Jesse Peterson

I went to see Grindhouse yesterday. I liked it.

Recently, I have seen Once Upon a Time in Mexico playing on cable. I remember commenting to Nancy, “It has been a long time since Robert Rodriguez has had a movie. I wonder what he is doing?” I wondered, because I remember one of the extras on “Once Upon a Time in Mexico” showed Rodriguez’s house/studio. He showed how he converted part of his house into a studio where he could edit his movies and record music for his movies. Days later I saw the first trailer for “Grindhouse”. As soon as I heard that it was a project with Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, I KNEW that I had to see this movie.

I was not disappointed. I don’t want to give too much away, but as you can see from the trailer, “Grindhouse” is really two movies: “Planet Terror” and “Death Proof”. “Planet Terror”, written and directed by Rodriguez, is full of zombies. You can boil the movie down to a group of people try to escape a horde of zombies by shooting them. The zombies are very squishy. “Death Proof”, written and directed by Tarantino, is a car chase movie. You can boil the movie down to a car with a fast car who chases and is chased.

But, the movies are much more than this. For instance, in “Death Proof”, which in my opinion had better acting in that it had better dialog for actors to work with and more character development, could be broken up into two segments. Each segment has a group of girls cast as antagonists for “Stunt man Mike”, the protagonist of the film. I will call the first group of girls the “Texas” girls and the second group of girls the “Tennessee” girls. There is one segment shot with the Tennessee girls where they are in a diner. The four girls are sitting around a table. The protagonist Mike is sitting at the counter. The camera shoots the four girls from right behind them. It appears to be one take, as the camera swings around behind the girls, following the conversion taking place between them. This shot seems to go one for many minutes. The whole time, the girls are carrying on their conversation, eating, and interacting. Doing this in one take would be very hard for the actors, they have a lot of lines! Also, during there conversation, as the camera pans around, it catches glimpses of protagonist Mike sitting at the counter, eating, and appearing to be watching the girls, maybe listening to their conversation. I didn’t notice this at first, the “one-take” aspect of the shot, until a little ways in. Then I realized, “Hey, the camera is panning in this shot. The girls are just talking away, without any apparent cuts. This is cool.”

The larger premise of “Grindhouse” is that it is a double feature. Rodriguez and Tarantino continue this premise by including “Coming Attractions” and standard movie announcements in between the features “Planet Terror” and “Death Proof”. I was taken back by one of the elements. The features were introduced by a sequence of colorful circles with words that would fly in announcing the feature presentation. It reminded me of going to the “Showcase Cinemas” in Milan, Il. This was the movie theater that we had to go to see the latest releases while growing up in the country between Donahue and Long Grove, IA. It was very late 70’s/early 80’s -ish. 🙂

I can appreciate this type of movie is not for everyone. Nancy seemed to have no desire to see it. I think that I, as a geek who likes video games, comics books, etc. was the target audience for the film. One little moment in “Death Proof” even reminded me of “Buffy”. One of the Tennessee girls is “left behind” by the other three on a farm with a scruffy guy. She doesn’t know exactly what is going on as she hasn’t been paying attention. When she realizes that the scruffy guy is walking up to her and she see the other three girls leaving, you can see the “concern” and uncomfortableness in her demeanor. At that moment, she speaks the word “gulp!”. This just seemed like something you would see in Buffy.

Sydney, Adelaide, and I went to “Meet the Robinsons” Sunday. This was the first time I took both girls by myself to a movie. Sydney was very excited to see the movie. I got us a medium popcorn, buttered, and a medium Pepsi. We found our seats in the second row. Sydney sat with the popcorn, sitting next to her in her seat to her left, and the soda in the cup holder in her right arm rest. I sat in the seat to the left of Sydney and held Adelaide in my lap.

The movie started with the Disney short “Boat Builders“. Adelaide was good throughout the short. She sat right up and watched Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. She ate popcorn, one piece at a time. When “Meet the Robinsons” started, Sydney was transfixed to the screen. During the whole movie she kept her eyes on the screen, but still had time to eat popcorn and sip soda.

About half way through, Adelaide started getting fussy. I strategically chose the 12:20pm movie, because I figured that this was during the Adelaide’s normal nap time and I hoped that she would fall asleep. After settling her down with a sippy cup of juice, she fell right to sleep in my arms. She didn’t stir for the rest of the movie.

I enjoyed the movie very much. I hadn’t gone in to the movie expecting much. I thought that the story would be rather thin and uninteresting. But I found the story to be very engaging. I may be a bit simple minded, but I usually try to just let the story take me where it wants to, so I enjoyed the layers of the plot as they were revealed. Since it is a “time travel” movie, there were some expected plot twists, but I liked how they were handled. It may have helped, too, the show was about family and I have my two daughters with me, one eating popcorn and soda glued to the screen, and the other one asleep in my arms. 🙂

I didn’t go to the 3D screening. Sydney was scared in the 3D shows at Disney World when we went there in January of this year, and with a one year old, I thought that 2D version would go over better. Still, I thought that the animation was very good. It was a CGI movie, but I thought that the modeling was good. Like I said, I hadn’t expected much going in, as this was a Disney animation. Disney animations haven’t been very good lately; not like the renaissance during “Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast”. But I was impressed. I think that it was a very good movie for the girls and I to see together.