The Null Device
2009/10/7
Maestro of super-stylish violence Quentin Tarantino has announced that he wants to make a sequel to the Kill Bill films, with Uma Thurman dispatching more baddies in ultra-cool ways. Of course, with both the titular Bill and the actor (David Carradine) who played him being dead, there is some speculation over what form such a sequel would take:
Option #1 - Bride on the Run. Remember in the first Kill Bill, where Uma Thurman murdered Vivica A Fox's character in front of her four-year-old daughter? The most obvious plotline for Kill Bill 3 would centre on the daughter's efforts to track down and kill Thurman in retaliation. She'd be 15 by 2014, so that would really tap into the key Hannah Montana demographic. In fact, why not go even further and make it a musical? Everyone could learn valuable life lessons about the importance of friendship and the littlest Jonas brother could play the love interest. Perfect.
Option #4 - The Death Proof Option. Kill Bill 3 opens with Thurman setting out to kill Bill, before realising that she's already killed Bill. So instead, she spends two and a half hours waffling aimlessly about nothing in an indulgent faux-hip way to the sound of the same tired old surf guitar records that everyone started getting sick of a decade ago. Something marginally exciting might happen at the end, but nobody notices because they've fallen asleep or left the cinema. This is the option most likely to reach fruition.Myself, I am partial to this idea.
In one sequence Tarantino called "distinctly Tarantino-esque," Slim delivers an unexpectedly poetic monologue on cheeseburgers while dancing to an Ennio Morricone instrumental with a drug-addled Uma Thurman. And in the film's stunning climax, Slim remembers his training with a martial arts expert in China and then exacts revenge on the film's antagonists: a Nazi colonel, a Hollywood stuntman, and a Los Angeles syndicate of 88 yakuza warriors.
Wikipedia has a list of unusual deaths from antiquity to the present day. They range from examples of sadistic ingenuity (how much thought has been expended throughout history on inventing fitting tortures for those who shouldn't be allowed to die too painlessly?) and parables of the mighty undone by their folly, through to the inexplicable and the highly peculiar:
1410: Martin I of Aragon died from a lethal combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughing.Death from uncontrollable laughter seems to be somewhat of a recurring theme. (Thomas Urquhart, incidentally, was an early proponent of a constructed universal language, and was a character in Andrew Drummond's excellent comic novel concerning the squabbles between utopian language proponents, A Handbook of Volapük.)
1599: Nanda Bayin, a Burman king, reportedly laughed to death when informed, by a visiting Italian merchant, that "Venice was a free state without a king."
1660: Thomas Urquhart, Scottish aristocrat, polymath and first translator of Rabelais into English, is said to have died laughing upon hearing that Charles II had taken the throne.
Other odd deaths, not involving uncontrollable laughter, include:
892: Sigurd the Mighty of Orkney strapped the head of a defeated foe to his leg, the tooth of which grazed against him as he rode his horse, causing the infection which killed him.Along similar lines: List of inventors killed by their own inventions.
1649: Sir Arthur Aston, Royalist commander of the garrison during the Siege of Drogheda, was beaten to death with his own wooden leg, which the Parliamentarian soldiers thought concealed golden coins.
1930: William Kogut, an inmate on death row at San Quentin, decided to commit suicide using only the rudimentary tools available to him in his prison cell. He began by tearing up several packs of playing cards, giving particular focus to obtaining pieces with red ink (at the time, the ink in red playing cards contained nitrocellulose, which is flammable and when wet can create an explosive mixture), and stuffed them into a pipe. He then plugged one end of the pipe firmly with a broom handle and poured water into the other end to soak the card pieces. He then placed the pipe on a kerosene heater next to his bed and placed the open end firmly against his head. The heater turned the water into steam and eventually enough pressure built up inside the pipe so that when it burst, the explosion shot out bits of playing cards with enough force to penetrate Kogut's skull, killing him. In a suicide note, Kogut stated that he and he alone should punish himself for his crimes. 1959: In the Dyatlov Pass incident, Nine ski hikers in the Ural Mountains abandoned their camp in the middle of the night in apparent terror, some clad only in their underwear despite sub-zero weather. Six of the hikers died of hypothermia and three by unexplained fatal injuries. Though the corpses showed no signs of struggle, one victim had a fatal skull fracture, two had major chest fractures (comparable in force to a car accident), and one was missing her tongue. The victims' clothing also contained high levels of radiation. Soviet investigators determined only that "a compelling unknown force" had caused the deaths, barring entry to the area for years thereafter.