(strumming) - Well, opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one. - I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this before. - You know, what was this? (grunting) - I'm kind of mad at you. - And as a reasonable man, I'm willing to do what I was necessary or the peaceful solution is proper. - Welcome to Punching Up, the movie podcast. Where two longstanding friends take a film from the canon that one or both of us have a problem with and discuss, debate, and try and show the world that disagreements don't need to end up with the destruction or dissolution of a 30 plus year friendship. Today, well, so, you know, we'll see. And this episode, I think it's 13 or 14. So, you know, when we get to 20, I think we're starting to really killing each other. Today, we'll be continuing with our first double bill of sorts as we discuss Killian William, aka Kill Bill Volume Two by Quentin Tarantino. So, I'm Damien and this is my co-host, Adam Nightingale. - Would you give us a little synopsis of the film, please, mate? - Yeah, well, I'm not gonna rehash the synopsis of Kill Bill Volume One. You can listen to the previous episode for that if you haven't already, but it just sort of continues. Uma Thurman, aka Brides, quest for revenge against the people that shot up a wedding and put a bullet in her head and left her in a coma. And the pot's quite simple, really. She goes after the last three people on her list. Bud, who's played by Michael Madsen, who's, we find out in this movie, is Bell's dissolute wester of a brother living in a trailer. And Elle Drive, who's played by Daryl Hannah, who's looking for Uma Thurman to kill her before she's killed by her. And Uma Thurman deals with these two, which sets her up for a final confrontation with the master assassin, former lover, and it turns out father of her baby that she thought had been essentially aborted in the coma, but is alive, being raised by Bell, which complicates matters. And the confrontation doesn't quite go according to the genre dictates we've been set up to expect in Kill Bill 1, which is basically like masters of bloodshed. And so it's a talkier film. It's a longer film. It's sort of pallets, very different. It's leaning a bit more into the Western. I forgot to mention, there's a training sequence in the middle where you have a flashback to a tutelage in the martial arts by a hundred year old white lotus, martial arts master called Pay May. And, effectively, that's the plot, which is quite simple, but with Tarantino, in this instance, it's all in the details, it's all in the references, it's all in the mood and the vibe. And have you got any background information on the film? You wanna out on the making of Kill Bill Volume 2? No, honestly, I'll just pass it over to you, mate, as far as all that goes. And then we'll just kick it back and forth. But I don't have any background, I don't think. OK, so there's interesting little nuggets that we didn't cover last week. The film, like I said, it leans more into the sort of spaghetti Western with the deliberately, so with the exception of the sort of Shaw Brothers training montage. I'm just gonna throw these out randomly, not on any kind of chronological order. There's double casting in it. So you've got Gordon Lou, who played Johnny Toe, Lucy Lou's right-hand man, who's killed by Inna Thurman in the first film. They've recast him in this as Pay May. And there's a sort of cinema in joke there, or reference, because Gordon Lou's massive star, who we've talked about briefly last time, of Shaw Brothers. You know, sort of sort of historical martial arts movies. Pay May is a sort of a villain. And he was in with it Clann of the White Lotus, which starred Gordon Lou, but it was Pay May. So Gordon Lou was actually four, the character of Pay May. And now he's playing it. Michael Parks is cast-wise. So Michael Parks plays like Texas Ranger Earl McGraw. And he also plays a pimp that-- I completely forgot this seems in the movie when I re-watched it, he plays a pimp called Esteban, a Mexican pimp that goes as far as the figure, mentor to Belle, and Uma Thurman has a scene with him. And he wasn't supposed to be cast in the movie. But if you watch any interview with Quentin Tarantino talks about Michael Parks, he talks about him with absolute reverence and awe, and says, I think this man is a comparable actor to Hoffman, De Niro. And apparently, during the read-through, the actor that had been originally cast to play Esteban didn't show it, couldn't make it to the read-through. So they just handed the role over to Michael Parks. And Tarantino's seen such a brilliant job just off the cuff. They paid the actor off that was originally supposed to play him, and Michael Parks, not Gordon Parks. Michael Parks got the role. Other things, the flute that David Carradine plays in the movie, it was his own flute, and he'd play it in rehearsals as they were training for the fights. And they incorporate that in. And it is either they either use the same flute or the same type of flute that he plays in his television role that made him a superstar in Kung Fu in the '70s. And Roger Egas did the score, did it for free. The movie reference is obviously full of movie references. It's a patchwork book of movie references. The movie reference that is kind of unusual is Jackass, the movie. Because Quentin Tarantino watched Jackass, the movie, and that informed how he choreographed the fight sequence. The film's only real fight sequence, the fight sequence between Uma Thurman and Daryl Hannah. So they're kind of knockabout, like, sort of nature of that is largely informed. And there were a couple of controversies on the set. One massive one, which we briefly talked about last time. And then a minor one, apparently, you never know when you read in these, like, sort of internet 20 years after, sort of, sort of, apparently, Uma Thurman and Daryl Hannah didn't get on, which kind of helps, I suppose, their characters, because they absolutely despise each other in the movie. And during the press tour, they had to be kept apart. And then there was a controversial incident of the Greek stunt that went wrong, you know? So according to my note, Quentin Tarantino insisted that Uma Thurman did this sort of semi-stunt drive in a Jeep. They were driving on sand, which is, obviously, an unreliable sort of foundation. Her seat wasn't secured. I think she did another take. She didn't want to do. She came-- yeah, there's something went wrong. And she was thrown out the car. And might have hit a tree or hit something and just basically, kind of, you know, kind of knackered aback, which she still suffers injuries from. And it kind of destroyed their relationship, sort of, post the movie coming out. They haven't worked together since. And I think they sort of, perhaps, things