the thing is, that roth moves his movies entirely by visual images, and seems not to know how to use literary devices common to cinema---compared to other people who use similar strategies of postmodern apporopition(spp, who life literary and visual structures (ie gondry, esp tarintino, de palma).

which means individual set peices manage to seem new, while working the entire history of western visual tradition, its because he is working from the id, and not at all working it thru the supereg0--i dont think he has read de sade, malefecto maledictum, genet, the photos from abu gharib, medeival heretical texts, discussions of rwanada, etc but it is all there, visually but not logophillically in hiw work. the tortue seems almost homely, and deftly familar.

(the trailers b/w planet terror and death ride work as a really interesting visual dictionary of references and cliches--the clever, anglo idyll/wicker man parody of peggs; the all american violence of roth, which transition b/w the sloppy bullshit of rodegiouez, and the hyperarticulate, hyperverbal, hypersexual work of tarintino)

i think roth has shit to work out, but the movies coasting w/o thinking is kind of fascinating--its like one of those imagebombs that ellis was talking about, the less and less he connects to elements like suspense or narrative, the more interesting he becomes...

(apostolic line?: hitchcock pulverised and heightened becomes de palma, de palma pulverised and remixed becomes tarintino, tarintino stripped of any talent for writing becomes roth?)