Kill Bill: Volume 1
Fashion be damned: Pop culture is just one big Hometown Buffet for  writer-director Quentin Tarantino. Nowhere has that sensibility been  more apparent than on his hand-picked soundtrack choices, and this oft  tongue-in-cheek tale of a female assassin's revenge (his first film in  six years) is no exception. With dizzy, almost palpable glee, Tarantino  evokes the international hall-of-mirrors influences that energize  martial arts films and much of Asian pop culture in general. Thus the  hip-hop of Wu Tang's RZA (who, along with composer Charles Bernstein,  concocts what passes for the score's traditional cues) somehow finds  itself but one ingredient in a heady souffle that includes vintage TV  and film cue rarities (Al Hirt's main title fromThe Green Hornet,  Bernard Herrmann's haunting theme fromTwisted Nerve, the spaghetti  western melodrama of Luis Bacalov's "The Grand Duel," Isaac Hayes in  full blaxploitation mode on "Run Fay Run"), Charlie Feathers' vintage  rockabilly and a pan-kitsch sensibility that encompasses Zamfir, Nancy  Sinatra's angst-in-the-pants take "Bang, Bang" and Santa Esmeralda's  disco-era workout of "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood." Tarantino's  contemporary Japan-Pop selections are no less giddy, ranging from Meiko  Kaji's sultry "Flower of Carnage" to The 5.6.7.8's loopy "Woo Hoo." It's  everything we've come to expect from a Tarantino score (including dialog  excerpts and a few sound fx stingers), with a madcap trip around the pop  music world thrown in for good measure.-- Jerry McCulley