up. And this is interesting, because one of the things that fascinates me up, Quentin Tarantino is a kind of environment for this, is his inability to-- he's refusing to apologize for anything in his movie. He doesn't apologize for the content. He wants some really entertaining interviews, where he gets borderline, like, libelous. We're talking about Bruce Lee's family. Well, Bruce Lee's widow, you know, his defense of the Bruce Lee sequences in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood are really entertaining, just for his inability to apologize and where he goes on the attack. This seems to be the one thing that he's expressed regret over, you know, like what he did to be performing. You know, so that's enough info to sort of be getting-- I'll give you something to add on to that. So James Parks, who was Michael Parks's son, plays Edgar McGraw, the son of the officer McGraw in Kill Bill 1. And he also played Edgar McGraw in Death Proof, Machete, and from Dostoel Dawn 2, Texas Blood Money. And he was also in, hopefully, an episode of Deadwood, which I thought was quite-- Brilliant. Pretty cool. Excellent. So yeah, I didn't know they were-- that was a father and son business. And yeah, nice. Brilliant. So you're the one that nominated these two movies. Yeah. Why are we talking about Kill Bill volume 2? Why-- what? Well, just-- God's saying why. Yeah, so why are we talking about Kill Bill 2. Kill Bill 2, I found just painful to watch, mate. I found it absolutely painful. The first one, I only had a problem with a few things along the way. And for the most part, it paces along really well. But Kill Bill 2 was-- so David Carradine, I don't think he has any charisma. I think his acting is all so one note. And he feels like the way that he's decided to act by this time is just to try and be as enigmatic as possible. But actually, it doesn't seem to contain anything dynamic. So all his scenes are just so one note. He seems with Uma Thurman. I just found so tedious. The flute bit, when he was playing the flute and telling the story about, hey, Ma, is that the introduction to pay, Ma, with him? I just found-- you know, he's whistling Dixie. And then he's like telling the story in this very flipping monotone. What's part of time in China? I don't believe around the year 1,0003, head priest of the White Lotus Clan, Pi May was walking down a road contemplating whatever it is that a man of Pi May's infinite powers would contemplate. Your storytelling skills lie just lack. So I found that incredibly boring. I didn't buy Uma Thurman being in love with him at all. Going back to that, or the Michael J. White deleted scene that we both saw, that would at least have added some idea of why she really loved him, or seeing him as something quite special. He's fighting. You don't get to see any of that. I don't believe that. Uma Thurman's doing her best sort of like, oh, I'm in love acting. And he's just doing his best sort of an old man with enigma acting. And yeah, I just didn't buy it. I also didn't buy the fact that he was into comic books, that whole Superman speech that we fast forward into the end now, but we'll flip around. Didn't believe his Superman dialogue is clearly Tarantino's dialogue. It didn't seem to sit within Bill's character, whatever Bill's character was. I think we talked last time about other people who were potentially who Tarantino wanted for. Bill, can you name him? Warren Beatty was the most famous one. At that time, Warren Beatty, was he even acting like? Well, yeah, he's always been like that. He's always had massive loggers in his career. And I don't think he was. I don't think he-- I think that the last thing I actually done was Ballworth, which people don't know about. That was going to say Ballworth, yeah. Yeah, he's going to send me with Simon. Yeah. I'm sure he'd have been more interesting than Caroline, for sure, I think. Well, you probably would have bought him as an older man that could basically pull like a 25-year-old woman or a 30. But yeah, that's essentially who he was for quite a long time. Yeah, yeah, definitely. A womanizer, whereas Caroline, yeah, don't know. He looks great. He's got his face is really good, but there doesn't seem to be anything behind the eyes. It's all just sort of like-- it's all kind of surface, like old wrinkles and just, you know, yeah, him and Keith Carradine-- no, they're not good actors. I don't know. OK, so you're not a fan of the Carradine family. The Carradine boys. The dad, like Henry Fonda and his although Jen Fonda outfit, I feel is a much better actor than Peter Fonda. But yes, John Carradine, John Carradine, that's it, right? Yeah, it's John Carradine, yeah. Yeah, it's John Carradine, so yeah, David's father. Brilliant. Great. The two kids, Napo babies that-- Oh, there's just three. You forget Robert Carradine, star of "Revenge of the Nerds." Yes, I did see his name crop up somewhere. Is he in business? He's also in the log ride as well. I'm sure it was Django that he was in. Django Unchained, he wasn't not the original Django. No, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the town team knows. Yeah, so don't buy them as actors. I'd recently seen Keith Carradine in "The Emperor of the North Pole" that you'd recommended starring was Lee Marvin, right? Lee Marvin, yeah. Yeah, it was-- Ernest Baldwin. Like, love Lee Marvin, love Ernest Baldwin. Don't really buy-- and he was young at the time as well. But he's supposed to be Callow in that, isn't he? Anyway, he's supposed to be like the guy with no substance that just sort of fails every test Lee Marvin sets for him. And I get that, and I get that. But like, where's any sort of humanity? Where's any kind of like the idea that he's not just a robot? I just didn't-- I found him vapid and vacant and similar to although he looks-- it doesn't look as good as-- His brother. Yeah. Anyway, that's my-- I'll pass it back to you. OK, well, we can start with David Carradine. I basically-- because we said just before we start recording, oh, this can be an interesting one, because I think we're both going to be on the same page. We're not, Damien. All of a sudden, you know, the desert heat has-- the back increase, we're back. We've agreed with each other for far too long. And I would have agreed with-- Everything you said. Yeah, no, I would have agreed with everything you said, because that was my memory of Kilgore volume. So I remember loving it. Like, alternative moves. I loved it when I first saw it. Found it, in term of the gonorrhea watch, was actually slightly apprehensive about rewatching it. I absolutely loved it. Everything you hate about it, I loved. So we can start with David Carradine. I remember feeling like, you know, like, David Carradine, I was brilliantly utilized in the first one, because