  I took a cheap shot at Tarantino and have opened a urlLink can of worms . The comment I made about QT was unfair -- both to him and to Eggers. There is no real correlation between the Lit Boy Problem and any filmmaker or group of filmmakers. There is, in fact, no general malaise and collapse of filmmaking in any way comparable to what's going down in book land. Which is not to say that there isn't a similar situation cropping up with certain specific filmmakers. Similar, but not identical. I don't want to spend much time on this, as I want to take a nap, but briefly here are my views on both Tarantino and the Coens. urlLink Pierluigi takes care of the broad strokes on Tarantino. The only thing I can say in his defense is that he seems to mean well.
His movies are a drawn-out love letter to cinema. The fact that I find all of his films boring, idiotic and brutally offensive to my aesthetic sense does not change the fact that he loves movies, and that shows, and maybe that's even okay. His basic innocence and naivete work to his advantage. Criticizing Tarantino is a little like criticizing a retarded person. Even if it must be done, it doesn't feel good. Criticizing the Coens, on the other hand, feels fucking awesome. Ben makes a strong case that their game has deteriorated. The last of their flicks I saw was The Man Who Wasn't There , so I'm not as up to snuff as I should be. Wait, maybe O, Brother came afterward and I did see that. Whatever. It's all the same to me. I disagree with Ben and Pier alike that the Coens were ever very good to begin with. Fargo is a masterpiece.
O,Brother is a solid exercise in literary allusion and fun shenanigans. The rest of it is just one solid blur of bad movie. I really want to like Barton Fink , because of its Faulkner references, but just can't bring myself to (despite the valiant efforts of Judy Davis to save the picture. ) Other than that, I can't even accurately distinguish one movie from another. The Coens wield irony like a bazooka and quirky humor like a sledge hammer. Their style is reduced to those two things. My aren't we ironic and quirky? Irony is a powerful tool, and is best used as little as possible, and should always be subtle. Quirky, dark humor can be used more liberally, but only if the quirkiness serves a greater purpose (which is not to say a greater message, but merely a greater aesthetic system). Humor should never be a justification for its own existence. The Coens don't seem to realize that.
To say that their new works are "more Hollywood" or "less energetic" is to miss what has been blatantly obvious from the beginning: subversion of genre can only get you so far. Eventually you have to make something that is really your own, that speaks in a loud voice and that stands for something. The Coens stand for nothing. They lurk behind the projector, hunting their next victim for an ode/subversion, squealing like delighted suckling pigs when they produce their next indie masterpiece of American irony.
Perhaps, finally, people are beginning to realize that these clowns don't have a distinctive style or a definable aesthetic theory or mission. Their films lack both style and content, and as such are as empty as a piece of art can possibly be. In addition, they have committed the abominable sin of foisting John Turturro on us in unspeakably bad role after unspeakably bad role. And that, loyal Fagistanis, is indefensible. 
