Hacker Cinema
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
2003 · Film · 111 min
Part of Kill Bill Collection
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
An assassin is shot by her ruthless employer, Bill, and other members of their assassination circle – but she lives to plot her vengeance.
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43 comments on Hacker News
One should note the officers in the missile silo at the opening of the film:
Michael Madsen of Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill, and John Spencer of L.A. Law and of course, The West Wing.
On the one hand, in interviews, Tarantino always seems to have contrarian opinions about everything. When Kill Bill came out, he’d verbally knock Lee and praise lesser known movie practitioners.
On the other hand, if you watch the movie until the end, it’s obvious that the movie has an unreliable narrator. We all know how the Tate/Labianca murders actually turned out. Not at all like the movie…
Interestingly enough, in the movie Kill Bill: Vol 1, The Bride (Uma Thurman) does a similar thing as the author does to get out of the cataplectic attack: wiggle her big toe.
Great movie. I noticed the character Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill was actually stolen from Battle Royale.
Excuse me for being an old geezer but at least AI bots don't tend to pepper their sentences with frequent utterances of 'like'. I don't normally find this speech mannerism annoying, and I do it myself too, but when 'like' is overused I switch off.
For this reason I don't listen to the otherwise highly entertaining CineFix podcast. Example: the recent episode discussing Kill Bill vol 1 contains 624 utterances in 75 mins (8.3 per min). IANAL I know.
For convenience, I asked ChatGPT to create this table, which summarizes how many times each movie has been mentioned in this conversation so far. It got a few counts wrong (as usual), but it still gives a good sense of the frequency. I hope it can be useful to someone:
| Movie | Number of Mentions | |-------------------------------------------|---------------------| | The Matrix | 9 | | Lord of the Rings Trilogy | 8 | | Pulp Fiction | 8 | | Alien | 7 | | Fight Club | 7 | | Ghostbusters | 6 | | Die Hard | 5 | | Back to the Future | 5 | | Inception | 5 | | Star Wars Trilogy (original) | 5 | | Groundhog Day | 5 | | Terminator 1 & 2 | 5 | | Jurassic Park | 4 | | The Thing | 4 | | The Fifth Element | 4 | | Monty Python and the Holy Grail | 4 | | Ghost in the Shell | 4 | | Interstellar | 4 | | Casablanca | 3 | | Office Space | 3 | | Shawshank Redemption | 3 | | The Godfather Trilogy | 3 | | The Blues Brothers | 3 | | Blade Runner | 3 | | Mad Max: Fury Road | 3 | | Unforgiven | 3 | | Total Recall (1990) | 3 | | The Crow | 3 | | The Princess Bride | 3 | | Akira | 3 | | The Big Lebowski | 3 | | Guardians of the Galaxy | 3 | | American Psycho | 3 | | Indiana Jones Trilogy | 3 | | Kiki’s Delivery Service | 2 | | Ratatouille | 2 | | A Clockwork Orange | 2 | | Mission Impossible (various) | 2 | | Casino Royale | 2 | | Skyfall | 2 | | Ferris Bueller's Day Off | 2 | | Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan | 2 | | Apocalypse Now | 2 | | The Shining | 2 | | Groundhog Day | 2 | | Donnie Darko | 2 | | Dune (2021) | 2 | | Gladiator | 2 | | Predator | 2 | | Seven/Se7en | 2 | | The Dark Knight | 2 | | Snatch | 2 | | Prometheus | 2 | | Schindler’s List | 2 | | The Wolf of Wall Street | 2 | | Dr. Strangelove | 2 | | Silence of the Lambs | 2 | | Kill Bill | 2 | | Real Genius | 2 | | Top Secret! | 2 | | Tenet | 2 | | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy | 2 | | The Adjustment Bureau | 2 | | The Expanse | 2 | | Pulp Fiction | 2 |
The Crow
The Machine (if you like Ex Machina, try it)
Alien
Prometheus
Fight Club
Secretary
Casablanca
Kill Bill
The Emperor's New Groove
Star Wars Episode IV - The original goodness, not the CGI horror-show.