he's off-screen here. You see little flickers of him. And then I thought, oh, you know, he's just-- he waffles. He's got verbal diarrhea. You know, he talks. He's like this phyllis-- That was when you saw it the first time. Sorry. I'm sorry. The second time. This is my third watch of it, I think. That's why it's why it wants it to stand in my wants, I don't know, well, DVD or something. And then I sort of streamed this. I-- and I didn't like the deleted scene, because I thought, well, the guy can't fight. You know, he's too old. He's been carried in that fight by Michael Jay White, who's a phenomenal screen martial artist. Pretty good actor as well. Yeah. I just-- I reversed my opinion on all of it. I thought the fight sequence was really well done. They kind of mask his age, credibly. It's done in a slightly heightened style anyway, like a show movie, because they sort of kind of-- sort of semi-dog Michael Jay White. They-- because he's talking with an English accent, then. You know, as far as having the lips, not quite sing. And so-- and I thought he was really charismatic. I thought he looked amazing. I thought the first time you see him, it's in black and white. And his face looked like an Anton Corbin photograph. You know, it's like my favorite photographer of celebrities, where they highlight all the crags look beautiful. I loved his voice. I bought him as a sort of charismatic guy that could simultaneously run a team of assassins, Paul Uberthurman, and Daryl Hannah. I loved the stuff I thought I would hate. I loved his Superman speech. I loved his little insights into his character, like the things like, which he says, are you going to be nice? You know, he says, well, I've never been nice or my life, but I could be sweet. I loved all of that stuff. I liked their final confrontation. I think because the final confrontation with those who haven't seen it isn't what you think it's going to be. It's not this massive drag-down fight, so quite quickly. And I like that. It's actually fought sitting down. I mean, the picture behind you, for those who eventually see this, is essentially the final confrontation of them. So it takes place sitting down to the usual way to choreograph a fight. He subverts your expectations. But I'm sort of genuinely moved. I believe that they do love each other. But they are committed to destroying each other. And that's an inevitability. I kind of like all of that. I like the perversity of his parenting style, as well. The fact that they're both bringing up the kid who knows that they're both killers and seems quite comfortable with the fact that one of them is going to kill the other one. And I really enjoyed it. And I really like he caradines an actor. I've always liked him. I love him in his Walter Hill stuff. I think he's great in Southern comfort. I think he really anchors the film. I like his other playing. I think he looks magnificent. We talked about Deadwood ever so briefly. One of the reasons I love season one-- it's my favorite television program, more than seasons two and three-- is because-- Yeah, no, what? Well, he's played Buffalo. He's played Buffalo. We're going to go if he's played Buffalo Bell. And nobody gets very complicated. He's played Buffalo Bell in Walter Hill's movie about Wild to Build their Cock. And then Walter Hill directs the first episode of Deadwood. And he plays Wild to Build their Cock in the Walter Hill director. And I think he's great. I think he's very tragic. Very stately. He's got incredible presence. I really liked it. I remember the campaign to get David Carradine an Oscar nomination. I thought that's ridiculous. I looked at it again. I thought, nah, I think he's sort of-- I think he edged it. He should have been nominated. So I've always liked David Carradine. I think his filmography is all over the place. So it's got a fascinating mixture of like Hal Ashby movies, Gossacie movies, Death Race 2000. All four straight to video action films, Kill Bell. I find it quite interesting that he never capitalized on that. Well, I think the last thing I saw him in at the cinema, he played a 100-year-old Chinese criminal called Wang Dong in the first crank movie, Jason Statham. That was it. He could have really parlayed the success of Kill Bell into something better than a man called Wang Dong playing yellow face in a Jason statement movie. I find his life career utterly perverse. I really like him. And I love him in this. So we're just talking about other aspects of the movie. Back at you. OK. So yes, Keith Carradine, Deadwood, yes. Solid comfort. I've not seen that for a long time. It was a film that I enjoyed. So I'd like to revisit that with these eyes and see what I think. And maybe he did get better as he went on. And like you were saying about Peter Fonda in Easy Rider became a better actor. Yeah, but yeah, David Carradine now, not for me. I found him just dull, ultimately. The ride walking across the desert being a nice homage to Harry Fonda's entrance in one spot, Time in the West. Yeah, yeah. That was nice. I was like, OK, cool. I like that. Sid Haig popping up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't know he was in it. Yeah. Yeah, so it's like this. And this was before he kind of, you know, he was-- if you were into black exploitation cinema, you know, it was essentially Tarantino's sort of just gave him an assist, didn't he? Because he's also the judge in Jackie Brown. Correct, yeah. And then this was a few years before, obviously, he had this massive relaunch as a horror star off the back of House of a Thousand Corpses. And then he's kind of in everything. Rob Zombie. Yeah, Rob Zombie keeps him. Keeps him in work. Yeah, does for him what, you know, you can argue, you know, like Quentin Tarantino does for Michael Parks. Because Michael Parks has just launched into brilliant character roles in great cult movies until the day he dies. And directors seem to really like him and reuse him. You know, Kevin Smith loves him. And, you know, Robert Rodriguez uses him. And, you know, he's just phenomenal. I don't really like him as asked about it. It just feels a bit too right. That was a one thing. That was a one kind of bomb note for me. Was Michael Parks's kind of slightly overripe Mexican hemp. It felt a little bit like the worst excesses of Al Pacino and Scarface, you know. But I love him. I think he's great. I enjoyed his, I enjoyed his, his like, sleepy sort of eye acting that he did. Yeah. I just wanted her to kill him. I wanted, I think she's going to kill Bell might as well cut his head off as well. Because he's clearly a vile laugh, you know. Yeah, because you even have that, if there's no doubt. Yeah, yeah, he's like one of his ladies, one of his like whores come up with her, you know, kind of his big lips. He's obviously kind of like marked