Posts Tagged ‘Kill Bill’

Carl Kozlowski

BIG HOLLYWOOD INTERVIEW: Quentin Tarantino, a Glorious ‘Basterd’

by Carl Kozlowski

Editor’s Note: After the publication of this piece we made an internal discovery that this interview was not a one-on-one interview between our writer and Quentin Tarantino, and that some of the questions attributed to “Big Hollywood” were asked by other journalists in what was a roundtable interview.
 
Upon discovering this, we temporarily removed the piece from the site until all the facts were known and a proper correction could be added.

Quentin Tarantino exploded on the world film scene in 1992 with “Reservoir Dogs,” a brutally profane yet ingeniously plotted and often funny deconstruction of the heist-film genre. He took things to a whole other level in 1994 with “Pulp Fiction,” reviving the foundering careers of superstars John Travolta and Bruce Willis while launching the star careers of Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman while winning a Best Screenplay Oscar himself. 

tarantino

Yet in the 15 years since that classic, Tarantino hasn’t been able to score quite as big an impact. 1997’s “Jackie Brown” made just $39 million, while the two “Kill Billfilms scored $70 million each yet were considered hyper-violent trifles compared to what he was really capable of. And he really bottomed out with 2007’s “Death Proof,” which made up half of “Grindhouse,” a three-hour homage to the trashy drive-in films of America’s past. Its 21st-century audience didn’t get the joke and largely ignored it, earning just $27 million at the US box office.  (more…)

S.T. Karnick

Legacy: David Carradine and ‘Kung Fu’

by S.T. Karnick

Prolific actor David Carradine, best known for the Kung Fu TV series, the Quentin Tarantino film Kill Bill, and a series of ads for telephone directories, has been found dead in the closet of his hotel room in Thailand, where he was about to begin participation in a new film.

Preliminary reports have the death as a suicide by hanging.

 

The circumstances of his death, however, should not be allowed to overshadow his accomplishments as an actor.

As the son of actor John Carradine, David Carradine both benefited from his Hollywood family connection and rebelled against the industry that employed him. He appeared in a few very good movies, such as Bound for Glory and The Long Riders, and many, many very poor ones. He played a wide variety of roles, with numerous appearances as villains, some of which were quite memorable, even in some very bad films. (more…)