Star Wars: Rogue One
American Beauty
Dredd.
Hellboy (directors).
Blade Runner (theatrical).
Chocolat.
Noise (Australian film, 2007. Love that one).
I try not to watch films too many times in quick succession. The repetition dulls the experience for me.
I downloaded it in the UK.
Here, there's not that much high quality TV content on it that isn't available on the free VOD providers (BBC iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4) for the free-to-air TV channels. If I click on to the 'Series Spotlight' and look at the TV series on offer, they're all strange low budget things ('Bad Girls Club', 'Evil Killers', 'Z Nation'...) and I've not heard of the first 19 of them. The 20th one is a 'Gordon Ramsey: Uncharted' National Geographic show that I have access to through Disney+.
For films the picture is much better in that there are popular ones that if not blockbusters were at least things I'd heard of, but it's still mostly older stuff (Donnie Darko, Kick-Ass, Pacific Rim: Uprising, Twilight, Saw, Kill Bill).
>He’s thinking, say, about the time I watched Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill just because my good friend Lanier recommended it to me. Fair enough; I did watch that movie just because Lanier recommended it to me, and because I trust his judgment. But then it turned out to be one of the worst films of all time,
I was enjoying this article until I found out the author has terrible taste.
Posts like these make me appreciate my parents for not bothering to do any of this nonsense. Absolutely zero care in the slightest for movie/game/music ratings, completely unfiltered internet. The only standard I was held to as a kid was "will she have nightmares if we let her watch it." Honestly there's something to the theory that if you don't make it a thing it stops being a thing.
At any point I could have put on an R rated movie, took one of my mom's cigarettes, or drank one of my dad's beers if I wanted but I didn't. For I'm sure their own amusement they even offered them to me just to watch me go bleh. And why would I -- ewwww those were boring dad movies. Hell I could have found porn but what stopped me wasn't parental controls, it was being 9 and not knowing such a thing existed. I'm still embarrassed that I never realized that that's what was behind the swinging doors at hollywood video until I was at college.
And I still remember the moment that was tossed aside too; I was like 8-9 years old, couldn't sleep and came down stairs because my dad was still up watching a movie. He must been in the bathroom or getting something from the fridge but regardless he wasn't there so I got into his chair, put on his headphones and hit play. Didn't know at the time what I was watching but it was Kill Bill and I thought it was so cool these two badass women were fighting each other. When my dad came back and caught me I was mortified so sure I was gonna get in trouble. But no, he was like, "you think this is cool?" and got our another pair of headphones so we could watch together. Big don't tell your mom I'm letting you stay up late energy. After that my dad was like I know what she's goona like and we watched the entire Alien series together and Alien 2 is still my favorite movie to this day.
Please let me know when the next ML-generated movies are available:
* Kill Bill 3 with Uma Thurman by Quentin Tarantino
* Moon Race saga by James Cameron with 45 y.o. Clint Eastwood
* H.P.Lovecraft screen adaptation by Guillermo del Toro
* Alexander The Great biopic by Peter Jackson in three or five installments
* Master and Margarita by Steven Spielberg with 35 y.o. Angelina Jolie as Margarita
Add your dream movies in replies!
Likewise Kill Bill flouted safety rules and badly injured Uma Thurman. Just a selfish mysogynist move by Quentin Tarantino. Calls it a mistake today but it was a deliberate act (lied to safety supervisor, don't come in today) because he didn't give a shit about a woman actor. I don't watch his movies any more.
>>the strong roles are all played by women
That's propaganda now?
Damn, make sure no one stumbles into a propaganda production like Kill Bill, or such an obviously wake drivel like the original Alien.
>>while men either bumble or act maliciously throughout the movie
Felix is the embodiment of a strong masculine character - looking after his wife and child at every step, with all the typical traits you'd associate with men. And Mirabel's father(Augustin) is literally the only character willing to stand up to the grandmother and her abbhorent treatment of Mirabel. I don't know which version of encanto you've watched, but I don't recall a single male character acting maliciously throughout this entire film - it doesn't happen.
