Caught a Bear FM sneak of Grindhouse

I caught a sneak preview of Grindhouse last night. It completely rocked! Two of my favorite directors in a double-feature that apart from the odd cell phone and text messaging device, looked like it came right outta the 70's. They put digital cigarette burns and film scratches on the print to give it that 70's porn theater look (not that I'm an expert on that, I was under 10 back then).

First up was the Rodriguez Zombie flick, Planet Terror with the lovely Rose McGowan . Why she split up with Marilyn Manson, I'll never know. I still remember what she wore to the 1998 Video Music Awards. Click here for a refresh (if you can tear yourself away from her cheeky outfit check out Manson's duds too). As you can see from the poster she loses her leg in this movie, ruining her aspirations of becoming a "Stand up comedienne!". Har Har. Michael Bien is also good in this flick (Reese from Terminator ) with his doubly redundant dialog. Almost Every time you see a Zombie Rodriguez shakes the camera, does an overexposure and chops a few frames. It's very creepy and effective. Some of his dialog sounds very Tarintoesque. Speaking of missing frames, just as the sex scene is underway, a reel goes missing, and the action continues with the place they were having sex in suddenly in flames, and a major character revelation having passed without us knowing WTF happened(grin). Pretty funny. I love the part in the hospital with the Zombie zit on the guy's tongue. This film has buckets of gore.
The Iraqi guy from Lost has a part in the film. He plays a scientist with a good business sense. Rumours have surfaced that the reason production of Planet Terror shut down for a month was due to the director sleeping with Rose McGowan prior to divorcing his wife of many years(and mother of his 5 kids). Hmmmmm. That must have been ironic considering some of the casting couch conversations from Tarintino's movie later on.

Tarintino's entry is Death Proof with Kurt Russel and some very interesting ladies. He's a ex-stuntman present day hitman who doesn't use a gun but his 1970's stunt car to assassinate people. The dialog, as always is punchy and snappy. One of my favorite bits of dialog is when Russel (who's gotta be over 60 now) is talking to one of the young hot ladies and she doesn't want to follow through on a bet with him. He pulls out a little book he has and tells her "I put the name of every interesting person I meet in my little book here, but I'm afraid I'm gonna have to file you under Chickenshit..." There's some great scenes with a stunt woman in the latter half of the film that get you on the edge of your seat. I didn't know how you played 'Ship's mast' with a 1970 4 barrel Dodge Charger before this. Looks like fun(not).

Great car chase scenes in this one. I left the parking lot looking to trade paint with someone in my shitbox Honda!(not really).

Sandwiched before each flick are a series of fake trailers for non-existent films. They are a friggin HOOT! I liked Machete with Danny Trejo, who always seems to get killed in every friggin film he does with the exception of the Spy Kids movies. They may actually make this one into a picture. That and Thanksgiving! Werewolf women of the SS was funny, hell they're all a hoot!

At the sneak preview being held at Silver City I got there an hour early and there was already a huge line. At 6:30 they started admitting people and I could hear metal detectors at the head of the line. They had 3 security guys with metal detector wands checking everyone for video cameras and cell phones capable of taking video or pictures. There were no vid cams but they did collect a lot of cell phones which they bagged up. The three guys doing teh scanning had no idea what the F&*k they were doing. I myself set the thing off about 80 zillion times and I almost asked the guy if he wanted me to take my pants off because I was wearing these army type jobbies with zip off pant legs and a zillion pockets each with a zipper, bla bla bla. I found it funny that my Spyderco knife was ok, but if my camera was capable of taking a picture that was a no no. The funny thing was these three guys had absolutly no idea if your phone was a camera phone or not! They pretty much had to take your word for it. There were 100's of different models. They took suspect ones and bagged them. If you lied like me, you got to keep it.

At the end of the night there was a huge line up as people tried to find their correct phone in the 100's of baggies. Gee, don't try to bring a cellphone so you can call your babysitter! No way, you might take a blurryu low-res still of the frickin movie! It was one of the stupidest things I have ever seen at a screening like this. Even when you went out to the restroom they scanned you on the way in. It took an hour, delaying the start by 30 minutes. AS IF! There will be a CAM of this out the day after it hits major release. Why they inconvenience hundreds of people for something that is an extremely rare occurrence I'll never figure out.