations from the Oscars. And so we weren't able to do it on our flagship podcast. And those episodes have been pretty good by now. We've talked about nine. We've talked about Pleasantville. We just dropped the listener's choice episode that we recorded about the lovely bones, which I will say without humility was a really great episode. I thought we had a lot of fun talking about the bones and October is all about our subscribers.

They picked the exception episode and then we're going to be answering their mailbag questions in a few weeks. That's right. On the 15th, right? Yes, the 15th. 15th, you will be getting a Patreon exclusive mailbag episode. Other excursions that we've got up include our report on Chris attending Magic Mike Live. our discussion of the 2016 actress Roundtable

featuring Isabel Huper and her many memes and just in general we've got some interesting we've got some fun plans for the future I will say Chris and I are really getting into the spirit of we're entering into the holidays which are a season of giving and we are very much going to be getting into the spirit of the season I would say right Chris? Yes yes

It is still September as we record this, but... No, listen, holidays accelerate. We are, pumpkin spice was in stores in July, and Halloween decorations have been up since August, and Christmas is right around the corner as far as your local stores are concerned. So, season of giving. Season of giving. if you are interested in taking part in a season of giving and giving us $5 a month for all this wonderful content

you can sign up for the Patreon at patreon.com slash at this had Oscar Buzz we have a $5 tier for everything that we just talked about everything that is available is available for $5 a month do we have any $100 sugar daddy signups currently all booked up. Is currently booked. All right. Okay.

But if you wish to be a sugar daddy and then eventually have the chance, if you do it for three consecutive months, pick a main feed episode. Yeah. It's not a bad. It's not a bad deal if you got the means to open. But prepare to have those in the coming months. Yeah, those will be coming too. Again, season of giving.

Season of giving. all right um i don't know why i'm deciding to make that happen what's the marlo thomas ad that that is before the movie that used to be before the movies at like do you remember that we're like the st jude's uh hospital ads would come and marl thomas would be like it's a season of giving it was always a season of giving good for marl thomas uh you're marl thomas i'm jennifer aniston that's right that's right aw what a good duo we are marl thomas should be on the morning show i need to catch up on the morning show because I just am watching all these clips of Nicole Bihari just killing it on that show and I don't want to be left out. I love her so much. I know.

I want better things for her than that demented show though. No, sometimes that demented show, that's good. It's good to have a demented show out there. Oh, 100%. Yeah, I'm into it. I'm into it. I'm going to catch up. Maybe this week. We want good shows for Nicole Bari. I like that you just did the Italian We want a good show I do that with almost everything that I say All right

This had Oscar Buzz Turbium, brilliance Go do it All right, back to the episode Back to Kill Bill Kill Bill Volume 1 Volume 1 Okay, but before it was divided into volumes 1 and 2

I want to talk about this initial teaser because, first of all, as is often the case, the teaser was so much better than the subsequent trailers. But this was the era of, like, Apple movie trailers. And we've talked about this before, where we would just sort of, like, go to Apple movie trailers constantly during the day. And just, like, if you were me watching the trailers for the hours

and adaptation and Chicago. Mind you, this is pre- YouTube. Oh, yes, definitely. This is pre-Utube. So we talked about the Ain't a Cool News report of the Kill Bill trailer, the first Kill Bill trailer, which was released in late 2002. So we weren't even into the year yet. As far as anybody knew, Kill Bill was going to be released as one movie. And this teaser gets released. And this is the first time, it's completely front to back scored by the instrumental guitar solo track. battle without honor or humanity, which you will know if you've ever been to like an NBA game and like a starting lineup has taken to court or something of that nature. Maybe the best needle drop in a movie. It's, so the needle drop occurs in the movie when Orent Ishii and her posse are headed to their little secluded room at the House of Blue News.

But in the trailer, it's, it's right at the beginning you see. the plane sort of descending into Tokyo and then like it's so many of these shots from the movie that would become just iconic from like it's it's very focused on like the Uma track suit the shot at the very end is the thing

where they're all surrounding her in the circle and she pulls back the sword and they all sort of like lean back there's scenes that ultimately get cut from both movies altogether the Michael Jai White scene that ultimately got deleted from volume two gets referenced in this

trailer. It's just the perfect, I cannot tell you how excited people were, including me at the time when this teaser came out. We hadn't had a new Tarantino movie in six years by this point. By the point the teaser came out, it was five years because it was late 2002. But since Jackie Brown, he's talked about... Six years is the longest gap that we've gone without a Tarantino movie. He's talked about how during that time, that's when he was writing the screenplay for Inglorious Bastards

and it had turned into this, like, behemoth that he could not figure out how to end. And so he put that to the side. He revisited this idea that he and Uma Thurman had together for this sort of revenge epic about a character called The Bride. And he, I watched this in an interview that I watched earlier today,

where he's like, I basically was hoping that Kill Bill would essentially be like a pallet cleanser, which would sort of like recharge my batteries and let me figure out a way to end my Inglorious Bastard script. And he was like, I'll do this quick and dirty and we'll sort of like, you know,

we'll make this Grindhouse movie. And sort of, of course, like, Quentin Tarantino's never going to make anything quick. Like, even like, you know, death proof is probably the closest to it. Which is so much like he's vomiting all of this style and pastiche and like Reference. Themes and references

and he's like getting it all out of its system and it's huge. And even still like as a grindhouse movie he doesn't get it all out of his system because he goes and makes a grindhouse movie next. And then he goes and makes Django Unchained and like hateful 8. Like there's still so many other things that he hadn't done.

But yeah, this in terms of style and we'll get into that this, after the plot description, but it really is every possible type of movie that he was obsessed with as a kid that he's referencing. But I just think it's so funny that, like, the intent of Kill Bill was not this, like, this was not the epic he had been building to, Inglorious Bastards was, and this was the sort of, like, small little movie he was going to do in between, and it becomes this two-part giant epic. And I like Inglorious Bastards a lot, but, like, if you're asking me to choose, you know, Kill Bill or Inglorious

Bastards, I'm going to choose Kill Bill, particularly Volume 1, which I definitely... I'm not going to, I'm not going to say Jackie Brown isn't my favorite Tarantino, and it, it just is, like, in the rewatches, I'm like, this movie's just perfect. It's a fucking perfect movie. But, like, Kill Bill is just like, if your top three, Tarantino doesn't have Kill Bill in it, it's probably wrong. Like, yeah, it's so... I don't know maybe I just had like the experience of this isn't something that I've watched regularly all the time but like I was very hot and heavy for it when it first came out and it's been a long time since I've seen it but like it's just so like note exquisite and it's like even though at the time it was reduced to this super violent thing and it's like well it's really violent and you know it's Tarantino but like I guess it's it's good. No, it's like, it's, it's so rich throughout. Like, there's moments that, like, you savor basically every moment of this thing, even when it's super gross. I remember the first

time I ever saw this movie, and I saw it with one of my very good friends who was not, who, like, was the person I went and saw movies with, but I was definitely, like, way more into movies than he was. And I just, I remember so clearly, just from the moment of that title card and the sort of like special presentation, like 70s throwback thing. I love the Times new Roman font. And then by the time we had gotten like the front to back bang, bang, my baby shot me down, the Nancy Sinatra version, which like play is completely over the credits. I could already tell that I was so much more into this movie than my friend was. And I remember by the end, he was just like, I don't know what I thought about that. And I'm like, oh, so good.

So that was the distinction. But, God, I just remember so vividly those first like 10 minutes and me being like, oh, this is like nothing. And like, it's not like Quentin Tarantino hadn't prepared his audience for his style from reservoir dogs to Pulp Fiction to Jackie Brown. Even still, you watch that first 10, 15 minutes of Kill Bill, Volume 1. And it's just like, I, you know, it's such an experience. I saw this movie opening weekend with my dad, and we were like on cloud nine. I do think that this movie has like the uniting force. It has like the juice to end all conflict between gay and straight men.

I think we are united and loving this movie. but it was my father and I and the cliffhanger of this movie you know the final line before the hard cut to black of does she know her daughter is still alive and then it's like boom we'll see you in six months I left the theater so angry like I remember being

viscerally angry at that rugpole and feeling like this was a storyteller who pulled a fast one on me so, like, completely. And you're like, I got to wait until April? Exactly. It felt to me, like, what it must have felt like to people in the 80s with the Luke I am your father. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Of just, like, this is something I hadn't, I got so wrapped up in this story and invested in this character. And I hadn't, even for a moment, thought of that as a possibility. and it took me a minute to not be suddenly so angry at the same. I do remember more so now watching it again. I'm like, wow, I was really stupid for not like expecting that. Because like it's like it's such a Chekhov's baby. She's shot in the head.

Well, sure, but then you just. Sure, but then she, the fact that she survives kind of tells you what sort of universe we're living in, right? that she like she survives and like is you know uh horrors done to her in her survival in this coma but also apparently someone has been giving her pedicures the entirety of her coma because we get the tarantino like foot shot and you see you see tarantino's hand coming from off screen with a file and just being like with a file and then clear polish the foot stuff is very like like like Like with everything, I feel like the revelation of the Tarantino foot fetish really, like, unlocks so much because you go back into all his movies and you're like, there it is. There it is.

