Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

http://armonddangerous.blogspot.com/

And we'll never know -- unless he chooses to elaborate on it elsewhere or at some late date -- what exactly Armond means when he describes Children of Men's aesthetic as "resembling the surreally distanced, uninterrupted viewpoint of a videogame." Which videogames? Certainly not first-person shooter videogames (which Elephant mimics at one moment in order to make a connection to the fps games the teenage killers play at home) because the film's celebrated long takes are not pov shots. The long takes' panoptical surveys -- with action occurring on multiple planes and often disappearing beyond the scope of the lens -- would only resemble videogame aesthetics for the most unsophisticated and -- dare we say -- cynical viewer. For one thing, the moviegoer cannot interact with the image in the same way a videogame player can -- an obvious point that White conveniently ignores. For another, the film maintains spatial integrity in presenting and exploring its realistic environments, an integrity that stands in sharp contrast to the comic book nonsense of V for Vendetta, the film that Armond White compares to Children of Men without properly explaining thier distinctions.

seems like this guy makes the leap that "resembling a videogame" automatically = "shitty movie"

I thought parts of CoM were gamelike in a good way

btw i really like that blog!

Anonymous said...
Rivette is a bore.

January 10, 2007 12:19 PM

C'mon Morbius at least sign your name to it! besides doesn't it bore you to say how boring he is all the time?

hahah the accidental truth revealed!

Alfred, what were Stanley Kramer's politics, aside from decent mainstream liberalism of his era?

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/film/features/article2160412.ece

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/film/2007/01/the_great_unseen_films_of_2006.html

Good lord that's a wrong sentence.

Rob Nelson latest casualty of Village Voice Media bloodbath

Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton

Good if long Edelstein interview (thanks to Scott Woods). Revelations: Dustin Hoffman's overrated, Josh Hartnett isn't used enough, and this:

probably shouldn’t say this, but I really appreciated Jackie Brown, really appreciated its beauty and magnificence when I saw it high. I hadn’t seen it high the first time and I loved it. When I saw it high I never wanted it to end. It was the ultimate stoner movie. The violence in the movie was for the most part off-camera, for the most part pretty upsetting in its implications. In no way are you supposed to get off on the violence in that movie. [The violence] is absurd, it’s sudden, it’s horrific. Even Samuel L. Jackson’s death is presented as a betrayal. And the death of Robert De Niro is disgusting. And obviously the death of Bridget Fonda is hauntingly absurd. Poor Chris Tucker is the other one. I’m mystified by the level of hostility to Tarantino among serious film writers as well as mainstream film critics.

morbius is gonna love that

He's pretty OTM on Brokeback Mt.

also, I liked Jackie Brown, straight.

what cinema needs is more josh hartnett

Even I'm starting to get a little tired of the "omg why don't more people give Jackie Brown respect" thing, and I still think it's his best one.

i wasn't aware ppl didn't give it respect!