Grindhouse, 3/28.

Variety's Anne Thompson's caught the LA premiere of Grindhouse: "The audience groaned and screamed and ducked in their seats with sheer pleasure throughout the three-hour running time."

Kevin Kelly's got "Grindhouse Junket Reports" at Cinematical: "QT Talks Future Grindhouse Projects, Rose McGowan Talks Black Oasis, Zoe Bell Talks Stunts, Jordan Ladd On Hostel II, More!"

Part 2: "Kurt Russell On Remakes, Rosario Dawson Talks OCT Film, Marley Shelton Gives Deleted Scene Details, More!"

Also, Matt Bradshaw: "My Favorite Grindhouse Movies."

Updated through 4/3.

"After over ten years of denying myself the double features the New Beverly has routinely offered, I finally made it out to La Brea and Beverly Sunday night, March 11, for my first Grindhouse Fest double feature, John Flynn's Rolling Thunder and Charles B Pierce's The Town That Dreaded Sundown," writes Dennis Cozzalio. And he went back on March 25 for Roger Vadim's Pretty Maids All in A Row (1971) and Richard Lerner's Revenge of the Cheerleaders. Much is written about all four.

Lou Lumenick in the New York Post: "If you want to sample Times Square moviegoing in all of its raffish glory from the 1970s and early 1980s, you don't need a time machine - just take the M60 bus out to East Elmhurst, Queens, and be prepared to watch your back." Via Jeffrey Wells.

"So, what are going to be the films to make up the second Grindhouse double feature?" asks Brendon Connelly. He finds a few more dropped hints.

Online browsing tip. Says Rex Sorgatz: "Entertainment Weekly: Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez pick their Top 10 Movie Posters. (See also: Grindhouse cover story.)"

Updates, 3/29: Holding her nose, Nikki Finke points to Josh Horowitz's interview with Eli Roth, who's being encouraged by Tarantino and Rodriguez to turn his Grindhouse trailer for Thanksgiving into an actual feature. Though he feels that "terms like 'torture porn' are offensive," he also rails, "When I go see an R-rated horror movie, I want lots of violence. I want nudity. I want sex and violence mixed together. What's wrong with that? Am I the only one? I don't think so."

For the Los Angeles Times, Mark Olsen talks with Roth, Rob Zombie and Edgar Wright about their trailers. And to Tarantino: "To me the only thing missing from our grind-house movies is they are not quite sleazy enough... These guys brought the sleaze factor. They are coming from a sleaze place that me and Robert did not come from, but that needed to be there for the picture to be proper."

"Last night, at the historic Paramount Theater in downtown Austin, the Austin Film Society hosted the local premiere of this willdly anticipated new film in grand style," blogs Matt Dentler. "The theater was overflowing with attendees, many of the stars made an appearance, and we all sat down for three hours of insane genre film homage. It's fitting, given that almost all of the film was shot and is set, within the wonderful atmosphere of Austin." He's got thoughts on the film ("the entire experience is an assault on the senses") and lots of pix.

Updates, 3/30: Bob and Harvey Weinstein's "career-long investment in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez has yielded the $53 million Grindhouse, a daring gamble that puts the showmen where they like to be: on the edge," writes, once again Anne Thompson in Variety, where she and Sharon Swart also report: "Given Tarantino's Cannes history, it's possible Death Proof could land a competition slot at fest's 60th edition this year."

Blogging for the Guardian, Will Lawrence: "It's a dizzying double bill. Those who worry that Hollywood is devoid of creativity need to see Grindhouse: it's a scintillating sliver of shlock and shock, fired from two smoking barrels."

Jette Kernion and Scott Weinberg were at that Austin premiere for Cinematical: pix and audience reactions galore!

Nick Dawson finds more related online browsing and viewing and posts about it at Filmmaker.

Updates, 3/31: "Casually mean-spirited and purposefully dumb, Tarantino and Rodriguez treat sex and violence like one big cackling joke," writes Jeremiah Kipp at Slant. "It's disaffected and campy, but unlike a lot of those sleazy exploitation movies that stood the test of time, it lacks any real anger, machismo, or even sleaziness. In other words, it's difficult to invest in anything that's happening beyond regarding it as one big gooey lark."

