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

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.

or rather, in front of your town

I guess Harry Belafonte won an award for best supporting actor from the NYFCC.

Weinstein is not to blame for promoting his interests any more than Valenti is. It’s the journalists, Oscar voters and the public who are the suckers. They won’t admit their own lack of standards and susceptibility to hype. The Times hasn’t noticed that truly small and edgy films (Circuit, George Washington, Office Space) never get Oscar nominations.

In fact, the only people who know what time it is are Armond White and the Hollywood execs he refuses to get in bed with. btw, see transformers 2.

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.

Apparently Armond doesn't subscribe to Netflix.

Well, maybe I'm wrong. He probably really just said you can not be a film critic (in America) unless you live in New York.

Well, maybe I'm wrong. He probably really just said you can not be a film critic (in America) unless you live in New York are Armond White.

I pick the last one.

As the thing he probably said that is.

well you can, you just need to stfu about art movies because if they get to you they're underrated and just tell people which big budget kaboom is the best

overrated, rather

They aren't overrated when they're only in New York, but by the time they reach flyover country, they sure as hell will be.

RIP Hurt Locker, I thought being directed by the lady who did Point Break would save you from this fate

Schwartzbaum presented herself as the masthead of a movement among middle-echelon, middle-brow journalists who value pop commerce and celebrity over everything and who have wrecked the currents of film culture.

Boy, he concluded this from just one remark?

if he doubts the critical facilities of everyone who isn't harvey weinstein, why does he give a fuck if they watch the turds they adore at home or in theaters?

i mean, unless he's just trying to be a contrarian prick.

"In the real world hamburgers matter!"

Schwartzbaum presented herself as the masthead of a movement among middle-echelon, middle-brow journalists who value greasy food and obesity over everything and who have wrecked American gastronomical habits.

Apparently Armond doesn't subscribe to Netflix.

He would argue that you can't review a film you haven't seen on a theater screen, which is an ideal I subscribe to (that is not practicable for all but a few people).

I think saying that "Oscars matter" sentence OUT LOUD and getting something short of a punch is good fortune.

yeah i forgot--it's not like they were at a meeting of professional film critics.

seeing a lot of movies in the theater is really hard if not impossible b/c of terrible distributing of smaller films, and yet, asking for screeners to give these films their due means you're "in bed with hollywood"?

that's bullshit, morbs. if i was in a meeting and someone said that, you can just have a lol and debate their weird point (if she even said that, and her point was in fact weird) instead of assuming the worst in people. guy seems like a sociopath.

anyway if armond white really feels that way about theater screens i wonder why he bothers to write up essays for criterion on occasion, because only a fuckin philistine would watch the movie on a small screen.

goole: yes, bcz they are promotional devices geared at awards/promotion. That's his position.

srsly, I wouldn't frame it that way, but the serious cinema conversation from November thru Oscars was not utterly monopolized by the Trophy Carousel 30, 20, even 10 years ago. It makes me ill.

well, in the case of CCs, you are NOT going to see the films any other way unless you live near a rep venue.

JOEKS re the punching.

don't hit me, dogg!

yeah well that's a dumb position. who gives a shit what they're geared at, if they're you're only way of seeing a film, watch it. any individual film print is basically a tool to get 9.50 out of me anyway, so what

i'm a lover, not a sociopath. xp

ha, Lisa Schwarzbaum is horrible tho

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.

― sir-mounter (Eric H.), Thursday, August 13, 2009 12:18 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

did any of u guys see that documentary about cinephiles in new york - Cinemania, i think? anyway AW reminds me of the crazy broad from that movie

always wanted to see that movie!
maybe i'll go hunt for it

acc to James Redd, that "crazy broad" just died.

Was it Orly Taitz?

We should a RIP thread.

everyone in it was pretty depressing but she was the least grounded, most insane seeming one... that poor-ass monster.

Is it worth watching? Is she the really old with the glasses?

old lady

no, she wasn't that old iirc, just kinda middle aged and wiry catlady-ish... when they show her apartment though it's terrifying. she had a thing about keeping all her ticket stubs, and there's a story about when she physically attacked an usher who dared to tear her stub in half

Jesus that's bonkers.