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

the very realistic appreciation of militarism as a foundation for capitalist freedom that supplies delight

YOOOO JOE!

that sentence doesnt really "do" anything critical, it just sort of sits there hoping for you to disagree

yeah exactly

when i first encountered armond i dont think i had ever read a critic whose POV was completely unpredictable to me. i didnt have any idea what he'd say about a movie. he would often come at it in such a way that i was sorta floored--almost having fun with the idea of interpretation itself--that many, many times he forced me to reconsider films i thought i knew/understood from the ground up.

of course, this only worked a few times and once you're on to the trick it kinda loses its power.

he used to be different, really.

As I read it I kept running into parts i wanted to quote and respond to but I really don't want to waste the time. This wasn't written by a real person it was written by someone living in Michael Bay world.

I probably wouldn't dislike Armond White much at all if he didn't have his bizarre vendettas against successful movies. Like the dude loves to celebrate trash/genre pictures/crowd pleasers, but he can't stomach the occasional schmaltz of a Pixar movie?

His vendetta is against critically acclaimed movies though. Whether or not you or me liked or saw a movie means nothing. Did Johnny Critic love it? Oh you bet Armond's gonna contrive a reason to fuckin' hate it.

yeah the next (first?) Pixar movie that critics despise will be Armond's favorite animated film ever.

Oh sure. Heck if revisionist critics retroactively decided they hated Up, he'd turn it its biggest booster overnight.

Armond is at his best these days championing commercially invisible filmmakers like Julian Hernandez, who (rounding off) none of you have ever seen or will see.

yeah the next (first?) Pixar movie that critics despise will be Armond's favorite animated film ever.

a reason to be excited for Cars 2.

really guys, i'm glad your hatred for ppl who depart from the consensus isn't limited to politics.

He's not departing from any consensus – he's making poorly reasoned arguments.

""really guys, i'm glad your hatred for ppl who depart from the consensus isn't limited to politics."

Not so glad that your pension for acting like a smug douchebag isn't limited to your opinions about politics.

penchant

unless you meant that morbius was really fucking old (which works)

Hah the former.

guys i'm sensitive and i don't want to see armond come between anyone :(

a pension for acting like a smug douchebag is part of the health plan. socialized crankiness.

Others are waiting on the two-faced asshole stipend.

Alfred, what does reasoning have to do with critical opinions? It is based on, as a guy in high school once said of English lit papers, "the art of persuasive bullshitting." AW is just increasingly unpersuasive.

what does reasoning have to do with critical opinions?

solid gold for all time

You just answered your own question with your last sentence. If I can't parse someone's reasoning, then they're unpersuasive.

(xpost to Morbs)

what does reasoning have to do with critical opinions?

solid gold for all time

where can i read yr stuff, goole?

haha nice try

It is based on, as a guy in high school once said of English lit papers, "the art of persuasive bullshitting."

wait do ppl really think this still?

I do, it's one of the few things I've ever been good at.

guys i'm sensitive and i don't want to see armond come between anyone :(

ew

xp Believing nonsense? Cuz it sure as hell isn't persuading anyone.

AW is just increasingly unpersuasive.

this is otm. and it's not just that he doesn't persuade me, because that's not so much what i look to criticism for -- i'm not persuaded that he believes the things he says in any significant or serious way. his opinions seem plucked from the air rather than grounded in any discernible set of critical preferences or observations or philosophy or even just interesting ideas. he's not fun to read because he only challenges you on this very superficial playground level -- "yeah, i said it. whaddya think of that?"

i don't actually mind the specific opinions AW has (holding up torque and transformers as examples of recent quality cinema could be interesting in other hands) but rather the fact that he seems to be joyless and use the films he claims to love as reasons to hate other films and other critics more than he gushes over them (and uses the same half dozen or so films over and over again.) his misanthropy is completely laughable and cowardly, really. calling a female film critic a bitch or cunt or whatever for daring to suggest that film critics should receive screeners for more obscure films so they can write about them is just one of his hilarious moves. going on to write about that encounter so he can position himself as the one man who stood alone bravely against the masses is even more hilarious. the dude must have had a miserable childhood and think the absolute worst of people in order to end up being such a pre-emptive strike, "i'll get you before you get me" kind of asshole.

ultimately ppl read movie reviews so they can figure out what movies to see and as much of a kick as i get out of armond his biggest failing and biggest sin is that he thinks they're for something else.

I have no idea what omar is even talking about it. What female film critic? When did this happen?

at some NYC film critics meeting, i guess lisa schwarzbaum (sic?) from entertainment weekly stood up and said that critics were increasingly unable to get access to certain films andplus studios were releasing screeners for fewer obscure films, and they should be able to receive some in order to cover these films fairly and shed some light on them. AW and her went at it in the meeting and revealed their argument in a column in which he played the hero. word is he called her a particularly unpleasant name.

he revealed*

http://www.nypress.com/article-8327-in-bed-with-hollywood.html

At a point during the hectic debate over an official statement, Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwarzbaum responded to my skepticism by rising from her seat with the full arrogance of Time Warner hoisting her up. She declared, "In the real world the Oscars matter!" (Since I, for one, don’t reside in the Oscarville zipcode, I handed back an obscenity.)

i like how he writes that like it was a perfectly appropriate thing to do.

what you get for assuming he lives in oscarville

"In the real world the Oscars matter!" pretty much permits carte blanche.

I believe AW is fiercely anti-screener.

his opinions seem plucked from the air rather than grounded in any discernible set of critical preferences or observations or philosophy or even just interesting ideas.

this is kind of the last word for me. maybe one day i'll be able to detect that stuff going on in AW, but i just cant right now.

like we can actually believe his version of events w/r/t context

the guy's had a very charmed life for whatever reason, his real ceiling should have been the dbag professor at a middling college you hoped you wouldn't get for film theory 101.

lol yes saying "in the real world the oscars matter" is truly grounds for breaking the glass on "bitch" or "cunt"

Valenti was just trying to help the industry but unfortunately critics are trying to collude with the industry yeah this isn't a rant

Throughout its 60-plus-year history, the Circle honorably made its awards without benefit of screeners–which is to say, without industry consent. (In 1996 the indie distributor of Kansas City refused to provide screeners simply because it didn’t consider the film commercially viable. Luckily critics had already seen Kansas City on the big screen in a glorious silver-retention print.) The Circle’s impartial stance against such industry thinking not only honored the group’s creed but, more importantly, helped create a singular atmosphere and distinctive criteria for film culture to follow.

wait if it's noteworthy that kansas city didn't provide screeners, isn't he saying that the circle occasionally gave awards to movies that didn't give screeners, not that they worked "without industry consent" throughout the 60 years as a point of pride.

Wait Kansas City won an award?!?!

Armond has gone on the record basically saying you can not be a cinephile (in America, at any rate) unless you live in New York.

Bold statement.

the best part about his belief that the critics are working with the movie industry against the movie industry is his dig at crappy independent movies at the end of the piece. it's not like these tiny sundance fuckers are any good anyway! stop whining and eat what the industry puts in front of you.