her. And if she's going to kill everybody else might as well kill him. Yeah. What, what did you, what did you think of, what did you think of Daryl Hannah? Because I think she's one of the best things that felt. I think she's fantastic. She is the best thing in the film. Yeah. She facts. Yeah. She's the best thing in the film by absolute mile. Like, don't get me wrong, we'll talk about Madsen as well. I do like Madsen. Yeah. I want to talk about Madsen. Yeah. She is brilliant, mate. Like every, every, every line she delivers, every facial expression that she, she gives on screen is, is just imbued with something like real. I feel that I don't know much about her character. She is like, they all a little bit cartoon-esque, aren't they? To be fair. But that's the world, isn't it? Well, the world is a cartoon. Of course, of course. Yeah. You can say the same. But you wouldn't, you wouldn't make that as, you wouldn't make well, I might, we might have to, because we have talked about Leo, but, but it's, it's like, yeah, all the characters in Leo, they don't, they're not naturalistic characters, they're, they're kind of exaggerations, aren't they, grotesque, some heightened characters that could only really exist in that world? And it's the same here. Yeah. Because it is a spaghetti western world with, yeah, with, with, with swords, you know, instead of guns. But within that, it just shows how good an actor she is, that she's able to three dimension, dimensionalize a character that is ultimately a cartoon drawing, you know, she, yeah, she's brilliant. Why have we not seen more of her? It's not the same of, like, everyone, they used to, they used to be a time. And I wonder if that, the crest of the wave kind of broke here in terms of it being like, if you, if your career's been in the doldrums, you know, if you've not been an A-lister and you're in a Tarantino movie, it launches you into the A-list because obviously it did with John Travolta, John Travolta's for about 10 years is like an A-list star, you know, you can get movies green-lit. Didn't happen so much with Robert Forster, although when you do pick through his, his, his, his film, there's a lot, there's a lot of respectable stuff right up till the day he dies. I think the last thing he does is, you know, the, the El Camino felt, you know, the kind of the spin off of, for, for Breaking Bad and that's respectable, he's in more Holland Drive, things like that. So he works with good people. But it didn't, it didn't really happen to anybody. I mean, like Michael, Michael Madsen's interested because he obviously gets a, you know, like he's launched the Reservoir Dogs. He has a run of interesting films, don't quite eat like he's in the Bond films as a regular. He famously does wire up rather than whole fiction. So I think he was like the first choice over John Travolta, I think. You never know how much of this is true and how much is, is sort of the mythology that's built around the movies. He did Donnie Brasko, he did some good stuff and then he just drops into like straight to DVD action movies. And then he's, he's lifted, he's rescued again by Kille Bell. And we can talk, we can talk about the merits or demerits of what he does. I like what he does in it. I think he's, I think he's really good. I think he's interesting. I like him as well. I think he's slightly miscast in terms of what he used to be in the film. We'll talk about that in a moment. But then you think, oh, he's, he's, he's had another chance. And then he just goes, you know, you could, you could probably, you know, you could hit the horror channel or something like that. And during the daytime, I'd probably see Michael Madsen turn up in a movie with Eric Roberts, you know, and that seems to be what he does. And then he comes back briefly and hateful a so he seems to be like a whale that goes down into, you know, and then just keeps coming up. You know, he's one of the 10 years and then he just goes back to like, you're straight to straight video on demands, you know. I mean, on the one hand, he, he, if you look at his CV post kill bill, like, he's worked a lot, like that might be the thing, you know. Yeah. You just, you know, he's happy to work. You might be lucky to get in, you know, some, some nice little classics amongst that. But ultimately, he just wants to work probably, you know, like do the same with them, you know, yeah, yeah, but because, because he's good, because he's so good, he's got so much presence. He kind of deserves to be in bigger movies and he just seems to be in them for Tarantino with it. And I think in a way, you know, I, I love what he does. I think I love the kind of, I love the sort of, I love the sort of honor that, you know, the, you know, the fact all the characters in their own way are kind of weirdly honorable. You know, Bill is, you know, you know, she's going to come for him. He's, you know, he's fine with that. He's fine with being killed by her. Um, what, what's fascinating is, is, um, Darlohanna is the only character that really hates Uma Thurman. They all kind of like her. She despises her and the intimations might be because she's just, she's a bait that way. She's a more, more vindictive person. Um, but, you know, there's, there's obviously she's, she's sort of shared a lover in Bell with Uma Thurman and that, that, she can't cope with that. Um, but even she, you know, she has these things like, you know, she's, she's outraged at what, but does to Bell when Bob, Bob tries to kill Uma Thurman by shooting her with rock salt and burying her alive. It's like she deserves better than that, which is arguably why she kills Bob, you know, the way, the way she does. Yeah. Um, but, but, but, but she, she kind of, yeah, I mean, she even says she despises, she despises the bride Uma Thurman's character, but she respects her and, and, and, and, and, and, you know, she respects her enough to want to kill her with a sword. You know, it's like, I want to kill. Um, so she's fascinating, but, but, but it's fascinating because he's, he's a massive contradiction, doesn't he? Because he seems to be the most remorseful of all of them. And he seems to have destroyed himself. You know, he's like, he's like, he's like, there's some kind of like tenants going on that he's, he's, you know, and he's a liar as well. He says he's sold his sword and he has it. Sort, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So he's living in poverty. He's taken crap working in a strip bar, taken absolute abuse from everybody who works there. When you know he could kill them all, bury the bodies, completely get away with it. And then he's, he's waiting for it to turn up effectively to commit suicide. And then he does the most despicable thing in the film to anybody. You know, like he, he, he sort of buries are alive. And