Hamlet Mash-Up, by Geoff Klock

And now for something completely different. I created a Hamlet Mash Up on YouTube: 65 clips from 65 different movies from or about Hamlet, and no clip longer than 23 seconds. Captain Picard, Billy Madison, Jack Skellington, and the cast of Gilligan's Island are among the 65. Enjoy, and share.

Kill Bill and Miltonic Allusion: Grease

I continue to tell people that Kill Bill's debts to other films are totally intentional and interesting. Tarantino alludes to film history like John Milton alludes to poetic history. Because he wants to stake a big claim in the genre he is working in.

FROM GREASE

(from 1:00-1:10)

This is the song Grease Lightning from the musical Grease. Grease is a musical about a summer fling between a nice girl and a cool guy and whether than fling can translate into the rigid world of high school cliques in the 1950s.

About a minute in you will hear John Travolta call the car "a really Pussy Wagon." Thurman's car that she gets from buck is the prominently labeled Pussy Wagon.

Though the allusion here is slight I still think it worth talking about. For one thing Tarantino is obviously a huge John Travolta fan, and successfully revived his career for a minute in Pulp Fiction. Second, Tarantino is on record saying that people who do not like violence in movies are the same people who do not like dance sequences in movies. The musical is how he justifies his love of violence in purely aesthetic terms, just something very "cinematic," as he says. He is not making a social commentary. He is making a fun movie, a work of art, an aesthetic thing. So I think the allusion to Grease is actually kind of important given the orgy of violence that is about to follow.

STAN “THE MAN” LEE MONKEYS AROUND FOR CHARITY!

[From Troy Wilson!]

Comics legend, Stan “The Man” Lee, and Emmy award winning artist, Dean Haspiel, have joined forces to close out Panels for Primates with a bang. “Collaborating with Stan Lee is a dream come true,” says Haspiel. Their comic strip, Even Gorillas Have Pride!, viewable only at ACT-I-VATE from June 1st onward, can be found here: http://act-i-vate.com/114-36-1.comic

Panels for Primates is a charity anthology of primate comics curated and edited by Troy Wilson and facilitated by Mike Cavallaro that has been updating with new material every Wednesday since October 2010 at ACT-I-VATE (http://act-i-vate.com), all to benefit the Primate Rescue Center in Nicholasville, KY. Like every webcomic on ACT-I-VATE, the Panels for Primates archive can be viewed absolutely free. But if Panels for Primates readers like what they see, they are strongly encouraged to swing over to http://www.primaterescue.org/ and make a donation.

Other prominent contributors include Fred Van Lente (Cowboys & Aliens), Mike Carey (The Unwritten), Rick Geary (Treasury of Victorian Murder series), Stuart Moore (Namor: The First Mutant), David Petersen (Mouse Guard), Colleen Coover (Gingerbread Girl), Faith Erin Hicks (Zombies Calling), Carla Speed McNeil (Finder), and Roger Stern (The Death and Life of Superman). In all, 56 generous creators from seven countries have donated 127 pages of all-new material for the cause.

The mission of the Primate Rescue Center is to alleviate the suffering of primates wherever it occurs by:

providing sanctuary or referral to appropriate facilities;

working to end the trade of primates both in the United States and abroad;

educating the public to the plight of primates caught in the breeder/dealer cycle;

assisting researchers and zoo personnel in finding appropriate placement for surplus primates;

encouraging compliance with applicable local, state, and federal laws and animal welfare statutes.

They currently provide lifetime care for 11 chimpanzees and over 40 monkeys.

ACT-I-VATE, the premiere webcomics collective conceived by Dean Haspiel, debuted February 2006, features original, serialized graphic novels, and is updated daily. ACT-I-VATE’s hand-picked artists produce their signature work sans editorial oversight and offer their personal comix for free to an ever-growing audience of loyal readers. The site is known for having lifted the veil between creation, creator, and reader by providing a forum for spirited dialogue between audience and auteur.

Stan "The Man" Lee has quite possibly exerted more influence over the comicbook industry than anyone in history. He created or co-created 90 percent of Marvel's most recognized characters, which have been successfully licensed and marketed since 1965.

His famous co-creations include Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men, The Fantastic Four, Thor, and Iron Man, among many others. Lee, known to millions as the man whose superheroes propelled Marvel Comics to its preeminent position in the comicbook industry, first became publisher of Marvel Comics in 1972, and is presently the Chairman Emeritus of Marvel Enterprises, Inc. Lee is also the Founder, Chairman, and Chief Creative Officer of POW! Entertainment.

