U.K.FILM INDUSTRY - Essay Example

On waking up, The Bride sets out on a bloody trail of vengeance killing her ex-colleagues one-by-one, leaving Bill for the end, thus deriving the eponymous name of the movie. Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, the movie is divided into ten chapters, five per volume. Chronological fragmentation leaves the viewer guessing till the start of Volume 2 (Chapter six: Massacre at Two Pines) as to the exact motivations behind The Bride's gory path of violence. Most reviews were positive with some critics calling it a masterpiece.

Detractors pointed to its questionable morality, pop-culture dialog and graphic depictions of extreme violence. Many scenes were filmed on location in China, Japan and North America and completed over eight months of shooting. Produced by Miramax Films a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company (Disney), it had an initial budget of US $42 million which shot to $60 million plus under the direction of Miramax' golden boy -Tarantino. Miramax, founded by brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein in 1979, started life as a independent film distribution company before being acquired by Disney in 1993 for $80 million.

From the beginning, the Weinstein brothers focused on the independent film segment, generally shunned by the big studios due to the perceived lack of commercial viability. A string of stellar hits made them an acquisition target for Disney and Harvey Weinstein grew to become the "darling" distributor of the experimental and independent feature film world and ultimately emerged as one of the most powerful and influential moguls in Hollywood.2 Kill Bill was distributed in the UK by Buena Vista International, the global distribution arm of Disney.

Research Methods: The primary source of information in researching this paper has been the Internet. Material on subjects of popular culture like movies is exhaustively available, giving one a wide range of perspectives to study and analyze. One of the dangers with Internet based research is the larger scope for factual errors due to source inaccuracies. This has been largely mitigated by cross verifying the information from different sources. For example, the Harry Weinstein biography referenced here has been reviewed at Wikipedia3 as well as IMDB (Internet Movie Database)4 and Yahoo! Movies5.Evidence of Commercial Relevance: Originally, Kill Bill was written and filmed as a single movie extending slightly over four hours.

Harvey Weinstein fearing audience fatigue over such a long movie hit upon the idea of editing it and shrewdly released it as two films during the last quarter of 2003 and the first quarter of 2004. The timing proved to be a stroke of marketing genius. The films featured in the top ranks in two consecutive years in addition to raking in a huge commercial gross. They were a big success ranking in the top 25 at the UK box office in both years of release, with combined worldwide receipts exceeding US $331 million6 ( 190 million).

In the UK, their combined box office gross was over 20 million7. Video rental and DVD sales have also shown very strong numbers with rental figures touching $25 million (as of 25th April 2004) and first day US DVD sales reaching $40 million.Background: Movie genre classification is problematic in that most movies have long since crossed over from a rigid formulaic approach to entertainment with central themes spanning