British postcard by Pyramid, Leicester, no. PC 8209. Photo: Joyce Silverstein. Caption: Winona Ryder - Cream Dress.

Delicate American actress Winona Ryder (1971) is known for her dark hair, brown eyes and pale skin. She starred in films such as Beetlejuice Heathers, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Edward Scissorhands, and the television series Stranger Things. In 1994, she won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in the film The Age of Innocence (1993), and Ryder was nominated twice for an Oscar.

Winona Ryder was born Winona Laura Horowitz in Winona (Olmsted County), Minnesota, in 1971. Yes, her name is very much the same as her birthplace. Her parents, Cindy Horowitz (Istas), an author and video producer, and Michael Horowitz, a publisher and bookseller, were part of the hippie movement. She has a brother named Uri Horowitz (1976), who got his first name after Yuri Gagarin, a half-sister named Sunyata Palmer (1968), and a half-brother named Jubal Palmer (1970) from her mother Cindy's first marriage. From 1978, Winona grew up in a commune near Mendocino in California, which had no electricity. When Winona was seven, her mother began to manage an old cinema in a nearby barn and would screen films all day. She allowed Winona to miss school to watch movies with her. In 1981, the family moved to Petaluma, California. Since Winona was considered an outsider in public school, she was sent to a public school and later to the American Conservatory Theater acting school. She was discovered at the age of thirteen by a talent scout at a theatre performance at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. In 1985, she applied for a role in the film Desert Bloom (David Seltzer, 1986) with a video in which she performed a monologue from the book 'Franny and Zooey' by J. D. Salinger. Although the casting choice was fellow actress Annabeth Gish, director and writer David Seltzer recognised her talent and cast her as Rina in his film Lucas (David Seltzer, 1986) about a teenager (Corey Haim) and his life in high school. When telephoned to ask what name she wanted to be called in the credits, she chose Ryder as her stage name because her father's Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels album was playing in the background. Her real hair colour is blonde but when she made Lucas (1986), her hair color was dyed black. She was told to keep it that colour and with the exception of Edward Scissorhands (1990), it has stayed that color since. Her next film was Square Dance (Daniel Petrie, 1987), in which the protagonist she portrays lives a life between two worlds: on a traditional farm and in a big city. Ryder's performance received good reviews, although neither film was a commercial success. Her acting in Lucas led director Tim Burton to cast her in his film Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988). In this comedy, she played Lydia Deetz, who moves with her family into a house inhabited by ghosts (played by Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, and Michael Keaton). Ryder, as well as the film, received positive reviews, and Beetlejuice was also successful at the box office. In 1989, she starred as Veronica Sawyer in the independent film Heathers (Michael Lehmann, 1989) about a couple (Ryder and Christian Slater) who kill popular schoolgirls. Ryder's agent had previously advised her against the role. The film was a financial failure, but Ryder received positive reviews. The Jerry Lee Lewis biopic Great Balls of Fire! (Jim McBride, 1989) was also a flop. That same year, Ryder appeared in Mojo Nixon's music video 'Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child'. At the premiere of Great Balls of Fire (1989), Ryder met fellow actor and later film partner Johnny Depp. The couple became engaged a few months later, but their relationship ended in 1993. He had a tattoo of her name and after they broke up, he had this reduced to "Wino forever".

