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

scott pilgrim is better than wild grass

haven't caught up with 'takers' tho

can't wait for his "chris brown > rihanna" slam when battleship comes out

I think bringing up Battleship should draw the Armondism "I pity you"

White is almost always wrong, but he's right about Darren Aronofsky. Pi was awesome, Requiem for a Dream seemed sort of okay on first viewing but gets worse and worse every time I think about it, and The Fountain and The Wrestler are pretty much unredeemable piles of shit. I haven't seen Black Swan because three failures out of four attempts = you get no more of my time or money.

Requiem for a Dream was the worst experience I ever had in a movie theater. I did like Pi, but it had the sheen of "promising first-time filmmaker"

I think bringing up Battleship should draw the Armondism "I pity you"

― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, January 12, 2011 9:05 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

Oh come on, he's gonna fucking LOVE Battleship.

either that, or hell use the review to praise GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra or a similarly awful action movie.

i was going to say, battleship will be "better than" whichever critically acclaimed film mildly questions american foreign policy.

http://www.nypress.com/article-22053-indecent-exposure.html

<3 u Armond

racist pseuds

Bening is all smiley in that photo with him, though.

Watched "Scott Pilgrim" again the other night, and really really enjoyed it. Still haven't seen Black Swan but will probably do so today...

"For years now, Hoberman hasn't been able to stand the heat of the New York Press' competition. "

This is like an epic diss track.

Yes, racism motivates Schwarzbaum and Hoberman. They pretend to be hip and ladylike...

J. Hoberman pretends to be ladylike?

Their fit of public indecency brings pettiness, sour grapes—and their privilege—into the open when normally it never affects public perception of the critical ranks.

I notice he doesn't mention his Greenberg dis at all.

uh this basically seems like ppl are castigating AW because he didn't simperingly kiss butt but presented kind of honestly?

yeah, i dunno. to me it reads like an arrogant asshole sucking his own dick (note mixed metaphor). failing to take a joke, getting petty and bitchy about it, and lavishing praise on the only person with the "wisdom" to acknowledge his own incredible importance. horrible, horrible piece of writing.

uh this basically seems like ppl are castigating AW because he didn't simperingly kiss butt but presented kind of honestly?

― zvookster, Thursday, January 20, 2011 8:55 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

commencing eye-roll sequence

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/01/11/armond-white-darren-aronofsky-nyfcc-awards/

http://gawker.com/5730615/worlds-crankiest-film-critic-makes-annette-bening-cry-at-awards-show

White also introduced playwright Tony Kushner, who was there to award The Social Network best picture, by saying, "Maybe he can explain why it won best picture."

yeah he's like ricky gervais up in this bitch, s0 funny, not afraid to tell it like it is

Two things

- lolling at the dude who fantasized about a "retroactive abortion" (no matter how otm) chastizing others for having "sick fantasies"

- sexy-maternal?????

otm?

the sexy-maternal thing really says it all

parasite suckling at the engorged teats of a monster etc

the thing about AW is he's not being honest even w/r/t to his own opinions i think. he projects weird shit onto other people and has a martyrdom complex that should be a case study. it's not surprising he gives bitchy negative reviews to antiwar movies tbh.

he went so far out of his way to say nice things abt michele williams that she made a joke of it. he responded to aronofsky saying "u give us another reason not to read your paper" with "“That’s all right. Darren reads me. That’s all I want. And because he reads me, he knows the truth.” which is fine, considering that's kind of vicious, what he's responding to. and he finished a long praise-filled preamble with "Surely Kushner, whose great play Angels in American showed how spiritual and social connections transformed lust and duty to family, friends and country into moral responsibility, will explain why The Social Network is deserving." which is over the line, but the reactions were hit pieces based on his offending some kind of social politesse

i wonder how many movies he hates he would actually love if he wasn't 24/7 aware of what other critics thought about them.

he responded to aronofsky saying "u give us another reason not to read your paper" with "“That’s all right. Darren reads me. That’s all I want. And because he reads me, he knows the truth.” which is fine, considering that's kind of vicious, what he's responding to.