Emmy award winning artist, Dean Haspiel, created the Eisner award nominated BILLY DOGMA and the semi-autobiographical, STREET CODE. Dean has drawn many great superhero and semi-autobiographical comic books for major publishers, including graphic novel collaborations with Harvey Pekar, Jonathan Ames, and Inverna Lockpez, and illustrates for HBO's "Bored To Death." www.deanhaspiel.com

Kill Bill and Miltonic Allusion: Lady Snowblood

Tarantino steals lots of stuff, sure, but in a good way. He takes from the past in order to write the future -- and Kill Bill is his bid for the future.

FROM KILL BILL AND LADY SNOWBLOOD


This clips has several other things mixed in as well, and the clips chosen are not always the best, but the Lady Snowblood ones are going to have to do. It is at 1:22, 2:22, and 5:21.

Lady Snowblood may be THE major influence on Kill Bill. The parallels are LOADS, some small and questionable, others FOR SURE. Here is a list

-- Female with a samurai sword hunting down several people for revenge one by one
-- she cuts someone's arm off
-- music
-- divided into chapters
-- the story is not told chronologically
-- the camera freezes at each bad guy, and they are labeled on screen with a name.
-- there is a hand drawn section
-- 4 figures, those upon whom she will take her revenge, loom in the exact same camera shot
-- a woman is having sex with a guy and kills him with a Samurai sword
-- there is a training sequence with an old man and a girl.
-- one guy begs for mercy because he has a daughter
-- she tells one of her victims "we have a little business to take care of" -- Thurman says "you and I have unfinished business."
-- there is a fight with her and the sword vs a bunch of guys and wire-fu leaps in order to get to her female prey.
-- the big showdown is at a party
-- she dies in the snow (sort of -- there is an epilogue where she gets up again, but it is clearly made to justify a sequel)

Some have gone as far as claim that Kill Bill is a remake of Lady Snowblood. This is going to far, but there are a lot of links.

Lady Snowblood is about a woman whose husband and son were killed and she was raped by three men. She gets revenge on one of them, but is sent to jail. In jail she has sex with everyone she can to get pregnant -- because her child will need to finish her revenge. That child grows up to be Lady Snowblood. She meets each villain and dispatches them but the first one has a daughter, and after she kills the last and is badly wounded in the process the daughter comes running up to her in the snow and stabs her. She dies in the snow but in an epilogue wakes up again because somebody smelled sequel.

Obviously Uma Thurman is Lady Snowblood in this equation. That is how we are to read the allusion. The parallels are numerous. This is Tarantino doing his version of Lady Snowblood. All the Kung Fu movies have this Japanese Chinese rivalry, and by aligning Thurman so heavily at the House of the Blue Leaves with both Bruce Lee and Lady Snowblood he is uniting Chinese and Japanese before taking both back to the American West for volume 2. Hence Lucy Liu's half-Chinese half Japanese American Army brat thing. It's like a metaphor for the whole movie.

But there is another way to look at the Lady Snowblood connection and that is to figure Lucy Liu as Snowblood. It is easy to forget but Lucy Liu's parents were killed and she took her revenge killing one guy in a bed while having sex with him. Lady Snowblood's parents were killed and her mother killed a guy in a bed while having sex with him. Also there is a flurry of Lady Snowblood references just as we begin the Origin of O-Ren as we see her face -- We see the four figures looming down at Thurman in a shot taken from Lady Snowblood, we the freeze frame on Liu's face and a label just as in Lady Snowblood, we transition to a hand drawn section just as Lady Snowblood does, and we get a chapter title just as in Lady Snowblood. And it is Liu in the traditional Japanese garb who will die in the snow as Lady Snowblood does (sort of), and who is killed by a woman she probably forgot all about, just as Lady Snowblood does.

In that second reading then the whole ramp at the House of the Blue Leaves, the battle with the crazy 88s and GoGo and more crazy 88s, all to get to Liu was really Tarantino fighting his way through all the movies that have influenced his project, taking each down quickly, before getting to the big one: Lady Snowblood. It is worth noting here the way Liu is killed -- scalped with a Samurai Sword. Again you get the Chinese-Japanese-America pattern -- Thurman, as the Avatar for Chinese Bruce Lee, takes down Japanese Lady Snowblood with a big American fuck you -- a scalping.

Kill Bill and Miltonic Allusion: Navajo Joe

Tarantino's Kill Bill is almost like a collage of other movie moments. But not like a high school girl's best friends collage. Like one of those collages from early 20th century art or whatever by like Picasso or somebody (did Picasso do collages?). Like smart so that seeing all that shit arranged in that way really makes you think, you know?