In 1990, Winona Ryder had her breakthrough performance alongside her boyfriend Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton, 1990). The fantasy film was an international box-office success. Ryder was selected for the role of Mary Corleone in The Godfather: Part III (Francis Ford Coppola, 1990) but had to drop out of the role after catching the flu from the strain of doing the films Welcome Home Roxy (Jim Abrahams, 1990) and Mermaids (Richard Benjamin, 1990) back-to-back. Ryder's performance alongside Cher and Christina Ricci in the family comedy Mermaids (1990) was praised by critics and she was nominated for a Golden Globe in the Best Supporting Actress category. Ryder also appeared with Cher and Ricci in the music video for 'The Shoop Shoop Song', the film's theme song. Independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch wrote a role specifically for her in Night on Earth (Jim Jarmusch, 1991), as a tattooed, chain-smoking cabdriver who dreams of becoming a mechanic. Ryder was cast in a dual role as Mina Murray and Elisabeta in Bram Stoker's Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992). In 1993, she starred as Blanca in the drama The House of the Spirits (Bille August, 1993) alongside Antonio Banderas, Meryl Streep, and Glenn Close. It is the film adaptation of Isabel Allende's bestseller of the same name. Together with Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel Day-Lewis, she starred in Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993), the film adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel. She was Martin Scorsese's first and only choice for the role of May Welland. For years, she kept the message he left on her voicemail, informing her she got the role. Her part earned her a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress and an Oscar nomination. She also earned positive reviews for her role in the comedy Reality Bites (Ben Stiller, 1994). She received critical acclaim and another Oscar nomination the same year as Jo in the drama Little Women (Gillian Armstrong, 1994). In 1996, she starred alongside Daniel Day-Lewis and Joan Allen in The Crucible (Nicholas Hytner, 1996), an adaptation of Arthur Miller's stage play about the Puritan witch hunt in Salem. The film was not a success; however, Ryder's performance was favourably reviewed. A year later she portrayed an android in the successful horror film Alien: Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997) alongside Sigourney Weaver's Ripley. In 1998 she starred in Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998). after Drew Barrymore turned down the role. In 1999 she starred as a psychiatric patient with borderline syndrome in the drama Girl, Interrupted (James Mangold, 1999), based on Susanna Kaysen's autobiographical novel. Girl, Interrupted, the first film on which she served as executive producer, was supposed to be Ryder's comeback in Hollywood after the flops of the past years. However, the film became the breakthrough for her colleague Angelina Jolie, who won an Oscar for her role. In this decade, she was involved with Dave Pirner, the lead singer of the group Soul Asylum, from 1993 to 1996 and with Matt Damon from December 1997 to April 2000.

Winona Ryder appeared alongside Richard Gere in Autumn in New York (Joan Chen, 2000), a romance about an older man's love for a younger woman. She also made a cameo appearance in the comedy Zoolander (Ben Stiller, 2000). The comedy Mr. Deeds (Steven Brill, 2002) with Adam Sandler became her biggest financial success to date. The film failed with critics and Ryder was nominated for the Golden Raspberry award. Also in 2002, she was sentenced to three years probation and 480 hours of work for repeatedly shoplifting $5,000 worth of clothes. The incident caused a career setback. She withdrew from the public eye in the following years and did not appear in front of the camera again until 2006. In that year, she appeared in the novel adaptation A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater, 2006) alongside Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., and Woody Harrelson. In 2009, she made an appearance in Star Trek: The Future Begins (J. J. Abrams, 2009) as Spock (Zachary Quinto)'s mother Amanda Grayson. The prequel became a huge success at the box office and Ryder earned a Scream Award for Best Guest Appearance. She also appeared alongside Robin Wright and Julianne Moore in Rebecca Miller's Pippa Lee (2009), and alongside Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan (2010). Ryder starred in the television film When Love Is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story (John Kent Harrison, 2010), for which she was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award. She starred in the comedy The Dilemma (Ron Howard, 2011), and the thrillers The Iceman (Ariel Vromen, 2012), and The Letter (Jay Anania, 2012) opposite James Franco. In Tim Burton's Frankenweenie (2012) she lent her voice to the character Elsa Van Helsing. Since 2016, she has embodied the main character, Joyce Byers, in the Netflix series Stranger Things (2016-2022), for which she received positive responses. Her role in the series has been described by many as a comeback. Since 2011 Winona Ryder is in a relationship with Scott MacKinlay Hahn.

Sources: Pedro Borges (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and German), and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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British postcard by Pyramid Posters, Leicester, no. PC 9649. Image: Disney. Spooky kids in The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick, 1993).

And we wish you a not so merry but fun Christmas!