kind of deserved an incredibly sarcastic "COMEBACK" from darren aronovsky but i guess ymmv

really though, "because he reads me, he knows the truth”? that's pretty weak

he went so far out of his way to say nice things abt michele williams that she made a joke of it.

that's a sweet way to look at someone introducing a woman by saying "well, i liked that movie you made four years ago" and her saying "woof, guess i won't read anything you've written about my movies since then."

isn't it just the only way to look at it

so why did Armond call her "naive" in his new piece?

as in naive Michelle Williams and gullible Mark Ruffalo followed suit, perhaps nervously thinking this is what film folk do in the presence of critics: a rare chance to settle scores.

the point is he's responding to lying, dishonest & apparently very successful hit pieces, i'm not going to defend his being butthurt that actors made fun of him

"dishonest"

"naive" for following the herd, i think, as in "i want to like her still, she was just naive"

seems like the only real difference in perception is whether annette bening was pissed at him (their take) or her fellow actors (his take), or whether he said Kushner "surely could explain" why the Social Network was deserving (his take) or whether he said MAYBE Kushner could explain (their take)

even without him stooping to calling a couple of other writers total racists for hating him (though w/schwarzbaum maybe it comes down to the time he called her a cunt or w/e during a NYFCC debate and then proudly wrote about it in the NY Press), he's been this kind of creep for years and well beyond the usual snark, so even if he was gracious (and according to himself he was the most ingratiating person in the room) he would still have had it coming if anyone bitched him out.

he responded to aronofsky saying "u give us another reason not to read your paper" with "“That’s all right. Darren reads me. That’s all I want. And because he reads me, he knows the truth.”

what this reads like, to me, is armond failing to understand that the role of critics at functions like this is to be affable about getting roasted. being affable demonstrates deference, and it's likewise the critic's job to defer to artists, at least in polite social/public settings. armond chafes at that. he rightly sees these demonstrations of deference as an acknowledgment of the critic's lesser status relative to celebrity artists. of course, he doesn't see the critic as any less important than what he critiques. quite the opposite. his own criticism clearly demonstrates this. it's no mere response to cinema. armond's criticism is an aggressive attempt to reshape the perceived meaning of films, essentially to remake them, to push them into shapes that only HE could or would design. cinema is the raw material from which armond creates the world, and he can't seem to tolerate any suggestion that he is not the most important being in it.

^^^OTM

The art for this piece is a picture of him with Annette Bening and little hearts around them.

Cuz, you see, otherwise people wouldn't know she was on his side.

cinema is the raw material from which armond creates the world,

Armond would totally use this as blurb material for his next book.

so while he infantilizes himself in describing his relationship w/Bening, he also refuses to cede any authority - the infant is the mother's equal, but it is also paradoxically the center of the world

xp

I hope he and John Simon drink at the same watering hole.

starting to seriously think this dude needs psychiatric help

He got the old antagonisms rolling, then naive Michelle Williams and gullible Mark
Ruffalo followed suit

Mark Ruffalo, well known victim of Rick-Rolls.

The art for this piece is a picture of him with Annette Bening and little hearts around them.

She has a heart on for Armond.

what this reads like, to me, is armond failing to understand that the role of critics at functions like this is to be affable about getting roasted. being affable demonstrates deference, and it's likewise the critic's job to defer to artists, at least in polite social/public settings. armond chafes at that. he rightly sees these demonstrations of deference as an acknowledgment of the critic's lesser status relative to celebrity artists. of course, he doesn't see the critic as any less important than what he critiques. quite the opposite. his own criticism clearly demonstrates this. it's no mere response to cinema. armond's criticism is an aggressive attempt to reshape the perceived meaning of films, essentially to remake them, to push them into shapes that only HE could or would design. cinema is the raw material from which armond creates the world, and he can't seem to tolerate any suggestion that he is not the most important being in it.

― normal_fantasy-unicorns (contenderizer), Thursday, January 20, 2011 9:39 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

"being affable demonstrates deference", no it doesn't!

darren aronofsky's zing was merited wasn't it? no-one takes armond white seriously as a critic.

i don't have the energy to argue the point. can we just agree that i'm right?