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

Munich, of course. ILXors throw "great" around like it was low-grade weed.

Clearly.

Of course thinking Munich is a great film is more indicative of the amount of low-grade weed you've been smoking, but still clearly.

DANCE ON CAMERA

Fri Jan 18 @ 6:15pm

POP VIDEO ARTISTS AND HOLLYWOOD INFLUENCE

Armond White's tantalizing take on the music videos of the king & queen of pop - Michael & Janet Jackson.

http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/doc08/program14.html

Sorry to back up a bit here, but, I have no idea what to think of No Country. thought I hated it - what was it for? The coin flipping thing and some scenes where characters were over explaining really annoyed me

pretty sure i don't recall anyone actually from minnesota getting upset by the lol what rubes character typing.

half my relatives talk like that, or used to until they moved out of rural minnesota and lost the minnewegian accents. far as I know everyone loves the movie.
http://flakmag.com/misc/images/hotdish1.jpg

Munich is a "so close" case for me. I would call Inland Empire something like great, tho. My last red film was Tropical Malady tho. That was a long while back.

At the time, Minnesotans seemed about evenly split by the Fargo caricatures. Half were offended, half were starstruck by a major sleeper hit-cum-Oscar nominee about their state.

Still think the best film I've seen in the past five years is Head-On, but Zodiac/Wind/No Country are all great films IMO (even if a second viewing was required for me to think that about the last.)

Eric, I'll give you some bad weed to push Munich over the line. (I really wish I could take notes at the Armond Q&A for you, but I think I have to see the Joe shorts tonight. AW vs AW!)

I think Malady only gets to green for me.

actually great movies of the last 5 years... dogville. i think there will be blood is close. (i don't have a problem calling it "great," but there are levels of great and it obviously has some problems.) goodbye dragon inn is pretty great, although i guess it barely sneaks into the last five years. the world is great-ish.

so is the holy girl.

There's a fine old thread where Eric takes me to task for saying I need never read a word by any critics who liked Dogville again!

(waived til at least I finish yr book)

Armond thinks Mr. 3000 is one of the great movies of the last five years, so he's not completely insane.

There's a fine old thread where Eric takes me to task for saying I need never read a word by any critics who liked Dogville again!

Your recall is just as spooky as jaymc's.

haha see now hoberman's love of dogville is one of the things that keeps him in my "pay attention to" column. (and then he liked southland tales too, love you j.ho.)

if i was a high school drama teacher i'd stage a production of dogville.

And it'd be BETTER!

xp: c'mon, i'm not even a contender! I only remember threads where ppl give me shit.

I saw Dogville at the 19th & B'way Loews on Good Friday. Cinematic Gethsemane.

I can't ignore J. Hoberman anymore if I wanted to. His columns are now a fixture in the City Pages.

xp: c'mon, i'm not even a contender! I only remember threads where ppl give me shit.

That's constitutes an amount of text that rivals In Search of Lost Time.

I LET YOU HAVE THAT ONE!

jesus 'dogville' was bad: probably a more boneheaded non-critique of capitalism than 'there will be blood'.

x=post I know.

those movies aren't about capitalism. also not misanthropic. or anti-american. or whatever. also they both have very funny endings (although dogville's makes more sense).

also i can only imagine the depth of loathing armond white feels for dogville. i don't remember if he reviewed it.

i have no idea what dogville's appeal is if it isn't to a kneejerk euro 'god aren't people cruel' misanthropy. 'twbbb' is at least a decent looking bit of film (as opposed to rehashing brecht) but equally naive politics-wise.

xp: He did and maybe you can't imagine!

Also tipsy, we have to discuss the "ugly liberal anger" dinner scene in Huckabees. I found it exhilarating.

bingo: "one of the most fatuous movies ever made."

xp: yeah i love that scene.

kneejerk euro 'god aren't people cruel' misanthropy

hey this is why I couldn't make it through Berlin Alexanderplantz! people are evil and stupid and cruel zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz* I guess the epilogue had some okay moments here and there

dogville's appeal to me was that i thought it was v. entertaining. it was like a punk'd remake of the crucible.

and the staging device yes is a gimmick but really well done. i don't mind gimmicks, i just want people to know what they're doing with them. plus i could listen to john hurt's narration all day.

calling it a movie given the second-generation-vid look is a dollop of kindness tho.

Not all of them are ENTIRELY evil and stupid and cruel, Shakey! No more than the average Altman gallery.

and i totally read dogville as cautionary, not condemnatory. i.e. not "people are terrible," just "people can be terrible, so watch it." which is a totally sensible and not at all people-hating pov.

it was like a punk'd remake of the crucible.

OTM!

Plus, Dogville had a lot of gorgeously processed shots in there too. Way more "filmic" than, I dunno, Crimson Gold or whatever also-great-but-butt-ugly-looking movies got big ups from lefty critics at the time.

maybe im a retard but all this 'truly great movie' stuff just brings me back to zodiac, which affected me like practically nothing else

punk'd adds sumthin?

post-The Kingdom, von Trier challenges my dogma(e) that being an asshole is irrelevant to one's artistry...

And you were just praising David O. Russell a few posts up?

I think the Kingdom is the only thing of his I've really dug. That Bjork movie was unwatchable (I think I have a hard time with completely unsympathetic protagonists - its no problem if the protagonist is evil/stupid/whatever as long as they're made interesting and relatable, but if they're not I just tune out...)

'crimson gold' got in and got out, showed you a bit of tehran, did its thing. wouldn't watch it again. but 'dogville' was a real striver, and so long! i think LVT is weird about punishing women. honestly no idea what the film has to recommend it. preferred even 'it's all about love'.

xpost

maybe im a retard but all this 'truly great movie' stuff just brings me back to zodiac, which affected me like practically nothing else

-- and what, Friday, January 18, 2008 6:22 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

yeah me too. i don't usually care for truly great movies (it's kind of a vote for significance or what people in the future will think) but this was one.

xp: no, the ways in which Russell seems to be an asshole haven't surfaced in the films themselves, so far as I can tell.

LVT is weird about punishing women

^^^^ding ding ding. it gets really tiresome. also its mostly lacking from the Kingdom, which is perhaps why I enjoy that more.

xp: no, the ways in which Russell seems to be an asshole haven't surfaced in the films themselves, so far as I can tell.

-- Dr Morbius, Friday, January 18, 2008 6:27 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

haha i had to make this argument to my editor this week when he aksed how i could like a director who was so nasty IRL.

also Eric, Jerry Lewis is kind of a fiend IRL. "women can't be funny" etc

Hey, I'm all about asshole directors.

And anti-humanitarians.

some of LVT's films (dogville, breaking the waves, etc.) are more specifically about a woman's ability to transcend punishment. sexist maybe, but the characters are at least strong.

the wimmin-hatin' bothered me more in breaking the waves and dancer than dogville (the only one of the three where the victim gets revenge). his sadism does always feel gleeful, so my reaction to the movies partly depends on how much i'm willing to share in the glee. (otoh i prefer gleeful sadism to whatever kind you get from michael haneke, say.)

zodiac is really good. i need to see it again, like was said up above it keeps getting better in my head.

I liek Haneke and Von Triers so apparently I like mean europeans. YAY EUROPE!

how bout catherine breillat? she's pretty mean. (i don't like her much but am kind of interested in her new one.)

I really draw the line at vaginal mega-closeups.

i havent seen everything yet, but im with the zodiac backers...i can't imagine that it won't end up being the best film of the year for me.

and im not sure why "power corrupts" and "people are cruel" are considered naive politics?