Fraters Libertas

Tarantino's (and others) Post-Adolescent Geekdom

Joe Morgenstern has a great qoute in today's WSJ regarding Quentin Tarantino and his "Punishingly dull" new movie Kill Bill, Episode One.

As I sat watching the serial beatings, mass killings, a grindingly awful gang rape and fountains of blood emanating from the stumps of severed limbs and a severed head, my thoughts turned not to video-store clerks but to a record-store clerk: Jack Black's Barry in "High Fidelity."

At the age of 40, Mr. Tarantino seems, on the evidence of this, to be locked in Barry's special sort of airless, post-adolescent geekdom--phenomenally knowledgeable, emotionally obtuse and cheerfully arrogant when it comes to telling others what's important or trivial, authentic or fake.

Local media purveyors of this mentality Chris Remenschneider and Jack Sparks should take note.