New York Times (again)

This is from a column by Dave Kehr printed in the Arts section of the Times on December 23, 2008 wherein Mr. Kehr promotes a film by Quentin Tarantino:

"Grindhouse" flopped, perhaps because the concept was too arcane, too elaborate and too drawn out for the impatient audiences of the 21st Century.
...Mr. Tarantino may be most celebrated for his imaginative explosions of violence, but his greater talent lies in structuring long periods of inaction, in the leisurely construction of dramatic contexts, in sketching large casts of characters and getting them to interact with one another through dialogue that generally has no direct bearing on the plot.
...but Mr. Tarantino resists easy ideological readings, confounding politics with visual pleasure....and confounding pleasure with revulsion."

No, this is not satire. I know it tends to read like it, but Kehr genuinely believes that long periods of boring inaction, and dialogue that has no direct bearing on the plot of the story are the hallmarks of a great movie.
There was a time when the Times would never have found this fit to print!