Beginning with the Bride tooling down a midnight lit freeway, Kill Bill, Vol. 2 instantly realizes its campy potential. With the narrative being plainly spoken by the main character, there’s a sense of simplicity inherent in older, dismissed filmic work – the kind that director Quentin Tarantino fawns over.

Coming to terms with Kill Bill’s complete averagness is probably difficult for viewers, but it appears that Tarantino rendered the film in such terms for a specific reason. The films he enjoyed when a youngster stink. And portions of Kill Bill aim at the same stench. Anywhere from the aforementioned wooden acting during the film’s first installment to this campy opening is proof of that.

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After what seemed like an eternity, Quentin Tarantino returned with Kill Bill, Vol. 1 in 2004. The long break between the director issuing work, though, is obviously as a result of concocting four hours or so of action and dialogue. That being said, it appears that the majority of the Kill Bill films were cribbed from other sources.

As this first installment opens, there’s an immediate reference to Japanese film history while the emblematic Shaw Brothers’ logo flashes on screen. It’s tantamount to the cheeseball opening that Jackie Brown started with, echoing Tarantino’s childhood spent watching B-movie fair.

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The 2007 documentary directed by Mawthew Ogens entitled Confessions of a Superhero, possess so many different layers to examine, that the film can be pigeonholed as a take on wacky street performers, Hollywood hopefuls or just crazy people. The wide breadth of different people interviewed for the film, no matter their then current situations, personal and otherwise, makes the film seem like something larger than it should be. It’s a sociological study, a look at the fringes of society and an investigation of the less glamorous side to living within the media scope of Hollywood and really all of California.

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Conjecture is a fun tool, so let’s go ahead and figure the contents of the brief case that Samuel L. Jackson’s Jules’ character totes around as some personal and indispensible object (or concept) that his boss, Marsellus Wallace, can’t do without. Maybe it’s gold, or cash. Maybe it’s the man’s soul – that would explain the oddly placed band aid at the base of his neck – the site of the soul’s extraction. Whatever Tarantino’s intent, the brief case, disregarding its contents, is a dead ring for what Mike Hammer finds during the final half hour or so during Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly. What’s in side – it’s been guessed that the contents could be radioactive material, or even the harbinger of the apocalypse. Either is acceptable and still comes back around as a signifier of older films that deserve a few more proper examinations.

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If "The Train Job" covered the Western half of Firefly's Space Western label, then "Bushwhacked" is roundly the first Space episode. It gets its dramatic tension from the simultaneous vastness and isolation of the deep cosmos, getting both shivers and laughs out of the claustrophobic conditions of life inside a series of giant tin cans. The episode also has a subtle emotional core that comes from the depiction of just what makes one such tin can a home.

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Following up his 1992 debut, Resevoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino endeavored to create another insular world, seemingly detached from what most of the film’s viewers were accustomed to. It was meant to take place during the present day, but aped a style pilfered from video store clerk’s collections, id and sublimated desires.

In its throw back good naturedness, though, Pulp Fiction presents an ever difficult realm to navigate as it’s populated by assorted killers, gamblers, drug dealers and crime figureheads. Each of these, however, becomes portrayed in a sympathetic light for at least a few moments.

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Coming off of both The Ladykillers and that disavowed film with Clooney, the Coens may have been looking to ditch the comedic flair so prevalent in its work. Of course, most of what the team is known for is its oddly amusing characters and the stultifying situations each finds themselves in. The biggest commercial success the Coens scored served up at least a modicum of laughs, even if those came at unsettling scenes as evidenced by watching Fargo and finally understanding it as the filmic equivalent to Evelyn Waugh’s take on the death industry in The Loved Ones. Crafting a story so void of humor – even as Trainspotting’s Kelly Macdonald seemed capable of levying a few off the cuff Texas-isms for the sake of levity – some critics have figured the Coens to have entered a stage in their careers that counts as being mature.

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There’s a really long and somewhat unruly lineage of Hollywood film aping a self reflex bent and castigating the goings ons the most normal folks not engaged with the industry just aren’t privy to. Everything from The Player back to Barton Fink and even the Jack Palance starring, Robert Aldrich directed The Big Knife comment on the travesty that is the Hollywood studio system.

In that, What Just Happened doesn’t present itself as anything relentlessly new and adventuresome. But starring Robert De Niro, the film deserves a glance if not two. But that’s about it.

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Jane Fonda, the actor, the person, the artist, is one of my all time favorite people. I am pleased to hear that she has received another honor.

Yesterday in Paris, in a ceremony, presided over by the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, the American actress Jane Fonda, who is looking very good at 72, received the Great Medal of Paris for her contribution to the city's art and culture.  Ms. Fonda was in the City of Light as part of the promotion for the Paris Cinema festival. The festival runs from July 3-13. She is France to make a film. See the video.

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I saw the rumor on the Internet yesterday afternoon that Russell Crowe had died and then the immediate announcement that Russell Crowe is alive and well, and is the latest target of an Internet celebrity death hoax. My first thought was good, great. Russell Crowe is well.

Russell Crowe is one of the best actors in the movies today. I must confess to a second thought that I had, when I heard of the hoax. It concerned his last movie. Yes, Russell Crowe is alive, it is his last movie, "Robin Hood," that is dead.

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