Roses

Recently I saw the Rodriguez / Tarantino homage to sleeze cinema, Grindhouse, and I was none too impressed. Since it was a double feature, I too am going to make this post a double feature, and use Rose McGowan as my through line.

Feature Presentation: Grindhouse – The Review

Warning – SPOILER (?) ALERT!

When both Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino burst out of the indie movie ghetto with their debuts, I was a very ardent supporter. El Mariachi, made on a shoestring budget mostly derived from credit cards and pay from clinical medical trials, was an inventive and exciting film about a drifting musician who is confused with a legendary hitman. In the ensuing scenes, there’s equal parts camp and action, which would suit Rodriguez’s future film style. Much the same, Reservoir Dogs established Tarantino as an auteur of snappy, quotable dialogue and gruesomely memorable violence.

In my eyes, Rodriguez started to slip as he trilogized his mariachi, with the decent Desperado and the silly Once Upon A Time In Mexico, and made family fare like Shark Boy and Lava Girl and a trio of Spy Kids films. His faithful adaptation of Sin City does earn him fanboy cred, and the fact he pretty much writes, directs, shoots, edits, and scores his films on his own is damn impressive, but overall, his attachment to a film doesn’t do much for me. Tarantino, on the other hand, still has a little clout with me. Pulp Fiction was an earthshattering work of art that so floored me I saw it three days in a row when it came out. Coming off that high, Jackie Brown was nowhere near as good, but Kill Bill, while heavily aping the revenge genre still delivered. Which brings us to Grindhouse.

Split into separate features and peppered with some interesting fake coming attractions, Grindhouse doesn’t reinvent the 70’s schlock films it pays tribute to as much as it uses today’s cinematic devices and starpower to redress it.

Planet Terror, the Rodriguez half, is clearly (and surprisingly) the better of the two films. When a mutative infection spreads in a sleepy Texas town, the victims become cannibalistic zombies. To make matters worse, an infected renegade military force is trying to horde the mutagen, and the only thing standing between them and the spread of the plague is a rag tag bunch of citizens, each an archetype of familiar proportions. The loner hero, the vamp heroine, the butch sheriff…all in there. Even though the main drive is staying alive, each of the ensemble cast have a minute or two of development to flesh them out and create a truly wide spectrum of characters. As is his way, the film has some cartoonish violence and exceptional amounts of blood and gore, and given the campy nature of the genre, works fairly well. Even with a machine gun leg, Rose McGowan stays a cool vixen while dishing out megadeath and gets a few decent lines in to boot.

Both directors seemed to like the actress, as Tarantino gives her a role in Death Proof (Rodriguez is dating her after separating from his wife of many years), his contribution to the back end of the movie. If Planet Terror is the best of what the grindhouse represented, then Death Proof is the worst. Two groups of gals are stalked by Kurt Russell and his muscle car of death, but the real victim is the viewer. Most of his 90+ minutes is both sets of women talking about boring, un-insightful garbage before facing automotive mayhem. I’ve never seen Tarantino waste dialogue like this. No clever lines. No cool pop culture references. Just lameness. The last 15 minutes where there’s some actual cool car stunts is hardly enough to help recover from the narcolepsy inducing rest of the film. Rose gets to opt out midway through, one of the lucky ones, and it seems that even Tarantino decided to end the movie as quick as possible once it peaked at the end. I have to figure that they put it second due to the fact that most people would not have stuck around for the other half had this been the lead off.

Overall, I’m quite happy I didn’t pay to see the film, as it partially exceeded my expectations, but I can’t say that I recommend it as the half I didn’t think I’d like I did, and the other half was awful beyond my conception.

Feature Presentation: The Muses Of Marilyn Manson

So after thinking about the Grindhouse Rose-a-palooza, I flashed on the arc of her career thus far and what was the single most interesting career move, and that was being Marilyn Manson’s muse du jour. Apparently, ol’ Brian Warner likes him a lady and releases them with roughly the same frequency as his albums. Here’s a peek at the albums and transformations (and reflections) of the man through his main squeezes.

Missy Romero – The American Family / Smells Like Children Era

Musical Style: industrial tinged metal

Look: swamp raider meets hesher

Rose McGowan – The Antichrist Superstar / Mechanical Animals Era

Musical Style: glam tinged metal

Look: Ziggy Stardust meets hesher

Dita Von Teese – The Holy Wood / Golden Age of Grotesque Era

Musical Style: gothic tinged metal

Look: German cabaret meets hesher

Evan Rachel Wood – The Eat Me / Drink Me Era

Musical Style: alternative tinged metal

Look: romantic artist meets hesher