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

b-but he said that the FALLACY was they were rejected

(i think: it's a fkn confusin way to make a point)

i love this:

...critics’ faves There Will Be Blood, In the Valley of Elah, Redacted, Rendition and The Kingdom

b/c everyone loved those last three unreservedly

Did anyone love those last FOUR at all?

i think a lot of people liked ITVOE and ebert liked rendition. no one liked the other two iirc

I remember most people thinking both were pretty flawed and the general consensus was undeniably pretty meh all around.

Let's put it this way, I don't think any of those four movies were in the top 20 (or maybe even 50) critically lauded films from last year. That kind of takes 'em out of the realm of critic's favs for me.

going by metacritic's stats, which ranks 594 films from '07 on their site, this is where they place:

205 - in the valley of elah
310 - the kingdom
320 - rendition
357 - redacted

CLEARLY SO LOVED!

he was suggesting those films were praised by critics while others such as shotgun stories, which is #20 out of 146 for 2008 thus far, have been bashed/ignored/whatever.

i find it a little disingenuous of course for him to go on for years about critics bashing de palma when they actually tend to like him for the most part, and then to turn around and wonder why they praise him unreservedly when in fact not a single person on the planet liked 'redacted' as far as i know.

Well obv (except for TWBB) they weren't praised very much (except in ARMONDWHITESMIND!)

ok reading it

- print crix whaling on bloggers: zzzzzz who cares? internetters are not 'undermining the (cough) professionalism' of the big dogs.
- he doesn't know what he's talking about and confuses lots of things. it doesn't seem obvious to me that reportage on b.o. has "replaced" the kind of criticism he's talking about -- hasn't it supplemented it?
- "the crisis of contemporary film criticism is that critics don’t discuss movies in ways that matter. Reviewers no longer bother connecting movies to political or moral ideas." i almost feel the exact opposite is more of a problem, but i also don't think he verifies this point at all.
- "the crippling social tendency that 1990s sociologists called Denial." o_O
- "The most powerful, politically and morally engaged recent films (The Darjeeling Limited..." he's fucking with us.
- "...Private Fears in Public Places, World Trade Center, The Promise, Shortbus, Ask the Dust, Akeelah and the Bee, Bobby, Running Scared, Munich, War of the Worlds, Vera Drake) were all ignored by journalists" he's fucking with us
- "only movies that are mendacious, pseudo-serious, sometimes immoral or socially retrograde and irresponsible (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Army of Shadows, United 93, Marie Antoinette, Zodiac, Last Days, There Will Be Blood, American Gangster, Gone Baby Gone, Letters From Iwo Jima, A History of Violence, Tarnation, Elephant) have received critics’ imprimatur." he sort of needs, at this point, to explain how 'zodiac' is "immoral" or how '4 months' is "mendacious" or how 'army of shadows' is "socially retrograde". or how 'american gangster' has "received critics’ imprimatur".
- "That there isn’t a popular hit among any of these films proves how critics have failed to rouse the moviegoing public in any direction." i thought we were meant to be above quoting the b.o.?
- "You can’t praise the Pirates of the Caribbean movies or the Bourne movies and then expect benumbed thrill-riders to sit still for A Prairie Home Companion, Neil Young: Heart of Gold or Munich." right, because you can't enjoy more than one kind of movie.
- "A generation of readers and filmgoers were once sparked by the discourse created by Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris during the period that essayist Philip Lopate described as ìthe heroic era of moviegoing.î The desire to be a critic fulfilled the urge to respond to what was exciting in the culture." lol boomer nostalgia -- do your homework.
- lays into ebert, who is at least not a menk and can write entertainingly
- what exactly is white's claim to 'professionalism'? what is it? he doesn't strike me as very knowledgeable on, say, film aesthetics or film history? he doesn't have to be, to be a critic, perhaps, but what does he mean?
- article degenerates into incoherency when he starts on about bosley crowther vs village voice
- "It’s entertainment—weakly." it's a clever play-on-words.
- heh, heh, heh he thinks mike leigh is a socialist
- "Hollywood’s emphasis on impersonal product then holds sway over art. Ideas get smothered in formula, and hype becomes the language of so-called discourse." he has spent much of the review defending hollywood against elitism. that passage could be from any piece of criticism from the last 90 years -- literally.
- "Does the training of movie critics matter if they aren’t taught to preserve the idea that movies must affirm our humanity?" "training"?

Never seen this film. Bet it's top-notch. Gonna print out banriquit's post & take it into the cinema with me. Then I'm gonna sit on it.

i just post for myself and if anyone else likes it, that's a bonus

That's a shitty attitude.

