To Uma on her 50th Birthday
by Mark Brinkerhoff
The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
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by Mark Brinkerhoff
To this day, I am shocked at how poorly the Kill Bill movies did with AMPAS. Both pictures conquered precursor support, including Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Guild nominations, but failed to secure a single Oscar nod. I consider this duo to be Quentin Tarantino's magnum opus, so the outrage is particularly intense when it comes to its awards run. It's a couple of perfect movies, from Robert Richardson's cinematography to Sally Menke's immaculate editing. However, no matter how great those elements might be, this is the Almost There series, so our focus today is the work of an actress who is only matched by Samuel L. Jackson when it comes to her ability to embody Tarantino's vision onscreen.
She's Uma Thurman and she's never been better than here, playing Beatrix Kiddo aka The Bride aka Black Mamba aka Mommy…
Despite some misgivings regarding this year’s highly unimaginative Best Costume Design line-up, there's much to rejoice about that Oscar category. One of the biggest reasons to celebrate is Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood's deserved nod for Arianne Phillips’ designs. As it happens, this is the first time any Quentin Tarantino film has been nominated for this particular award. Considering the director's ability to create memorable images and influential bits of cinematic iconography, this is somewhat preposterous. Better late than never.
Still, to shed light on the many costume delights of Tarantino's colorful oeuvre, here's a list of the ten best costumes in this director's films…
Did you know that there are said to be 108 pressure points in the human body? That number factors into many martial arts. In popular fiction you only need to hit five of them to cause instantaneous death. Movies reference this occassionally and most famously, to westerners at least, in Kill Bill Vol. 2, when The Bride slays her titular foe with the "five point palm exploding heart technique".
What are five pressure points Oscar voters have hit in their attempts to kill you? One of mine is skipping Uma Thurman for her most iconic role. Hell, I would've been tempted to give her the actual statue for Kill Bill Vol 1 -- that was such a weird Best Actress year (2003) so why not?
by Nathaniel R
Wednesday mornings will now be devoted to Oscar trivia (the crowd cheers... we hope). This morning let's look at some factoids you might have missed in Oscar's on & off again romance with Quentin Tarantino. Like many A-list writer/directors before and presumably after him, Oscar has honored him with a Screenplay Oscar (two, in point of fact) but not a directing Oscar. That's how they often do with the more polarizing and unique talents. Do enough people realize this to make Tarantino and actual threat for the Best Director win for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as his career threatens to wind down? We aren't sure (yet) but for today's particular trivia pursuit, instead we'd like to talk about the categories that Tarantino films compete in versus the ones they don't.
If you smoosh all of Tarantino's 9 films pre-Hollywood together for a rough average, the movie would be nominated for 3 Oscars (Supporting, Screenplay, and Cinematography) and have a 50% chance of winning a single one of those races...