Quentin Tarantino

SOME kids love Disneyland, but for little Quentin Tarantino, the happiest place on Earth was always a scabby L.A. movie theater. That's where he could sit in the dark with bloodied samurais, dangerous pimps and zombie brides. His search for the next matinee took him to every freeway and to distant neighborhoods, which is why Tarantino now knows the city like the back of an amputated hand.

Ten years ago, when Quentin Tarantino first sat down to write his own WWII extravaganza, "Inglourious Basterds," a film he referred to as his "men on a mission" saga, he needed to come up with two story staples: a cool group of renegades and a mission. For his rough-edged warriors, he quickly settled on Jewish soldiers -- not the most obvious choice, given the legacy of Jerry Seinfeld and Woody Allen -- and for his mission, nothing less than revising history in his update of such war film staples as "The Dirty Dozen" and "The Guns of Navarone," "Where Eagles Dare" and "The Great Escape."

Quentin Tarantino would have been proud had he been in the melee of journalists vying for a spot at his "Death Proof" news conference on Tuesday. The previous one, for Julian Schnabel's film "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," also in competition, ran well past the normal 30-minute allotment, which created a scrum outside the meeting room. Members of the media clawed their way in when the "Diving Bell" team finally gave way.

When Quentin Tarantino was just a video store clerk filled with filmmaking dreams, he and his pals shared a shorthand for the against-all-odds mission movie they would someday make: "This will be our 'Inglorious Bastards!' " Tarantino and his friends would say.

Unlike criminal investigator Nick Stokes, who's buried alive in the "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" season finale, Quentin Tarantino didn't feel at all trapped by working within the confines of network television. "It wasn't a challenge in that regard because ... I like the show," says Tarantino, who conceived and directed the episode. "I just wanted to do my episode of it. So the format was all the stuff I embrace. I just wanted it to be bigger, to feel in someway like a 'CSI' movie."

"Killing can work as a metaphor for human relationships, if that makes any sense." -- Quentin Tarantino Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, the 41-year old maestro of "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction" and the coming "Kill Bill: Vol. 2," is perched in the family room of his Mulholland mansion, popping strange Japanese cheese munchies in his mouth and trying to explain that "Kill Bill," which seemed like a chick revenge movie in "Vol. 1," actually turns out to be a love story in "Vol. 2."

An adrenaline shot to the movie heart, soul and mind, Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill Vol. 2" is a blast of pure pop pleasure. The second half of Tarantino's long-gestating epic, "Vol. 2" firmly lays to rest the doubts raised by "Vol. 1" as to whether the filmmaker had retained his chops after years of silence and, as important, had anything to offer beyond pyrotechnics and bloodshed.

Quentin Tarantino said Monday that he plans to shoot a third part of the "Kill Bill" vengeance series, eventually. "I have plans, actually not right away, but like in 15 years from now, I'll do a third version of this saga," the director said at a news conference in Madrid to promote "Kill Bill Vol. 2," which opens in Spain next month. Tarantino said it would focus on the daughter of a hired killer that Uma Thurman's character bumps off early in her revenge spree.

Miramax Films will release Quentin Tarantino's martial-arts adventure film, "Kill Bill," in two installments. The first volume of the three-hour movie will be released Oct. 10, according to the New York Times. The second part could follow two to six months later. "Kill Bill" is the Oscar-winning writer-director's first film since 1997's "Jackie Brown" and revolves around the world's most deadly female assassin, who is shot on her wedding day and falls into a coma for five years.