more bill

James points me to Elvis Mitchell's review of QT's soundtrack compilation for Kill Bill Vol I. The references Mitchell nails down are useful, of course. Some of the comments are expected and even interesting (even the note that with soundtrack compilations like the one for Jackie Brown, QT seems to be milking the African-American film franchise more than African-Americans themselves). But I guess I like QT, his love for films, and his ouevre too much to objectively read comments like Mr. Tarantino's endless catalog of references does not serve, as it might, to enlarge his film's meaning. Even the exploitation-movie scores that Mr. Tarantino appropriates served, on some freakish level, as social commentary. But he shows no interest in any social context. He also doesn't seem to understand that the blaxploitation films he loots were a delivery system for underground cultural transmissions. I can understand Mitchell's disappointment, but I don't think QT was attempting any social context. His P. O. V. on all the films he pays homage to lacks any such social context, since he probably caught them outside the fervent time that they marked in history.

And some more takes on the film...