he's just the most sadistic thing. And that's a bit of a, that's a bit of a sort of disconnect. It's like, were you lying all the time? Are you really are the levels of like sadism and deviousness that, that you were just masking from everybody else? Or were you doing that as a favor to Daryl Hannah? Because there's a conversation beforehand, isn't there? So he's expecting her. And then he tells Daryl Hannah, which is why she comes to the trailer, you know, like, I've got her, she's suffered. And then Daryl Hannah's really annoyed that he's buried her alive. And, you know, that she doesn't get to kill him. So what do you, what do you think about? Do you think that's like bad writing, complex writing? Um, I think he carries it all well, and he carries all those contradictions. So you kind of buy them all. Um, and you know, and, and I like the fact that he's devious, because he doesn't, he's the only one that doesn't look like he's done any fight training. He's the only one that doesn't look like he can feel the store. And you don't, you don't believe that he was ever. He says, doesn't he say, oh, he's not picked his sword up for like, you know, however many years. Yeah, but when you see him, even go into the church as an assassin, when he's presumably his pea, he still looks like a big guy, bordering on being a little bit toby who hasn't done any martial arts training and is basically kind of brawler ahead, but a dirty fighter and a shooter and not a swordsman. So I think, I think it's interesting to be passing because one guy that really doesn't look like he's turned up fight training. Doesn't look like a convincing samurai, but it does look like a guy who'd live in a trailer with a shotgun and just basically shooting you at the back if he got the chance, you know, or could beat you in a play or part with his hands. Yeah, at his teeth, it is forehead and all of that sort of stuff. So I think it's I think I think that's a testament to Michael Matson. Yes, the dialogue like that the writing is is is interesting and has like intricacies with his character. But it's like at one point, Meagan said that she would prefer it if he was playing Bill. And I thought, yeah, do you know what, like, how Samuel Jackson gets aged up in Django Unchained? You could gray Michael Matson up a little bit. And I thought I think that might have been I might have found that more interesting had he played Bill. I just think he's got more charisma. And yes, he's obviously a bit younger. So yes, I don't know. I like I like Michael Matson. I think he's he's great. It's he's enjoyable to watch as Daryl Hannah was going back to Uma Thurman, not quite sure how good an actor she is. Really, especially when you've got like a lot of those scenes that talkie scenes, here's a question I'm just back back at you. Do you think that it could have like the whole bloody affair could have been re edited to make it flow a bit different or a bit better? I didn't mind the pacing of it. I like the fact that it's in complete contrast to the first one. I like because I was I looked at the length. That was a little bit. Oh, OK, I thought I thought it was longer. I remembered it being longer than it was. I was like, it's two hours, 10 minutes. And then it gets to the point where like she's dispatched two of them. And there's like an hour to go with, oh, my goodness. Like what I don't remember, is it is going to be an hour of just her talking to Bell? And I didn't I didn't I didn't feel I didn't feel like the length of it. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the sort of because she doesn't she wants to kill him, but she doesn't want to kill it. So I think it makes more sense that she's taking the time to get there. And also she knows her daughter's alive at that point. Oh, just a little bit of a fact. Did you know that they weren't originally going to have a daughter live? Yeah, yeah, I did. Yeah. And there's a lovely lovely sort of legacy thing here. And he talked about Nipo babies. I don't think I don't think this this applies because I think her daughter is really, really talented. But it's like it was Tarantino seeing with them and play with with male hawk when she was like, basically. My father and he thought, well, I'm going to let the child live. And I think her scenes with the kid are lovely. You can see that she's a mom, you know, the bit where she just takes the kid. You know, she sort of sets and watches a movie with the kid. I think they watch a show, goodness, that's it, aren't they? And yeah. And yeah, so just the way she sits with the kid, she's playing with the hair, I thought she's a mom, you know, and that was lovely. You know, and that obviously the seed that germinated that idea of Tarantino's mind was just seeing Ooma with Maya, who is now, you know, approaching the age that Ooma Thurman was when she made the film. And is a really good actress, you know. And we'll come back to my possibilities of, you know, later, because I think there's a, you know, you know, I want to talk about, like, you know, like Kelville Volume 3, whether you want to see it. We talk about that now. Would you want to see Kelville Volume 3? No. No. So you want to see like a sort of 50, a 54-year-old Ooma Thurman at the 25-year-old. I'll watch Maya Hawk do her thing, but I'm not really interested in it over Thurman. Like she's not a go-to actor for me that I would like, oh, gets, she gets to play, you know, kiddo again, Beatrix kiddo, you know, and again, like that whole sort of not saying her name, like I just, it didn't really add anything to me. It was just, it almost was just a bit glaringly weird and unnecessary. I agree with you there. It just, it was a bit, but I do like the fact that they're effectively telling you her name because she's called kiddo. Yeah, calling the kiddo again. So it's hiding in plain sight and that is a surname. You know, so I like that. I thought that was quite clever. I would like, I'd tell you one of the reasons I'd like to see Kelville 3 other than I'd just like to see it. They don't kill Darryl, do they? It's left very ambiguous as to whether she lives or not. Because it's interesting. I hope to have the right. And then she's left in it. She's left in a trailer with a snake, a poisonous snake, which you could arguably like tread on and get bitten by. But I would like to see her back in the frame as a blind, like very, very embittered, broken 60 year old L driver, like pitched against a slightly younger Uma Thurman, a daughter and then possibly. Is it Viv, is it Vivia Fox? Vivica, Vivica Fox's daughter, who would be about 25 now coming after Uma Thurman and just like flip it all. Yeah, that would be really interesting. But Tarantino's, he seems quite resolute about 10 films and no more. And so the next one might be his last one and he might