I didn’t care for Hateful Eight or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It’s always hard for me to decide whether Tarantino is exceptional or has the right people around him at the right time (which is also an exceptional quality). He has 4½ excellent movies (counting Kill Bill as 1) and a bunch of OK movies.
You have some minor errors:
* Mulholland Dr. comes up twice (and different files)
* Same for The Fellowship of the Ring (but the file seems the same)
* Again for Se7en
* In general, most of the movie with a ":" in their title are duplicated ("2001: A Space Odyssey", "Kill Bill: Vol.1", "Star Wars: The Force Awakens")
Also, kudos for having some screenplays I've never found around
It's hard not to be cynical or entertain thoughts of Hollywood planning these things in case the show sucks. Because they can clearly do entertainment with diverse casting, non-white people, female leads and succeed:
- Tom Holland Spider-Man does not have a red-head MJ, Flash is Indian and the made up best friend is Filipino. - Domino in the Dead Pool movies is black. NTW doesn't seem to have the same powers and is gay. But I'm not sure what the current character status is. - Everything Everywhere All at Once - Black Panther - Shang Chi - Jordan Peele does good work: Nope, Us, Candy Man, Get Out - The Expanse - Life of Pi - Sandman swaps a bunch of stuff
Appetite for completely foreign media is much slower in English speaking countries but once in a while you get a major break through: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Parasite.
For iconic female leads: Terminator has Sarah Connor, Ripley from Aliens, The Bride from Kill Bill, Charlize Therons character in the last Mad Max movie. Buffy. I apologize for how narrow the genres are here.
I don't think the popular media for anything I just mentioned was too negative (maybe Black Panther?). Is it really just the fans? I bet the overlap of Rings of Power watchers and watchers of the stuff I listed is pretty big ...
edit: formatting
> (1) distorting Chinese and other countries’ culture and society;
Then no sarcasm is allowed which is an important measure to critize a state and its behaviour.
> (2) defaming Chinese military forces, policemen, and judiciary;
Same as for (1), making these groups "untouchable" and "uncritizeable" (if that's a word)
> (3) showcasing obscenity content, either visual or verbal;
Who defines "obscene"? The Ministry of Truth? The president? The government? Your mother?
> (4) showcasing “excessive” images of murder, violence, horror, interrogation, drug-taking, and even gambling;
Is there any movie where such display is not used as a negative example in the end or to explore the boundaries of human downfall? Tony Montana is not really the hero in the end, same goes for Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill or Fight Club.
> (5) advertise negative and decadent values or deliberately exaggerate the negative part of society;
Yeah, please don't put your finger where it hurts, we don't like that so much, someone could have a bad opinion of a broken state.
> (6) advocate religious extremism;
"Being Christian" is enough to be considered extremist in China, I think. Or let's ask the Uigurs how well these rules work for them.
> (7) advocate environmental destruction and animal torture;
Especially China is very good at the practical side of this, really no need to make movies about that. Besides that: Are there any movies where animals are tortured?
> (8) excessively showcase alcohol addiction, smoking, or other bad habits;
Same as with (4).
> (9) demonstrate other illegal content.
Bingo. Wildcard.
> How would simply not putting this kind of negative stuff in our media not benefit us?
You can't simply close your eyes and hope everything will get better by itself.
It references Beatrice Kiddo/ The Bride in the Tarantino films Kill Bill. I'm foregoing the spoiler warning for a movie from 2003, but the same music/red color is in the film whenever she recalls Bill killing her groom and bridal party, and shooting her in the face, leaving her for dead.
In 2022, the Mets were (are?) by far the team most likely to get hit by a pitch. It's a commentary on past trauma.
So I watched John Wick yesterday evening, and unfortunately I didn't like it.
I didn't feel invested in the main character at all, let alone any of the other characters. Was it the camera work, or the editing, or the acting, or the way the story was told? I don't know. In any case as a result I found the whole movie extremely boring.
Someone here mentioned Kill Bill which in a way has a similar story and over-the-top fighting scenes. But I do love Kill Bill (even though I think the fight with the Crazy 88 would have been better if it were not as long). I also found movies like The Transporter or Taken entertaining (which I think are more or less in the same genre as John Wick).
