Is that the sound of angels singing? No, it’s just Grindhouse being awesome

First of all, hello to the spoilers.

Now THIS is a comic-book movie. Yeah, I know it wasn't actually a comic book, but it missed a good chance to be. Grindhouse is the kind of movie I was thinking of when I talked so much shit about 300. See, it's fun without being insultingly stupid. There are no fucking queer jokes, there are no appearances by RuPaul knock-offs, there are no hunchbacks with questionable moral conviction (too bad, because Ugly = Bad Person, of course), and there are no handicapped-lesbian gang-bangs. In fact, Grindhouse shows a refreshing lack of any lingering flavor of "manly" by way of "excessive playing of video games and extreme living with parents." It pays homage to the cheesy, bloody, sometimes misogynistic traditions of '70s and '80s B-movies without absorbing all of their bullshit wholesale. But my favorite thing about Grindhouse is that Rodriguez and Tarantino chose to turn it into a Slayer story. And that's awesome.

Although Rodriguez and Tarantino's movies draw life from a hodgepodge of geek-cherished cinema, including all kinds of exploitation films, I don't remember either committing violence against women to film without reason. Granted, there is a fine line between violence in service of a story and violence for its own sake, and those distinctions can be subjective and difficult to judge. Still, think of the ass-kickers that both directors have brought to life: Jackie Brown, The Bride, Carolina, the prostitutes in Sin City. When you've reached that level of bad-ass-woman credibility, I automatically cut you some slack.

"Death Proof" is a perfect example of the difference between misogyny and just plain bad shit happening to women narratively. It tells the story of two groups of women: one murdered brutally, the other equally brutal in their vengeance against the murderer. To really stir up the pure movie satisfaction of watching Rosario Dawson crush Kurt Russell's skull with her boot, you have to go through the suffering he inflicted, and while it's hard to watch, I understand why those particular strings have to be pulled. Like, I remember thinking near the end, "you better let me see that fucker die." I would have preferred something bloodier, but really, I can't complain. I also like "Death Proof" as sort of a feminine retread of the talky roundtable scenes Tarantino is famous for. I was surprised at how real the female characters felt, and you'd think Tarantino would know fuck all about writing women if you focused on, say, Reservoir Dogs, but he pulls it off. And, Tarantino proves here, just like he has in the rest of his movies, that being a pop culture-obsessed dork is fine, but being a bitter, miserable dork who peers suspiciously at life through a fog of Doritos and emasculation is not. Somebody should probably explain that distinction to the macho retarded-gorilla powerhouse that is 300.

"Planet Terror" is the one that really stirs up my Slayer love, though. Here we have the go-go dancer with the secret destiny, the woman who finds her power by examining those places hidden in plain sight, who finds uses for all her "useless talents." She draws strength from the man she loves, but continues without him, leading those who survive fucking crazy zombies to a new home, a new civilization built among the ruins of a long-dead one. "One girl, in all the world, a chosen one." Plus, seriously, fucking crazy zombies getting killed by a machine-gun leg. What could be more Slayer than that? OR MORE AWESOME?

This Black Snake Moans...with excellence! Also, 300 (stupid-ass gay jokes)

Let's talk for a minute or twenty about how 300 is kind of stupid.

People tell me sometimes not to make fun of something like a comic book movie, because they're supposed to be stupid. That doesn't have to be true, but it definitely IS true most of the time. Like, I guess Ghost Rider is a stupid movie too, I'll never know because I sure as hell won't watch it, but it's about a guy who rides a motorcycle and his head turns into a flaming skull every now and then. Now, flaming-skulled-biker movies are predisposed to be stupid, but why does 300 have to be? We're talking about some pretty impressive shit that actually happened, albeit in a way no doubt different from how a comic book would tell it, so why does that story have to be cheapened by stupid shit like ten million gay jokes?

