Uma Thurman will Kill Bill, but not until Volume 2 in February.

Here's CinemaSource's summary: "An entire wedding party is slaughtered during a dress rehearsal in a rural chapel: the pregnant woman in the blood-splattered wedding dress is Black Mamba, better known as The Bride. The assassin, Bill, and his circle known as The Vipers left The Bride for dead, but unluckily for them she was merely comatose. Four years later, The Bride suddenly awakens from her coma and realizes what has been done to her. She sets off on a ferociously focused mission, setting out to seek revenge on her former master and his deadly squad of assassins. One by one, she kills the various members of the assassin group. She saves Bill for last."

Lucy Liu is fantastic as O-Ren Ishii.

Cast: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Lucy Liu, Daryl Hannah, Vivica A. Fox, Michael Madsen, Michael Parks, his son James Parksm Sonny Chiba, Chiaki Kuriyama, Larry Bishop (son of Joey Bishop), and gorgeous newcomer Julie Dreyfus as Lucy Liu's right hand, Sofie Fatale.

Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Produced by Lawrence Bender. Executive producers: Erica Steinberg, E. Bennett Walsh, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein.

Original Music by RZA. There's also a great use of Al Hirt's version of the "Green Hornet" theme, and Ennio Morricone's "Da uomo a uomo."

Cinematography by Robert Richardson. Film Editing by Sally Menke. Production Design by Yohei Taneda and David Wasco. Art Direction by Daniel Bradford. Set Decoration by Sandy Reynolds-Wasco. Costume Design by Kumiko Ogawa and Catherine Marie Thomas.

The scheduled release date for Kill Bill: Vol. 2 is February 20, 2004.

By the way, I haven't stopped thinking about Kill Bill since I saw it a few days ago. It was such exciting filmmaking. Not exciting like how Die Hard is an exciting action film, but exciting like how filmmaking can, at times, excite you. I mean, it wasn't as good as Jackie Brown, but still fantastic.

From the Castro website:

November 14-20, 2003... SPRING TURNS TO AUTUMN... The Post-War Films of Yasujiro Ozu: Probably the most unknown famous director, Yasujiro Ozu made extraordinary films about the most ordinary events and circumstances. Film scholar Donald Richie observed, "In every Ozu film, the whole world exists in one family. The ends of the earth are no more distant than outside the house." Within these confines Ozu found humor, tragedy, pathos, and redemption in the small gestures and subtle rhythms of everyday life. His influence can be seen in the works of directors as diverse as Andy Warhol, Paul Schrader, Wayne Wang, Jim Jarmusch, and Wim Wenders, who called his work, "a sacred treasure of the cinema." David Thomson calls Ozu, "a vital lesson to American film, and provocation to us to be wise, calm, and more demanding in what we want of our films." This series brings to a our audience the shimmering brilliance of the master's films, available at last in new 35mm prints from Cowboy Pictures. Notes adapted from the Hong Kong Festival program. The complete Ozu series will show at the Pacific Film Archive November 23-December 21. All films in Japanese with English subtitles.

Okay, are we clear there? I've not seen any Ozu films. Until today, that is. November 14, 2003.

Here's the Castro write-ups:

Late Spring (Banshun): 12:00, 4:45, 9:35. The master's personal favorite, Late Spring is about ties of love, devotion and duty that bind and eventually sever the intimate relationship between a widower and his young daughter. Where else can the ordinary gesture of peeling an apple achieve such profound emotional impact? The incomparable Setsuko Hara makes her debut in an Ozu film, the first of many legendary father-daughter pairings with Chishu Ryu. Set against a genteel and civilized background of kimonos, tea ceremonies and Noh plays, it is a story of heartbreaking beauty. Script by Kogo Noda and Ozu. With Chishu Ryu, Setsuko Hara, Haruko Sugimura, and Kuniko Miyake. (1949) 108m.

Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari): 2:10, 7:00. Ozu's best-known film is ranked by the BFI international critics poll as the fifth best film of all time. An elderly couple's trip from their provincial town to visit their children in Tokyo becomes an elegy on the disintegration of the traditional Japanese family. The frosty reception by their own offspring contrasted with the gentle hospitality of their widowed daughter-in-law remains one of the most affecting pieces in all of cinema. Script by Kogo Noda and Ozu. With Chishu Ryu, Setsuko Hara, Haruko Sugimura, Kuniko Miyake, and Nobuo Nakamura (1953) 136m.

