This is a very long article that looks at the same question everyone else seems to be asking - does Tarantino still have it?. Here's the key paragraphs:

'Tarantino is in a uniquely difficult situation,' elaborates the film historian and critic Mark Cousins, 'because all the things that made him new and fresh when he burst on the scene a decade ago have become over-familiar and hackneyed through their over-use by other, often lesser, directors. It reached a kind of tipping point a few years back where every movie seemed to have a scene where the characters argued over pop cultural trivia. More worryingly in the long run is the sense that, like Scorsese before him, the second stage of his career might be characterised by that long, sad search for a subject.'

If that is indeed the case, Kill Bill might just be the pivotal moment when Tarantino exorcises, once and for all, the various absorbed generic influences - noir, blaxploitation, kung fu - that, to varying degrees, have defined all his films. Or, it could mark a long retreat into the kind of over-the-top stylistic conformity that will appeal only to his most adolescent-minded fans, of which there are many. Curiously, the most radical aspect of Kill Bill is also the most baffling: Tarantino's decision to pare the dialogue to a bare minimum which, though faithful to the genre's unspoken ground rules, is akin to Ronaldo deciding to stop scoring goals in order to concentrate fully on his passing.

Read the whole thing, its got lots of little tidbits of information - though I am getting tired of all these 'woe is Quentin' articles.

Category: Kill Bill
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