another maniacal Armond White review, this time "Fahrenheit 9/11"

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Hoberman and Dart reveal their roles in the contemporary power structure

oh for chrissakes people still writing and thinking like this?

The Magnificent Colin Firth (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 17 March 2010 17:10 (fourteen years ago) link

meetings of the ny film crix circle must be kinda tense

lipster grifter (history mayne), Wednesday, 17 March 2010 17:11 (fourteen years ago) link

I honestly have no idea how you could read that review as suggesting anything other than that Baumbach be aborted.

He is trying to say that the good reviews from is mothers' peers are akin to baby shower gifts, whereas his bad review is akin to someone crashing the party and saying "baby wasn't worth it". He is not trying to actually call for dude's abortion, he is trying to give dude's movie a bad review and is attempting to cast its impact in terms of the simile he set up about the mother's perceived self-regard. The problem is that it is nigh-impossible to make that kind of direct comment and not have it be taken as a blatant statement that dude should have been aborted.

smoking cigarette shades? it doesn't even make any sense. (HI DERE), Wednesday, 17 March 2010 17:12 (fourteen years ago) link

is this much different from "I KIlled Christgau with My Big Fucking Dick"?

Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 17 March 2010 17:14 (fourteen years ago) link

- not a record

lipster grifter (history mayne), Wednesday, 17 March 2010 17:14 (fourteen years ago) link

Would Thurston Moore have sullied his dick with xgau's brains?

The Magnificent Colin Firth (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 17 March 2010 17:14 (fourteen years ago) link

is there any1 better @ trolling than armond? love this dude

no chapo (Lamp), Wednesday, 17 March 2010 17:16 (fourteen years ago) link

Armond's writing style lends itself quite well to being misunderstood and misinterpreted.

Your body is a spiderland (polyphonic), Wednesday, 17 March 2010 17:16 (fourteen years ago) link

"retroactive abortion", though? that's a jokey way of saying murder

it's pretty clear what white was saying: "Mr. Jealousy" has references to the director's mother, other critics are saying nice things about the movie because they are sucking up to the director's mother in lieu of giving a baby shower gift, but I think the film is bad enough that georgia brown should have killed noah baumbach as a kid before he made it. ha ha.

amazing that he thinks he can say he meant something else and expect anyone to believe it.

goole, Wednesday, 17 March 2010 17:18 (fourteen years ago) link

and no i don't think he "really" meant to say baumbach should be killed really actually in real life

goole, Wednesday, 17 March 2010 17:18 (fourteen years ago) link

is this much different from "I KIlled Christgau with My Big Fucking Dick"?

― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, March 17, 2010 12:14 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

did noah baumbach make a movie about how much he hates armond white?

goole, Wednesday, 17 March 2010 17:20 (fourteen years ago) link

meetings of the ny film crix circle must be kinda tense

How did he ever get voted president or is it decided by lottery?

queen frostine (Eric H.), Wednesday, 17 March 2010 17:20 (fourteen years ago) link

Pauline Kael appeared to him in a dream.

The Magnificent Colin Firth (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 17 March 2010 17:24 (fourteen years ago) link

did noah baumbach make a movie about how much he hates armond white?

that was only the entire subtext of Margot at the Wedding, jeez, how did you miss that. the entire movie was a subliminal dig at Armond

dmr, Wednesday, 17 March 2010 17:43 (fourteen years ago) link

he inspired Jack Black's character iirc

dmr, Wednesday, 17 March 2010 17:44 (fourteen years ago) link

he is right about publicists and critics, of course

(guessing those of you who dutifully trot out to every hyped stinker on opening weekend hv no comment there)

Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 18 March 2010 11:23 (fourteen years ago) link

of course

max, Thursday, 18 March 2010 11:28 (fourteen years ago) link

can't believe i still haven't read this

lipster grifter (history mayne), Thursday, 18 March 2010 11:37 (fourteen years ago) link

probably too busy dutifully trotting out to every hyped stinker on opening weekend

max, Thursday, 18 March 2010 11:39 (fourteen years ago) link

Greenberg, the big-budget mumblecore movie by Noah Baumbach, should enter the language as Woody Allen’s Zelig did—a title that goes beyond ethnic specificity to stand for a particular social disorder: the tendency toward vanity, suppression and censorship.

this is all kind of awkward isn't it? im not 100% sure what it means. the word greenberg should go beyond the specific (jewishness? am i reading this right?) to the particular (vanity, suppression, censorship)?

lipster grifter (history mayne), Thursday, 18 March 2010 11:48 (fourteen years ago) link

Jim Hoberman joined the crackdown, exhibiting his own case of Greenberg syndrome.

wait what? the hobes has moved to LA to deal with some personal shit?

lipster grifter (history mayne), Thursday, 18 March 2010 11:50 (fourteen years ago) link

take it easy max, i dont even know what you thought of Dooly Appointed etc.

Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 18 March 2010 11:52 (fourteen years ago) link

It was an honorable, cordial system until—after the mid-’80s rise of entertainment media—studios and their publicists exerted greater control over media access to films, insuring favorable/biased coverage. Publicists’ power increased as the media gave itself over to non-inquisitive, low-integrity forms of celebrity news and gossip.

morbs, he isn't otm about this. the idea that the publicity machine only got going in the mid-80s is ludicrous. i mean, just off the top of my head, you have the whole kael/beatty thing in the 70s. but apart from that, publicists have always, always tried, as they are paid to, to get favourable responses to films. access, baby, access.

lipster grifter (history mayne), Thursday, 18 March 2010 11:55 (fourteen years ago) link

"got going" i take to mean bringing it to a whole new level, tail wags dog, etc.

Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 18 March 2010 11:57 (fourteen years ago) link

well, yeah, alright.

these arguments should be made by someone who isn't mental tho.

("bringing it to a whole new level" is not very morbs imo.)

lipster grifter (history mayne), Thursday, 18 March 2010 11:58 (fourteen years ago) link

imo hoberman should "step up to the plate" and respond

lipster grifter (history mayne), Thursday, 18 March 2010 11:59 (fourteen years ago) link

yeah, publicists go back before the 80s. the difference is the perception of the relevance of critics, and their increasingly disposable nature when it comes to marketing films (it seems more important in the case of Greenberg, but maybe that's part of where the outrage comes from).

Freddy 'The Wonder Chicken' (Gukbe), Thursday, 18 March 2010 12:36 (fourteen years ago) link

dudes you are NOT taking an armo article seriously right?

by another name (amateurist), Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:04 (fourteen years ago) link

he has good points amid the craziness, almost always. You know, like music writers.

Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:06 (fourteen years ago) link

The abortion uproar seems more serious, but it’s easily dismissed as a mere nit-picking gripe. Even if I had advised abortion (which I did not), fact is, abortion remains a hallmark of the privileged class that extols Baumbach.

call all destroyer, Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:07 (fourteen years ago) link

yah thats really good but this is my favorite part btw:

It’s unfortunate to have to point out that it is also a racist lynching by white critics of a black critic. Fact: Year after year, Hoberman never even deigns to review movies with black subjects, and he passes this racist contempt on to his epigones. That’s hegemony.

lacks some of the subtlety of other passages but makes it up for just going top level on the racial shit + fact colon construction

Lamp, Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:10 (fourteen years ago) link

would it be possible to reconstruct armonds political philosophy

max, Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:12 (fourteen years ago) link

is it some kind of n/l right-wing marxism?

max, Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:12 (fourteen years ago) link

xpost Not without a claims adjuster.

queen frostine (Eric H.), Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:13 (fourteen years ago) link

j-hob responded btw:

Further unburdening his mind, Armond expresses displeasure that I criticized Pauline Kael's review of Shoah, panned a number of Steven Spielberg's movies, and most recently gave "traitorous praise to the movie Green Zone for encouraging insurrection in the American military." Sanity has prevailed, though. At least he hasn't called for my "retroactive abortion" (yet), even if I am "the scoundrel-czar of contemporary film criticism," a publicist-coddling representative of the film industry status quo as well as "a force behind racist snobbery in the film festival circuit (which led to such cultural disasters as Precious)" who, "like some nefarious, shadowy dictator in a Fritz Lang silent" exerts an influence that "stretches from coast to coast, institution to institution." It's true!

Tomorrow, I plan to get universal health care, settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and bring the Dodgers back to Brooklyn.

call all destroyer, Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:13 (fourteen years ago) link

Can Hoberman and Dart’s objections to the very mention of abortion mean that they are, in fact, Pro-Life? (I remember Hoberman railing against Juno for choosing life while praising the Romanian abortion thriller 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.) Can’t wait to see Hoberman and Dart defend their Pro-Life position on the Glenn Beck show.

fuck that, give armond his own show imo

lipster grifter (history mayne), Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:15 (fourteen years ago) link

hoberman is pro-life! he hated the pro-life juno! he's pro-life!

lipster grifter (history mayne), Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:15 (fourteen years ago) link

i shamefully admit that i would watch this guy on tv

call all destroyer, Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:17 (fourteen years ago) link

funnier than Arrested Development, but then so was Shoah.

Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:18 (fourteen years ago) link

u shldnt play tball when were discussing the pros here doc

is it some kind of n/l right-wing marxism?

gramscian whos been mugged

Lamp, Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:19 (fourteen years ago) link

Shoah was objectively pro-jewish and pro-Netanyahu.

The Magnificent Colin Firth (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:20 (fourteen years ago) link

has anyone read his bio of Tupac?

Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:21 (fourteen years ago) link

ayo i just posted that

call all destroyer, Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:22 (fourteen years ago) link

dudes you are NOT taking an armo article seriously right?

― by another name (amateurist), Thursday, March 18, 2010 3:04 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

only film crit to take seriously imo

jenkem pensky (cozen), Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:23 (fourteen years ago) link

Armond has a charming talent for piling adjectives and adverbs as if the use of them transformed the object of his wrath into whatever he thought of him.

The Magnificent Colin Firth (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:24 (fourteen years ago) link

Like if he called Hoberman a "narcoleptically slavish ladybug."

The Magnificent Colin Firth (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:25 (fourteen years ago) link

It exposes the hidden conspiracy by him and his backward children (you know who you are) to control film discourse.

kind of impressed that hoberman didn't take too seriously all these weird "global conspiracy" zingers

lipster grifter (history mayne), Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:27 (fourteen years ago) link

rly dunno how anyone can defend a. white here. this is the most transparently bad faith shit-talking i've seen displayed in serial public utterances this side of an NRO Corner writer

goole, Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:28 (fourteen years ago) link

http://flann4.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/strangelove.jpg

j hoberman and the "inner circle"

call all destroyer, Thursday, 18 March 2010 15:28 (fourteen years ago) link


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