Here is the quote from the New Yorker, 13 Oct 03, p113:
"And yet, entering into the spirit of Tarantino's video-store fantasy of
martial arts, we may still have a little problem. It's this: a filmed image
has a stubborn hold on reality. An image of a rose may be filtered, digitally
repainted, or pixilated, yet it will still carry the real-world associations--
the touch, the smell, the romance--that we have with roses. Tarantino wants us
to give up such associations, which means giving up ourselves. [He describes
the fight between the two women, one of whom is killed in front of her
daughter, who stares blankly.] But where's the joke in this particular
unreality? If Tarantino is cutting us off from the real world, why use a child
to bring us so perilously back into it. And, if he's bringing us back into it,
why not allow the child some expression of fear or grief? [...] KB is what's
formally known as decadence and commonly known as crap. It will doubtless
cause enormous excitement among the kind of pop archivists for whom the merest
reference to a Run Run Shaw kung-fu picture from 1977 is deliciously naughty--a
fresson de schlock that, for them, replaces any other vital response to a
movie."
Well said.
Andrew
Andrew Lesk
http://courses.ece.utoronto.ca/eng252yl0101
http://www.andrewlesk.com
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