h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>She tries to retire and get married. Her boss, Bill (a largely unseen David Carradine) is reluctant to let her go and sicks the rest of his employees on her<

Funny, I could have sworn that Bills motives for the killing are largely unrevealed. In fact entirely unrevealed. Save possibly something to to do with the child which is, according to her, his. And still alive.

>Tarantino simply doesn't seem interested in credibility or, indeed, in giving his film any kind of moral grounding or framework whatsoever.<

Rather refreshing, really. Specifically as the whole thing is self evidently an homage to the cinema of the Far east (specifically Hong Komng and Japan, with violence and aesthetics to match)where such niceties as morals are left to the viewers own minds. As for realism? Give me a break. When was the last time you saw a film that even remotely attemted to be realistic. Without being turgid. Seeing the sword in plain view on a jumbo jet just made me smile...

Sickness is in the eye of the beholder. And of course it's worth pointing out that the splitting into two volumes wasn't QT's idea, so a little unfair to accuse him of that. Having said that I'd rather see another three volumes of this than than the turgid, stupid mess of Matrix Redux...

I have a sneaking suspicion that Matrix Revolutions is going to suffer coming after Kill Bill... some of the stuff in the last looked fake enough as 'twas, without coming after the House of Blue Leaves

The trailer for Matrix Revolving Door looked sooo dumb me and my companion (the ubiquitous Spikey) were at it. It looked to be just a collection of tropes and tics from the Wachowski's bag of (limited) tricks.

I'd rather sit though Prince of Thieves again than give them my money...

Did you like the first Matrix?

The last one gave me a headache from all the computer game stuff...
maybe I should just stick to all the Christmas rom-com stuff I'm sure will appear.

I loved the Matrix *on the big screen*, the first time. It pales into stupidity on the haunted fish tank and the second time i watched it, I was singularly unimpressed...

haunted fish box

like that!

Fair comment as far as the 'sickness is in the eye of the beholder' thing goes (although, regarding the 'it's a homage to Oriental cinema and thus excusable' line, surely moral relativism has its limits?), and I suppose on the synopsis thing as well - must have been using something I read in the alarming amount of pre-release hype this film generated.

But the splitting in two thing *was* originally Tarantino's idea. He showed Harvey Weinstein the rough cut and at one point said something along the lines of 'this scene either comes half-way through, or it's the first scene of the second movie'. And Weinstein said 'Two movies! Great!' or words to that effect. (I may have paraphrased unkindly there.)

Oh well, can't win 'em all...

Oops, must check facts before running off at mouth. As far as I can tell the vol 1/vol 2 split thing seems like a 50/50 Tarantino/Weinstein decision - and I didn't say it was Tarantino's fault in the actual article, if you look at it.

As a firm believer that morality is the enemy of art, I have no difficulty with the moral vacuum that inhabits *ALL* of QT's movies.

Frankly, most of my favourite movies suffer from an alarming lack of morality and good taste. Takes all sorts to make the world go round.

'Morality is the enemy of art'? Hmmm. I'll have to think about that.

Well, anyway, the only movies which I know for certain you like are the works of Woo (which, surely, are fairly moral in their own way) and The Wicker Man (which is *about* morality) so I'd better not comment.

And I do like Tarantino's other movies (BTW, I'm not sure Jackie Brown qualifies on the 'moral vacuum' front as - amongst other things - it actually has a bad guy), they don't fetishise their lack of moral grounding and fill the space with other, interesting stuff as opposed to just violence for its own sake.

I've gone off Woo recently, mostly because I think any film maker who shrouds the sort of violence he does with a veneer of morailty is far more exploitative of the audince than someone like Takishi Miike who simply slaps the violence on the screen, slaps his audience round the head with it and leaves them to figure out the mess.

There are bad guys in al of QT's movies. The entire cast of Resevoir Dogs are stone cold killers, who we, the audience are invited to sympathise with in what must be one of the most amoral pieces of cinema since Hitchcock first said 'Here, look, here's this nice murderer. Sympathise with him' in Psycho.

Hmm, I would argue the Reservoir Dogs point about them all being stone cold killers: Mr Orange only shoots the motorist after he's been shot himself, it's an instinctive response and he looks genuinely appalled afterwards. (And Mr Pink only uses his gun in self-defence, but admittedly that's splitting hairs...)

I wouldn't say Woo shrouds his violence with a veneer of morality. Morality is at the heart of all the films of his I've seen (admittedly I'm no expert, but I've seen the famous ones).

