Sunday, December 10, 2006

Wherin Ed does not like Quentin Tarentino.

It's easy to hate things that are popular. Some people make an entire subculture out of disliking things that are popular. It's fun to look down on things that others love, because that makes you BETTER than them. Or at least more cultured. And smarter too! Et cetera, et cetera, and so there's a very real temptation, in my heart at any rate, to be the sort of reactionary hater of popular things. And while this is a perfectly rational and appropriate reaction in some instances (Larry the Cable Guy? Who allows this man to live?), other times a person's popularity is so great, especially among people who I otherwise respect, that I feel like I'm doing something wrong, or am somehow MISTAKEN in not supplying them with their due adulation (Dane Cook; I figured out that he was a douchebag a good six months before anyone else I knew).

I try to keep an open mind though. So last night, in spite of the fact that I think Quentin Tarentino is, well, not very good, I watched Reservoir Dogs. I watched it with an open mind, as best I could. I tried very hard to turn off the part of my brain that said I wouldn't like it... every time I thought the word 'hack' I would mentally slap myself on the wrist and try to just dig the goings-on. And there were some enjoyable aspects. The dialogue was rapid-fire and tightly paced; the cinematography was visually interesting... but that's not the same as 'good'. I liked the costuming, I liked the hits of the seventies music, I liked Mr. Pink's paranoia... but I got so bored by the midpoint of the movie that I started playing New Super Mario Brothers. This, in a movie starring Steve Buschemi, is pretty much unforgivable.

I'm tempted to tear the movie apart, but I'm a man who unironically enjoyed Snakes on a Plane, so I can't really judge others. Besides, Pulp Fiction was awesome; easily in my top twenty list, and it used the same set of tropes, but with Samuel L. Jackson. And HEART. Maybe it is that I just couldn't let go of my dislike for the QT; Pulp Fiction was the first of his movies I ever saw (discounting Four Rooms, which I loved but is a special sort of case), and I didn't start hating him until the self-satisfied train wreck that is Kill Bill. Also, he's got the kind of smile that makes my fists itch, and I will be willing to concede that as a specific physical problem on my part. That being the case, that I didn't like it because I somehow wanted to not like it, I feel kind of like an ass. Am I just a reactive, not marching to the beat of my own drummer so much a banging pots and pans together just to make as much noise as possible?

Then, I'm looking at the IMDB page for Kill Bill, and I read this: "The many continuity lapses and other apparent technical errors are a matter of deliberate stylistic choice," and my loathing burns anew.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

In Resivour Dogs the guy who gets shot in the stomach sounds like Grover from the mupets for the rest of the movie.
Also- whats your high score in wack-a-mole in New Super Mario Brothers minigames? Mine is 82. Theres no way you can beat that.

12/11/2006 9:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

^-dnon

12/11/2006 9:32 PM  
Blogger Ed Turner said...

I've not done the NSMB mini-games, sadly. Don't have a DS of my own. Notwithstanidng, I've gotten all the way to Giant Bowser in the game proper, while the poor saps that OWN the system are stuck on level 5. Poor saps.

12/12/2006 10:06 AM  

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