Quentin Tarantino, self-professed film geek and broke 25-year-old video-store clerk in Manhattan Beach, Calif., sold his first screenplay in 1990 to an independent studio. It was called "Reservoir Dogs." NEW ON VIDEO
‘Pulp Fiction’ a
fine collector’s item
"Pulp Fiction Collector's Edition DVD" (Miramax Home Entertainment) That violent and stylish heist film was his entry into the world of real filmmaking. With the help of friend and producer Lawrence Bender, financing was put together for his next movie. Much like its enthusiastic director, 1994's "Pulp Fiction" was inventive, aggressive, both reverential and referential to Tarantino's influences of French New Wave, Italian spaghetti western and American low-budget exploitation films. He turned the crime genre film on its ear with great dialogue and performances by John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis.
He shot new life into the movie scene that year -- like the movie's infamous scene of a syringe-full of adrenaline being slammed into the heart of an ODing Mia Wallace -- with his hyper-real, $100-million-grossing "art film."
Much of the giddiness and critical response that surrounded the enormous success of "Pulp Fiction" back then is documented on the second of the two-disc set, but there is no updated audio commentary by the loquacious Tarantino. The only new segment is one about the film's production design.
Still, this is a finely-packaged collector's edition, complete with a menu from Jack Rabbit Slim's. The eight-year-old film hasn't aged a bit and still packs a visceral punch. Of the extras, the deleted scenes with Tarantino's introductions were taken from an earlier special edition on videotape, but the extended scene between Travolta and Uma Thurman at the club is new but hardly revelatory.
And we still don't know what was in the briefcase!
Gary C.W. Chun, Star-Bulletin
Click for online
calendars and events.