First, let me say, that from the latter capsule, I believe I have learned some Japanese: monogatari means story.

Next, let me talk about the films. I saw Late Spring first. I liked it. It was quiet, and it was somewhat touching. It lingered. The camera lingered on people and places. It's black and white. The print was good, but not great, but what ya gonna do? We're lucky to be able to see these at all.

I had heard that Tokyo Story was Ozu's most famous. I was expecting big things. I liked it, but not as much as Late Spring, and I didn't love it. It seemed too long. An elderly couple takes the long train ride to visit their kids and their families in Tokyo. The kids don't really have time for the parents. One daughter in particular is particularly cold throughout. It's not like the kids have anything against the parents, they're just caught up with their own shit.

So, the kids (a son, with his family, a daughter with her family) decide to get rid of the parents by sending them to a spa and passing it off like it's a treat. The parents go, and it's for young people, loud music, late nights, mahjong. The decide to go back and go home.

They also visit a daughter-in-law -- their son was killed in the war. She's different. She's very nice and give them spending money -- even though she's more strapped for cash than the others. Also the few grandchildren are cold to their grandparents. That was the saddest part. A scene on a hill where the old woman is trying to hang out with her 8 (?) year old grandson and he's just too self absorbed and kind of mean to her.    

"What does it matter what you say about people?"

 

Anyway, on the train ride back, the elderly couple stop off to see their youngest son, who's really too busy with work and baseball games and girls or whatever to hang out with them for more than a quarter second.

The elderly couple return home. The children receive telegrams that their mother is "critically" ill. So, they're like, "I guess we should go. We're busy, but she's gonna die, so we'd really look like shits if we don't go. Let's bring mourning clothes too." And they say all this without any emotion.

So they arrive, the mom's already in a coma. She dies, the youngest son arrives late. They all leave as soon as possible -- like the day of the funeral -- except for the daughter-in-law widow. She stays on. Also the old couple have a younger daughter still living at home, she's like 20? She's a school teacher. She complains to the daughter-in-law about how uncaring and rude her siblings were. The daughter-in-law is like, "you know what? That's just life. People move on and grow apart from their parents and have their own families." And then she pretty much said that she had treated her parents that way when they died. At least that's what I got. I felt like she was making it up to her own parents by treating her parents-in-law so kindly.

But the movie seemed too long. It was like two hours and 15 minutes. And it was kind of depressing. Not like depressing-disturbing-make you think-make you change your life, but just kind of drab, like that's how it is. I don't know. Maybe I should change and be nicer to my parents. Right, like I have time for that...

Elf at the Rheem, in, well, Rheem (near Berkeley); Weds; 11-19-03; 5:30pm; $5; Katy sold ticket; Theatre #3. After my girlfriend and I broke up, we tried to remain "friends" this is an example of our emails, and also a review of Elf:

J: We went to see Elf. Have you seen this yet? I've seen it twice. Hilarious.

Ted: I saw Elf and was disappointed; it was only mildly funny, and otherwise forgettable. My sister had really liked it too; maybe I was expecting too much. I like Zooey Deschanel, and Will Ferrell can be hilarious, but it didn't seem like there were enough laughs, and the heartwarming-ness felt phony. Bob Newhart was good

Plus while I was watching it I realized Jimmy Caan (Elf's real-life dad) and Ed Asner (Santa) co-starred together 36 years ago in El Dorado (1967) with John Wayne. Caan was the young gunslinger who the Duke took under his wing; Asner was the villain. It was kind of weird to see them together on screen so many years later.

J: I can't believe that you didn't love Elf. I have now started answering my phone, 'Buddy the elf--what's your favorite color?' Ted, that shit is pure gold! Or 'I like your purple outfit. It's very purplie.'

Ted: There were some funny parts, but I just didn't feel like I was laughing enough. Were you sober when you saw it? Although I saw it like the day after we broke up so I may have been feeling kind of down. I think I was hoping the movie would help pull me out of it.

J: Thanks for the bit of movie triv, which I read and then promptly forgot.

Ted: That sounds about right.

But Katy the ticket-seller was cute.

At imdb.

DECEMBER...