There it is. You're Tarantino, or you're DiCaprio in Tarantino's own Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, just like pointing to the screen being like foot fetish, foot, foot, foot, foot. Once upon a time in Hollywood is like the full, he's trolling us now. Well, by that point, he knows that we know. foot squashed against a windshield. He knows that we know at that point, so it's like, yeah, it's a little less fun. Listen, go off, Quentin, get those piggies wiggling. Yeah.

You know what, good movie. It's a good movie. I can't wait to get to it. Good movie, tremendous performance that I think was kept from an Oscar nomination purely because, well, two things. purely because of how violent this movie is. Uh-huh. Yep. But, like, when BAFTA goes and gives this movie five nominations, including hers, it's just like, the Brits are fine with it.

Right, right. What is your problem, America? What's your deal? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but I also think this is going back to our 2003 miniseries from the very origins of our show. and like obviously harvey wine scene is a horrible person and you know all that but miramax put all of their energy into cold mountain i knew you're gonna blame cold mountain you're right too yeah and like basically that miniseries was also a shadow cold mountain cold mountain episode but like yep it's cold mountain's fault like and i am someone who's like cold mountains a good movie But, like, I don't know.

Cut to Chris in his car with a spiral notebook that is just like one, cold mountain. Like, two, the human state. Three, the station agent. Everything on Miramax's slate. Yes, yes, I'm going to go and kill those movies and get this nominated. But, like, also, it sounds weird to say this, and maybe we'll get. further into this. But, like, as far as the immediate expected embrace from the Academy to any Tarantino

movie that we have at this point, even post-Pulp fiction, Tarantino wasn't seen that way by the Academy because now it's like, Django Unchained is as violent as Kill Bill Volume 1 is, and that movie has two Oscars. This is, there are, Tarantino's story is interesting because it's a, double. It's a double unlocking. But there are, but like the Coens kind of go through that too, where the Coens have Fargo. It's their big breakthrough movie. And then the Academy goes back to sort of like thinking that they are niche filmmakers who only really had one little breakthrough. And then no country for old men comes along. And then they're like, well, now you're really, now we're

going to sort of, you know, give you first, first, write a first refusal of nominations for all of your movies. And that was what it was like with Tarantino with Pulp Fiction. It's this sort of like brash indie breakthrough. The Oscars can sort of look at him as like maybe a one-trick pony. And then Inglorious Bastards comes along and they're like, I see. We,

you have made a movie about World War II? Come in, friend. He's doing his thing with like material that maybe they, he can dupe them into being like, but it's also about this serious thing because like, Jane goes another example of it. It is interesting that are worse, more so worse with that movie. It is interesting that Tarantino got back into the Oscars Good Graces by essentially making movies about Oscars' favorite serious topics, but in a way that, like, gives them the happy ending that history denied them, right?

Where it's like, not only am I going to give you a World War II. movie, but I'm going to kill Hitler. Not only am I going to give you a movie about American slavery, but I'm going to make sure that the slaves come out winning in the end. Not only am I going to give you a movie about the Manson murders, but like, we get the best of those Manson family murders or murderers. And it's like, oh, Hollywood's like... You all, like, because he... The thing about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, that's like the Oscar thing, but like his version of it is that like he made a movie about them. Yeah. And it's like, guess what? you stop Sharon Tate's murder from happening.

Like, I'm being glib. I love that movie. I do too. No, I love that movie. I love, and even Django Unchain is not my favorite movie, but there are things about Django On Chain that I really, really like. But no, I...

Less we say the better. I am more or less a big Tarantino fan. I'm looking forward to this movie he's making about maybe Pauline Kale. You know what I mean? Even though everybody is... And now it's not going to be about Pauline Kale, because it's called like the movie critic or something, but he's actually refer it.

It's come out that the character is male, so it's not Paul and Kill. Oh, well, that's less interesting to me. Maybe she'll play a supporting character or something. But anyway, I'm a fan of Tarantino. Even though I have not liked every one of his movies, I'm a fan. And so I like that the Oscars have sort of welcomed him back into the fold. I think he makes the Oscars more interesting. I do wish he had not won that screenplay award for Django and Chain, but you know what?

We can't have everything we want. So, all right, are we going to have me do this plot description because I'm nervous. Let's do it so we can really get into the movie. Yes. Listeners, we're here talking about Kill Bill, Volume 1, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring the great Uma Thurman, the great Lucy Lou, the great Vivica A Fox, the great Terrell Hannah, Julie Dreyfus, Sunny Chiba, Chiaki Kiriyama, Michael Parks, Michael Madsen, and the disembodied voice of David Caradine. yes you get his face at the end there right don't they they do they flash back to him for like for like half a second yeah the movie opened wide October 10th 2003 happy 20th anniversary killed yes yes that opened wide uh uh no it was gonna i was gonna have a 1010 321 joke but that wasn't that's not gonna fit remember 10 10 321 the the collect calling apparatus did you are you

too young to have ever collect called, have you? We're going to get real into early 2000s culture if you're bringing out 10-10, 3-2-1. I'm saying, though, our age difference, I think, makes our experience a little bit different. I do remember going through the high school phase where, like, I would call my parents collect if I had to get picked up somewhere, like that kind of thing, yeah. And that cost your parents like $10 a call. Yes, but it was always that thing where I would always gain points with that. because they were very much like call us at any time.

You know what I mean? Joseph, if anybody starts smoking at a party, you can call us collected. To my credit, I've never done that. I've never, I never did the thing where I called and been like, people are drinking beer. I'm scared. Come get me. I never did that. I never did that.

I was a little bit of a good, goody, goody in school, but it was never to that extent. I never did that because I never got invited to party. I never narched. I didn't until like my senior. year. It took me most of high school to, like, claw my way to the lower rungs of the popular clicks. And then you were doing lines and, you know. Oh, yeah, definitely. No. My high school, it was so funny, we were just, we, I think I grew up at the exact perfect time in between heroin culture and rave Molly culture. So, like, it was just weed. Like, the only drug that

anybody did in my high school was weed. It was like, I was doing heroin in. your Catholic Void and mushrooms I remember there were like the really like the real big potheads also

did mushrooms I never did mushrooms I've never done mushrooms actually maybe I should do mushrooms all right we'll talk offline

um join our Patreon come come along for the Joe does mushrooms and watches the lovely bones episode

um anyway I'm not promising that caveat caveat I'm not promising that all right um Joe would you like to give

a 60 second plot description sure it'll probably go over but what the hell all right then your 60 second plot description of kill bill volume one starts now all right we're going in order of presentation ready umma thurman plays a woman in a bridle in a bridle dress whose bloodied face looks up at the man who's about to kill her and just as he fires the shot she says bill it's your baby bang bang and he shoots her brightly color pasadena pastina and the bride pulls up in her pussy wagon to the home of verneta green one of the gang of deadly viper assassins who tried to kill her a vicious knife fight ensues interrupted by the arrival of vernet's daughter which pauses the violence for momentarily until vernet gets to tries to get the jump on the bride and the bride throws a knife through her heart and the bride crosses Verita's name off her death list where she sees she's already crossed off the name of Oren Ishii because Quentin went and chopped and screwed the timeline. Next scene. Post-de assassination

attempt, the bride has left comatose in the hospital where an eyepatched assassin L. Driver comes to finish her off. Only Bill calls it off at the last minute and that's where the bride remains for four years with this cretine of an orderly renting her body out to scumbag rapists until the bride wakes up and has a big cathartic cry for the baby that's no longer in her belly and then bites one rapist slip off, crunches scumbag bucks head

in a doorway and gets to the business of wiggling that atrophied big toe. Next, we're off to Okinawa, where she impresses retired swordmaker and Tauri Hansa with her Japanese and convinces him to build her one less samurai blade, with which she can, bump, da bump, bum, bum, blah, kill Bill, applause, applause. And then whoosh were off to Tokyo, though not before getting the anime

backstory of O'Ren, along with another one of her deadly viper assassins who rose to power among the Japanese accuser. Well, though not without controversy, and she called that controversy with a well-timed monologue slash beheading. In Tokyo, the bride announces the presence at the House of Blue Leaves by chopping off the arm of Sophie Fatal, who was Oren's executive assistant, who

was also unknown on the plan to assassinating at the bride. This draws out O'Ren, who unleashes her gang of young Yakuza go-getters who get dispatched in quick order by the bride. Teenage Haydeskogo New Yubari gets a bit longer, but then she's dispatched, and then it's the whole gang of Crazy 88 who surround the bride, and she fends them off and severs their limbs and blood sprays everywhere, and it's about 18 different Kung Fu movies are referenced, and it's glorious. Then it's out to the Zen Garden in the background, where the bride and O'Ren face off in a one-on-one, amid the falling snow and water features, and it's intense, but the bride manages to slice off the top of Oren's head, and then she sends

one-armed Sophie back to Bill with a message that she's coming, and she won't stop until they're all dead. Bill ends the movie with the tantalizing notion of the baby's, bride's baby is still alive at the end. With seven minutes over. Another three seconds, you would have been a full minute over your 60 seconds.

