What I was saying, or trying to say, is that that thing that I admire and find most frustrating in Tarantino’s work is that which I admire (and find most frustrating) in a lot of fairly contemporary art: the way with which influence is addressed. The cleverest (at their best, for the time being) can form a world out of ideas they’ve borrowed and somehow come up with something that’s wildly itself, despite the homage(s). It’s not as though this is new. (See Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou, for instance, complete with Samuel Fuller. Or Baby Nostradamus Shandy for that matter.) Nor are the the differences between “homage” and “in the style of” and “lazy mimeograph,” but QT’s facility (and often brilliance) with homage has led to a kind of laziness that I’ve come to dread so much that I had, until watching the movie in question, forgotten I could even LIKE a Tarantino film. Which is funny, since I’ve enjoyed all of them. Immensely.

At this point in time and technology with all that is available to pretty much anyone, it’s impossible to deny influence, but what one does and is capable of doing with them are strange beasts that far fewer can master.

“a DV camera, a ziploc bag, and an ethnic friend”

i think plenty of other folks have spawned as much bad art, since, for writers (i know you know this), your qualifiers could be (and always have been) boiled down to:

“a pen and a piece of paper”

we’re getting to the point where every “art form” will be accessible to everyone. well and good. i hope to see new things come from all these possibilities. but i tend to think it’s a plus that tarantino absorbed enough of his medium to be able to build on it like i see him doing in …basterds, even if he sometimes uses his powers for evil (mediocrity or the suborning thereof).

of course, i’m also open to the possibility that i’m reading this movie wrong, since i know you could totally school me on film.