I'm not going all Mr. Serious Art Feelm on it, and I don't expect a comic book adaptation to be necessarily realistic. There are all kinds of great liberties you can take with comic book material and it's a mistake not to take some of them. I thought Sin City was fucking cool, but everybody involved there took the comic book thing and just ran with it like hell, and the story itself is so balls-out crazy that it ended up being all kinds of fun. 300 came from Frank Miller too, so it surprised me that it's so blah. It's supposed to be a pretty much shot-by-shot recreation of the graphic novel, and that itself is kind of a dumb-ass move on everyone's part, because you might as well put some kind of individual spin on it, but whatever. There are some cool images, although overall it doesn't even look as good as you'd expect, and it doesn't have much else going for it besides looks. The problem could be a lot of stupid dialogue and cheesy shit going on, and seriously, about ten million gay jokes.

OK, so it pounds you over the head with the fact that the Spartans are the heroes here, they are "real men," so I guess the Persians have to be "vaguely androgynous and/or fags." Is America collectively that stupid? Like, why does Xerxes have to be RuPaul? And also why does Xerxes' camp have to have all kinds of "freaky" sex acts going on inside? I came in to see a battle epic and all of a sudden I get vignettes from Hot, Deformed Lesbian Bitches? I mean, I'm not humorless about this kind of thing at all. It's just that I expect it to actually be funny, and not somebody's homophobic pottymouth acting up. For example, the trailer for Knocked Up was attached to 300, and that shit will be funny as hell, and one of the jokes is that Seth Rogen is an expectant father, and his friend says he'll help "rear the kid." Jason Segel snickers out "Watch out, he wants to REAR your kid!" and I responded by laughing my ass off. I mean, I'm not above this shit. It's all about the childishness of the joke overpowering hatefulness, like when a friend of mine told me he was in a threesome the other day and I asked what the guys' names were. Fun all around! That's totally different than Leonidas in 300 saying the Athenians were "philosophers and boy-lovers" or some similar bullshit. Sure, that's factually true, but it's not like the Spartans and every other Greek didn't get into sport-fucking their brethren from time to time. Of course, none of that matters, because the joke for 2007 America is that nothing says taking it up the ass like reading a book. Jesus. Seriously, somebody tell me, are we all that fucking stupid? And with the shot of Leonidas' wife getting it from behind? Leaving out the fact that she's hot, it was all just way too much manly gamer dork attitude for me, I guess. Maybe they thought the audience would all be guys who had only the slightest acquaintance with vaginas. Who knows.

And also, while we're talking about my favorite things, I don't want to forget the ugly American shit 300 quietly hauled up to the table too. Leaving out the fact that the Persians were all dandies, and corrupt ones at that as proven by bitches actually KISSING!!! ohmygod did you see them up in the middle of their warlike goings-on, they also represent "mysticism" whereas the Greeks are all about "reason." So…yeah, that's right…

"Gee, I'm glad those brave, noble, hard-charging, hot-wife-doggy-style-fucking Spartans never surrendered to the kinda sissy, ambiguously non-white, differently religioned Persians! HEY do you think there is a parallel between those PERSIANS and this whole Earthful of DARK PEOPLE that AMERICA HAS TO KILL?!? Glory Be we cain't surrender to them Terrorists!!! Cause if it ain't Chrish-tin, it's puuure mystic-cism!!!"

Accuse me of reading into it if you want, I guess, but I don't think I'm crazy. It's not like I even think the movie was consciously pushing an agenda. I read a review where the critic said it was too silly to be actually about anything, politically or otherwise, and I mostly think that's true. I also read that the director had to quash rumors that 300 was government funded, and that's just retarded. Most of the feeling I get off it in this respect comes from how trained people are to jump on anything that jibes with some jingoistic bullshit right now. The last thing I would want to do is feed on that shit, and if I were writing a movie I would parse it word for word about fifty times to make sure I wasn't. So, I don't know whether it was a conscious choice, but I'm pretty positive somebody's "AMURICANS DON'T DUCK-N-RUN" was acting up. It's so awful to me to hammer everyone's frayed post-9/11 nerves but I guess that's how the movie industry rolls in general. But, anyway, I went through all that mostly to say don't waste your $8.50. Black Snake Moan is good, though. Go Craig Brewer!