I regret nothing. I regret nothing. Or your comprehensiveness. This is the shorter of the two Kill Bill movies. You would have made five movies. I would have.

Listen, was there anything that I said that you would have made me cut. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for bringing up the pussy wagon. Famously to be used later. Repurposed. And the telephone music video. Yes. Perfect. The telephone music video, which ends with To Be continued. Where is Telephone Volume 2, Lady Gaga, and Beyonce? Did Tarantino direct that video? No. That would have been fun. I don't want him to direct a Lady Gaga video. Do we want him to direct a Lady Gaga movie? I think she would be. great in a Tarantino movie. I mean, she already did

Machete Kill's. That's a Robert Rodriguez movie. I know Quentin Tarantino's all involved in those movies anyway, but... She's going to tell us how she went to Stella Adler and watched Taashi Makeetka... Honestly, Lady Gaga...

Lady Gaga playing Pauline Kale in a Quentin Tarantanah movie. Make it happen. It's all I'm saying. It's all I'm saying. Sure. Sure. Why not? All right. So, um... I said all of those things about the plot. It's a good plot. There's a lot of plot.

There's a lot of plot. It like goes. Much like your plot description, I was like, I'm not jumping in. You're cooking. It's maybe like, you know, with this movie. It's at most three big set pieces with like little things. It's actually two big set pieces with like little interstitials thrown in there. There's the opening stuff, but like it really is when Vernita,

answers the doorbell and they immediately start fighting that it's just like oh it's fucking on first of all i want to mention verneta's front yard with the fisher price slide and the turtle the turtle sandbox the exact turtle sandbox that i had when when i was a kid um tremendous tremendous detail but that fight is so fucking so good so good it's also Also, the sequence that you realize that the movie is a secret women's picture, that it is also a melodrama. Yes. And, you know, not that it's like going full cirque or anything. That's why that's the scene with, like, the most saturated colors are in that, are in that sequence.

You know what I mean? Like, that's where everything is the brightest. This movie is enraptured in the faces of its actresses. I want to talk to the person whose job was to hold the giant spray bottle and just spray the both of them with like their so their faces are so fucking sweaty in these scenes like every time they cut to a close up and it's like Vivek A-Fox and she looks like she just like came in from a torrential downpour it's incredible they're instantly so sweaty it's great but like all of that stuff it's so visceral it's so like the the shattering of the glass coffee

table and the part at the end when when the bride finally gets the knife on her and like the the walls are splattered with the coffee from the coffee mug that she kicked at her and then the and also the blown out cereal box from the cereal called kaboom called caboom cereal oh yeah there's like so many easter eggs like even just like death list five is a pulp fiction easter egg and like the part where uh the bride says that'd be about square and she like lazily draws the square with her fingers sort of the way that uh she does in in pulp fiction I like that he's self-referential in addition to referencing all these other things. You mentioned the part about Nicky, young Nicky walking in at the end and the bride being like, see ya in 20 years if you want.

I don't know. It's just so there's that one shot where it's from above where you're sort of like the top got taken off of the dollhouse and they're looking down on like, the kitchen and the sort of the adjacent room there, and you're sort of like just scoping out the geography of the house to figuring out where this, this fight is going to ultimately resolve. He does such a good job of playing with tension in that scene of like, what's going to happen? They stopped fighting, but they're going to start fighting again soon, right? It could happen at any moment, the shot of like the silverware drawer when she opens it and that, and then he sort of like takes the temperature up and down as they're talking because

they are now having this, like, pleasant conversation that, like, turns tense, you know, at these irregular intervals. It's a tremendous. It's so funny. It's so good. It's, um, and you get a good sense of who these characters were, who they were, colleagues, who weren't exactly friends, who respect each other enough to, you know, be around each other. and we're close enough that the bride feels a sense of betrayal from this woman.

And you can sense that they have while, you know, they may not like each other, they operate by the same code. So there is an understanding. There's a shared language there. Well, and you can tell that there are like lingering resentments when Vernita is like, I should have been Black Mamba. Like it was bullshit that you got to be Black Mamba. So it's like you get a good sense of.

of a relationship that is kind of not easy to draw quickly. Like, it would have been a lot easier to just be like, oh, they were friends. They were best friends, and then she betrayed her. And this is a much more sort of particular kind of relationship between the two of them, which I like I really love. And you get that with the other ones, too. Elle clearly hated her. L. Driver just, like, couldn't stand her. and O'Ren kind of looked down on her, interestingly enough, because we get that flashback

where O'Ren gets looked down on for her mixed heritage, right? That's the scene that leads up to her chopping the guy's head off, and yet O'Ren looks down on the bride because she's this silly Caucasian girl playing with samurai swords, right? So, like, all of those things are added into these moments that exist in the margins between these tremendous fight scenes which is why people don't really criticize the movies this way

but I imagine there were probably some people who would have criticized the movies for being overstuffed or bloated because it was one giant movie that had to get cut into two but like there's not a lot of fat in Kill Bill Volume 1 like it's a pretty mean movie

even though it has excursion to seeing the cop at the church but like that also is such like kind of necessary texture to and pacing the whole tapestry of it and then of course we do see more of that of the scene at the actual wedding in kill bill volume two so it's like yeah plus you need to get a sense of a span of time happening where the bride was out of the picture and so you need to to have these back-to-back sequences where she is unconscious and sort of, you know, out of it. And so you get the part where the cops find her, and then you get the part in the hospital.

And then by the time she's awake again, you have at least felt a little bit of an absence of her. Yes. But also, while she's absent from the story, we're getting this, you know, you're getting the texture and the breadth of this horrendous thing that happened. to her and also the violence that stayed happening to her in a way that makes you really invested in her revenge that makes you as an audience root for her to kill all these people. Well, and I don't want to hold forth on this movie in a feminist context because, like, I don't have the chops to really, like, pull that off. But it, you know, it is interesting how much color gets put into this movie along those lines, right? Obviously, you know, her being sexually assaulted in the hospital is, like, is not a subtle sign about, like, the ways in which women's bodies are vulnerable to men in, you know, the world, even this person who is this world-class assassin, right? But, like, it's the, like, it's the way that, like, the cop, you know, is gross and sexist calling her a tall slice of cock sucker, you know what I mean? When he's, you know, peering over her or whatever. And I don't know.

Like, I don't know. I'm not sure how much credit I want to give from, like, Quentin Tarantino creating this, like, feminist masterpiece. Right. He's still making those things, like, body and stuff. Like, you get that close-up shot of the Vaseline jar with pubs on it. Like, it's still, like, that part of it's gross, but, like, I also think it's tonally consistent with everything else, too. So it's, like, I don't necessarily want to fault him for anything on the opposite. end of it in terms of like dealing with any of this stuff too because it's like he's making a

consistent movie um that's like all maximalism all at you know an 11 or everything is exclamation point in this movie yeah well and there's a way that he plays between tones of brutality and elegance in the action scenes too where like everything in the fight with Vernita is very smash, like smash, smash, smash. And yet the choreography of them is so intricate that you can't help. But like marveling at that, the part where they're just like boom, boom, boom, boom, like back, back, back. And you're seeing it all in this one shot. And you're just like, oh, this is like insanely intricate fight choreography. And then obviously the House of Blue Leaves scene is basically back and forth between these like

ridiculously unrealistic sprays of blood from severed limbs cut again with these really well-choreographed group fight scenes and then the thing... It took them two months to film that sequence. And then out

in the Zen Garden or whatever where it's this incredibly elegant final battle. That is obviously I mean all of those things that are a reference to that is a reference to the movie Lady Snowblood and like all of scenes have antecedents and all of these scenes are things where Tarentino's pulling from other things,

but it's interesting to see what he does with those sort of like hardness and softness in terms of the action scenes. Well, I think that like that dichotomy is integral to like everything in the movie and one of the most impressive things he's pulled off in his career. Because even if you're just talking about the violence of the movie, it's incredibly like gosh and body but it's also funny and it's also like human too because some of this violence I mean like the opening violence of the movie

when she gets shot in the head is so like visceral like you can feel it in your body but then like you know someone can be spraying an entire room because their arm got chopped off you have Julie Dreyfus like walking around with both of her arms chopped off just spraying blood around.

So it's like the fact that like the movie can have all of those things and still you know makes sense tonally. Yes. You know it can go from very real to very stylized. Very funny

to very tragic. You know, it's embodied in basically everything in the movie even like the shifts to animation in this movie. But I think the biggest thing if we can like zoom out for a second, because we haven't really talked about her yet, is I think the thing that maybe makes that work is Uma Thurman's performance, which gets to also be all of those things.

And that moment when she does come out of the coma and she has like this gasping sob realizing that her child has been dead, even though it's not, is like tragic in a very human way that pulls us into, like, an actual, like, real rooted character that we can root for in this moment, and then, like, go back into these extreme stylizations like you have with the Vivica A box scene. Yeah. I mean, Umma Thurman, let's do a little diversion into Uma Thurman's career, because it's obviously incredibly interesting.

