Kill Your Idols: Quentin Tarantino

I'm in line with what Norrin wrote and what Versatile wrote. I don't think Inglorious Basterds or Django Unchained can hold a candle to Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill, but he's still a fascinating filmmaker, and an average Tarantino film is still worth the price of admission over most other director's best efforts.

He may make bloated, flawed films, but they're interesting bloated, flawed films.

 

Death Proof was definitely better than Planet Terror, but it was still a mess. Great set-up in its first half, but once they devoted seemingly 10 minutes to Zoe Bell surfing on a car hood, it got fucking ponderous.

 

To make a sports journalism analogy on a sports journalism board, watching a Tarantino movie is like reading a Charles P. Pierce feature. You know what you're getting. The voice will be very distinct. Some things will be overwrought. But if you generally like his work, you probably will like it.

 

Tarantino fellates Obama?

 

If you think Pierce fellates Obama, you haven't read him in the last five years.

 

I was joking... It was a bad joke... My apologies...

 

Sorry. Sore spot with me. Pierce actually goes out of his way to overly criticize Obama. Unfairly, sometimes, in my view.

 

I rarely think it's unfair. I think he holds the President to a very high standard, and sometimes the President falls way short of that, and I like that one of our strongest liberal voices is willing to criticize him with such vigor. When we have conservative columnists admitting after the fact they couldn't stand McCain or Romney but felt it was necessary to "advocate" for them as part of the cause, that shows the difference in intellectual honesty between them and Pierce. I mean, shit, Charlie wrote a column stating he was going to vote for the Green Party candidate until she said something straight of left field Crazyville that even he couldn't get behind.

 

To me, idealism is both admirable and frustrating. Charlie is an idealist during a period in which only pragmatism seems possible. He wants Bob LaFollette in the White House. Not sure that's possible anymore. Doesn't make me think any less of him as a writer; it's just how I feel.

 

Never could have worked for a black guy. He has it bad enough as it is.

 

Anyway, back to QT.

Basterds has some lovely set pieces, but I fail to see why it's viewed on the same level as Pulp Fiction, or even Dogs. It's a lovely, messy, disjointed, violent film that I'm not sure even knows what it's try to say.

 

Who said it is?

And why does it have to say something? It's a fun, enjoyable, smart movie. In that way, Django Unchained was sort of the better version of Inglourious Basterds.