Kill Bills

When a rumour started circulating several months back that Kill Bill might actually be released as two separate films, most of us gave a knowing smile at another daft rumour and went about our days. However, with official word now filtering down from Miramax, it now looks like there will, against all likelihood, be two Bills to kill after all. The decision was made (presumably not lightly) after Tarantino found editing down othe three-hour-plus feature a herculean task beyond his abilities. Unwilling to lose what must have been essential scenes to comply with Harvey Weinstein's notoriously hard line on overlong films, the director has opted to snip the film neatly in two, thus presenting the Miramax boss with a pair of separate 90 minute films. The first film will stick to its original 10 October slot in the US with the concluding part scheduled for late 2003 or, if busy release schedules squeeze it out, early 2004. It all sounds a bit daft to us really. Did we not sit through both instalments of Lord of the Rings without ill-effect? Hell, Pulp Fiction was two-and-a-quarter hours and no one complained. We'd all, it's safe to say, be quite capable of enduring the full 180 minutes of entertainment in this verbose cinematic age. But then, given the exemplary work he's produced in the past, if old Quentin thinks it necessary to split the film in two, who are we to argue?