She sort of comes up through these costume drawings. in the late 80s. She's in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Dangerous Liaisons and Henry and June, which is like infamous, infamous, this is the first NC-17, right, movie,

Henry and June? Yes, correct. The first thing I ever was aware of her with was a movie called Final Analysis, which is this like, neo-noir-erotic drama with Richard Gehr and Kim Basinger.

And one of them's the psychiatrist and one of them's the patient. I think she's the psychiatrist and he's a cop who's investigating something. Don't hold me to you that. But Uma Thurman plays Kim Basinger's troubled sister, who's sort of

psychologically troubled. And I don't really know the specifics of it beyond that, but that's the first time I really remember seeing Uma Thurman in anything. She had already, like, Dangerous Liaison's was kind of her big, you know, breakthrough. That was such a, you know, rich cast in that movie. And then she just starts getting cast in things like Jennifer 8,

where she plays a blind woman who is being stalked by a killer, I want to say, and Andy Garcia, I think, is a cop. Mad Dog and Glory, which is this sort of, oh, you wouldn't. is a surprise. This is a mobster comedy where the mobster is Bill Murray and the nice guy is Robert De Niro and you would expect it to be the other way.

And she's sort of the woman who comes between them. And then Pulp Fiction happened. Oh, sorry, even Cowgirls gets the blues is that 1993. The Gus Van Zandtisaster. And it is definitely a movie. Is it bad? I've never seen it.

All I know, it's got the big thumb, right? That's the movie where she's got the big thumb. You can tell that it is a very faithful adaptation of a very strange novel. It is not a movie that works, and it is very high on its own supply. But you can see how they thought they were making a good movie. Okay. All right. I'm curious to see it anyway.

It's on my list of movies with overly wordy titles that one of these days I'm going to watch all of them at once. Things to do in Denver when you're dead. Yeah. But anyway, so 1994 happens, Pulp Fiction, she plays Mia Wallace, she dances with John Travolta, she wakes up from a coma, a drug-induced coma with an adrenaline needle in her chest, and she wants to win that twist contest. And she gets an Oscar nomination, her very first Oscar nomination for this, loses to

Diane Weist, as everybody did that year, for Bullets Over Broadway. But that is her, like, what I imagine people thought was first of many Oscar nominations for Uma Thurman and Pulp Fiction. It remains to date her only one. And then she really starts getting cast in things, right?

She's in beautiful girls, a movie I watched eight bajillion times. Don't you dare skip a month by the lake? What if the lake in question was a Hotori Hans I'm sorry. I should not have skipped a month by the lake. A month by the lake. Her follow-up to Pulp Fiction. Who is it her and Vanessa Redgrave? Is that who it is? A month by the lake? Spending a month by the lake? All right. You're right. What if a month by the lake told you the truth about cats and dogs? Because that is also a movie that she does in the wake of Pulp Fiction gets cast as Poison Ivy in Batman and Robin. Poor timing for her career. As I told Lady Freeze when I pulled her plug, this is a one-woman show. Okay. I don't want to spend too much time on this.

I'm going to give you like 30 seconds to defend that as a good performance. It is a great performance. How dare you ask me to defend that performance? She is incredible in that movie. Like, it is an absolute camp performance. Like, this is why, you know, we're saying justice for Uma Thurman in times like these because, like, there is no room for people who understand how to play a camp performance like that anymore. And, like, obviously, it's pitched at a 95.

But, like, even so, like, I think you look at something, like, Kill Bill, Volume 1. And, like, part of its greatness is that she knows how to do these, like, heightened, uh, emotion, heightened, uh, delivery. I love that you're doing a Poison Ivy performance as you are defending. I love her performance as poison ivy. I'm not telling you not to do it. Do not let me hide your light under a bush. Listeners, what show meant by you're doing a poison ivy performance is I just took off my gorilla costume and I was dancing as I was, you know, monologuing about why she's great in that movie.

Samir is Batman and Robin. She's in a movie called Gattaca that stars... to my mind, that is a Jude law vehicle with Ethan Hawk and Uma Thurman also in it, but it is the movie where Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawk meet and fall in love and ultimately get married and ultimately have a daughter who grew up to look exactly like her mother. We'll get into it. 1998, she's in two unfortunate movies that have the same titles as much more famous movies. She's in the non-musical Le Miserables. She's in the non-musical Le Miserab. She's in the non-Marvel the Avengers, and

neither one of them, I think those two movies and Batman and Robin together, it was tough. She sort of gets shunted down back into costume dramas for a couple years, Sweet and Lowdown, Vettel, the Golden Bowl. She's in a couple of low-budge movies

with Ethan Hawk, tape and Chelsea Walls. She's in Paycheck, another bomb. So by the time Kill Bill comes along, Umah's kind of at a low point in her career. She is creeping back up, though, because there's the HBO Mira Nair movie Hysterical Blindness.

Was that earlier or later in the year? It was 2002, but, like, because it was on TV, it straddles this, it straddles weird timing awards by she won the globe at the beginning of 03 for the 2002 year. Gotcha. And then when Emmys come around that fall, she's a voted for the next Emmys. Yeah, yeah. She's eligible for the next Emmys, but she gets shockingly snubbed after winning the globe, getting a SAG nomination. She's good in that.

Have you ever seen hysterical blindness? I have, but not in a long time. That was when I had HBO. Three of her other cast members got Emmy nominations for it, including Jenna Rollins and Ben Gazara, who won. That was one of their big sort of year-end prestige products. I remember them being very, very high on it. Juliette Lewis is kind of incredible in that, playing her best friend. They're all these sort of like a jersey girl.

They work in a bar. They wear cut off t-shirts, like kind of a thing. It's a whole thing. Right ahead of Kill Bill. She has this HBO movie where she's getting the best reviews she's had since Pulp Fiction. That's a good point. And then so Kill Bill comes along in the wake of that. So it is sort of her career really does take an upswing in that.

And I think even people who did not appreciate. Kill Bill Volume 1. I think critics, especially mainstream critics, ended up liking Volume 2 a lot more. I think there was a little bit of they were starting to come around on the whole project in general by the time Volume 2 came around.

But I think even people who were sort of more middling on Volume 1 all kind of agreed that Uma Thurman was giving a really incredible performance. And, you know, big time movie star stuff, big-time action star stuff. There was a lot of the reaction

that Charlize Theron got after Mad Max Fury Road in this, where it was, you know, oh, I think everyone's, you know how people keep wanting to anoint the new Meg Ryan? People, like, for 20 years, they tried to anoint the new Meg Ryan.

I feel like there's also that search among genre people to be like... To anoint the new Uma Thurman. Well, I was going to say to anoint the new Sigourney Weaver. after the alien movies. And so Ouma was one of those. Charlize was one of those, I think. And she gets nominated for the Golden Globe for Kill Bill, Volume 1.

Who was she nominated against? Chris, I know you have it. She was nominated against a good number of the Oscar nominees. She's nominated against Charlie's Theron, who wins? Cape Blanchet for Veronica Garon. We should do an episode. on Veronica Garan, especially movies that only exist as a title. We should, because I would love to talk about Jill Schumacher again.

Yes. Actually, no, she's the only Oscar nominee she's nominated against is Charlie Stairn, because there's also Scarlet Johans and Girl. The 2003 Best Actress Year was freaking weird and crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Scarlett Johansson Girl with Pearl Earring, Nicole Kidman for Cold Mountain, and Evan Rachel Wood for 13. Right.

So the ultimate- So, no Naomi Watts for 21 grams, who's the only, BAFTA nominee opposite Uma Thurman, that's an Oscar nominee. Interesting. No, Samantha Morton in America. That was a long, long thing, like, a long road to getting those Oscar nominations for that movie. She had been, she had been campaigned and supporting early on.

So Samantha Morton was a big, big surprise. As was Keesha Castle Hughes. As was Keesle Hughes, right, exactly. And then it's Diane Keaton, who is the sort of representative of comedy that year. Comeback vehicle. Yes. And then Charlize there on for Monster, the, we never knew an actress who could be so beautiful,

could look so, could look so scary. Also a great performance. A tremendous performance. Do not get me wrong. I do not mean to slight the performance, but that was how that was sold as an Oscar vehicle, for sure. 2003 is wild. That was the year where at the beginning of the year,

before even like that first set photo from Monster came out and sort of changed things around. The expected big contenders were Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts, and Jennifer Connolly, who was going to be in House of Sand and Fogg, which ultimately gets nominations for Ben Kingsley and Shori Agadashlu, but not for Jennifer Conley, which I think is a little unfair, because if you like that movie enough to nominate Kingsley and Agadashlu, and you should, it's a very well-acted movie. I think the acting is better than the movie in a lot of ways. Yes.

But Connolly is playing the most difficult character. Like, she's so unsympathetic. And she really holds to that line. Like, she does not budge. She does not make any false moves to make her more likable to you. She is the piece of glass that you step on at the beginning of the movie, and you keep fucking digging it deeper and deeper into your foot. I don't need this metaphor.