keep his word, you know. But yeah, I mean, should we talk about the deleted scene? Have we talked about it enough? Would you want to do is anything more that you wanted to say about the deleted scene? No, it's not that I want to say more about Michael J. White's brilliant, Black Dynamite, he's an actor who I feel. Is, was he in any of the John Wick films? He wasn't. I was thinking like if they did another one or, you know, they're doing lots of spinoffs. He's, he would be brilliant, you know, because they seem to have gone through the roster of great, like straight to video, video on demand action stars, like Mark DeCascos and the guys, I kind of never remember the nine, the two guys from the raid, you know, and, you know, Scott Atkins, obviously, a mama. And why not Michael J. White? He's phenomenal. He's, he's, he's all these guys that don't, yeah, just seem to be slowing down the age and he's just like an astonishing fighter. And probably of all of the kind of martial arts stars, yeah, yes, yeah, straight to video guys, it's probably the best actor to the point where they cast him, you know, they cast him beautifully in non martial arts roles. He's very, very good. He's dragged across concrete. He's, you know, he's the guy that he's led your kills with a pencil in the dark night. Yeah, he's one of the gangsters in that. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then his own stuff. He's like, I haven't seen out Lord Johnny Black, his sort of, his tape for black exploitation by supposed to be very good. But like the little bits I've seen a black dynamite. It's really funny. It's great. Brilliant. And he's an interesting guy. I love hearing him interviewed by, you know, he's, yeah, and he's for everybody, hasn't he? You know, he's for everybody in the movies. Yeah, he's done it all. Yeah. Did you like Gordon Lou? Yes, I did like Gordon Lou, but I liked Gordon Lou anyway. I'd recently watched, I think I said in the last one, the 36 chambers of the Shaolin and also five deadly venom. Vipers, five deadly venom and the five fingers of death. I think it's the five fingers of death, or one of them where the eyeballs come out. So she does that obviously in Kill Bill one. And then she does L, L, Kelly Driver in Kill Bill two as a nice little thing. So, yes, I did enjoy that. I did enjoy him. Because I remember you said before we start recording that there was there was a film they referenced heavily that you wanted to talk about. Before we do that, before we do that, and I just before we leave, kind of almost like leave Kill Bill and go on to kind of the films that it sort of grows out of the compost of if you like, you said some very, very kind of harsh things about David Carradine in Kill Bill outside of Kill Bill. Do you feel the same way about David Carradine? Or do you like him? Give me, I don't, I don't think I know enough of his stuff. Like what I was, yeah, a death race 2000, have you seen that? Yeah, I don't really remember it. I've seen it years ago. It's not a rip, it wasn't. You're the wingster. I think that's his Steve McQueen bullet. Stop motion animated sort of like Aztep monsters. I think he's great at that. Mean Streets, he has that cameo, doesn't he? Is that cameo in? We forget that he was a sensation by the long ride. The long ride is interesting if you don't like the carradines because this could be because it's obviously like my, my, my favorite living filmmaker, like Walter Hill, you obviously, it's his, it's his Western. And I would say that he steals that movie because it's ostensibly about the James brothers and their gang, you know, so you've got the two Keats brothers, Stacey and James Keats playing Frank Jesse James. But the far more interesting guy or the younger guy, they, they, they, they kind of, they teamed up with in reality and front and centre of that is a borderline demonic, incredibly charismatic David Carradine is Cole Younger and he dominates the movie and I would say keep carradines very good as well. He's like quite a more sensitive brother and he's got some lovely scenes. I don't remember if I forget the actress, some lovely sort of scenes of courtship and David Carradine. I mean, if his fighting's a bit ropey, maybe in anything really to do with martial arts, he has one of the best knife fights I've ever seen with James Remar for the Warriors. So so my, I would, I would strongly recommend the long riders. Just, just the kind of, I'm happy to, I'm happy to be proven wrong. Yeah, I'm happy to, to see him be great in something. I think just my, I don't know, at this point in his life, his career, it just seems like he was, you were in a Tarantino film and your phone in it in, for me it was, I felt he was just being found in, but I'm happy to go see the wrong riders. Although in terms of his iconography, the two things that are mentioned in his obituary are Kung Fu and Kilbel, you know, and yeah, and also, and also, I mean, he brings baggage with it, which is why they cast him as well. He brings all that baggage, all that kind of martial arts, like, deserved or not, in terms of actual martial artists, he brings that iconography. Two or down. Okay, so, so, I'll let you set this up, but yeah, there's, there's a, there's a movie, it's, it's sort of referenced in terms of blood spurts in the first one. And they literally watch this film in, in Kilbel, too. So we're going to hand over to you. You want to talk for a little bit about which film. Yes, mate. Yeah. So the film is Shogun Assassin, which is the Americanized version of the first two lone wolf and cub films, I think they just use a little bit of the first one. And then most of the second one in 2020, as COVID was, everybody was locked down. You got in touch with me and let me know that that RZA was doing a commentary for this film, Shogun Assassin, which I'd heard, I'd seen about on the video shelves. I didn't really know too much about it. And so as I watch it, I realized, okay, this is the lone wolf and cop. Now, Lone Wolf and Cub is an old manger, Kazuo Koyiki. We mentioned Lady Snowblood last week, who he'd written that manger as well. Lone Wolf and Cub is about a, an old show, an assassin who used to work for the Shogun, who was disgraced in whatever way they tried to kill him. And he goes on a journey with his son. What do they call it, the journey through how? What is it that the bastard journey through how or something? It's like, well, maybe, maybe call the river the sticks and things like that. Yeah, no, the films are called that. Yeah, but in the films they have. Anyway, yes, there are six, six lone wolf and cub films, all based on the manger. Absolutely brilliant. The lone wolf and cub trope has been used many, many times since then. It was hugely influential on the, what was that? Tom Hanks film? The Rhodes edition. The