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) is an American musical animated film written by Tim Burton. The production was almost entirely made with stop-motion. The script of The Nightmare Before Christmas was taken from a short story of the same name (in verse) written by Burton. The film was produced by Touchstone Pictures, a film studio of Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group, itself part of The Walt Disney Company. Burton came up with the story of the original poem after seeing Halloween paraphernalia in the window of a shop being taken down and replaced with Christmas decorations.

Source: Wikipedia (Dutch).

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British postcard by Pyramid Posters, Leicester, no. PC9458, 2004. Photo: Miramax / A Band Apart. Sonny Chiba as Hattori Hanzō and other cast members in Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003-2004). Caption: The 4th film of Quentin Tarantino.

On 19 August 2021, Japanese actor and martial artist Shinichi Chiba (千葉 真一, 1939 – 2021), known internationally as Sonny Chiba, passed away. Chiba was one of the first actors to achieve stardom through his skills in martial arts, initially in Japan and later before an international audience. Chiba's breakthrough international hit was The Street Fighter (1974) which was brought to Western audiences (dubbed in English) by New Line Cinema. The film and its sequels established him as the reigning Japanese martial arts actor in international cinema for the next two decades.It was New Line Cinema founder Robert Shaye who gave Chiba the English name "Sonny", which Chiba would adopt as his own (mostly for non-Japanese projects) from that point on. Chiba's enduring onscreen career received a tribute when he appeared in a key role as Hattori Hanzo, the owner of a sushi restaurant and retired samurai sword craftsman, in Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003-2004). Chiba starred in more than 125 films for Toei Studios and has won numerous awards in Japan for his acting.

American martial arts film Kill Bill: Volume 1 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003) stars Uma Thurman as the Bride (code name Black Mamba), a former member of a team of assassins, the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, described as "the deadliest woman in the world". She swears revenge on the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, and Vivica A. Fox) and their leader, Bill (David Carradine), after they try to kill her and her unborn child. Her journey takes her to Tokyo, where she battles the yakuza including Chiaki Kuriyama as Gogo Yubari.

Writer-director Quentin Tarantino and actress Uma Thurman conceived the Bride character during the production of Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994); Kill Bill credits the story to "Q & U". The two began talking about the kinds of films that they would like to do, and Quentin said he would like to do a 1970's style kung-fu flick. Uma came up with the film's opening shot of her beaten up and wearing a wedding gown. Tarantino spent a year and a half writing the script while he was living in New York City in 2000 and 2001, spending time with Thurman and her newborn daughter Maya. Reuniting with the more mature Thurman, now a mother, influenced the way Tarantino wrote the Bride character; he did not come to the realization that the Bride's child could still be alive until the end of the writing process. He originally wrote Bill for Warren Beatty, but as the character developed and the role required greater screen time and martial arts training, he rewrote it for David Carradine. Tarantino decided to cast Daryl Hannah as Elle Driver after seeing her performance in the television film First Target. The physical similarities between Thurman and Hannah inspired how he wrote the rivalry between the two characters. Tarantino conceived Kill Bill as a homage to grindhouse cinema, including Martial Arts films, samurai cinema, Blaxploitation, and Spaghetti Westerns. It features an anime sequence by Production I.G. Tarantino revealed in an interview that the music used in Kill Bill was all from other films. He used music from his soundtrack collection. It is the first of two Kill Bill films made in a single production. They were planned as a single release, but the film, with a runtime of over four hours, was divided into two. Volume 2 was released the following year. Volume 1 grossed over $180 million on a $30 million budget.