That's what happens in the movie. Do you not remember that part in the movie? Yeah, it does happen. But, like, I saw the movie. movie, ah. Okay. Well, anyway, regardless, I think Jennifer Conley's incredible in that movie. Yeah, she's really good in that movie. I feel like at the time, people had felt like they had seen that from her before. Sure. She's just coming off of Requiem for a dream. Yes. Yeah. That's fair. That's fair. And her Oscar win. Also, I don't really quibble with too many of the actual nominees

in O3 because I love Samantha Morton in America, so I do not mind that nomination. I love I love Diane Keaton. I love Charlize Theron. I don't like 21 grams, but I think Naomi Watts is doing good work in that movie. And honestly, I feel like an asshole. But like Keisha Castle Hughes is the one I probably give the boot to. You know what I mean? Because you feel like an asshole because you're booting a child. A child. I mean, I wouldn't lose Charlize or Diane Keaton for anything. But like, I think Uma Thurman belongs. in that lineup. I mean, it's totally understandable why, especially with Miramax pushing Cold Mountain, you know, like it was the cure of cancer. I mean, truly. Well, and they also had Nicole Kidman and the human stain that year, but at this point, the human stain wasn't going to go anywhere because it already bombed at TIF. I could actually imagine a doctor in the times before more Western medicine prescribing people who were sick. to, you know, take a trip to a cold mountain and it will cure you.

So, yes. I have been to a doctor who told me to stand out in the rain and say, shit, it's raining. And, and how did you feel after? Better. Better. You shed your one tier and put it in a... If I have one tier, stole it from a crocodile. Yeah, and you put it in a pot and it's done.

Every little bit of this is man's bullshit. See? Okay. You could do a whole performance. I had to start at the beginning of the monologue, and then I would get there. Okay. All right. All right.

Anyway, we can't do another whole episode on Cold Mountain. We can't do it. We've done too many. This is why we don't do 2003 movies because we fall into the cold mountain trap every single time. I want to talk about Quentin Tarantino for a second. Let's do it. The fourth movie by Quentin Tarantino. It's kind of amazing that he is by this point 12 years into his movie career and

This is only his fourth movie. He is, but I think he builds up, he builds up a real legend around himself, in part because he's only made four movies in this 12-year span. Reservoir Dogs comes out in 1991, 1992, 92, very much a part of the wave of American indie film of the early 90s. It's a huge standard bearer of. that I remember... He has never gone back to Sundance since that movie. That's a movie that got so much attention

for its violence. And kind of rightly so, Michael Madsen comes off the year. There's the, like, there are scenes where Tim Roth just looks absolutely soaked in blood in that movie, where he's just like just absolutely

soaked. And by the end, they're all sort of, they all kind of shoot each other. But that movie also, I think, I think Tarantino doesn't become Tarantino, at least in terms of reception, without that scene in the diner where they're talking about whether you should tip waitresses and how much you should tip waitresses. Because that is then where this incredibly violent movie about gangsters also has this like oasis of really literate, sort of leisurely-paced. the movie is in no hurry to get past this scene and so the characters are allowed

but like fever pitched verbiage. Sure. But like this is a scene that is allowed to sort of like unfold at its own pace and you never quite know how long you're going to spend in these sort of Tarantino dialogue cul-de-sacs right? That's what becomes such a churning

part and then that becomes such a big part of the reception to Pulp Fiction which is another incredibly violent movie that ups the creativity has like ups the reference game which is something that that kill bill shares but also has like structural leap of that movie completely realigned movie storytelling in america for the next 25 years but that's also a movie that has about seven or eight scenes like the diner scene about the waitresses and reservoir dogs where it's the royale with cheese scene it's the scene where travolta and umma thurman talk about the five dollar milk shake. It's, and him sort of pointing out, well, that's, that's Marilyn Monroe, and that's

maybe Van Doren, and that's, you know, Jane Mansfield in the, in the restaurant. There's the scene where Christopher Walken gives the backstory to the watch. To the watch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's the Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer

scene. There's the scene where Samuel Jackson talks about how he's going to become like Kane and Walk the Earth. And so, Pulp Fiction sort of takes whatever reservoir dogs made that splash with and just turns up the volume on all of it, and it's a sensation. Best Picture nominee, kind of the, I've talked about before, my Oscar origin story being the Forrest Gump Pulp Fiction dichotomy of 1994, which was so real.

Like, it really was the culmination of this whole American indie movement. that, you know, arrived at this point where the patron saint of indie filmmaking of violence and vulgarity and sex and unapologetic sort of indie filmmaking comes up against literally a movie that is bathed in nostalgia for the past is like boomers the movie. And it's it's Gen X versus Boomers in a way that like would have been much more strongly articulate. as such today. Back then, I don't think the, you know, the, I don't think boomers were criticized in the way that they are now, so I think it sort of elided that particular conversation. But like, everything you want about the trajectory of American filmmaking in the 1990s can be found in the 1994 Best Picture Race. Well, both of those are, like, I'm sure the Gen X pop, Pulp Fiction set wouldn't have liked to have had this dubbed upon, you know, their, you know, sway over the culture.

But, like, Pulp Fiction versus Forrest Gump, that's monoculture. Those are two monoculture events battling against each other, which you never really see. And, but the thing about Pulp Fiction is, like, it was monoculture in the sense of revolution about it. Like, you know, that was a huge movie. That movie made a shit ton of money, especially for what it was at the time. But, like, the decisive way that it changed everything and people knew that it would change everything and influence everything. Yeah. That's effectively monoculture.

Oh, yeah, for sure. And he goes on to make weirder kind of movies than that. I mean, you could argue that he himself is monoculture. but, like, I don't know if his movies have ever been quite since. Like, Kill Bill is very weird, but I also think Jackie Brown is such an interesting pivot from Pulp Fiction in a way that, like, you could see at the time how it would maybe satisfy nobody in that, like, if you're coming off of Pulp Fiction and then you do this essentially character piece that is still violent, that is still, like, creatively, you know, bounding. it's very minor key in all of those things. And, you know, I think the more human elements that you can talk about in something that's incredibly stylized, like, Kill Bill is there. But, like, that is the top note of Jackie Brown.

Jackie Brown had to happen. Jackie Brown is the absolutely inevitable come down from Pulp Fiction. And it was always... But it's also like you could see how it would annoy people too because, like, getting lost in the weeds of Tarantino dialogue, that movie is two and a half hours of being lost in the weeds of its own dialogue. And that's why it's amazing. But, like, it also brought that, like, that quality, which people might not have,

not everybody might have liked, they're really going to hate it about Jackie Brown. Well, and that's the movie where, if we talk about it in the, you know, context of our friends at blank check, right? That is the movie where he had the blankest of blank checks, where he could really do whatever he wanted. I would say the hateful eight is that. Well, it is also that. I think Tarantino is a movie, a filmmaker with a couple of blank checks, but certainly coming off of Pulp Fiction, I think Tarantino is really powerful in terms of the way he can dictate what his next movie is going to be about. And it ends up being this sort of ode to Pam Greer and the black exploitation movies that he was obviously quite sincerely,

you know, influenced by. I don't think it's a put on for as much as Tarantino's relationship to race is complicated and not always shines a great light on him. But I think he's incredibly sincere about how these black exploitation movies really inspired him and influenced him in his career. And you see that a lot also in the Kill Bill movies. But I think it's interesting that, you know, Jackie Brown is this sort of almost inevitable, you know, minor note in his career, minor note in terms of enthusiasm, not in terms of filmmaking prowess. Because I think you're right. Like so many people say that Jackie Brown is his best, you know, is the best of all of them. And ultimately, it falls flat. And then six years go by, he tries to write Inglorious Bastards. It's not coming.

I've read certain things about how aspects of the bride were originally sort of meant for the Melanie Laurent character in Inglorious Bastards, that that character was going to have more of a sort of vengeance tilt to her that she was essentially going to be going around knocking off Nazis. Killing Nazis left and right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that ends up getting changed because that becomes the story of the bride, the sort of the revenge epic for the bride. And so at some point he puts the Inglorious Bastards script to the side and decides to make Kill Bill. And it's a really interesting, it's definitely a much bigger deal than Jackie Brown was in terms of its influence.

on the monoculture as it stood, and obviously the monoculture is a different thing in 2003 than it was in 94, but it still exists. And Kill Bill was everywhere, as I said. Like, if you were at all into movies in 2003, kill bill was

the thing. And there was still plenty of people who absolutely hated it. Yep. Well, expectation was at the highest possible level. You know what I mean? So, right. And for a movie that effectively, even though, you know, Miramax was an indie label, it was, I believe, their widest release they had ever done, they were effectively making a studio movie, a studio action movie with this. Yeah. Um, you know, it's, you know, playing to the widest possible audience that can get to it. It's kind of amazing that this movie made as much money as it did. Yeah. Um, because even I think by today,

Tarrantino standards. This is an even stranger movie than something like the hateful eight. Sure. Made more money than the hateful eight. A piece of shit. What is his biggest box office success? Pretty sure it's still

in glorious bastards. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. It could be once upon a time in Hollywood, but I think it's in glorious bastards. I think one of the things that sort of communicates the pop culture reach of volume one is all of the

types of awards that it was nominated for. She gets the Golden Globe nomination. You mentioned the BAFTA. But, like, it's a huge presence at the MTV Movie Awards. Won three awards, baby. Which ones? Let it tell the people. It won. Best female performance for Uma Thurman. Best villain for Lucy Liu. We haven't even talked about her yet. We're going to get there. And it won best fight between the two of them. Okay, let's talk about those two words.