Benjamin Franklin on John Adams:

"He means well for his Country, and is always an honest Man, often a Wise One, but sometimes and in some things, absolutely out of his senses."

I loved when he said that V FOR VENDETTA was a forgotten film, unaware that by name-checking it and assuming readers would know what he was on about, it kinda isn't quite that forgotten.

I think he's gone, well, mental with his hysteric modifying words. The 'decline' in 'film culture' (whatever that is, aside from the ivory tower in hi head) is a "CALAMITY!", a "TRAGEDY!"

ALL film writers who are not Armond White are regularly labeled "idiots", "stupid", and far worse. He can't resist a sentence without sideswipes like "of course, this is the sort of tripe that gullible, idiot reviewers will worship" (i paraphrase; I'm not pathological enough to mimic him properly.) THEN he goes on to, for the nth time, to explain to other idiots--his readers--how DePalma's MISSION TO MARS was one of the greatest films ever, if only you nitwits could understand the things only White can understand. Then he'll try to browbeat you into understanding that NORBIT was not only funny--White thinks humor can be beaten into you--but that it was the greatest movie about race ever. Or silicone fat suits ever; I forget.

A film can't just be, you know, not-great and its makers just some folks who failed to make a good film--oh no: These films are a THREAT!!!!! to, uh, everything and their makers evil cabalists who meet fortnightly at some unspecified dark ceremony where, after donning black robes with pictures of Kubrick as they plan, chortling, their latest stealth attack on Film Culture.

It's remarkable how he shrieks about Nicole Kidman--who he despises with a very discomforting zeal--being a despicable careerist--imagine, a professional wanting a career, wanting to work, what a skank--and then falls on his knees to worship the latest Spielberg Oedipal reenactment, making arcane claims of assorted genius that would have old Steve going WTF??? THEN he gushes about the brilliant nuance Tom Cruise brought to, er, WAR OF THE WORLDS, make us this what you will.

Not only does he evidence zero understanding about filmmaking technique or acting, he's so far up his own shimmeringly astute posterior that he honestly thinks that the reason movies don't make it is because the Evil Idiot Critic Cabal did not pimp it. And so he has no notion that there's a thing called marketing, or a thing called dumb luck.

Finally, as oft noted, the real reason he goes on and on and on about the TERRIBLE THREAT posed by hipsters is that he's miffed that they dare threaten his positioning of himself as the ultimate hipster who always knows more than anyone than anyone and is always correct, more moral than you, and the one brave soul standing between collapsing world and the fact that, again, NORBIT rulz.

Really, it's like he suffers from some sort of academia-based PTSD: The sky is always fallimg; only he can prop it up by trashing anyone who disagrees.

gff, you gotta be kiddin, Sirk had to be subtle about tons of shit the Code prohibited

definitely. i'm just saying that's twbb's self-conscious lineage. he's playing with that form. and i know, i'm always suspicious of people saying things like "oh it's not meant to be xxxx" by way of excusing something for not being xxxx, BUT plainview is not exactly a character study. more like an archetype. so the lack of depth just didn't seem like an issue to me. he's a sort of monolithic game piece on a monumental board. the movie seems to me more about the force of his action than the nuances of his character. but that's a subjective thing; to me the movie was kind of like getting steamrolled or bulldozed, and that was exciting, i don't get bulldozed at movies very often. if you didn't feel bulldozed, or object to bulldozing on principle, it would be a different experience.

― tipsy mothra, Saturday, January 19, 2008 2:55 PM (11 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

(and to take that a step further, pta's and ddl's bulldozing approach mirror plainview's; the movie's an example of what it's about)

― tipsy mothra, Saturday, January 19, 2008 2:57 PM (11 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

shit bulldozed me with boring

give me the blud, cankles~

Somehow I thought this deserved to go on this thread.

"The Most Hated Film Critic"

29 December 2008 12:55 AM, PST

A Los Angeles Times article on Sunday suggested that Ben Lyons, the current co-host of the syndicated movie-review show At the Movies, has become "the most hated film critic in America" among film bloggers, columnists, professional movie critics and even longtime fans of the show. (The article observed that viewership this season is down 21 percent from a year ago.) Scott Johnson, who started the StopBenLyons.com blog, told the Times: "I don't expect to agree with a critic all the time. But his approach is to throw out blurbs just so he can get on a poster" for the movie he's reviewing. Erik Childress, vice president of the Chicago Film Critics Assn., remarked, "His integrity's out the window. He has no taste." Variety.com deputy editor Anne Thompson said that with Lyons providing the reviews, At the Movies has become "a train wreck." But Brian Frons, an executive with Disney-ABC Television Group, defended Lyons saying, "This is a guy who, if you sit and talk with him, he really does have an enormous love and knowledge base of movies. ... Did he spend 20 years as critic for a major newspaper? No. He's very much of the TV generation who don't [sic] spend time reading newspapers."

