New Acquisitions: Grindhouse, Cold Fish
Grindhouse directors: Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez (2007) LD11--785
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Image Courtesy of Dimension Films
Released on this rare DVD set, Grindhouse offers the cinematic experience originally intended by Tarantino and Rodriguez, including the back to back features Planet Terror and Death Proof as well as a host of fake-trailers and snack-bar advertisements all intended to recreate the drive-in cinema experience of the seventies.
Kicking off the double-feature is Robert Rodriguez’s zombie thriller, Planet Terror. Expect plenty of gore, surprising cameo’s (including Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas) and enough action to have one reviewer celebrating the film as “the most fun you’ll have in the cinema all year (Turner, 2007).
Expectations were high for Tarantino’s Death Proof, the director’s tribute to carsploitation films such as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Vanishing Point, and while the audience might not have as much fun with the film as the director did, Death Proof remains a thrilling experience with some spectacular stunt scenes featuring New Zealand’s stuntwoman-extraordinaire Zoe Bell.
The highlight of Grindhouse: fake trailers so ridiculous, so brazen and absurd that many of them have become feature-length films in their own right, including Machete and Hobo with a Shotgun.
Reference: Turner Matthew, ‘Planet Terror’, viewlondon.co.uk/films. 26 Oct. 2007.
Cold Fish director: Sion Sono (2010) LD11-0784
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Image Courtesy of Salient Media
From the director of Suicide Club and Love Exposure, it is no surprise that Sion Sono’s film Cold Fish is a visceral, hysterical and disturbing film. What starts as an innocent exchange between two fish store families quickly descends into madness when it is revealed that one of the families consists of serial killers. Loosely based on the true story of two serial killers in Japan who owned a pet store, the film has been praised for being “not so much a blood-and-guts horror movie, more a danse macabre about social breakdown (Elley, 2010)."
Reference: Elley, Derek, ‘Cold Fish’, filmbiz.asia/reviews/. 10 Sep. 2010.
Fraser Mckissack
Audiovisual LIbrary