It at least should have been nominated as a double nominee in Best Fight because Justice for the Vivicae Fox Fight. 100%. Did I ever tell you about the website I was writing for in 2003 that this was before I had, this was just, what's that? Mr. Skin? Yes. I was, in fact, Mr. Scan. That's the only website that I think existed then. No, it was just this little movie news site that was actually an offshoot. of a professional wrestling fan site.

But they created a movie vertical, and I essentially emailed them, and I was like, can I write for you? This was before I was getting paid. I did the thing that people tell you not to do now. I wrote for free. But it was kind of how I learned to write my own little bullshit for the internet,

and I wrote movie news roundups once a week and was essentially like given free reign to write whatever I want. There was very little oversight. So I was just sort of like putting up. But I did a lot of scouring of cool news and dark horizons and chud. So I remember tracking this movie from sort of stem to stern. And at the end of the year, I was in charge of doing a all-staff awards thing where we all sort of chose our best movies of the year.

and Kill Bill was so far in away the favorite that like supporting actress was like Lucy Lou and Vivica Fox and Shiaki Coriama like it was like it was so like waited towards that like it was and it was like that kind of a movie site right where it was sort of it trafficked in that kind of movie bro which is so funny because I'm like the one sort of like gay guy writing for the movie bro site but

I still have friends from that time, like people who were like the people who I could just be like, you, we'd sort of get it. We get what this place is, but like we're cool with it, kind of a thing. Anyway, so yeah, Lucy Lou was at least properly rewarded by us and MTV. So who's she up against? I'm always, I love looking at the competition at these sort of lower awards. Best villain, she beats out the guy in the leather face mask in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. A movie that exists

only as a really great and scary trailer and then the movie itself is dog shit. That movie exists as a mental image of Mike Vogel's torso wearing a very dirty white tank top. Like that's all I can remember. To be more as a gun and a fur coat

in Charlie's Angels full throw. And we love her for that. Jeffrey Rush in Pirates of the Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl, you best start believing in ghost stories, Chris File, because you're in one. And maybe my favorite.

I still like Lucy the best, but my second favorite of this category, Kiefer Sutherland as voice on phone in phone booth. You see him at the end of the movie, spoiler. Honestly, deserved. Like, he deserved that. He was great.

Phone booth, great movie. I will say, yes. Phone booth is a very good movie. Phone booth. I only get on your case when you're like phone booth top five Colin Farrell performance of all time. And I get a little bit like, okay. You mean me? Because you did give me shit for saying that on mic in a previous episode, listeners will attest.

And guess who is right? Me. I don't think you're right, but it's still a good movie. I like that. That's fine. Best fight. It is nominated against springing down the house between Queen Latifah and Missy Pyle. sure

never saw that movie for Keanu Reeves and a bunch of Hugo Weaving the absolute wrong nomination for that movie like any other scene from Matrix Reloaded

I would support that scene with Neo and a bunch of Agent Smith's is awful I'm guessing that that is the scene it is the scene I remember it

yeah no that that is that scene that's what he was nominated for and it's the exact wrong thing nominate the car chase and the highway that they built out in the desert, which is one of the great action scenes in the Matrix movies. Nominate Monica Baloochie for all the looks she throws at everyone versus... While she's eating the orgasm cake? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Tremendous. Jain the Rock Johnson in the rundown versus something. Sure. And for X2, Hugh Jackman and... The woman who played Lady Death Strike. I only wrote last names in here and I want to get her first name. Yeah, get her whole name. But yeah, it was the fight between Wolverine and Lady Death Strike

where it was like adamantium on adamantium. And she had the fingernails that became the Andamantium Clause. X2 is a good movie. I know it's directed by a terrible person. Monster. But X2 is by far my favorite X-Men movie. The thing is, we can't talk about movies made in 2002 and 2003 without being like, this is made by a monster.

Um, de, de, de, de, de, alas. Are you still looking up? I'm still looking. Sorry, I should have written full names. Kelly Who? Kelly Who, yes. Good fight.

Good scene. Um, good movie. Weirdly, I've been falling asleep to the X-Men movies, which sounds like a damnation, but it, I... No, those movies absolutely could put a person to sleep. I think they suck. The movies that I choose to put on, uh, on my television as I try to sleep have to be a certain level of I have to have seen it enough times where I won't try and stay up and watch it because I like I'm familiar enough that like I know how this goes but also can't

be awful because like I sort of object out of like personal level to like I don't want to just like fall asleep to a bad movie so although I did fall asleep to X-Men Origins Wolverine which is a bad movie but like that was a good one I stayed up long enough to watch Troy Savon as a young Wolverine which is the funniest thing Yes. Yes. It's very funny. You. Yes. Ew.

I know. Little bone claws coming out of his hands. Yes. Before we move on to Lucy Lou. Yes. I want to talk about Daryl Hanna in this movie. We'll talk more about Daryl Hanna next week. Why?

What are we doing next week? What are we talking about? What are you saying? We're talking about what was the stripper movie she did? I don't know. Well, I don't know from the stripper movie. I don't know. No, she did a strip club movie that was released by like Sony

Classics. Amazing. Anyway. What I mean, she's one of the reasons why I'm like, no, you can split this in half because we know that we're going to get back to her in that one scene, which I didn't realize until this time that all of the, like, lines and pockets and such on her white jacket are drawn. Yes.

Yes. Like there's sharpied on there. I didn't realize. I must have never noticed that. It took me a few viewings to get that, but yes, yes, incredible. So fabulous. Also, I'm addicted to a scene where diagetic music becomes non-diagetic or vice versa. And, like, her whistling the twisted nerve theme and then it becomes just the soundtrack is so delicious.

Her look in the nurse's uniform with the eye patch with the red cross on it is so good. The iPch is so fucking cool. Her acting is so funny. You're right in that, like, she's much, much more worth talking about in volume two. I think she's tremendous. She dresses herself as a sexy nurse for no reason other than JBC. If you got it. If you got it, flaun it.

Who told us that? Um, Thurmond. Um, and. Future episode eventually. Future episode eventually. All right. Let's talk about Lucy Lou, who owns the last 45 minutes of this movie. The funniest element of this movie, because especially that monologue,

on the table after she beheads the guy? I don't have committed to memory, but it's like she beheads this guy, and, like, very intensely, she's like, I'm going to speak in English so you know the severity of what I am saying. And then she just gets all sweet. Like, corporate overlord as a joke. If there's any time to disagree with a particular plan of action, I've decided, is tell me so. But allow me to give you up, and I promise to you right here and now, no subject will ever see. Except for the subject of my American and Chinese heritage. And then she's like what?

You have it committed to memory. Bravo for you. The consequence of I take your fucking head. I take your fucking head. I will collect your fucking head. Yeah. Like, it's so good.

If any of you sons of bitches have anything else to say now the fucking time. Please don't use my horrible version of it. Please just sound. So this is post, well, sort of. mid-Charlie's Angels, Lucy Lou, this is post to the first Charlie's Angels pre-the-second one, just pre-the-second one.

She obviously comes to note from Allie McBeal. Were you ever an Allie McBeal person? No, my grandmother was, so I am by osmosis. Was your grandmother, Vonda Shepard? Did she just look very good for her age?

I don't know. Emmy nominee for Allie McBeal, I don't feel like this is disgust enough. Oh, Allie McBeal was an Emmy Magnet for a couple of years there. Absolutely. Yeah. This is also around the time that Samantha Jones became her publicist and got a burkin in her name and then Lucy took it back. Controversial moment in Lucy Lou's very real life.

Yes. Lucy Lou's an interesting actress. She's somebody who I don't always think about because she kind of dips in and out. She's, you know, Lord knows how long she was on. non-elementary with Johnny Lee Miller playing Lady Watson, but a long time. See, this is the thing why, like, I think we as a culture and we as a gay culture have forsaken Lucy Lou, however inadvertently, is because she is on a show that mostly straight people watch, and by that, I mean, our parents. I would say our grandparents even Yeah

Although my grandparents have been dead for quite a while But yes, in general That is a yeah That's a CBS That's a CBSy kind of show But so okay So between the Allie McBeal breakthrough She's in payback

With Mel Gibson She's in Play It to the Bone The boxing movie with Woody Heraldson and Antonio Banderas She's in Shanghai Noon Which is the first of the Owen Wilson, Jackie Chan

comedy, western kung fu movies, Charlie's Angels in 2000. Of course, the exquisitely titled Ballistics X versus Sever, which goes on my pile. I still have to see that, apparently. She is tremendous in

a scene that was rumored at one point to have possibly gone to Britney Spears as Go to Hell Kitty in Chicago. I don't know how far down the road they got to casting Britney Spears in that, but I, I'm happy with it being Lucy Lou instead. It's on her known for. Chicago is on her known for.

