And has received nearly unanimous critical raves, excepting a few major critics. Bloggers across the board did love it.

Not to mention for those who indulge in January of trying to predict what will be at the Oscars the following year, nearly everyone included Django.

It was expected to be an Oscar movie. And it became one.

Also, there were multiple posts on Django before the final one, and they were all filled with people nearly unanimously excited for the film. The dissenters were the minority.

Now, I'm not saying that the film doesn't have merit (it does), nor am I siding entirely with you or with OE on your opinions of the film-- I fall somewhere in the middle. But to imply that people don't assume Tarantino's brilliance even before the film comes out simply isn't true.

You can say that he's earned it through his body of work, and that's one side of the argument, no question. The other side of the argument would be that his films are elevated in the collective societal mind from "well-executed genre films" to "best of the year" because "the man who did Pulp Fiction" is behind them. I'm not sure which side of that argument I'd agree with-- again, I think there's some validity to both extremes-- but it's not like groupthink doesn't exist or that Tarantino is necessarily exempt from being an accused benefactor.

Certain filmmakers do get passes from critics and others don't. You can look up some turds from big-name guys that have astounding Rotten Tomato scores from the online critical circle (Kingdom of the Crystal Skull comes to mind), and you can look up some surprisingly well-executed remakes, sequels, or genre films that because they sound iffy on paper get absolutely trashed in print.