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Post #86086 by donhonyc on Tue, Apr 13, 2004 9:18 PM

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I just saw 'Kill Bill Vol. 1' on DVD tonight. And I thought the same thing I always think about Tarantino; he's a great director who knows how to make a film look very good. He is a master of stylization and art direction, and he knows how to steal from the other film genres he was a fan of and put them in the world of his own films.

What REALLY, REALLY bothers me about Tarantino, is that his style outweighs his content. Although he does attempt to give his characters and stories their own lives, he's more interested in making violence look 'really cool and trendy' and that, for lack of a better term, just pisses me off.
At the end of 'Kill Bill Vol. 1" I was like 'what the hell did I just watch?'. 10 minutes of character and story and 90 minutes of STYLISH VIOLENCE. Yeah, I did like the whole female ass-kicker thing, but making violence look so damn cool is to me, and pardon me if I sound like some kind of moralist (hey..I love Russ Meyer), is a very dangerous thing. It's just bad, and perpetuates a world of folks, mostly kids of the Columbine/Kleibold & Harris variety, who will continue to think violence is really cool and try to imitate it in their own lives.

I thought the same thing about 'Pulp Fiction' and I have not seen it again since I saw it for the first time 10 years ago. I do remember liking 'Jackie Brown' and thought there was something more substantial going on there than just trendy cinematic violence. I have not seen 'Resevoir Dogs', but I probably will see 'KB Vol.2'. Hopefully there will be more of a story there, otherwise Tarantino should just go have cocktails with Oliver Stone and call it a day. Speaking of Oliver Stone...I threw in the towel with his films after seeing 'Natural Born Killers'. That film almost beat out 'The Doors' as the most ridiculous, self-indulgent film of all time.

[ Edited by: donhonyc on 2004-04-14 07:46 ]