Fantastic. Yeah, she never quite, I think Kill Bill, the Kill Bill, or Kill Bill Volume 1, actually, because she's, she's in Volume 2, but not really. Kill Bill, Volume 1 is definitely the apex of her film career. That and Charlie's Angels, sort of that moment right there. I think she's so good in Volume 1. I think her, the way she like sort of, you know, again, just like volume up, volume down, volume up, volume down. The way, the sort of the disdain she has for the bride when she's talking about silly Caucasian girl likes to play with samurai swords and sort of, you know, writing her off as this dilettante and teacher's pet.

Again, you get the sense of what everybody in the Deadly Vipers sort of related to each other as. Obviously, after you watch Volume 2, you can see how much this resentment was from her being this sort of like teacher's pet. She had slept with Bill, and I imagine the other people didn't really care for that. She probably got favorable treatment, yada, yada, yada. and O'Ren has this harrowing origin story that is conveyed in this anime sequence, this like, really, this is again, like, nothing's holding Tarantino back in this movie. He's just like, yeah, full-on anime sequence. That almost certainly would have been one of the things that had to be cut.

You could out, you could see, that is a DVD extra waiting to happen in a one-volume Kill Bill movie. right? He said, I see the Washauskis have done the animatrix. That's your animatrix. I am going to include the animatrix in my movie. Exactly. And that sequence is amazing, too. I mean, like, you can't lose it.

You wouldn't lose it for the world. But I think Lucy Liu, on top of being incredibly funny and just, like, you know, I have a weakness for a woman who slays. I think it also, like, what you're talking about, this dynamic of, like, condescension towards the bride, I think it, her performance is part of why this movie, I think this movie is satisfying as a whole and not a half of a larger story. Yeah. In that, like, the climax of the movie is the fight with Oren. Yeah. And I think the climax of that scene before, you know, O'Rour.

Ren's untimely demise, is that she apologizes to her and then suddenly sees her as an equal. Yes. You see the bride respond to that. And that, like, I think brings it all together. But, like, in that moment, Lucy Lou is also incredible in this performance that also got to be very silly and, you know, volume up, volume down. I will say this, this thought that just occurred to me just now, which is, it's fortunate that... Tarantino owns the rights to these characters, because you can absolutely see a streaming prequel series about the Deadly Vipers, like being pitched to somebody about something, right?

Like, as a, whatever, the Yellowstone universe version of the Kill Bill movies. Yeah, none of the characters in these movies need to exist anywhere outside of... But part of the reason for that is because I... I find them so interesting to think about in that way. Like, it's almost, it's because I find it so fascinating to think about what their dynamics would have been outside of this movie that I never want to know for sure. You know what I mean? I never want to have that taken away from me. But, I mean, like, this is the genius that Tarantino brings to it.

There's so much life there that you can imagine it. And it's like, you know, it gets to be the Tarantino Star Wars. without a billion different Star Wars things, unpacking every little piece until it's all boring. And, like, this movie should never have the type of life where it's like you have spin-offs. All right. It just becomes less interesting.

Chris, we are creeping up on the two-hour mark, and we have a IMDB game still to go. I have an idea. Oh. Rather than go over the, I, the, our imagined time limit and test the patience of our listeners, why don't we next week come back with a whole other episode on Kale Bill, Volume 2? Perhaps we will do that.

Perhaps we'll do that. We're not, you know. We're not promising anything? Are we still being vague? What I'm saying is that our daughter is still alive. It's your baby and she's still alive. bang bang um any last thoughts any last thoughts on volume one okay awardsiness

for this movie because like looking back this movie actually this is one of those movies that benefited from like all of the different guild like art directors and costume designers have contemporary films and perhaps a like kind of banner example for like when I am someone who says that you know contemporary work should be nominated by the Oscars yes this is a perfect example of that I kind of am flabbergasted by the movies that beat it for contemporary film in its respective guilds. Costume Designers Guild awarded contemporary costumes to A Mighty Wind, which is not a bad call.

New Main Street Singers were rocking some duds there, I got to say. I don't hate it. I don't hate it either. I wouldn't have voted for it over this. No, I agree with you. I agree with you. Is there a more iconic single costume in the past 20 years than the bride's yellow track suit? I can't think of one.

It really is. Maybe there is, but it's probably wrong. It really is damning that even in a world where Kel Bill, Volume 1 was not received as a whole in the way that I would have liked to have seen it received. it's kind of so look at the Oscar nominees in costume design that was the year where Return of the King won everything so Nila Dixon and Richard Taylor end up winning costumes for Lord of the Rings

which I don't know if fellowship or two towers had won costumes let's see It would make sense that fellowship did yeah fellowship certainly in 2001 was winning a bunch so actually no

you know why who was nominated in 2001 that was never going to lose Moulin Rouge Catherine Martin doesn't do losing. So actually, Fellowship of the Ring was nominated and Two Towers was not even nominated. So fine. So costumes were Lord of the Rings, even though, obviously, I think Kill Bill costumes are even better.

But the sweeps is a sweep, and that's fine. Girl with a pearl earring. She was a girl. She had a pearl earring. They were like, we like this pearl earring, good costuming. She was a boy. He was a painter. Can I make it any more obvious?

Naila Dixon gets a second nomination this year for The Last Samurai Snoze Master and Commander of the Far Side of the World Great Good costumes, sure Everybody loves it I gotta see that movie again

And decide whether I'm going to be a bitch about that movie Or I will just like shut up and let people enjoy it It's a great movie All right And then Sea Biscuits For those jockeys Those jockeys get in the biscuit

Yeah Kill Bill Come on, come on, guys. I mean, you could also look at categories like Best Makeup. Like, that blood, they didn't pay thousands upon thousands of dollars for gallons of blood for nothing. If Best equals most in some of these tech categories, where were the nominations for Killville, Volume 1? Art Directors Guild gave it a contemporary film nomination. I think this would be a great production, design, art direction, whatever.

it was being called at the time, nomination. Art direction and costume design were the exact same five films, by the way, at the Oscars that year. Return to the King, Girl the Pearl Earing, Last Samurai, Master and Commander, C-Bisket, snooze. Art Directors Guild gave their contemporary film prize to what movie, Mystic River. Why?

I cast a quizzical eyebrow about that. They just put a fucking camera in all of those apartments in Southie. Jesus Christ. All due respect to that movie's art director. I don't mind that movie as much as Some people seem to mind that movie, but still. Most importantly, though. Yeah.

Kill Bill. It wasn't embraced by the Academy, but you know who embraced this movie? The AARP. God bless them. Movies for Grownups nominee in Wait for It. Best movie for grownups who refuse to grow up. A, we need to bring back this. Bring that back.

Bring that back. B, we need to explain what this category means because I don't know what that means. But it was Kill Bill Volume. one was nominated, didn't win, it lost to School of Rock and was also nominated against Finding Nemo. Finding, well, I guess that's the whole, like, adults are going to see a kids animated movie? Now I've seen everything, kind of Pixar thing.

That seems to me, that's a category based in shame is what I'm going to say, and I don't like categories based in shame. I'm glad the AARP maybe grew out of that. I maybe don't want them to bring that category back. I like when they let their freak flag It's good if they bring it back As a way to let their freak flag fly And not as a way to be like

I like this movie But I think this movie is for kids and dumb dumbs So I maybe feel bad that I like this movie I don't know Other Oscar categories though That I would have nominated it in How about editing? How about film editing?

How about Adaparo Adieu? No Best film editing though, I mean... Once again, won by Lord of the Rings, Return of the King. Nominees, City of God, a movie I don't love. Cold Mountain, a movie that...

If there was any editing done in that movie, I would be surprised. Master and Commander of the Farclair of the World and Sea Biscuit. So, I know that's not how editing works. I'm making a joke about it being long and unwieldy. You do kind of wonder, like, it's hard to maybe make a case

for something like Kill Bill or like rally behind something like Kill Bill when it's, you're talking about an Oscar race where it's already a foregone conclusion you know that Lord of the Rings is going to win everything. Sure. It makes total sense to me

that all of the Oscar nominees that year are pretty boring when it's like, well, we know we're giving the Oscar in all of these categories to Lord of the Rings. That's fair. But, you know. boring default logic.

Except, like, there are four other nominees in all these categories. So there's no, there's no real reason that they had to give Cold Mountain and Girl with the Pearl Earing and Last Samurai, all these nominations. Especially when those are some pretty boring movies. I'm saying, shake it up. If you already know who, if you already know, you're going to go have you for Lord of the Rings, shake up the rest of it, I say. Come on.

Give Lucy Lou that supporting actress nomination. Give Lucy Lou that supporting actress nomination. Who didn't need it? You know, who didn't need it? I mean, I love her, but. Marcia Gayharden Um Marcia

You know Okay This is nothing to do with Kill Bill But we've never talked about this on Mike I sent it to you Because I sent it to a million people When we found out where it was Marcia Gayhartton's

House in the Catskills Or guest house in the Catskills That you can That's on Airbnb And in the comments It's like Main House something like main house host may be around to visit or something.

Yes. And it's like... It's literally like Marcia Gay Hardin may drop in for coffee? You may see Marcia Gay Harden on the trail with a glass of wine and a job. Here's what I'll also say. That place was not out of the realm of possibility for you like gathering five friends together to rent for a weekend. And have Marcia Gay Harden maybe drop it. It'd be us and three other gay people with binoculars.