FROM NAVAJO JOE
Music plays at the start of the clip. Navajo Joe confronts Duncan, gets shot and throws a hatchet at him from like ten feet ending him. Different music plays to the end of the movie. You can hear the final music and see the hatchet here:



FROM KILL BILL
Thurman Kills a Crazy 88 by throwing at him the hatchet he threw at her.

Bad guy Duncan and his team massacre an indian village and scalp people. Navajo Joe, played by Burt Reynolds, kicks their asses. He also saves two hookers who know about Duncan's plot to collude with the town doctor to steal the town's money arriving by train. Navajo Joe will protect the town from Duncan and his men for money in exchange for scalps. He goes back and forth with Duncan but manages to steal the train, return it to the people, then go after Duncan because Duncan, it turns out killed his wife in the initial massacre. They kill each other. The end.

The scene above is the end of Navajo Joe, in which they kill each other. In that scene are three crucial things from Kill Bill.

For starters there is the hatchet, which shows up in Kill Bill. If you think it is a coincidence, notice this -- why would that one dude in the Crazy 88s even HAVE a hatchet when EVERYONE ELSE has samurai swords. The hatchet stands out and it stands out to bring up this movie at this moment. And it is only one of many Navajo Joe overlaps with Kill Bill.

The music at the start of the Navajo Joe clip above you can here more fully in this clip, which is an earlier scene where Duncan's men wait for Navajo Joe's attack:

FROM NAVAJO JOE
The music from the start of the Navajo Joe clip above plays as Duncan's men are about to be attacked.

Just as it is used twice in Navajo Joe, it is used twice in Kill Bill -- both times in vol 2. It anticipates the showdown with Bill in the first Kill Bill clip from the opening of Vol 2. And it IS the showdown with Driver in the second clip.

FROM KILL BILL
The same music plays as Thurman narrates from her car at the opening of Kill Bill vol 2.

FROM KILL BILL
The same music plays just before the final clash of Driver and Thurman.

Let's talk about why. Take a look at this clip between Duncan and his Brother:

FROM NAVAJO JOE
Duncan's brother calls him a "half-breed" and he smacks him.

Navajo Joe also kills Duncan's brother, and Duncan wants revenge. This is why Budd wants revenge on Thurman -- because she hurt his brother Bill. But there is something more important to notice here -- the accusation of "Half Breed." It echo's Lucy Liu's sensitivity to someone bringing up her mixed race status -- in both instances, if you bring it up you bring violence on yourself.
And just as Navajo Joe kills this half breed guy who killed his woman, so Thurman will kill her mixed race antagonist who robbed her of her child. And just before she confronts this mixed race woman we get a Navajo Joe reminder with the hatchet. And how is the mixed race Lucy Liu killed? She is scalped (by a Samurai sword).

But there is one final major Navajo Joe allusion left. The music that Navajo Joe ends with you can hear more fully in the opening credits, where Duncan scalps Navajo Joe's woman.

FROM NAVAJO JOE
The music that ends Navajo Joe also starts it -- it is used in the opening credits as Duncan scalps a woman.

Watch where the Navajo Joe music gets used again.

FROM KILL BILL
That music plays as Bill walks out into his garden to die.

Navajo Joe music opens and closes Kill Bill Volume 2, and both the opening and closing music of Navajo Joe appear in Kill Bill. The music that ends Navajo Joe is the same music that ends BILL.

Why? Because Like Liu's character, whose death is preceded by a Navajo Joe reference, Caradine is also mixed race, and so we get the music that is used to end the mixed race guy in Navajo Joe to end Bill. Why does Bill's race matter? Because it was a big reason that he worked in Kung Fu the Television Show -- he is American enough, foreign enough. Unlike Bruce Lee who was far too foreign for American audiences. Now look at your killers. Thurman, a white woman who in volume one is the avatar for the Chinese Bruce Lee. And BURT REYNOLDS AS AN INDIAN. In both moments the mixed race actors, mixed race characters and/or cross race casting is an issue in both movies.

I hope I have sufficiently impressed you up to now, because honestly I am not quite sure where to go next. On the one hand I can see a narrative that involves Pure Bruce Lee vs Mongrel whatever, but as much as Tarantino is on the side of Bruce Lee he is really on the side of MIXING EVERYTHING, crossing cultural, racial and gender lines as he builds COOL. And I am reminded that accusations about Tarantino using the N-word in Pulp Fiction had a lot to do with this idea that he thought he could get away with the cross race thing himself, using a word reserved for blacks. Crossing these divides, for this white guy who loves Blacksploitation movies, is the marker of cool, of being with the in-crowd. I am not quite sure how this factors into Kill Bill, but if you will forgive a weak ending, I will promise to keep thinking about it. And of course you might want to help me out in the comments section.