COMING SOON TO A GRINDHOUSE NEAR YOU

UPDATE 1/15/07 3:30 p.m.: Here's a new image of some advertising for Grindhouse designed to make waiting out the three months a long and arduous process.

MISSION TIKI DRIVE-IN! RUBIDOUX DRIVE-IN!
PLEASE TELL ME YOU"LL BE PLAYING THIS MOVIE IN APRIL!




“You all know me. You know what I do for a livin’.” --- Quint (Robert Shaw), Jaws

As far as I’m concerned, the best movie, from frame one to the final fade-out, that Quentin Tarantino has made to date is Jackie Brown (1997), starring Pam Grier, Robert De Niro, Samuel L. Jackson, Bridget Fonda, Chris Tucker and Robert Forster, * who ended up with an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. And I’ve enjoyed and/or respected, with reservations, just about everything else he’s done as a director (I’d rank the rest of Tarantino, in descending order, thusly: Kill Bill Vol. 1, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill Vol. 2 and Reservoir Dogs- I have not seen Four Room). His geeky cool persona on talk shows and in interviews I find extremely annoying, but at least his movies split time between that geek passion and an at least fleeting awareness with the (non-movie-derived) world around him, and the movies he chooses to make movies about are at least ones in which I can share in his enthusiasm.

Robert Rodriguez, on the other hand, seems much more a self-bred legend far too beholden to his own image of cool (oh, how I’d love to burn that hat, bandana and ever-present guitar!), a master of making fast, cheap and out-of-control images that have, to date, signified almost nothing. I loved exactly one of Rodriguez’s films—the first, least self-conscious, most sprightly episode in the increasingly wearying Spy Kids series. I felt a distanced technical admiration for Sin City while at the same time being put off not by the violence so much as the “Look, Ma! I’m being gory and sick, and isn’t it neat?” sensibility behind it, that of a giggling adolescent pushing content to revolting limits just because. El Mariachi has the fire of its young filmmaker boosting it along, even though the legend of its shoestring production has inflated the movie itself far beyond its simple pleasures. And there’s much to like in his contribution to Showtime’s Roger Corman remake series, entitled Roadracers, which provided me with my introduction to Salma Hayek. His From Dusk Till Dawn, Desperado and The Faculty, however, seem simply tiresome and overwrought. And tiresome can’t begin to describe the homegrown wretchedness and pointlessness of Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (we can only hope) and Once Upon a Time in Mexico. (I have not seen The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D-- I have not been that bad, and in any case, I would hope my optometrist would intervene if I ever was delirious enough to consider a viewing.)

All this said, after I saw this trailer for the duo’s upcoming Grindhouse-- a self-conscious attempt to fashion a tribute to the kinds of double features frequently featured in urban grindhouses and drive-ins in the early to mid ‘70s-- I had to admit it: I was in geek orbit. This should not be news to anyone who reads this blog regularly. As Quint said as he introduced his services to the good people of Amity, you all know me. And if the movie—or should I say movies (Tarantino’s Death Proof and Rodriguez’s Planet Terror)-- come anywhere near to fulfilling the giddy, pulse-pounding, absurdly pleasurable potential of that trailer, it may end up being just too much fun—I could easily slip out of geek orbit and head straight up to geek heaven.

And these posters, designed to set the hook deep into the soft palate of someone like me, have not only snagged this shark, but are reeling him hard and fast toward the boat.





Yes, I remember From Dusk Till Dawn and Once Upon a Time In Mexico. And I remember how overbearing Tarantino can be in his seemingly undiscriminating fandom. But, at the risk of a loss of circulation and use of four of my most important digits, I will keep my fingers crossed until early April, in the hopes that Grindhouse can actually deliver the goods and bring back someone of the vile, oily, mean-spirited, hallucinatory jolts and racy, vicious humor that Roger Corman, Crown International Pictures, and other even more low-to-the-ground distributors delivered right on schedule every weekend to the downtown flea pits and dusty drive-ins of the ‘70s of my youth.

At best, Grindhouse might be an answer to a question in Professor Dave Jennings’ Milton-Free, Universe-Expanding Holiday Midterm: “Name a movie that redeems the notion of nostalgia as something more than a bankable commodity.” Maybe it’ll land somewhere in the middle on the scale of expectations, like Sin City, flirting with transcendence as much as submission to the kind of mediocrity that was just as much in evidence at those ‘70s drive-ins as were pieces of pop nirvana like Death Race 2000. And at worst, it’ll be a loud clang of B-movie signifiers and in-jokes, just another annoying wallow by a couple of too-cool-for-planet-Earth filmmakers who have disappeared up the rectums of their own obsessions with trash movie culture. Call me an optimist, but as much as that trailer and these posters make me grin, I’ll keep my guarded hopes up for the moment. Stay tuned.

* If you're in the Los Angeles area this weekend, Robert Forster will be appearing at the North Hollywoodd Library to speak about his career. The actor will be appearing Sunday afternoon, January 14, at 2:00 pm. The admission is free. The North Hollywoodd Library is located at 5211 Tujunga Ave in North Hollywood. Call (818) 766-7185 for more information.