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by sparky_Archive
I just read of the death last year of the film editor Sally Menke, who was best known for working on all of Quentin Tarantino's films. New York-born Menke was an NYU graduate who made her editing debut with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990). Then she read Reservoir Dogs. œIt floored me, she said. œScorsese was a hero of mine, especially as he used a female editor in Thelma Schoonmaker, and this script just had that tone. Tarantino has made more mature and inventive movies in the years since Reservoir Dogs, but has any of them had the precision of that debut? Menke s fluid editing made the tricksy structure, full of detours and elisions, seem organic; she let little gasps of air into the suffocating macho fug with judicious cuts to master shots, or stolen glimpses of the Los Angeles exteriors.Menke continued to make Tarantino s structural shenanigans look effortless. Pulp Fiction (1994) and Kill Bill: Vol 1 (2003) “ modern œmonsterpieces , to borrow Manny Farber s word for grossly overelaborate filmmaking “ showed a filmmaker daring himself to exceed his own berserk ambitions. Don t overlook the baggy rhythms of Jackie Brown (1997), a film comprised largely of people talking softly to one another in shitty rooms. It s a great comedy about middle age and resignation, and Menke s editing gives it a languid, expansive shape that would she would revisit to some extent in the melancholy Kill Bill: Vol 2 (2004). She also cut Death Proof (2007), both at brisk B-movie length for the Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez double bill Grindhouse, and in a patience-sapping two-hour edit.I discovered this after seeing this Hello Sally piece he did for her. I know he's not the most popular film-maker here, but I think that this is a sweet thing to do for someone.
Gib Opi kein Opium, denn Opium bringt Opi um!