Then what exactly is it that makes me like some of these movies but not John Wick? I'm afraid I don't have the answer to that.
I always thought part of what made Tarantino films so fun is that he’s basically doing the film equivalent of what the audio world calls sampling a lot of the time. Not just doing it but really nailing it. Watch Lady Snowblood and then Kill Bill or Django Unchained back to back. Some shots are basically identical but the context is very different. As in music, (and many other areas I’m sure) a knowledge of the base material really adds to the enjoyment of newer work.
I think yakuza, katana, and bushido have less to do with weeb/anime culture than video games and movies.
I bet yakuza, katana, and bushido could all be picked up watching Kill Bill & playing some Call of Duty set in WW2.
>Notice the color differences. Every movie now takes place as if it were in The Matrix, appearing in deep greens or blues or in gray shades, like the complex colors of the world have been bleached out.
Could this reflect that we as a society have progressed towards a more advanced state? Maybe we have reached a more 'real' reality, a bit like Quentin Tarantino movie characters. As a consequence, the movies that we are watching now look different.
>There's the realer than real universe, alright, and all the characters inhabit that one. But then there's this movie universe. And so From Dusk Till Dawn, Kill Bill, they all take place in this special movie universe. So basically when the characters of Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction, when they go to the movies, Kill Bill is what they go to see. From Dusk Till Dawn is what they see. [1]
[1] https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/news/a41379/quentin-tarantino-movies-connected/
Well if your only experience with the movie was on Comedy Central you might remember it as "Did you ever suck _toe_ for weed?". Comedy Central with the hilariously bad filler lines.
Another classic being the line from Kill Bill: "My names Buck, and I like to [cue robotic, out of cadence word]_party_"
Offtopic, but
> coup-de-gras
Is funny. Gras (pronounced gra) means fat(as in animal fat, not a fat panda), and the real saying is coup de grâce (pronounced gras and means grace). For some weird reason English speakers pronounce coup de grâce improperly, skipping the s sound at the end ( funnily it's usually the French language which cuts sounds), including in movies (like Kill Bill).
>One of those moments where I can clearly delineate the person I was before watching from the person I was after.
I think I know what you mean, for me it was Kill Bill.
Its like something clicked in my head and I have understood what a good movie/story is. And I never just mindlessly watched a movie again.
Well I was talking about a different time, where film distribution (literally) was still done by a lot of players, and movie theaters actually had several owners (before they closed down or got bought by big chains). A time when local theaters didn't have access to the movies for some months as well.
With that said, the majority of people won't forget it, especially with the media budgets used for advertising - promos, appearances, going on the talk shows tours, PR to news/magazines/, etc that's all coming out of the promotion budget. You probably don't realize it but you get in contact with movie promotional material several times before it launches.
Maybe you like just a particular set of movies, so the majority leave you little impression. I have movies that are completely oblivious to me, others that stick and leave me curious, but probably with so much content, noise and distraction it's normal to don't recall it all.
In my youth I recall that The Matrix, LOTR, Kill Bill, Harry Potter, all left me with big anticipation to watch them, for months if not years.
Not sure the source but there is a rule in fiction that everything has a purpose, as opposed to reality. If the camera stops in an axe, you can be sure someone is going to wield it later.
There is no purpose in those alternate realities, other than being a sadistic fantasy, as another comment points to. Tarantino's universe is very familiar to me. It's based on the series B (or worse) films that we watched as teens.
There is an interesting exploration in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill of the obsessive thoughts that old movies raised presenting extreme situations.
I do enjoy goofy details like Uma Thurman in the plane with a katana in the hand luggage. But this is part of the assumed over-the-top tone. Like you said, it's clearly delineated and presented as fiction. The others not so much. A counterfactual historic movie? Now it seems I'm supposed to learn about the plot before watching the movie, or just avoid Tarantino, because I've had enough of that bs.