Rhodes of petition, which that was also a based on a graphic novel. A graphic novel, yeah. The Mandalorian is the same thing. The Last of Us is very much influenced by a lone wolf and cub. Basically, an older dude looking after a younger dude or a dude. But can I, can I add something that you've missed? But the young, he carries on his trade as an assassin and the kid assists him in his job. Yeah. So it's the same fire. Really? Yeah, but the pram that he pushes, the baby car is booby trapped. So it's got like signs, blades. He often, I can't remember if he does this in the film. He certainly does it in one of the manger where he's he's hired to kill a guy. And the guy's a decent guy has on it. So what he does is he throws his son into the assassin. The lone wolf throws his son into a river and basically his son can't swim to his son's drowning, knowing that this guy will dive into save it. And then he dives in after his, his, his mom and then stabs him to death. So he's not, he's not a good man by, by Western, by Western standards. And his son is, he's a toddler and he's complicit in these assassinations and these killings and, you know, and, and that, that's kind of one of the elements that makes it such a sort of fascinating, brilliant, like manger and sees theories and movies. The film series was all made in Japan in the early 70s. Yeah, if you haven't seen them, I would highly recommend, I know our mutual friend Charlie just got onto them and he's watched the all six of them recently bought the criterion collection. Yeah, it's a brilliant collection. It's a wonderful, wonderful film. Worth shelling out for 40 English pounds forwards. I think it was one easily. Yeah. Oh, no, I didn't know. I thought it was a present, but it was like, yeah, it's brilliant. But also they include showing an assassin. And the interesting thing is like showing an assassin should be an aberration, shouldn't they? Because it's essentially, it's, you know, it's taking these two Japanese movies. Um, effectively, you know, like you said, splicing together. But the other thing they do is they completely change the plot. Um, it's dubbed. And then they have the child and this isn't, this isn't in the originals. The child, the rate set in this very eerie sort of monotone. When I was little, my father was famous. He was the greatest samurai in the empire. And he was the showman's decapitator. She cut off the heads of 131 lords. They're so good. They re-scoring the simple guy, Scott, all of these things should be awful. And they, they're brilliant. And it's just one of these like re-tooling of a movie that sort of stands complimentary to and on its own and is in its own way almost as good as the originals. Yeah. Um, yeah. And, and it also, it also sort of, it also provides the backbone. It's one of the best hit pop albums I've ever made. Because it's just this liquid store where, yeah, we're all the way through it. They have the dialogue from the movie kind of punctuate and introduce, like, or most, a lot of tracks up there. And it's just, and the dialogue is great. It's just really, yeah, it's really, yeah, absolutely. And, um, and it's, it's a phenomenal album based on a phenomenal, almost kind of like hybrid bastardization. Awesome. And these things say about like, you know, if you had a burning house, you have the last copy of "Kill Bill" while you two and the last remaining copies of local pickups and Shogun Assassin, you grab, show it, you have to say, yeah, you, you grab, show it, you grab logos. And they're really, they're really interesting. We were talking about like sort of a bud, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe the casting of buds a bit more subtle than I thought of Michael Madsen because the interesting thing about the actual plays low wolf is he's, he's a fat guy, isn't he? He just doesn't look like he's, he's the, he's the most on obvious action. But he's brilliant and he's utterly convincing in the sword fights. He was a judo expert anywhere. He was a, a, a sword, like expert, anyway, I think, you know? And he's phenomenal, you know, yeah. So, so maybe, maybe casting bud is a sort of slightly chunky, you know, kind of, you know, that, that, that might have been, I don't think it was, but that might have been subconsciously, you know, like a nod. Yeah, yeah, a little reference. Like the, the sort of chubby hero of the low wolf and comb movies. And did you know, you didn't know this. Did you, did you know that he's, his brother in real life, that his brother was these, the same acts that plays up for you too. Again, you know, a concurrent, well, I know it existed before and it existed afterwards, but, but this sort of rank concurrently, didn't they? These two, yeah, there was like, there was 30, 25, 30 films or something. Yeah, I've never been able to afford the criteria and collection. I think it's about 19 pounds. I've seen it on five movies. I've seen, I've got a couple of them. I think I've seen two or three. And Blind Fury is a, is a remake of one of the Zatoyuchi. That's Rockahower, yeah. Yeah, Zatoyuchi at the fire festival. So it's, it's not just, it's a direct, it's, it's a direct remake. Ah, okay. Maybe I saw that years ago. Yeah, Blind Fury is fun. It's good fun. I mean, Rockahower, I've just been, uh, thinking that I need to go back to his films. Um, we've been talking for 50 minutes now. So we just sort of like, uh, start to wrap up. But before we do, I just want to say that I, uh, yesterday I did a Tarantino double bill and I watched Inglourious Bastards and Django Unchained. Yeah. Um, and thought they were both brilliant. Yeah. Like fully, like, I don't think, and it wasn't bored at all that I think, you know, any little tiny, uh, problems I might have had with them, uh, were so minute in the, in the vast, uh, I hadn't seen Django Unchained since, I hadn't seen either of them since the cinema, I don't think. Um, and I thought that they both ran, um, brilliantly. They're really well paced. They're really well acted. They're really well, it's almost like he wants to make, um, you know, the best war film ever, the best, you know, martial arts film ever, the best, um, slave film ever. And, uh, and I get it and I, and I really feel that especially with Inglourious Bastards, you get so many wonderful, um, obvious homages to all these films, like in all these films, the homages, all the old, um, uh, the, the genres and the, you know, grindhouse and, uh, and marginalized films, I think, but, uh, and he just does it well. And I wasn't, as, I wasn't as pissed off with his magpie use of music in Inglourious Bastards as I was in Kill Bill volume one. Well, because I think he does something really counter-intuitive as well. I think he's very good at counter-intuitive music because what, the one, the one sort of need or