He makes a really good point about indulgence, structure, and pacing. I also think film language of today has geared the audience toward dis-appreciating the brand of storytelling Tarantino provides. Plus, there is this over-emphasis on novelty. If it's not new, then it must be told in new and surprising fashion -- or else a movie is just so been-there-done-that it's got all the cachet of an out-of-date idiom.
What works for me is that I feel I can appreciate Tarantino's films on more levels than just plot. I agree it's self-indulgent to put yourself in your own movie, but there's also a part of me that feels, "Yeah, the director of the WE SAID NI___R A LOT film should be blown up." I'm not saying there is a ton of metaphor and symbology by any stretch of the imagination. It's just the filmmaking is more muscularly visual.
He's a master of story; different from plot. By today's standards of gimme gimme gimme, he delays and prolongs and draws out and sometimes that doesn't work. I can see why Kermode was weary during the last part of DJANGO -- I think we all were and further I think we were meant to be. We were meant to feel the lowest point of Django's journey; it's meant to be difficult (but really, only briefly). Tarantino utterly controls the audience by plunging us deeply into the narrative. Even its sly referential winks add to its fictional reality.
Today's story perspective is very self-conscious. I think it's because of all the fancy tricks we can do with the camera (I'm looking at you, Fincher). Tarantino's lengthiness either encourages us to marinate along with the story or frustrates our expectations. I don't count that is necessarily a bad thing to frustrate expectation. I love not knowing how a film is going to end up moment by moment.
