Grindhouse, 4/12.

Ray Pride finds it odd but interesting to be writing about Grindhouse "after its cataclysmic opening weekend, with mooted plans by distributor The Weinstein Company to perhaps pull the $90 million-plus investment from theaters and to release Robert Rodriguez's twangy, frenetic Tex-Mex-neck zombie Planet Terror separately from Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, a sadistic, even nihilist, limb-scattering car-crash demolition derby opus and girl-gawking trash-talk epic (aka 'Gone in 60 Footrubs')."

Indeed: "As last weekend's box-office take for the heavily promoted Grindhouse tumbled in at just $11.6 million, a chilly realization came with the numbers: Not all is well with the Weinstein Company," reports Michael Cieply for the New York Times.

So what happened? At the Reeler, ST VanAirdale assesses "the routines of movie blogs' finest second-guessers," and it's there that you'll see all the main bullet points fired off.

Updated through 4/17.

Joe Leydon fires a few fresh ones himself; more from Ron Gonsalves at Hollywood Bitchslap, where there are new reviews from Jason Whyte and David Cornelius. Plus, Whyte and William Goss ask, "What's wrong with the world today?"

Michael Z Newman has a few suggestions; the ads made it look misogynist, argues Justine_FilmFatale. Geoffrey Macnab finds it "fitting that the film itself is now being sawn through the midriff."

Even so, some are still getting a kick out of the full-evening-ride version. At DVD Panache, for example, Adam Ross sends out thanks to all the filmmakers involved. PopMatters' Bill Gibron finds it "a resplendent reminder of why movies are magic."

But: "Quentin Tarantino is ruining American movies," declares Jonathan Kiefer in the Sacremento News & Review. "If Robert Rodriguez knows what's good for him - and for the art of filmmaking - he'll dissolve his professional partnership with Tarantino immediately. As the writer-directors' tag-teamed double feature Grindhouse makes clear, Tarantino is only dragging Rodriguez down."

And the Philadelphia Weekly's Sean Burns gives it a "C".

Earlier: "4/4" and "3/28."

Updates: It's "an uneven, hyperventilating whole high on its own audacity," writes Jeannette Catsoulis for Reverse Shot. "Essentially a well-executed nostalgia trip with no new detours, Planet Terror scavenges Romero and Fulci with less artistry and more secretions.... The real problem with Death Proof is its absolute failure to engage our emotions; compared to the revenge-driven heroine of the Meir Zarchi classic I Spit on Your Grave, these gals are as expendable as blowup dolls."

"Grindhouse in the long run is a grind indeed," sighs Duncan Shepherd in the San Diego Reader. "Anyone wanting to relive the experience of Golden Age exploitation would do better to see Black Snake Moan. All it lacks are the scratches and a second bill."

"If the recent box office disappointment of Grindhouse itself recalls the miniscule awareness of original grindhouse movies, then the movie has managed a brilliant bout of performance art," suggests Eric Kohn in the New York Press. Come to think of it: "Given their underground prominence in the gritty land of 70s-era Manhattan, it's an unfortunate byproduct of misunderstanding that prevented any real discourse between the exploitation scene and a thriving group of independent experimental filmmakers taking shape in the Downtown area. In the preface to Sleazoid Express: A Mind-Twisting Tour Through the Grindhouse Cinema of Times Square, coauthor Bill Landis recalls a time when Anthology Film Archives founder Jonas Mekas scolded him for leaving a grassroots publication centered on exploitation movies in the lobby of Mekas' theater. Granted, a guy like Mekas might not want to deal with anything titled Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, since the video diarist spent the early years of World War II producing anti-Nazi fliers while hiding out in Lithuania. But the incongruity of two anti-populist movements within an insular film culture is a curious situation that undoubtedly contributed to the further marginalization of grindhouse movies."

"I don't even get paid to make savvy marketing guesses, and I could have told Harvey that them what likes Norbit and Wild Hogs and Blades of Glory may not flock to his movie (especially on Easter weekend)," writes Dennis Cozzalio. "But for heathens and film-savvy fans eager to revisit the heyday of pus-and-blood zombie epics, road-rage-fueled revenge thrillers and directors like Jack Hill, Lucio Fulci and George A Romero, when downtown urban grindhouses and, perhaps even more importantly for my generation (and Tarantino's), drive-ins served as musty, rickety, sticky cathedrals for exhibiting the violent, sleazy, amoral dregs of movie culture, Grindhouse is a 195-minute bliss-out, a giddy orgy of nostalgia, reinvention and, maybe for some, redemption of a kind of movie most often held beneath contempt by critics and even moviegoers."

