Five Easy Pieces

Abstract

  THIS BRIEF and itinerate survey of the airwave spectrum, a somewhat arbitrary scan across the audio visual radar, takes a glancing read of some current films and television programmes. There should never be any inhibition or snobbery about the range or pluralism of the material we take seriously, in fact there is an imperative to attend to the things that most people watch. Even if these five fragments, very different pieces from different places in film and television, cannot possibly add up to a balanced overview, they form some part of the pattern of how things are now. 1) Kill BillAs the opening credits announce, this is indeed the fourth film by Quentin Tarantino; (it's worth remembering that Ford, Hawks and Huston used to produce that number every couple of years rather than over a decade and a half). But this is part of the enhanced self-promotion of...