A woman in a wedding dress, the Bride (Uma Thurman), lies wounded in a chapel in El Paso, Texas, having been attacked by the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. She tells their leader, Bill (David Carradine), that she is pregnant with his baby just before he shoots her in the head. Four years later, having survived the attack, the Bride goes to the home of Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), planning to kill her. Both women were members of the Deadly Vipers, which has since disbanded; Vernita now leads a normal suburban family life. They engage in a knife fight but are interrupted by the arrival of Vernita's young daughter, Nikki. The Bride agrees to meet Vernita at night to settle the matter, but when Vernita tries to shoot the Bride with a pistol hidden in a box of cereal, the Bride throws a knife into Vernita's chest, killing her. Nikki witnesses the killing, and the Bride offers her a chance to avenge her mother's death when she grows up, should she choose to do so. Four years earlier, police investigate the massacre at the wedding chapel. The sheriff discovers that the Bride is alive but comatose. In the hospital, Deadly Viper Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) prepares to assassinate the Bride via lethal injection, but Bill aborts the mission at the last moment, considering it dishonorable to kill the Bride when she cannot defend herself.

The Bride awakens from her four-year coma and is horrified to find that she is no longer pregnant. She kills a man who tries to rape her and a hospital worker who has been selling her body while she was comatose. She takes the hospital worker's truck and teaches herself to walk again. Resolving to kill Bill and the other Deadly Vipers, the Bride picks her first target: O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), now the leader of the Tokyo yakuza. O-Ren's parents were murdered by the yakuza when she was a child; she took vengeance on the yakuza boss and replaced him after training as an elite assassin. The Bride travels to Okinawa, Japan, to obtain a sword from legendary swordsmith Hattori Hanzō (Sonny Chiba), who has sworn never to forge a sword again. After learning that her target is Bill, his former student, he relents and crafts his finest sword for her, taking a month to finish the job. The Bride tracks O-Ren to the House of Blue Leaves, a Tokyo restaurant, and amputates the arm of her assistant, Sofie Fatale (Julie Dreyfus). She defeats the Crazy 88, O-Ren's squad of elite fighters, and kills her bodyguard, schoolgirl Gogo Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama). O-Ren and the Bride duel in the restaurant's Japanese garden; the Bride gains the upper hand and kills O-Ren by slicing off the top of her head. After torturing Sofie for information about Bill, the Bride leaves her alive as a threat. Bill finds Sofie and asks her if the Bride knows that her daughter is alive.

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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British postcard by Pyramid Posters, Leicester, no. PC9465. Photo: Miramax / A Band Apart. Daryl Hannah as Elle Driver in Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003). Caption: Elle Driver a.k.a. Californian Mountain Snake.

American actress Daryl Hannah (1960) is a tall blond beauty, with haunting blue-green eyes. She had her breakthrough as Pris Stratton in Ridley Scott's Science-Fiction thriller Blade Runner (1982) and as the mermaid Madison in Ron Howard's fantasy Splash (1984). She is best known for her role as one-eyed assassin Elle Driver in Quentin Tarantino's two-part classic Kill Bill (2003-2004).

Daryl Christine Hannah was born in 1960 in Chicago, Illinois. She is the daughter of Susan Jeanne (Metzger), a schoolteacher and later a producer, and Donald Christian Hannah, who owned a tugboat/barge company. Her parents divorced and her mother subsequently married music journalist/promoter Jerrold Wexler, brother of cinematographer Haskell Wexler. Her siblings are actress Page Hannah, Don Hannah, and film director Tanya Wexler. Daryl graduated from the University of Southern California School of Theatre. She practiced ballet with Maria Tallchief and studied drama at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. Her interest in film was sparked by a severe case of insomnia early in life, and young Hannah would spend hours on end soaking in films into the wee hours of the night. In her twenties, she played keyboard and sang backup for Jackson Browne. She started with small roles, such as a student in the supernatural horror film The Fury (Brian De Palma, 1978) and as Kim Basinger's kid sister in Hard Country (1981). Daryl's breakout role was as the acrobatic, beautiful replicant punk android Pris in Blade Runner (1982). IMDb: " Pris was the vixen who wanted to live beyond her allotted years and risked the wrath of the title character." That same year she appeared in the summer hit release Summer Lovers (Randal Kleiser, 1982). Showing her versatility, from there she portrayed a mermaid, Madison in Ron Howard's zany comedy Splash (1984), which starred Tom Hanks. That same year, she appeared in The Pope of Greenwich Village (Stuart Rosenberg, 1984), with co-stars Mickey Rourke and Eric Roberts. She also played a Cro-Magnon in The Clan of the Cave Bear (Michael Chapman, 1986), and the title character in Steve Martin's romantic comedy Roxanne (Fred Schepisi, 1987), a contemporary take on Edmond Rostand's play 'Cyrano de Bergerac'. Hannah received a Razzie Award for her part as Darien Taylor in Oliver Stone's drama Wall Street (1987) opposite Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen. She was highly praised for her interpretation of a nerdish hairdresser Annelle Dupuy Desoto in the comedy-drama Steel Magnolias (Herbert Ross, 1989) and was treated kindly by the press and public for her title role in the made-for-TV Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (Christopher Guest, 1992), a comical remake of the 1958 cult Science-Fiction film of the same name.