Surely that kind of extreme violence must be carefully deployed for a specific artistic purpose? If you just stick violence in for its own sake aren't you just creating gore-porn, on the road to snuff movies?

I think there's a thin line (almost invisible, actually), between saying 'This violence is artistically valid because the characters are behaving in a moral fashion' and just saying 'Here is some violence, figure out the morality, or otherwise, for yourself.'.

And in thos terms I don't think that Woo occupies any particular high ground. The morality of his characters is usually nothing more than revenge dressed in haute cauture. We, the audience, are invited to share in Woo's clear delight of high octane violence and at the same time our consciences are salved by the balm of 'morality'. I find that somewhat more irritating as a member of the audience than Tarantino's attitude of amorality.

Violence has no morality. It's just violence.

I'm not saying there is a morality to violence, nor am I saying it's justified if the characters act morally. I'm saying that you can use violence responsibly in films, in the service of the narrative, or you can just stick violence in there because you like it and think it's in some way cool or funny.

The moment that stuck in my head is at the conclusion of the Uma Vs Crazy 88 battle where you get a reverse angle shot of the huge restaurant about an inch deep in blood, the floor covered with moaning and screaming people many of whom are clutching the bleeding stumps of their recently severed limbs. And it's scripted, shot, and edited to get a laugh. (Which it did.)

Violence may or may not be moral. But that kind of graphic, realistic, gory violence surely shouldn't be funny, should it?

Why not? It made me laugh. A cheap laugh? Maybe, but a genuine one. In fact, thinking about the manageress sliding about on the floor in her kitten heels is making me smile right now, and if you read my journal, you'll find that Uma's line 'Leve your limbs. They belong to me now' was one of the highlights of the movie for me.

I think to talk about the 'responsible use of violence' in a worlsd that gave us 9/11 and a war in Iraq that the papers couldn't report properly because the sight of dead bodies might be distressing for the public is frankly absurd.

So by that logic, a comedy about the zany adventures of a predatory paedophile would be fine by you, as long as the jokes were good enough?

I think that in a world like ours, with such a disposition towards senseless acts of carnage, it's all the more important that violence isn't trivialised. It seems to me that to say otherwise is basically to give up and admit that the world is hopelessly and irretrievably corrupt - which (if you'll forgive me saying so) seems odd coming from someone as vocally committed to social justice as you appear to be.

It is only because the world is irretreivably corrupt that |I can take a contrary stance to the rest of humanity buy complaining about it.

I just can't get overly excited about the difference between Woo's stance on this and tarantino's. I just think that Woo enables us to feel smug while enjoying the violence whilst tarantino actaully forces us to question it.

Which is preferable?

So - and I hope you'll forgive me if this comes across as harsher than I mean it to - your promotion of those causes on your u-space is essentially a pose, you don't feel obliged to actually do anything about them as the situation is irretrievable anyway? It's just an exercise in being contrary for its own sake?

I don't think Tarantino *is* inviting the audience to question the violence, he just seems to me to be shouting 'Whoo! Look at this, isn't it cool?' When questioned about the violence in his movies he's never said 'I'm trying to make a point about morality (or whatever)', instead he's just said (with what seems to me to be commendable honesty) 'I like violence, to me it's just another element you can use in films like slapstick comedy or a dance routine.' Obviously I paraphrase.

I think a lot of people (and obviously I include myself here) read things into Tarantino's movie he didn't necessarily intend (most obviously the gay subtext of Reservoir Dogs, but that's another argument...).

cinema viewing isn't a passive experience - we, the viewers are required to take something of ourselves to the film. It doesn't *matter* what tarantino intended, what matters is what the images and ideas he puts on the screen say *to me*. I despise film makers who preach, no matter how close to my heart their concerns. Ken Loach, for example, is a crashing bore.

The only difference between Woo and tarntino on this issue is that Woo continually states in his articles that he hates violence while inviting his audience to share in his choreographed slaughter. I like them both, but Quentin's honesty appeals to me more. For my money the pornography of violence reached it's pinnacle in the sanitised violence of the A Team, which i think was far more de-sensitizing about violence than any number of movies like 'Kill Bill'.

Leni Reifenstahl intended us to think 'God, them Nazis were great'. I watch her movies and think 'God, Hitler must have had a really small dick'.

As for the point about social issues, well, please note use smiley, to indicate sarcasm.