> And it was intended to be a single movie through almost the whole of its production and then was split seemingly arbitrarily to make it more marketable.

And yet I keep telling you that it works REALLY WELL as a split film. Vol. I is 111 minutes long, which is just about two hours, and it feels long. Almost everyone I know who has seen it has said that, in a way, they were glad it was split. I can't imagine watching another 90 minutes of it. If the second half is 90 minutes (which would be pretty short), that would put the whole thing at 201 minutes, longer even than the theatrical releases of the "Lord of the Rings" films. I could not imagine watching a kung fu flick that goes on for almost three-and-a-half hours.

The point is, I think that splitting the film has helped it artistically. It has allowed Tarantino, who apparently filmed a much longer movie than he wrote (the IMDB says he was writing new scenes during filming), to release the entire movie he wanted to release.

No, it wasn't initially conceived to be two films, but it wasn't also apparently originally conceived to have a lot of the scenes it does now. Editing is as important a part of filmmaking as any other. Do you refuse to see movies when you learn that subplots have been chopped during the editing process? After all, the film was initially conceived to have them in there. I believe the initial reports that this was solely a marketing move by Miramax were way off-base, and I'm more inclined to believe that the splitting was the correct artistic decision.

Tarantino is a perfectionist, and I actually don't think many directors have his excellent sense of pacing and ability to chop stuff. If you've looked at his DVDs, he has a wealth of cut scenes for each film, some of which are great, but he's always clear that these are shown separately from the main feature. He doesn't believe in "director's cuts" because the theatrical version of all of his films have been the best possible cut he could have done. Unlike certain directors, he doesn't feel the need to go back and tweak his film later after thinking about it some more. I've seen KBV1 twice now, and I see no instance of any "padding" or anything that suggests he was reaching for scenes to add more time. In fact, the place where the film stops is so perfectly in tune with the rest of the movie it would be easy to believe that it was written as two parts.

> The Lord of the Rings trilogy, on the other hand, was designed to be a three-part film trilogy from its inception and could scarcely have been released to theaters in a single nine hour chunk anyhow.

The funny thing is, I think a much worse thing is happening to the theatrical versions of Lord of the Rings: very good, important scenes are being hacked out of the films in order to keep their running time under three hours to satisfy the folks at New Line. Peter Jackson is apparently okay with this, and we as fans know we'll get the (superior) "Extended Edition" on DVD. But is there anyone who really believes the EE of Fellowship isn't much better than the (also good) theatrical cut? The EE of Two Towers adds in scenes that seem vital, to me, and now a major subplot and character makes sense instead of the flat and confusing Faramir we saw in the theater.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the theatrical cuts of the first two films were both a minute or two under three hours -- it's pretty clear PJ is working under a restriction to deliver a movie under three hours, because New Line believes it can make more money from 3 hour movies than 3.5 hour movies.

With Kill Bill, we're getting the full movie in the theater (in two parts) rather than having to wait until DVD. You may choose to boycott it if you want, but you are ultimately cheating yourself of a great theatrical experience.

Stephen