Matt Zoller Seitz and Keith Uhlich discuss "My Tarantino Problem, and Yours" at the House Next Door. Pack a snack.

"In the end, the failure of Grindhouse isn't really about a failure for 70s B-movie nostlagia - it's a failure for 90s nostalgia." Karina Longworth explains.

"You knew Tarantino's contribution would be good, but who would've expected Rodriguez to match him (and in my humble opinion, one-up him) with a film just as inspired in its lunacy?" wonders Dave Micevic.

Updates, 4/13: Mike Goodridge interviews Tarantino for the Evening Standard.

"Lloyd Kaufman is the legendary NYC-based, B-movie auteur and founder of Troma, an independent film studio that's acquired and distributed thousands of films you've probably never heard of," writes Matthew A Stern, introducing his interview for the New York Press. "With the grindhouse phenom cranking up, it seemed like the perfect time to check in with him and, with his inexhaustible discursiveness and characteristically bawdy wordplay, Kaufman gave a rousing defense of independent cinema, and a critique of the zombie culture that has the mainstream media, who so often ignore him, suddenly scrambling for his phone number."

"[I]n Death Proof, black suited guys are replaced by hotties in baby tees and tight pants, and the results come off as little more than male geek fantasy - gorgeous young women sitting around dropping references to Zatoichi, obscure British rock bands, and 70s cult cinema," notes Filmbrain. "It's unbelievably juvenile, and more than a little pathetic."

"Grindhouse is to grindhouse movies as the AMC Empire 25 is to the Empire: a gussied-up homage that can't compare to the real thing." Looker explains.

Update, 4/14: Nikke Finke looks at the weekend box office numbers so far, and for Grindhouse, they are most definitely not good: "Not only did the Hard R-rated pic place only 11th its second week out, but The Weinstein Co's release dropped a whopping 74% Friday to squeeze out only $1.3 mil from 2,629 venues for a paltry new cume of $16.7 mil. Its per-screen average of just $494 meant the much-hyped movie was playing in near-empty theaters. The most it could make this weekend is $4 mil."

Update, 4/15: Harry Knowles posts a list at AICN: "I personally vouch for each and every one of these fuckers as being righteously kick ass titles of the Grindhouse variety."

Update, 4/16: The Ultimate Dancing Machine sends notes from Tarantino's Grindhouse Festival in LA to Hollywood Bitchslap.

Updates, 4/17: "Like the fabled producers of old, the men who made exploitation the historical hinge for all post-modern cinema, you can't take failure as the final response." In an open letter to the Weinsteins, PopMatters' Bill Gibron outlines a battle plan. After all, "David F Friedman, Dan Sonny, Harry Novak and Bob Cresse didn't make mountains of money - and a ballbusting reputation - by moping around the minute the public rejected their efforts. No, they reinvented these projects, using the standard carnival barker approach of bait and switch to change the perception of their problematic productions."

At ScreenGrab, DK Holm reviews Grindhouse: The Sleaze-filled Saga of an Exploitation Double Feature and Death Proof: A Screenplay, both naturally from Weinstein Books.

"I still miss the old Harvey, who used to confront filmmakers when they were arrogant or indifferent to audience concerns, as he did when he got into a screaming fight with Tarantino in the lobby of a multiplex in Seattle over the filmmaker's refusal to trim Jackie Brown. That was the Harvey who almost single-handedly dragged independent film into the commercial mainstream, championed young film talent and turned the Oscars into a brilliant marketing weapon for his art-house acquisitions." Yes, Los Angeles Times columnist Patrick Goldstein actually misses this guy.

Jeremiah Kipp's "5 for the Day" at the House Next Door: Kurt Russell.

"The project is a worthy one, both economically and from the point of view as a theatre spectator," writes Daniel Kasman. "Watching the package with a large crowd reminded me of the unforgettable live viewing of Guy Maddin's fairly mediocre film Brand Upon the Brain!, where the in-the-moment experience was thrilling and memorable but the content itself is entirely without longevity."

Updates, 4/18: "From frame one I was hyped," writes Rufus at Lucid Screening. "So yeah this review isn't neutral but who the hell cares? It's exploitation."

An online viewing tip from Ed Champion: "Quentin Tarantino vs Jan Wahl."

Posted by dwhudson at April 12, 2007 7:50 AM