Despite public perception that Daryl Hannah withdrew from acting in the later 1990s, it was simply an unfortunate series of career missteps that kept the enigmatic actress out of the multiplexes and in such mediocre fare as The Last Days of Frankie the Fly and Gun (both 1997). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Of course, not all was lost during the 1990s, and audiences could indeed catch memorable performances by Hannah in Grumpy Old Men (1993) (as well as that film's 1995 sequel), the Emmy-nominated mini-series The Last Don and the Robert Altman thriller The Gingerbread Man (1998)." As a filmmaker, Hannah wrote, directed, and produced an award-winning short film, entitled The Last Supper (1995). Hannah also directed, produced, and shot the documentary Strip Notes (2002) which was inspired while researching her role for Dancing at the Blue Iguana (Michael Radford, 2000). She has been a consistent, strong supporter of independent cinema, both acting in and producing many films. Daryl starred in the experimental improvised film Dancing at the Blue Iguana (Michael Radford, 2000), Casa de los babys (John Sayles, 2003) as well as the political satire Silver City (John Sayles, 2004). In 2002, Hannah appeared in Robbie Williams' video for the song 'Feel' portraying Williams' love interest. She worked on several films with the Polish Brothers including Jackpot (2001) and the acclaimed drama Northfork (2003). The success of Northfork marked the beginning of a critical year for the veteran actress. A turn as a contract killer with a conscience followed with The Job, and after a trip to the middle of nowhere in The Big Empty, Hannah aspired to adopt a Mexican orphan in John Sayles Casa de los babys (John Sayles, 2003). Teamed with a powerhouse cast that included Lili Taylor, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Marcia Gay Harden, the critically acclaimed drama cemented the comeback that would continue with Kill Bill Vol. 1 just a few short months later. Cast as deadly assassin Elle Driver (Codename: California Mountain Snake), Hannah's eye-patch-wearing killer was inspired by the exploitation roughie Thriller (also known as They Call Her One Eye). Though Hannah was still breathing at the end of Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003), audiences held their breath to discover the ultimate fate of her vicious character until the release of Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004) four months later. In 2015, she appeared as Angelica Turing in the Netflix series Sense8 (2015-2018) from the Wachowskis. Darryl Hannah was in a serious relationship with John Kennedy Jr. for several years but never married due to Jacqueline Kennedy's disapproval of her son marrying an actress. She began seeing musician Jackson Browne in 1983 and eventually broke up in 1992 amid allegations that Browne was physically abusive to her. Since 2018, Hannah is married to musician Neil Young.

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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British postcard by Pyramid Posters, Leicester, no. PC9462. Photo: Miramax / A Band Apart. Chiaki Kuriyama as Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003). Caption: The 4th film by Quentin Tarantino. When Kuriyama was shooting this scene where she flings her ball and chain out, she accidentally hit Quentin Tarantino on the head as he stood by the camera.

American martial arts film Kill Bill: Volume 1 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003) stars Uma Thurman as the Bride (code name Black Mamba), a former member of a team of assassins, the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, described as "the deadliest woman in the world". She swears revenge on the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, and Vivica A. Fox) and their leader, Bill (David Carradine), after they try to kill her and her unborn child. Her journey takes her to Tokyo, where she battles the yakuza including Chiaki Kuriyama as Gogo Yubari.