Dune is a great movie. It's just not completed. The first part, up to the meeting with the fremen,is great. Set, costume design, music are all top notch, and actors are all great. But it would be 6 hours long to fit all the book, and the producers didn't know they can split movies in two parts like "It" or "Kill Bill"
Django meet Kill Bill. Can't wait a good movie on that story.
Name me a non-obscure movie, show, or song and I’ll bet I find it on YouTube.
Sure: Kill Bill (vol 1).
Hwang Jang-Lee is probably better, and has had more of an impact. In Jackie's older films, he plays many of the villains, and he is the one behind the iconic Silver Fox villains like pai mei that Tarantino lifted for Kill Bill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Jang-lee
He is almost always amazing to look at, like in this clip from the Buddha Assasinator, where he plays the main villain in red at the end.
https://youtu.be/ehqAgeewn_o
I think that's an issue that a lot of science-minded folks disagree with.
I happen to think there's a lot about the author's time/mental state/life circumstances that one can find in the words themselves.
A much more light-hearted example is Quentin Tarrantino's insistence that he hasn't watched the Truffaut film 'And the bride wore black' - even though Kill Bill is an eerily similar remake.
Should I believe the author's product or his rationalization?
I actually didn't know this film bombed, I heard about it in my capoeira class - the only other film I ever heard of there was Kill Bill and Fight Club so I figured it was a big hit.
Also I saw it 5 times.
If you enjoyed Black Mirror you have to watch Utopia by Channel 4 in the UK. It's remarkable. Don't search for a synopsis online. It's a sci-fi conspiracy thriller like none you'll have ever seen before.
This is an imdb review that echoed my sentiments:
"First of, I made an account at IMDb solely so that I could submit this review.
Utopia is exceptional. It is a masterpiece. It gets 10\10 from me.
I won't explain what Utopia is about because I don't want to give any possible hint of what is to come, so I'll describe it by comparing it to other things.
Buy the DVD or download the show and your life will get.... stranger. Its rather unsettling how Utopia gets under your skin.
There are a few television shows that share some similarity to Utopia.
For example, if you enjoyed Fringe, the X-Files, then you'll be quite at home with Utopia's paranoid wanderings.
So then you cross the weirdness of Fringe and the paranoia of the X-Files with the violence of Kill Bill and the action\suspense of the Jason Bourne series.
Now cross that already bizarre hybrid with a series of scientific TED Talks given by Joesph Mengale, yes, the Nazi who chopped countless pairs of twins to pieces for the greater good.
I'm not sure which is more bizarre. That description or that incredibly, it works.
However Utopia is much, much darker than any of those. It is the darkest TV series I have ever seen. It also as others have said, feels very real.
A note of warning. When I said Utopia was dark, I was not joking. If you suffer from excessive anxiety or you're squeamish, then do not watch Utopia. Because this TV show is nothing like you've ever seen before, it will affect you. You will be thinking about the themes in it long after you've watched it.
The violence in Utopia isn't actually that strong at all, most of it occurs off the screen. But the intense atmosphere of paranoia which accompanies it makes it brutally real.
On the other hand since the governments of the world have apparently taken a leaf out of Utopia's manuscript lately with regard to surveillance, Utopia could well seem prophetic in a few years time. This really is a TV series for 21st century of flying killer robots and universal surveillance.
The Sopranos changed the way I thought about television. I thought television was for lightweights until I watched The Sopranos. It was like thinking books were mostly about erotica and then coming across Shakespeare and entering a world full of subtle complexities on a bunch of levels.
Utopia is nothing like The Sopranos. But the way it'll change how you view television is very similar.
Just one last thing. There is an American show called "Person of Interest" or something like that which has similar themes. Watch this instead.
In a word: this is intense. "
It also has one of the strangest soundtracks you'll ever hear. Listen to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2f6MfEzhvo
Warning: Do not watch if you are especially prone to paranoia, depression or anxiety.
