I looked through the things trending on Netflix and chose Kill Bill Vol. 1 to see if I can make something coherent of the bits and pieces that I've already seen.
The opening scene vaguely explains the reason behind the second scene that picks up in saturated primary and secondary colors, Uma wearing an ugly yellow track suit and driving a yellow truck, pulls up to a very green house with children's toys scattered around an unnaturally green lawn. A suburban home that looks like a toy itself.
Uma Thurman gets out, and punches the woman who answers the door. They fight in the fashion of Kung Fu movies. At length a yellow school bus pulls up and the four-year-old daughter comes home and propriety compels the two women to stop fighting. The home owner asks Uma Thurman if she'd like to have a cup of coffee. In the kitchen feigning normalcy the strained dialogue reveals a previous partnership that went bad somehow unexplained. The female homeowner pulls out a box of cereal with a gun inside it, aims the box at Uma Thurman and shoots Uma Thurman but misses. Uma Thurman throws a knife into the woman's chest and kills her. Here is the scene on YouTube with lots of sweary words.
Uma Thurman goes back to her truck pulls out her to-do list, titled death list five, with the name 0-Ren Ishii already marked off, and she crosses through the second name, Vernita Green.
The box of cereal has Kaboom printed on it. I imagine a visual pun as it holds both cereal and a powerful gun.
I was surprised to see the cereal in the movie. It's such an odd brand. I had never seen a box of Kaboom cereal but I read about it through Ace of Spades. I mention all this because Ace wrote the funniest essay that I've ever read, about his parents having Kaboom cereal in their household, a cheap imitation of Apple Jacks, itself a cheap imitation of real cereal, and the lasting psychological damage that embarrassing substitution inflicted upon the young Ace. I have never laughed so hard at anything in my life. The reader becomes Ace's psychologist who can do nothing but laugh at the personality left permanently inured by Kaboom cereal. Here is Ace's 2013 heartfelt confessional essay. Recommended if you haven't read it already. (Do not leave comments on old posts there or you'll be automatically banned. )
5 comments:
Ace can really write, and write well.
I can be banned? Again? Cool!
Can't believe Uma spent years riding that geek Tarantino just to get a part.
I'm not into Hillarywoodland violence and skip most of it.
I enjoyed the Kill Bill series. Revenge porn at its finest.
Uma Thurman has a awfully clean face and not much acting range, now that I notice her.
The Accidental Husband had that too, now that I think back on it. Previously I just thought of her as a generic actress, not having put the look together with a single actress. Colin Firth ruins it a little, if you hate Colin Firth in general. He looks enough like Hugh Grant that you expect something witty and you never get it.
I Spit on Your Grave is revengier, tits and ass, bad guys establish sadism creds first. I II and III as I recall. The target audience obviously includes sadists. They seem to enjoy it too much, and the redneck stereotype is a little annoying. Somehow eastern Europeans turn up in the sequels. I don't remember exactly. I have the feeling she gets back at all of them, for whatever it was.
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo I II III is the best of the revenge ones, standing on its own.
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