"The double bill is wildly uneven, and you could be excused for cutting the night at the grindhouse short," writes Jürgen Fauth. Rodriguez's Planet Terror is "a four-star riot, bound to claim its place next to other cult zombie classics," while Tarantino's Death Proof "attempts an odd deconstruction of the streamlined seventies car chase film (Vanishing Point is quoted again and again) and fails miserably."

Online viewing tips. At Cinematical, Ryan Stewart points to Eli Roth's faux trailer for Thanksgiving, while, at Twitch, Mack points to five clips.

Updates, 4/1: Paul Cullum has a freewheeling interview with Rose McGowan in the Los Angeles Times.

"A pair of pictures devoted to re-creating their progenitors' grubby aesthetics and visceral kicks, but with vastly greater budgets, higher-end actors and a patina of hipster cool, they part company when it comes to talent and freshness," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy. "On the basis of sheer accuracy, Rodriguez's installment wins points for more exactly replicating the hollow, soul-sucking badness of many low-grade gore films, even as he raids Romero's great Dead cycle of zombie splatter epics. By contrast, Tarantino's road-rage opus so far exceeds almost anything made at the time in terms of dialogue and performance that it seems like a different beast, one half plotless gabfest, the other half insane car chase."

"Understand, I love my junk cinema," writes Vince Keenan. "I’m the guy who recently binged on Coffin Joe movies. But when it comes to true grind house, I may be out of my depth." Do read his reasons for his worry. Or pride, whichever way you cut it.

Reed Tucker and Henry Cabot Beck talk with Rodriguez and Tarantino for the New York Post.

Updates, 4/2: Cindy Pearlman has a fun long talk with Tarantino and Rodriguez for the Chicago Sun-Times. Via Movie City News.

"If you're not familiar with the 60s and 70s exploitation flicks that inspired Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez to make Grindhouse, you might want to take a peek at Stephen Kessler's The Independent to prepare yourself for the three-hours-plus epic opening Friday at theaters and drive-ins everywhere," suggests Joe Leydon. "And if you are a connoisseur of schlock cinema - that is, if you're a guilty-pleasure-seeker who fondly recalls the low-budget, high-concept quickies of New World Pictures, American-International and other now-defunct manufacturers of full-tilt, down-and-dirty B-movies - well then you, too, likely will enjoy Kessler's overlooked and under-rated pastiche."

Online listening tip. Tarantino is a guest on The Treatment.

Another online listening tip. At IFC News, "Alison Willmore and Matt Singer take a look back at what grindhouse theaters were actually like, what kind of movies they showed, and where modern day films like Grindhouse fit in."

Jeffrey M Anderson lays out an interesting comparison at Cinematical: The friendship - and working relationship - between Rodriguez and Tarantino is not unlike that between John Huston and Orson Welles.

Updates, 4/3: "Certainly, there aren't specific requirements mandated to make a movie meet the grindhouse distinction, but it's fairly obvious that Tarantino and Rodriguez are using the moniker to make their standard scare fests appear far more scandalous than they are," argues Bill Gibron at PopMatters.

Movie City News points to Varaces: The Movie Car Chases Database.

DK Holm offers a "Beginner's Guide" to the music of Grindhouse at ScreenGrab.

"As a second-generation exploitation film junkie with a video stock pushing 1500, I have dedicated thousands upon thousands of hours to wading through the worst, vilest, most shoddily produced pieces of motion picture trash in order to find rare garbage that shines." At DVD Panache, Charles Fontaine offers "a back-to-back breakdown of two quintessential Grindhouse genres and summaries of some defining movies: the rare gemstones that shine through the mud."

Brendon Connelly has DVD and Cannes news. Look for the non-surprise of at least one round of double-dipping in July, evidently.

Posted by dwhudson at March 28, 2007 1:08 PM