Grindout

Rating: Null/10 (19 January 2008)

I wonder why this failed. It's pretty thin soup compared to what these guys have already put out there. It isn't good, whether in relation to any kind of "style" being riffed or when judged on its own terms. But in all its superficiality it's as passable as any of the other superficial work they've done. Maybe people saw that the concept simply wasn't worth it. I don't know.
Heralded cinematic mime that he is, I think Tarantino is someone whose work is only ever as good as the person he borrows from. I know, there's so much talk about transcending source material and all that, but what do we really get out of it? Sure, he glosses up a dirty artifact well enough but so could any talented filmmaker, if that's all they wanted to do. Thing is, the best of them are busy being more ambitious, trying to say something with the art form. Could be something important or minor, new or not, but something as opposed to just recycling genres and kidding them. But Quentin seems to believe his press releases, that his filmography carries some deep value beyond craftsmanship. And so his dialog here is the most obviously self-conscious it has ever been and it really chafes.
If he does possess any genius it extends only to his ability to unearth a singular mood (always one at a time) in the material, and to stage it competently. It can be something musical linked with action like in "Kill Bill" or it can be complex wordplay like in "Pulp Fiction." There is something to be said for that ability and it has its use, but as a matter of art, maybe his stylistic flourishes get your blood pumping and that's enough for you. Not for me, it isn't.
As for Rodriguez, he seems to me as the more promising, genuine filmmaker. His approach is one of realizing full cosmological constructs, maybe not his own, but he's about fictional worlds that arrive to us complete, that we can enter with ease, while his buddy Quentin deals in mere quotations and everything's chopped. With "Sin City" Rodriguez really did give us something substantial, a many layered distillation of neo noir as both the story "meat" and its own "telling" device. As a stylistic exercise it had all the proficient movement, the energy of QT's stuff, but more intelligently abstracted. And it is upon further reflection that Rodriguez's portion of this double bill is the one that sticks, though still a failure. It's easy to miss that he's taking on the more difficult task with his parody because the filler material is of exhumed genre plot points (infection, slow spread, zombie hoards, lots o' mayhem, etc). QT's piece seems more gratifying at first, with all its "Tarantinoisms," until we get far enough away from it and have the distance to reflect, that the thinness of his technique begins to manifest.
The "coming attractions" in the middle were all very funny. I wouldn't be surprised if they were the reason behind the whole enterprise.
Blake's rating: 2 (out of 4)