My mother hated Inglorious Bastards and asked me to read the negative review in Macleans. Basically it says that Tarantino isn’t enough like other filmmakers and that people today don’t care about GW Pabst.

Because of Tarantino I’m watching Pabst’s Die freudlose Gasse at the moment. From the very first scene the titles it’s already the most unique black and white film I’ve ever seen: It’s in color. That’s no trivial claim either. I watch a lot more black and white films than others my age might suspect. Last night I took in Bogart’s High Sierra and those ultralate morning-bleeding writing nights are well-served by a solid Charlie Chan film nattering away in the background.

Tarantino uses color, and specifically weird color balances and saturation, in his films extensively. Literally — checking the time on the video now — 2:29 in to the movie I’m picking up neat ideas with color and mise. This is the kind of stuff we had to do on the (awful, awful) short: Color-balance the digital cameras to blue instead of white so that everything looks more red. Color use is easy to see in Freudlose because there’re only two, and one of them is always black. It’s like a training film.

When Tarantino talks, I listen. I do with any artist because they talk from a place of love and passion. Critics, more and more often I find, just hate what they don’t get. That’s understandable: A critic eats on knowing a genre. Innovation and creativity just make more work for them, and no one wants that.

The real test of the matter seems to be this: Who makes better film critics? Film critics or film directors? It’s just a personal taste thing, perhaps, but when Tarantino recommends a film I watch it. Ebert, not so much.