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DVD: Treasures from Tarantino
[Photo: Miramax ]
Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta) do the twist during a dance contest in Pulp Fiction. |
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 29, 2002
Tuesday's release of the 10th anniversary DVD of Reservoir Dogs, plus collector's editions of Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown released last week, offer the most comprehensive peek yet into the cinematic style of Quentin Tarantino.
The fact that they're so vastly different in the ways they entertain, at times sloppily so, is a measure of how methodically jumbled this mercurial filmmaker's mind works.
Reservoir Dogs gets the most academic analysis, although the two-disc set sneaks in a few giddy extras such as recreating the famous ear-slicing scene performed with toy action figures and a virtual radio tuned to K-Billy, the station of choice for Tarantino's characters. The program lineup includes audio outtakes of Steven Wright dubbing deejay lines at Tarantino's urging, an interview with a real thief unimpressed with the Dogs' professionalism and Gerry Rafferty musing about his song Stuck in the Middle With You becoming a sociopath's soundtrack.
But the DVD set is more impressive as an educational tool, starting with an audio commentary on disc one with the director and several cast and crew members that elliptically describes the genesis of a revolutionary film. Later, home video footage shows Tarantino working out scenes with Steve Buscemi at a 1991 Sundance Film Institute workshop.
Disc two delves even deeper, from the perspective of three film critics: Amy Taubin of Film Comment offers a rare feminine view of what has been accused of being a misogynist movie. French reviewer Emanuel Levy explains the American cultural implications of Reservoir Dogs with an outsider's clarity. Rolling Stone writer Peter Travers concentrates on the music, a collection of bubble gum and funk-pop that isn't as contradictory to the mayhem as it may seem.
Deleted scenes focus on Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) and his police contacts. Tarantino was wise to leave them out. Two alternate takes of the ear-slicing scene look fake, making the ultimate choice to have the violence off-camera seem even smarter. Newly produced interviews with Roth, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn and producer Lawrence Bender are casual breathers.
The DVD shifts from Tarantino's aesthetic to his influences and, in a typically generous move, his peers from the 1992 Sundance Film festival when Reservoir Dogs debuted and the independent film movement bloomed. Alexander Rockwell's In the Soup won the grand prize that year, and he sounds almost apologetic in hindsight. He's also the most successful of Tarantino's competitors at the festival and that doesn't say much. Rockwell, Chris Munch (The Hours and Times), Katt Shae (Poison Ivy) and Tom Kalin (Swoon) aren't household names.
The most ambitious bonus is an expansive, indispensable crash course in film noir, the genre Reservoir Dogs respectfully brightened. Directors John Boorman (Point Blank) and Stephen Frears (The Grifters) get equal time with novelist Donald E. Westlake analyzing the art of deadly drama. Dozens of noir authors and directors are listed with biographies, suggested selections of their works and synopses.
Tarantino also indulges his infatuation with pulp cinema in tributes to old-school filmmakers Roger Corman, Monte Hellman and Jack Hill plus, just for the heck of it, Pam Grier, who later played the title role in the director's Jackie Brown.
The DVD set of Jackie Brown is as frivolous about Tarantino's craft as Reservoir Dogs is serious. No commentary track, although the director offers two brief interviews, explaining the blaxploitation influences on his underworld comedy and admitting that it was too long. Yet his emphatic affection for the 1970s genre represented by this DVD set brings him forgiveness.
Schlock movie fans will rejoice at a collection of preview trailers from the careers of Grier and co-star Robert Forster, a reminder of how much delirious junk -- from Reflections in a Golden Eye to The Big Bird Cage -- used to be produced when movies weren't so slick and monitored. The racist, sexist and altogether tasteless array of revenge plots and macho postures can be either repulsive or hilarious depending upon your perspective.
The same goes for a short film titled Chicks with Guns, often seen on TV sets while Jackie Brown's plot unfolded. It's shown here in its entirety, a lineup of bikini-clad women demonstrating high-powered automatic weapons and seductively reciting their capabilities. Both the NRA and NOW would be interested, although for different reasons.
Even the deleted scenes are amusing, especially Grier cracking up co-star Michael Keaton during an improvised scene. We get more chances to see how masterfully Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro handled their comically lowlife roles. And we get an alternate version of the opening shot with Grier passing a tiled wall on an airport pedestrian conveyor. This time, she surfs and dances through the take while Dick Dale's Misirlou -- the theme from Pulp Fiction -- rips through the background. Funny stuff.
Pulp Fiction's DVD set falls somewhere between the polar appeals of the other two collections. Not as illuminating as Reservoir Dogs or playful as Jackie Brown, but with elements of both styles. Its best features are shared with the Jackie Brown set: an alternate track providing trivia subtitles during the movie, DVD-ROM games and readings, and a chapter selection based on when certain songs are heard on the soundtrack.
Tarantino doesn't provide any Pulp Fiction commentary, but you can create your own with an open-mic feature. Viewers still get plenty of his chatterbox personality, though, on footage filmed at the Cannes Film Festival where Pulp Fiction became a phenomenon and the Independent Sprit Awards (with host Michael Moore), where it cleaned up. A biographical featurette covers the often-told story of Tarantino's ascension from video-store clerk to the first rock 'n' roll director.
Deleted scenes -- a brief Eric Stoltz monologue, a longer taxi ride for Bruce Willis and more interaction between John Travolta and Uma Thurman -- are for devout fans only. However, some candid, on-the-set footage contains goosebump moments. One is the chance to see Travolta dance more, an icon at work. The other is Willis grimacing into the video-camera lens and predicting that someday a kid will use one to make a groundbreaking movie, five years before The Blair Witch Project. Tarantino should've taken the hint.
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