Like, we are armed. No, it would be us, Christina Tucker, and two other gay people, armed and ready for Marcia to make an appearance. All in Lee Krasner, Bob Wigs. And just, just perfectly in character. Yeah, yeah, we're doing it. We're doing it. Marsha Gay. We'll all do a reading of God of Carnage on the lawn.

100% we will. Oh, my God. tremendous. Tremendous. We would invite her over to watch a movie. What movie would we watch with Marcia Gay Hardin? It couldn't be, can't be a Marcia Gay Hardin movie, but what movie do you think she would, like, really appreciate? Probably something like super gay, but like gay activism, like, B.P.M. or Pride. Oh, my God. Let's watch Pride with Marcia Gay Hardin. She would love it. She would

absolutely love it. Oh, my God. What a thrill. Okay. what else do I just want to quickly go through I think we got everything the Vernita fight that'd be about square oh all right just one last thing and we can talk about it next week as well there are a couple shots in this movie where Uma looks so much like

Maya that it's like distracting like obviously like that's how mothers and daughters work like it is genetics yeah it is genetics but you know what I mean like sometimes Like, it's like every time you see an old movie with Ingrid Bergman and you're like, oh, the family resemblance between her and Isabel is so strong. And that's how I feel. The shot when, after she kills Buck in the doorway and she puts on the sunglasses and she just sort of peeks her head out the door and, like, looks around. She looks so much like Maya. It's crazy. Like, it's really something else. I don't know. I'm pro Maya Hawk. I don't know how you feel about Maya Hawk. I'm Maya Hawk neutral. Okay. I think it's because I watch... She has a good scene in Asteroid City, but so does everybody in Asteroids City.

I genuinely have loved her on Stranger Things, I will say. And I know that's not a show that you watch. I know, I know. But I'm just saying, that's where a lot of my appreciation for her comes from. Okay. Why don't you explain the IMDB game to our listeners, new and old? I suppose I shall... Every week... Every week... Every week we end our episodes with the IMDB game,

where we challenge each other with the name of an actor or actress, and we try to guess the top four titles that IMDB says they are most known for. If any of those titles are television, voice-only performances, or non-acting credits, we mention that up front. After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release years as a clue, and if that is not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all of hints. That's the IMDB game. Would you like to give her guess first, my friend?

I'm going to guess first. Oh, okay. insert killbill sirens here I did not go into the Tarantino filmography I did not go into Uma Thurman co-star filmography

I just went through some bills who is the first bill that shows up when you type in Bill to IMDB it is Bill Scarsguard huh okay For you, I have Bill Scarsguard. I thought you were going to give me like Bill Nunn or something like that, and I would have been so, so difficult.

What if I gave you Bill Clinton? Contact. I don't know anything else, but contact. Okay, so Bill Scarsguard, any television? No television. He's so good in Castle Rock is the thing, but no television. Fine. It Chapter 1.

Correct. It chapter 2? Correct. Okay. Um, the only terrifying, murderous clown with DSLs, um... You are going straight to hell. Just saying. Um...

Billy Bill Sarsgarde. What else? Not Sarsgarde. Scarsgarde, right. He is a brother not to Peter, but to Alexander. Oh, gosh, Atomic Blonde? Incorrect. Damn.

Good movie. Yeah, good movie. Oh, he's in the new John Wick. John Wick Chapter 4? Correct. I couldn't. Maybe it's because I haven't seen those movies. I just wrote a review of the television show, which is why it's on my mind.

Got it. Got it. Is he on the TV show? No, but that's why I've been sort of versing myself in the John Wick averse. of late. All right, three out of four for Bill Scars Guard. Is he in, like, Dunkirk? Is Dunkirk, you guess?

Yes. Incorrect. All right. He is not in Dunkirk, though. Should I count that? Yeah, if it were me, I would count that. All right. Your year is 2022.

So last year. So last year. Post Pennywise Post Pennywise Bill Scarsguard Movies from last year Post Pennywise

Same genre Oh horror from last year Yes Yes what were real horror He wasn't in Oh wait Is he in Halloween ends is he in it no it does not appear so okay what we can't talk about it we can't talk about it

I still haven't seen Halloween ends I still haven't seen it it's so fucking stupid maybe I'm shot really well I'm gonna try and revive my 31 horror movies in the month of October thing that I've been that I always try to do and that might be one of them because I do want to pass that book here I'm telling you okay if I if you can find it for me on streaming I will it's on criteria channel. I have to make sure that I subscribe to Criterion channel. But I'm going to because they're adding a bunch of things for October. So yes, I will do that.

Anyway, Bill Scarsgaard in a horror movie from 2022. Was it like a very popular horror movie? Oh, God. Smile? No. It's another mouth-focused movie. There's not some mouth stuff in this movie. He plays the Fisher Price Phone and Skinner Inc.

right? That's the deal. It's 2023. I know. I'm making a joke. What was popular in 2022 horror-wise? God, recent years are the fucking worst. I will say you definitely expect more of him in this movie. Oh, so he's like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, it's barbarian. It is barbarian. He's good in that movie. I like that movie. He's good in that movie.

Justin Long's great in that movie. I don't think that that movie fully works, but I do think that that is a potential, like, classic horror movie. It's a good movie. In terms of, like, this is a movie that people are going to be watching for a long time. It is. I agree with that. I agree with that. All right.

All right. Better at Bill Scarsgard than I thought I was going to do. Okay. For you, I have decided to just give you everything that you want. You bitch so many times about me picking one. that are out of your wheelhouse or whatnot. We're talking about Quentin Tarantino. We're talking about all his great films.

I'm going to give you Pam Greer, star of Jackie Brown. So interesting. Foxy Brown. Yes. Coffee. Yes. Jackie Brown. Yes.

Do you go four for four? And there's got to be something that added. there. Is POMS one of them? No. Not POMs. Oh, I almost got the perfect score. Palms would be very funny. Hmm. Okay, so do I stick with something recent, though?

Or is it one of the older ones? No, I feel like Jackie Brown can't be the most recent thing there. That's just not how the algorithm works. And holy smoke? Not holy smoke, although that's a good guess. Your year is 2001. So you were right that it's not, it's post-Jackie Brown. What was she in in 2001?

So 2001 is, obviously post Jackie Brown she was in some type of genre e horror teen thing but it's not like the faculty

I think disturbing behaviors before then but it seems like she it is definitely that type of movie I'm just trying to remember which one

oh it's Jawbreaker I knew Jawbreaker is definitely what you were thinking of, but that's not her unknown, that's not on her known for. Damn it. Oh, okay. It's what I would have guessed to, though. It's what I would have guessed to, though. No, I think Jobbreaker is like 99.

Okay. Yeah, that's what I was saying. Yeah. Okay. So it's after Jawbreaker. Huh. Yeah. Am I in the right ballpark, though? You are in the right general ballpark. You're right in that it's... Teen movie. it's not teen that's where you went astray but but it's a horror movie it's a horror movie with a very genre friendly director

Wes Craven No Genre Genre but not horror genre no horror genre He's done other movies Outside of horror but he's like a very famous horror director Carpenter Yes

John Carpenter's vampire No, John Carpenter Ghosts of Mars Ghosts of Mars, correct Oh, that's not cool I know. I knew that the last one would be a bad. The Ghosts of Mars cast, though. I've never seen this movie, but it's... Ice Cube. The groatiest cast that I definitely want to see, though,

because it's Ice Cube, Natasha Hensstrich, Pam Greer, Jason Statham, Clea Duvall, Joanna Cassidy, um... Some other people, but Like, that's enough for me, man. Like, give me Joanna Cassidy and Clea Duval in a horror movie, and I'm in. I don't know.

That's an interesting poster. That's the one character is this, like, ghost painted with, like, weird tribal tattoos on his face or whatever, and he's a monster, and he's sort of, like, holding his hands up, like, that around the cast photo. I've never seen it. Maybe I should. All right. Good job. On the Pam Greer. You went three for three very quickly, and then Ghost of Mars was always going to trip you up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, we'll be back next week with another movie. Chris. Let's just tell you. Yeah, we're doing Kill Bill. Well, we're doing Kilboilio. Okay, we haven't mentioned this, but we're doing three Umas in a row because of Burt last. Oh, fuck.

I didn't even think about that. Wow. Accidental three-peat. Yeah. I know. I know. For now, though, that's our episode. If you want more ThisHad Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at this had oscarbuzz.com.

You should also follow us on Twitter at had underscore Oscar underscore Buzz, on Instagram at This Had Oscar Buzz, and on Patreon at patreon.com slash this had Oscar buzz. Joe, where can the listeners find more of you to come and reap their vengeance? Twitter and letterboxed at Joe Reed, read spelled R-E-I-D. I'm also on Twitter and Letterbox at Crispy File. That's F-E-I-L. We would like to thank Taylor Cole for his theme music. Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork.

Dave Gonzalez and Kevin Mevy is for their technical guidance. Please remember to rate, like, and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, wherever else you get your podcast. Five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple Podcast visibility. So tell us our daughter is still alive with a

slew of new five-star reviews. That's all for this week, and we hope you'll be back next week for more buzz and more build. That's well. And that's good. Thank you.