No-Grindhouse Blues
A travesty has befallen cinema lovers in Australia and elsewhere around the world. Grindhouse is no more.
After tanking rather spectacularly at the US box office - apparently the premise of two cult/genre films by two of the most interesting directors working today shown back-to-back mimicking old cinema double features was too much for US audiences to comprehend - Grindhouse is to be split for all foreign releases. Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof and Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror will now be released separately later in the year, no word on what willl happen to the Fake Trailers - probably a DVD extra in the future I'd imagine.
Now, I don't want to whine. Well, no, actually I do. This is ridiculous - it robs these films of their entire purpose for existing. This was all about the cinema experience we've lost, and now I guess we see why it's gone. Audiences don't want the Grindhouse experience - they don't want trashy cinema that isn't pretending to be anything more, and they don't want it in double features, because apparently (in the US at least) the collective audience's bladder is too weak, or the attention span too short. (Not that an attention span is a prerequisite for such films, really - they can be enjoyed perfectly well with or without it.)
But in more upbeat news, I realised I am yet to mention how much I am loving Grinderman - Nick Cave's new outfit. How great is "No Pussy Blues"? The entire album is gold. Pure Nick Cave gold. What would the Australian music industry be without him?