It's almost a crime to be a writer on RogerEbert.com yet not reference Ebert's classic review of Aliens, so well written that I can still remember his characterization and nod my head at it:
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/aliens-1986
> It's here that my nerves started to fail. "Aliens" is absolutely, painfully and unremittingly intense for at least its last hour. Weaver goes into battle to save her colleagues, herself and the little girl, and the aliens drop from the ceiling, pop up out of the floor and crawl out of the ventilation shafts. (In one of the movie's less plausible moments, one alien even seems to know how to work the elevator buttons.) I have never seen a movie that maintains such a pitch of intensity for so long; it's like being on some kind of hair-raising carnival ride that never stops.
> I don't know how else to describe this: The movie made me feel bad. It filled me with feelings of unease and disquiet and anxiety. I walked outside and I didn't want to talk to anyone. I was drained. I'm not sure "Aliens" is what we mean by entertainment. Yet I have to be accurate about this movie: It is a superb example of filmmaking craft.
It sounds like all of the kids were boys...It'd be interesting to hear the perspective of girls watching it for the first time. Aliens was one of the first action movies I ever watched (and remembered) and I don't remember ever, at all, thinking that it was odd that a woman was in charge (in fact, all of the strong characters are female). Only years later have I realized that Alien and Aliens (never watched the other Alien movies) were unique among blockbuster movies in how the heroine is both the savior and not written as an object of romantic interest (beyond a brief flirtation with Cpl. Hicks)...Unlike movies like "Kill Bill" (which I love), the woman isn't written as an oddity, but a down-to-earth character who happens to be strong and resourceful. I never even thought Sigourney Weaver was beautiful until seeing her in other non-action movies.
Edit: speaking of watching Aliens as a kid...I think it's the movie that caused the longest-running movie-inspired-phobia in my life...hearing something under my bed, and then not wanting to look under my bed for fear of a facehugger attacking me.
OT: This is a throwaway comment in a caption near the end:
> Samus’ underwear are a reference to what Ellen Ripley wears at the end of Alien, but Alien had a reason for it.
A little OT, but I believe Alien and Aliens may be the only popular movies we'll ever get in which the heroine whose gender isn't treated as anything more than a matter of fact. In both movies, she has nearly zero amount of dialogue relating to romantic interest, and acts and is treated as just someone, not specifically a woman, on the crew...which makes sense given that the character was originally written for a man. Even her climactic victories arise organically from her character background, not in a cartoonish let's-see-women-kick-some-ass, as with the Bride in the Kill Bill series...Early on in Aliens, she is shown proficiently operating a Power Loader because of her past work experience, which foreshadows the final confrontation...in fact, it's funny that Ripley is sometimes referred to as a kickass gunslinger, when it is her inept use of flamethrowers and grenades that inadvertently lead to the final fight.
Anyway, this is just a long way of saying that Alien and Aliens are still not only two of the best action/sci-fi movies out there, but perhaps the only times in a major movie in which the woman is so asexual (the closest comparison I can think of is Marge Gunderson in Fargo)...So when that she does appear in her underwear at the end of both movies...it feels logical (she's getting into the cyrochamber), and not as a contrived way to capitalize off the sexiness of the actress. I guess it was "cool" that Samus was revealed to be a woman at the end, but the race to beat the game to see more of her underwear was an unnecessary bit of game design, IMO.
I love the UI and the results! I'd just say that I have two concerns; while the click-to-add nature of the genre list is great, I don't think it's immediately intuitive. Perhaps I'm just part of the old "if you click a link it takes you to a page" demographic, but clicking to add or subtract -- while in my opinion the right mechanic here -- isn't immediately obvious. Making it more clear how this works could save you some traffic by avoiding requests from people who don't immediately understand how the UI works.
The second thing is that, on browsing movies "from Japan," I immediately get Band of Brothers, Kill Bill, Lost in Translation, The Last Samurai, and the latest American reboot of Godzilla. If it's intended to show movies set in a particular country, that's potentially a really cool gimmick, but as it is it seems inaccurate.
Love the site, though! Great work!
> And here’s something no one has stopped to consider: Maybe making movies is too damn expensive. Or rather, far more expensive than it needs to be.
Hmm. I went to the theatre (first time since a long time as the experience feels antiquated and overpriced) with friends to see Sherlock Holmes, and the opening scene perfectly exemplifies the point: for about ten second you see a shot of the cathedral of Strasbourg. Half of it consists of a CGI explosion. I live there, and to produce this shot, they locked this part of the city for one week.
