Kill Bill is my joint favourite Quentin Tarantino movie, along with Pulp Fiction.

Tarantino movies tend to veer between breathlessly exhilarating and sluggishly unwatchable. His tendency to deliberately drag scenes and dialogue out to breaking point reached its nadir for me with The Hateful Eight which I, well, hated. Kill Bill Volume 2 was a mixed bag for me also – some great scenes but some really long and boring sequences too. 

But for me the first Kill Bill is a cinematic tour de force – kinetic action, cool lines, great music, neat plot twists, and tons of pop culture references, all made with an over-arching sense of style and a geek’s passion for the possibilities of film-making. 

It also is in thrall to all things Japanese, with lots of lopping of limbs by samurai sword, for starters. So I thought it would be fun to own some Japanese artwork for the movie. A “B2” Japanese poster proved hard to come by, so I settled for this cheap and easy to store two-sided ‘chirashi’ flyer, which would have been given out in cinemas on the movie’s release. This iconic image of Uma Thurman in the yellow tracksuit (itself a Bruce Lee reference) was used in various forms on most of the promotional materials around the world.

Today’s trivia:  when I lived in Japan I went many times to the huge restaurant in Tokyo where Tarantino allegedly got the inspiration for the set for the climactic House Of Blue Leaves showdown. Its called Gonpachi, in Nishi-Azabu, if you want to check it out.