Thursday 14 June 2007

Schlock

I went to see the new Quentin Tarantino film last night with Sally. The two of us were alone in the cinema apart from a group of teenagers, mostly boys, nerdy types as QT must have been, who behaved in a fairly respectful way and then went home, no doubt to squeeze their spots and dream about Butterfly.

The film had all the essential ingredients, raunchily attractive women in hot pants discussing sex, car chases, gory and apparently gratuitous violence, an intellectual's attention to tacky period detail, deliberate anachronisms, lap dancing - everything you expect and love (or hate) from Tarantino, in a particularly stripped-back form. Underpinning all this was an extraordinary simple but effective structure: essentially, the same story told twice but with all the difference in the world, which is where the film's moral purpose (because, of course, it has one) comes from.

I won't say any more, because I wouldn't want to spoil it for you, but it's extraordinary how something that is so much sheer fun in such a superficially mindless way can also be intellectually satisfying.

Now just let me squeeze that spot.

4 comments:

Chancelucky said...

Okay, really dumb question, but I've never heard the phrase "Squeeze the spot".

It sounds like a euphemism for masturbation, but I thought I'd better ask the source.

In any case, I hope your spot is now as squeezed as it needs to be.

I just figured I ought to know what it meant before I see another Quentin Tarantino movie. Funny review btw.

Charles Lambert said...

If you substitute 'zit' for 'spot' does it make more sense?

Chancelucky said...

Thanks,
that does change the image a bit.
Though they used to claim that having the one was a product of doing the other.

Charles Lambert said...

Yes, that and drooling.

I think I actually prefer your interpretation.