Imagine if, after "Jackie Brown" wasn't the biggest thing ever; that instead of taking some time to dig in and truly connect with what he wanted to do with film and what made him "tick" as an artist (results re: "Kill Bill," "Grindhouse," "Inglorious Basterds" and now "Django" speak for themselves) ...Quentin Tarantino had decided to say "fuck it" and just making variations-on/revisitations-of "Pulp Fiction" and "Reservoir Dogs" while staying comfy on merchandising from films and characters he'd made during a relatively brief period of relevance in the pop-cultural wasteland of the 90s.
Well, if Tarantino had fallen that far AND people were still telling him he was "the man" because he does podcasts and speaking engagements where he tells allegedly fascinating stories about how he almost made a "Superman" that one time... he'd be Kevin Smith. The latest thing Smith Inc. is (correctly) certain that his fanbase will pay live-appearance prices to see on a roadshow is an animated Jay & Silent Bob movie that appears to at least partially be a "Bluntman & Chronic" movie - the one-joke idiocy of which (i.e. making a movie about them) he devoted a huge chunk of "Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back" to skewering...
Ugh. The obvious jokes. The "nostalgiac" callbacks to fans-only comics making nostalgiac callbacks to the movies. The John K.-wannabe animation. Why? Why is this?
And before anyone brings it up - it took me a LONG time to finally turn around on Smith. I love "Clerks." I love "Mallrats" in a different way. I respect "Chasing Amy." I love "Dogma." "Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back" is hilarious. I even like the "Clerks" animated series and "Clerks 2" has some really powerful/funny stuff in there that at the time signaled he might have "figured shit out."
But he's been blowing it ever since, and his "aw, geez" self-promoter schtick was tired for a loooong time before that. His B.S. about film critics and all the nonsense that went down around "Red State"... no, I'm done with him.
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