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

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?

or what -- you'll insult us at the next New York Film Critics Circle meeting?

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.

I have a certain affection for Armond because of this. He comes out with a lot of absurd reviews that bring the lolz, but I like (at least, on a conceptual basis) this notion of reshaping (or, rather, finding new perspectives on) the meaning of films. He makes intriguing arguments from time to time, when he's not being all the things this thread is saying. All those problems get in the way, of course, but it would be great if he would focus in and open up a debate about some of the films he champions that nobody else does.

^ agree with much of that. wish he were less aggro & egomaniacal about it.

City Island > The Social Network
Gotta have at the Facebook movie once again, if only to counter the fallacious consensus that no other movie dealt with the Internet phenomenon. Ray De Felitta's emotionally large family comedy and Andy Garcia's warm comeback performance epitomized timeless, non-cyber interfacing.

i saw city island. it's bad. juliana margulies is good in it. the only thing about it that "dealt with the Internet phenomenon" was a lame subplot where the weird son is secretly into fat girls, and finds out the online performer he's obsessed with actually lives next door to him. what are the chances?

"the internet phenomenon"

this whole internet fad

the phenomenon of distracting people so they can't watch foreign films w/ subtitles

its not my fault i cant speak all the languages

city island was set in queens but it wasn't subtitled

for some reason i find julianna margulies a total babe w/ straight hair but not w/ curly hair. and usually i like curly haired chicks

just adding another data point 2 this informative discussion

*concurs*

thirded

http://mattsmoviereviews.net/Images/whitearmondstartrekcritic.jpg

Ream me up.

Armond wd make a fine ST villain, if JJ Abrams is lurking

Should at least be Ming The Merciless for Halloween

the phenomenon of distracting people so they can't watch foreign films w/ subtitles

reminder: you are stanning for a douche who pretends to love the transformers movies for fun & profit

that was mostly a max joke, genius

I have no idea how ppl know that AW doesn't actually like Transformers.

same way we know moon landing wasn't real

"real" as in it actually happened or "real" as in it was all a front to check out the Transformers wreckage on the other side of the moon?

Well there's certainly nothing racially offensive in those Transformers movies!

yea Optimus Prime is totally sporting Latin Kings colors

well actually no that'd be Bumblebee

for some reason i find julianna margulies a total babe w/ straight hair but not w/ curly hair. and usually i like curly haired chicks

― max, Friday, January 21, 2011 12:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

same here, my wife has curly hair, but i never gave JM a second look until when she was on scrubs and i was like woah

I have no idea how ppl know that AW doesn't actually like Transformers.

― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 22 January 2011 15:02 (5 hours ago)

you mean Transformers II, of course, because somehow he didn't like the first one but felt the second was good. Which is completely ridiculous and unbelievable.

Well there's certainly nothing racially offensive in those Transformers movies!

― Telephoneface (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, January 22, 2011 4:29 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

Pretty sure Armond loves racially offensive movies, considering his positive review for Norbit.

Armond wd make a fine ST villain, if JJ Abrams is lurking

― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Friday, 21 January 2011 18:07 (Yesterday)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v216/sexymollusk/armondwhite090223_250copy.jpg

but really, what do you guys think of his liking 35 Rhums but not White Material? (same as me actually)

He couldn't find a connection in White Material he could manipulate into a diss of Social Network or Greenberg.

have no problem with him liking 35 rhums whatsoever, it's a great movie

AW liking good movies here and there is totally a blind chicken finding some corn

Armond the maverick quite likes Your Highness (tho it's no Gentlemen Broncos), but he gets off a good shot at the Arthur remake:

No wonder Arthur’s mother (Geraldine James) warns, “As the coffee-colored gentleman who runs this country said: It’s time to put childish things behind us.” Actually, someone else said that first.

http://www.nypress.com/article-22281-inner-geeks.html

Digging through some old Spin magazines and read about Armond's role in Public Enemy's Professor Griff row. He called Griff's dismissal "the most terrible example of sellout I have witnessed in my lifetime" and called Chuck D "another bought, whipped slave." Good to see that offensive, misguided hyperbole is not limited to his movie reviews.

I just realized I had no idea how he sounded in person

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBxruT4LEaA

Dude should be stroking a cat

If you watch that, he complains that everyone lied about the last NY Film Critics Circle Awards. Then describes the exact same anecdote I recall reading (Aaronofsky made some crack, White responded "that's ok, he reads my articles, so he knows the truth") and says everyone else lied about it, without saying what THEY erroneously reported.

also...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWrjJZR6PfE

again, "they lied...they lied" never saying what the "lie" was - double checked Lisa Schwarzbaum's piece and...yeah, i still don't know what the lie was, other than the suggestion that Armond wasn't awesome: http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/01/11/armond-white-darren-aronofsky-nyfcc-awards/

Digging through some old Spin magazines and read about Armond's role in Public Enemy's Professor Griff row. He called Griff's dismissal "the most terrible example of sellout I have witnessed in my lifetime" and called Chuck D "another bought, whipped slave." Good to see that offensive, misguided hyperbole is not limited to his movie reviews.

I finished Jeff Chang's hip-hop book last week and the quotes are even more delicious in context.

I didn't bother noting that he loved The Beaver.

He did win me over in the '90s for rightly labeling The Silence of the Lambs "feminist claptrap."

god forbid hollywood claptrap is feminist

not really to his point

AW finds Trollhunter "genuinely sophisticated":

http://www.nypress.com/article-22514-bridging-the-legend.html

he's also found a title for his autobiography

Larry Crowne, is the humanist opposite to Hollywood’s self-congratulatory snark.
Larry Crowne’s lack of cynicism requires an audience that doesn’t hate itself.

I was surprised by his negative review of Transformers 3, but reading that I just said to myself, "of course."

gotta remember that he loved TF2, so the most challopy thing for him to say is that part 3 lost the magic of the second one.

The specter of Cranston’s Bad Husband recalls Dede the pimp in Jean Renoir’s 1931 La Chienne

Yes, and Transformers 3 has been getting some relatively ok reviews so he had to go the other way