drop I remember from Inglourious Bastards is that they use David Bowie. It's it with Diane Inglourious preparing, like from Cat People, like putting out the fire with gasoline and just to stick that in the middle of a war movie is just inspiring, you know, and for it to work as well. I would, I would, I would echo, like, hateful A. I remember, I watched hateful A. It was one of the best trips to the cinema I'd had because I went to London to watch the roadshow release where it was screened in 70 millimeter. And I think the empire, the, the odian Lester Square, and, you know, with the intermission and added scenes and the overture, and it, oh my goodness, it was brilliant. And then I was nervous about watching it again in case that the Tarantino effect happened by second time I watched it. It's just as good. And we talked last, last week about my backwards and forwards on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the more I watch it, the more I love it. And now it might be, it might be one of my favorites, but Kill Bill too, edged, edged its way up there. I actually watched this. I don't know. I haven't watched this again. This might be a favorite of mine. So we can end on that sour note if you want. Yeah, I definitely don't think I'll be watching Kill Bill too again. Yeah, that's Kill Bill volume two. I suppose if we're looking for sort of threads between episodes, it's quite tenuous. It's like Tarantino wrote, probably like the film that he wrote that is the most beloved is True Romance, isn't it? I would say. The film that he wrote that he didn't direct that he's most, there's like it or not. I know you're not a massive fan of True Romance, think I'm right in saying it. It's well liked. There's a Renaissance post his demise of, yeah, there's a reclamation of Tony Scott as an interesting director and probably front and center of that argument is True Romance. We're not going to do True Romance. We've done too much Tarantino, but it's peppered with outsized cameos, probably the most outrageous of which is Gary Oldman's White Raster. And so we're going to look at Gary Oldman in probably his most iconic movie star role, Bram Stoker's Dracula. And I'm sick of being nice about movies defending the I don't like this. It's just, it doesn't sit well with you, does it, mate? I can clearly see it, it's just shifting and possibly in your seats. I'm going to have a stroke, pretended, paneling all this like, I'm the same mate. I can't, I don't like bagging out people, you know, so let's, and I love Gary Oldman. I'm a big fan of Gary Oldman. Well, I, I, I, I, I have a lot of respect to Gary Oldman. I like him, but I love horror films. I love Dracula films. I have very, very feeling. I'm really looking forward to this one. I am as well. I'm looking forward to be watching it actually. Yeah. So I'm very, very, very big speelied, bordering on hostility towards Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Gary Oldman's Dracula. Gianna Reeves, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins. Anthony Hopkins. With all the actors. Oh, Tony Hopkins as well. Tony Hopkins. Harry Elway's Hamming it up. Yeah, it was a lot of, a lot of, a lot of raw, raw dripping meat, but the ultimate ham, Gary Oldman, who consumed a drink that the ham, the ham blood, many ham actors. The blood. Yeah. I'm sorry to look forward to that. This might be, this might be the one that destroys our friendship. I don't know. We've been tested so far, pretty good. My kill bill was absolutely shit. Invert, but I was currently taking swings at two of your top 10 movies. Yeah. Yeah. And you, and you haven't, you haven't done it back and forth. I remember, I remember the film, one of the films, I don't think Tarantino's ever like publicly, like, acknowledged it as an influence. The whole desert sequence, like reminding me a little bit of, well, yeah, obviously the bit where she's buried live, and she kind of comes out of the grave, seemed lifted straight from Warren Oaks's resurrection in, bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia. I can't remember when, when, when we were... That's a pack in power, isn't it? That's bad. Yeah. When you were doing, when you were doing your pack in power, like exploration. Yeah. When you made me. There was one, there was one of them that I love that you didn't like very much. Was it that one? Was it bringing me the head of Alfredo Garcia? I didn't really. Yeah. I wasn't. It was one of those films that I was, I've been looking forward to for so many years. And yeah, the first viewing of it, I wasn't overly impressed. Like, I just, I don't know, I didn't take to it as much as I would have liked to. If I watched it again, I may change my mind. Yeah. I'm going to say that this may be not a strong enough reaction or a vivid enough memory to kind of have it as a punch. You know, but it's there if you want it, if you want to take a swing, it'd be great. On a saleably brilliant, unequivocable genius that is some... Apart from all the stuff he did when he woke up in the late seventies. I thought the shoot out scene at the end of Jango Unchained was very pack in Paris. Yeah. And I thought he did it really well. I thought it's like a brilliant, brilliant sequence. It is. You know, like the violence happens quick. You know, it's not a drawn out, although the wild bunch was drawn out. I'm going to say that's not pack in Paris though. Pack in Paris is like slow it down. And the blood's very, it's interesting. I mean, because we talked in the kill bill volume one, like he was very specific about what types of blood for different types of films, like this oromety blood, this comfy blood. And the thing I remember last time I watched Jango Unchained was how good the bloods, the bloods, and it was so shy. There's loads of it as well. Really, it's just in terms of blood shed. I think it's probably the bloodiest felt, just in terms of literal blood, all over walls and floors. And he didn't have to make it black and white to pass through the senses, you know? No, he did it. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, well, thank you for that, my friend. I enjoyed that break. Yeah, same thing. Cranking about podcast hacks that we are. Yeah, a bit of housekeeping. If you like it, let other people know, simple as please, trying to get more and more people to to engage with us. And you can always email us at punching up movie podcast at gmail.com. Be nice to get a question or even a suggestion of a film. But we'll be like, no, we both like that film. But if we both hate it, or if one of us hates it, maybe who knows? Yeah. Okay. Well, from sort of slightly sunny Australia, Arrivederci, Chao, Gratcy Millie. Yeah. From like, not, not bad looking, England at the moment. Yeah. In English. Goodbye. Mission at the complete. Truly. [Music]