Ten seconds. One week. A whole team plus equipment. To the other side of the world. Seriously.
When seeing the scene I found that downright shocking, especially given the 10€ hole burning my pocket.
By comparison it takes Turn10 Studios three days[0] locally to gather enough information on a track to subsequently work on for one year. That's a full-length, five kilometer track.
I know this is not the same, and various other things come into play, but I just can't help but have an alarm bell ringing when I see movie production costs. See for yourself (budget in $):
- 2001 and Star Wars: 10 million each - Independence Day: 75 million - Transformers: 150 million - Kill Bill 1+2: 50 million - Jurassic Park: 65 million - King Kong: 200 million - Blues Brothers: 30 million - Fast & Furious: 90 million - The Fellowship of the Ring: 100 million - Harry Potter: ~150 million each - Full Metal Jacket: 15 million - Jarhead: 72 million - Apocalypse Now: 30 million - Black Hawk Down: 90 million - Terminator: 6 million - The Matrix: 60 million - Terminator 2: 100 million - Casino Royale: 100 million - Quantum of Solace: 230 million - Sherlock Holmes: 125 million - The Godfather: 6.5 million
I know those $ do not mean the same across time, but still, you can see going from simple to double produces crap (CS vs QoS), or produces twice the length at arguably the same 'quality' (whatever that means) for a significantly smaller cost (LotR vs HP). I don't see either why F&F costs thrice as much as BB, and almost twice as much as KB.
Bottom line: MAFIAA, please produce non-crap and control your costs instead of blaming piracy.
[0] http://forzamotorsport.net/en-us/underthehood4/
Oh get over trying to shame me for "deciding I know what your ethics are" (I did no such thing and wouldn't know where to start). I've never even seen Gilligan's Island, I didn't know it was ropey quality, only that the parent had dismissed it and the entire industry because he thought it lowbrow.
Funded by advertising is a bit different it can still be run like a traditional business, but where is the amateur TV as good as BBC Frozen Planet, or Sherlock, Wallander or QI? And they're just people talking in scenic locations - or in a big room, nothing requiring months of filming and hundreds of people.
Where are the part time charity funded films like Lord of the Rings or The Shawshank Redemption? The Shining? 2001? Kill Bill?
Amateur work can be good, but mostly it's worse than professional work that's the informal definition of the difference between amateur and professional. The formal one being "profession: paid work".
It's not just teachers, but any popular media portrayal of someone being successful: the magical teacher, the genius investor, the miracle comeback kid, etc. You have Billy Madison, The Rookie, Kill Bill, The Karate Kid, all of these films showing someone going from zero to AWESOME in less than two hours. I think it's really just the nature of the media and how we respond to it that we want to believe that these kinds of people exist and surround us -- we want to believe that WE can be that kind of person, too.
I think it is made using a filmstrip of some frames of the movie then streched vertically. I tried to reverse the image to the filmstrip and this is what i've got: the probel is the image is so low res than the frames are recreated with a lot of difficulty. Anyway, i put a actual frame of the movie next to the filmstrip. You can still recognize figures. like body shapes, etc. My try here (Kill Bill vol 1: http://i.imgur.com/ZUUo0.jpg
Yes, loved the Matrix representation myself too. But then again, look at the Kill Bill one. It's not as "yellow" as I associate with the movie (I think the packaging gives me that "yellow feeling"). But then, there is this one lonesome yellow stripe in the moviebarcode for Kill Bill! I thought that captured the movie well on a higher plane (e.g. main character being quite a lone, too).
http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3509777216/kill-bill-vol-1-2003
My only real concern with this is that Disney will decide that the more adult titles don't align with their core values.
Disney is a media company, and will make money any which way they can. They will only put mouse ear logos on family friendly stuff, but the worst that'll happen to Marvel properties is that The Avengers will be a Miramax film. (Miramax, virtually synonymous with hard-R movies like Kill Bill, is also a Disney subsidiary.)