Adventures in My Mind
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Apr 6, 2007
Escape from Big Trouble in the Little Grindhouse
I'm a big Kurt Russell fan. That's right! I said Kurt Russell. So that's why I'm really looking forward to seeing QT's half of Grindhouse, Death Proof, which opens today. Thanks to 3 children, a wife who can only be so accomodating of my love for weird movies, and Robert Rodriquez's clunker opener, Planet Terror, I'll have to wait for the DVD. But it still doesn't dampen my enthusiasm for the cool concept of a double feature and fake trailers (NSFW!) for even more over-the-top movies.
While not a huge fan of Tarantino, I've always appreciated his writing and his unbridled love for genre and cult films. Always a little over the top, the same bravado that spoils his on screen appearances and off screen interviews is the same energy that fuels the best parts of his better films, Resevoir Dogs, (parts of) Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bill, Vol. 2. So you take the good with the bad.
Anywy, back to Kurt Russell ...
First there was Snake Plissken.Then there was Jack Burton.
And now ... there's Stuntman Mike.
The trailers and the reviews suggest that Russell is great as Tarantino's latest iconic character. A skill that these three roles, as well as RJ MacReady in John Carpenter's The Thing and Tombstone's Wyatt Earp, show that Russell has in spaids.
And who else, other than Bruce Campbell in Bubba Ho-Tep, plays a better Elvis?
Russell as a young EP ...And the impeccable Bruce Campbell as a post Vegas EP ...
What's not to love?
I think I love these films and actors like Russell partly as a result of my film school years. We spent so much time studying the masterpieces of American, European, and Asian cinema that movies like this became guilty indulgences that we all watched when we got out of class. The rest I think is from all those years of Chiller Theater. All you Yinzers know what I'm talking about.
0 Comments | Link to this post posted by Teddy 9:53 AM
