“Repeat after me, Kill Bill fans: Referentiality itself is not an intrinsic aesthetic value. Empty referentiality, going through the motions, doesn’t make a motion picture, give cinema the gift of sight….or insight.” So goes Ron Rosenbaum’s very astute piece about cheaply referential films in the 5.23.05 edition of the New York Observer. Quentin Tarantino’s martial-arts flick “was the perfect epitome of and metaphor for what I would like to call ‘The Cinema of Pretentious Stupidity,'” he continues. “The idea that ceaseless tedious references to obscure martial-arts movies known mainly by video-store geeks adds up to art. I’ve heard so many defenses of Kill Bill that depend on the apparently marvelous and unheard-of-before wonder of its referentiality. Dude, just because you make a reference — or many references — doesn’t make it meaningful or worth four hours of our time.”