Writer-director Quentin Tarantino and actress Uma Thurman conceived the Bride character during the production of Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994); Kill Bill credits the story to "Q & U". The two began talking about the kinds of films that they would like to do, and Quentin said he would like to do a 1970's style kung-fu flick. Uma came up with the film's opening shot of her beaten up and wearing a wedding gown. Tarantino spent a year and a half writing the script while he was living in New York City in 2000 and 2001, spending time with Thurman and her newborn daughter Maya. Reuniting with the more mature Thurman, now a mother, influenced the way Tarantino wrote the Bride character; he did not come to the realization that the Bride's child could still be alive until the end of the writing process. He originally wrote Bill for Warren Beatty, but as the character developed and the role required greater screen time and martial arts training, he rewrote it for David Carradine. Tarantino decided to cast Daryl Hannah as Elle Driver after seeing her performance in the television film First Target. The physical similarities between Thurman and Hannah inspired how he wrote the rivalry between the two characters. Tarantino conceived Kill Bill as a homage to grindhouse cinema, including Martial Arts films, samurai cinema, Blaxploitation, and Spaghetti Westerns. It features an anime sequence by Production I.G. Tarantino revealed in an interview that the music used in Kill Bill was all from other films. He used music from his soundtrack collection. It is the first of two Kill Bill films made in a single production. They were planned as a single release, but the film, with a runtime of over four hours, was divided into two. Volume 2 was released the following year. Volume 1 grossed over $180 million on a $30 million budget.

A woman in a wedding dress, the Bride (Uma Thurman), lies wounded in a chapel in El Paso, Texas, having been attacked by the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. She tells their leader, Bill (David Carradine), that she is pregnant with his baby just before he shoots her in the head. Four years later, having survived the attack, the Bride goes to the home of Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), planning to kill her. Both women were members of the Deadly Vipers, which has since disbanded; Vernita now leads a normal suburban family life. They engage in a knife fight but are interrupted by the arrival of Vernita's young daughter, Nikki. The Bride agrees to meet Vernita at night to settle the matter, but when Vernita tries to shoot the Bride with a pistol hidden in a box of cereal, the Bride throws a knife into Vernita's chest, killing her. Nikki witnesses the killing, and the Bride offers her a chance to avenge her mother's death when she grows up, should she choose to do so. Four years earlier, police investigate the massacre at the wedding chapel. The sheriff discovers that the Bride is alive but comatose. In the hospital, Deadly Viper Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) prepares to assassinate the Bride via lethal injection, but Bill aborts the mission at the last moment, considering it dishonorable to kill the Bride when she cannot defend herself.

The Bride awakens from her four-year coma and is horrified to find that she is no longer pregnant. She kills a man who tries to rape her and a hospital worker who has been selling her body while she was comatose. She takes the hospital worker's truck and teaches herself to walk again. Resolving to kill Bill and the other Deadly Vipers, the Bride picks her first target: O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), now the leader of the Tokyo yakuza. O-Ren's parents were murdered by the yakuza when she was a child; she took vengeance on the yakuza boss and replaced him after training as an elite assassin. The Bride travels to Okinawa, Japan, to obtain a sword from legendary swordsmith Hattori Hanzō (Sonny Chiba), who has sworn never to forge a sword again. After learning that her target is Bill, his former student, he relents and crafts his finest sword for her, taking a month to finish the job. The Bride tracks O-Ren to the House of Blue Leaves, a Tokyo restaurant, and amputates the arm of her assistant, Sofie Fatale (Julie Dreyfus). She defeats the Crazy 88, O-Ren's squad of elite fighters, and kills her bodyguard, schoolgirl Gogo Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama). O-Ren and the Bride duel in the restaurant's Japanese garden; the Bride gains the upper hand and kills O-Ren by slicing off the top of her head. After torturing Sofie for information about Bill, the Bride leaves her alive as a threat. Bill finds Sofie and asks her if the Bride knows that her daughter is alive.

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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