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

He is making all of our cards

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/386521/across-ungreat-divide-armond-white

Since 2004, the year that film culture split along moral and artistic lines, political and class biases have been exhibited in films that became more and more partisan.

I deeply admire his ability to have your head spinning with challop-driven confusion from the very first sentence.

Not just entertainment, the 20 films listed here effectively destroyed art, social unity, and spiritual confidence.

...

9) Knocked Up (2007) — Judd Apatow’s comedy of bad manners attacked maturity and propriety.

The Dark Knight (2008) used the Batman myth to undermine heroism, overturn social mores, and embrace anarchy.

I'm no fan of Nolan's trilogy, but wasn't this the one where Batman gets all Patriot Act to stop the Joker?

wow even the commenters are like WTF

but then

The Anger of This Place Amazes • 3 hours ago

Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds wasn't anything even remotely about the history of WWII!!

we should also acknowledge the article where he goes into how 2004 was the year everything changed

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/386468/year-culture-broke-armond-white

re: negative reviews of passion of the christ

It was moral vandalism, sullying ideas and totems sacred to many. Such a fundamental offense devastated civilized behavior in ways many still have not realized. It drove a wedge between the public and the elites who make movies; the very ground we walked upon as enlightened, cultured people was scorched like Ground Zero at the World Trade Center.

half of the blurbs are otm

the fact that he's half-right is part of what makes him a troll beyond compare

14) A History of Violence (2005) — David Cronenberg’s new take on Ugly Americans blamed patriotic sadism.

*~~American flags flutter in the breeze over the compound of corrupt Republican Senator Richie Cusack (William Hurt)~~*

He's right re: the vile Mr. & Mrs. Smith, but, as evidenced by his Dark Knight blurb, he doesn't even properly read the films he has good reason to trash.

the Slumdog blurb is tom

otm too

i can easily imagine someone realizing that 2004 had two very striking, very different blockbusters and considering the effect of those hits on hollywood. but it takes a real champ to roid up to AND SUDDENLY GLOBAL TEATIME WAS SHATTERED AND THE NOBILITY OF POP CULTURE WAS LOST FOREVER without even the slightest bit of second guessing

and throwing in weird asides about how the fix was in at cannes thanks to tarantino instead of an actual investigation of pop film history

Hipster Hollywood

Maybe I'm forgetting the weird misogyny of there will be blood, idk. Strange to hear that complaint, though, from a reverent fan of 3000 Miles to Graceland.

that instead of hollywood reflecting the red-state/blue-state schism, critics and liberal directors CAUSED it. in TWO THOUSAND AND FOUR.

"liberals ruined america, can i write about it for you?"

"Please do, older black dude with journalistic credentials! Score!"

"LO, HOW THE HANGOVER DID SHIT UPON MY ONCE BEAUTIFUL WORLD. OH CURSED TARANTINO. FOUL BRANGELINA!"

happy Brangelina Wedding Aftermath btw everybody

i hope his book fills in the gaps between nanook of the north and pulp fiction, maybe a bit about how in 1984 Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters and Police Academy reflected a sense that hipsters and authority structures were learning to co-exist under reagan, smoothing the ruptures of the 60s

Surprised at how (relatively) subdued his pan of Boyhood was, with exactly zero shit-throwing over the Obama stuff or the (largely misunderstood, I think) representations of Red State America.

i hope his book fills in the gaps between nanook of the north and pulp fiction, maybe a bit about how in 1984 Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters and Police Academy reflected a sense that hipsters and authority structures were learning to co-exist under reagan, smoothing the ruptures of the 60s

ha – isn't this what J. Hoberman's book is about?

not in a rush to find out but it wouldn't surprise me

In what the New York Times’s A.O. Scott called a “suave, scholarly tour de force,” J. Hoberman delivers a brilliant and witty look at the decade when politics and pop culture became one.

This was the era of the Missile Gap and the Space Race, the Black and Sexual Revolutions, the Vietnam War and Watergate—as well as the tele-saturation of the American market and the advent of Pop art. In “elegant, epigrammatic prose,” as Scott put it, Hoberman moves from the political histories of movies to the theater of wars, national political campaigns, and pop culture events.

With entertaining reinterpretations of key Hollywood movies (such as Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, and Shampoo), and meditations on personages from Che Guevara, John Wayne, and Patty Hearst to Jane Fonda, Ronald Reagan, and Dirty Harry, Hoberman reconstructs the hidden political history of 1960s cinema and the formation of America’s mass-mediated politics.

capital letters, so it's important

Armond misses 2004, and this is all straight up nostalgia.

You'll Never Believe Which Of Your Favorite Movies Ruined Our Country

That said, I'll probably get What We Don't Talk about When We Talk about the Movies from the library when it comes out.

Armond misses 2004, and this is all a suave, scholarly tour de force.

I just hope Mel Gibson reads it and gives Armond a "you get me" bouquet

saw this pop up on twitter and i knew this thread would be all a-light

these sentences, my god

SARCASTIC VIOLENCE IS THE NEW MARRIAGE EQUALITY

i feel like i'm reading dayo's hong kong tshirt thread

Armond misses 2004, and the toilet.

Armond gets slack from me these days for saying that Michael Cera is a "modern Sterling Holloway."

http://www.studiosystemnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Michael-Cera.jpg http://poorwilliam.net/pix/holloway-sterling2.jpg

David Fincher’s new Horatio Alger tale glorified technocrat Mark Zuckerberg with chic, digital-era arrogance.

"Glorified." You know, the guy who ends the movie alone and debating whether or not to send a friend request to the girl who dumped him at the beginning of the movie, showing he had grown not a bit.

Armond gets slack from me these days for being the most interesting part of the NYFCC banquet.

well arguably any movie about a person is "glorification" in the sense that you're suggesting they're worthy of getting a movie about them. though the fact that he calls it a "new horatio alger tale" does undermine his thesis that these movies were unprecedented blows to our collective morality from the liberal left

that's why Armond's a perfect fit for NRO. "Glorify" is one of their favorite verbs.

i still think he's gonna get too real for them eventually

He's splitting the suicidal conservatives who won't watch Hollyporn from the ones who go, "Well, wait a minute, I can like The Dark Knight and vote for Romney" more than anything I've seen on the regular site.

yeah i assume one day he's going to piss off bruce willis or somebody and then he'll be quietly dispatched from the site

Just now on Twitter:

Glenn Kenny ‏@Glenn__Kenny 13s
Shorter Armond White: God how I hate attractive, socially adept people

oh come on jesus was clearly attractive and socially adept

ok we can debate "socially adept" considering his fate but dude obv had a pull

There you go, glorifying Jesus again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylYzbB-tLcs

for all his manias and delusions, i suspect AW can still distinguish what constitutes a romantic comedy.