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"KILL BILL" SPLIT AVOIDS OSCAR CLASH
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"Kill Bill" - Quentin Tarantino's fourth feature - arrives in cinemas in two parts.
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But Miramax now plans to release the second half on in the US on February 20 to avoid the potential problem of both halves cancelling each other out come Academy Award time.
(The current release date is 23 January - a month before the US date.)
"From the time we first saw the script we knew there was a possibility of releasing the film in two parts", said Miramax co-chief Harvey Weinstein. "We are pleased to have the chance to be sharing Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 of his fun and action-packed Kill Bill with audiences".
The February release date means Oscar voters now won't
have to choose between the two releases for this year's
ballot.
Instead, Vol. 1 of Bill, due out on in the US and the
UK on October 10, will qualify for the upcoming Oscars
to be handed out February 29), and it's concluding instalment
will be a possible contender for the 2004 Academy Awards,
giving Miramax and Tarantino a double shot at taking
home the golden guy for the kung-fu epic.
Kill Bill
stars Uma Thurman as a female assassin known as "The
Bride", who's attacked on her wedding day and ends up
in a coma. She awakes five years later to plot her revenge
against Bill ( David Carradine ), the man who tried
to kill her.
The finished film clocked in at more than
three hours, leading the filmmakers to decide to make
the split. "I am thrilled about Kill Bill being in two
volumes", said Tarantino. "While editing the film, we
thought we could make it work. It is about story telling
and the best way to tell this story is in two parts".
The revenge thriller, Tarantino's first writing and
directing effort since 1997's Jackie Brown, also stars
Lucy Liu , Daryl Hannah and Michael Madsen . There's
also a cameo by the filmmaker's favourite martial-arts
master, Sonny Chiba, to whom Tarantino paid homage in
1993's True Romance.
Like Tarantino's previous work,
Bill will feature the director's trademark fractured
narrative. Industry chatter says it's Tarantino's most
violent film to date, including bucket loads of what
the director calls "samurai" blood and gore. While Miramax
has figured out how to handle its two-fer dilemma, another
studio is in a similar quandary.
Executives at Warner
Bros. have been trying to determine how to position
the two Matrix sequels--Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions--for
the upcoming awards season. Because both sci-fi flicks
are being released in the same calendar year and are
essentially one long movie, the studio has opted not
to submit Reloaded for Oscar consideration--something
it's allowed to do under Academy rules--and instead
put all its awards' hope in Revolutions.
So Neo fans
shouldn't be surprised when special effects categories
are announced, only Revolutions turns up among the nominees.
And despite rumours to the contrary, no one at Warner
Bros. or Miramax ever lobbied the Academy to allow both
the Matrix films and the two Kill Bills to be considered
as a single entry each.
Ultimately, the delay between
release dates for both franchises makes financial sense,
as well as strategic sense. The lag enables studio marketeers
at Warners and Miramax to plan two separate campaigns
to maximize box-office receipts and eventual home video
releases.
It's uncertain how Miramax will proceed with
Kill Bill's DVD, but it's doubtful the studio would
put the Bills back together, at least upon initial release,
since the studio can double its money by issuing two
separate discs and then possibly repackage the set together
at a later date. |
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