Haha he really does seem like a dope.

I kinda like that dude! but I guess it's context, he seemed to have pretty good taste for an E News Daily walk-on but they shouldn't have gone right from there into Ebert's spot

I lolled when he came on E during "James Bond week" and trashed Quantum of Solace

*he shouldn't have

"he seemed to have pretty good taste"

I see no evidence of this.

in the context of E network where they blowjob every blockbuster he seemed all right

haven't seen him on At the Movies

I don't watch E! so I can't compare him to the folks on that channel, but compared to like actual people with brains who like love movies he's total deadweight. He makes Richard Roeper seem like Pauline Kael.

he seemed to have pretty good taste for an E News Daily walk-on

translation: he looks cute

Armond wrote a piece on Lyons & Mankiewicz not long ago (I've never seen the show).

Some blog reported Lyons was on his cellphone through an entire screening.

http://nymag.com/movies/profiles/54318/

http://images.nymag.com/movies/profiles/armondwhite090223_250.jpghttp://images.nymag.com/movies/profiles/armondwhite090223_250.jpghttp://images.nymag.com/movies/profiles/armondwhite090223_250.jpghttp://images.nymag.com/movies/profiles/armondwhite090223_250.jpghttp://images.nymag.com/movies/profiles/armondwhite090223_250.jpghttp://images.nymag.com/movies/profiles/armondwhite090223_250.jpghttp://images.nymag.com/movies/profiles/armondwhite090223_250.jpghttp://images.nymag.com/movies/profiles/armondwhite090223_250.jpghttp://images.nymag.com/movies/profiles/armondwhite090223_250.jpghttp://images.nymag.com/movies/profiles/armondwhite090223_250.jpg

Made in U.S.A. and 2 or 3 Things have more in common with the visual wit of Michael Bay’s Transformers 2. It is Godard’s bold example that taught Bay to love sound and image. All these films share a visual language and a way of seeing the world that is rooted in an artistic use of technology. What a triple bill.

Based on the original 1980s Transformer toys by Hasbro and subsequent TV cartoons and limited print run grimoires, the Transformer movies expound on this cultural plenitude. Their fascination with technology —the way common objects rearrange, expand or shrink as if having a benevolent or malicious life of their own — drives the stories. This transformation is the filmic equivalent of an alchemists workshop and Bay is the Aquinas here, the ideal director to realize this peculiar genre, which remakes the surfeit of modern techno-gadgetry into a panoply of heavy-balled supervehicles

http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/winter2004/features/images/critic.jpg

have 2 say dude loves paul w.s. anderson: movie genius so he cant be all bad

Transformers doesn’t simultaneously critique pop culture like Joe Dante’s Small Soldiers, Paul W.S. Anderson’s Death Race or Joseph Kahn’s near-miraculous Torque (none of Bay’s mechanical anthropomorphism matches the wit of how Torque’s human characters live through their vehicles)

http://codebloo.net/stuff/picard-headesk.jpg

SMALL FUCKING SOLDIERS?!?!

yah im pretty sure he was won over by the films lyrical impulsiveness and digitized grace

he really is a consummate troll

"Transformers doesn’t simultaneously critique pop culture like Joe Dante’s Small Soldiers, Paul W.S. Anderson’s Death Race or Joseph Kahn’s near-miraculous Torque (none of Bay’s mechanical anthropomorphism matches the wit of how Torque’s human characters live through their vehicles)"

This sentence is hysterical.

Hey, Small Soldiers is great, despite Captain Challops' endorsement. It's a smart, witty movie.

i like small soldiers.

its aight but its no torque

this fucking guy

" This Star Trek sells cuteness, sentimentality and explosive F/X as if Starship Troopers, Minority Report, Mission to Mars or even Blade Runner or The Matrix (all visionary standard-setters) never happened."

Forget the Oscar bait, Transporter 3 is the only movie you need to see this season

NOTHING IN CINEMA this week is more important than Transporter 3. It’s been a long time since a new movie has been so spiritually and aesthetically exhilarating. Producer Luc Besson, director Olivier Megaton and star Jason Statham work at the top of their imagination and abilities—not like they’re completing a formulaic sequel but reinventing the action movie genre.

thats basically otm i mean cmon

oh also mission to mars is being remade with the o.g. cast and script but its being retitled mission 2 mars

Transporter 3 is clearly the wackest, most formulaic of the Transporter series!