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

thanks.

I don't think Roger had a grudge against academia or film theory (Bordwell was a big fan, though obv there's tension between him and academia), he just wasn't trained in it. His job was to review films for a mass audience, something his peers in alt-weeklys or Armond here aren't all that bothered with. Not all critics have the same goals, after all.

Armond likes to find larger political implications in what everyone else would call trash a la the melting of the Eiffel Tower as some sort of post-9/11 metaphor in G.I. Joe, and also the complexities of race in Norbit, but he too often descends into absurd bouts of contrarianism (his year end list of "this is better than..." is pretty abhorrent and damaging, I think, to critical evaluation). Vulgar Auterism isn't necessarily interested in contrarianism, but rather finding new forms of artistic expression in "populist" digital forms. I think they too often ignore fundamental filmmaking aspects like, say, a script (the lastest Resident Evil had some amazing and interesting visuals and compositions, but the writing was still shit...otoh Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning is fantastic despite some ropey acting).

hm, who is an example of a vulgar auteur critic? i feel like maybe i am one, sometimes, because i loved TRON legacy in part *because* the plot felt so light and weightless, allowing the amazing sounds and visuals to come to the fore. it would have been a worse movie, i think, and less like a videogame, if it was more complex. in terms of ebert's anti-academia bias i am mostly thinking of this article. about 1/3 of the way into it, the author of the piece claims to have interviewed ebert, and quotes him as saying that film theory is a "cruel hoax for students, essentially the equivalent of a New Age cult." i know he is bros with bordwell but bordwell is a film historian, and his writing is, from what i understand, pretty different from semiotic, lacanian, etc. approaches to film analysis.

i should qualify my defense of TRON by saying that, in general, i find the hollywood studio system depressing, but i still try to evaluate its products on their own terms and not according to a set of criteria designed to apply to different types of films.

Well I would hope anyone would approach it that way.

As far as those that subscribe to vulgar auterist, aside from Vishnevetsky, I'd say Jamie Christley and *maybe* Calum Marsh over at Slant, a number of people at Spectrum Culture, and other people dotted around. Young'un Peter Labuza gave a lecture on it at Columbia last week.

interesting, thanks.

some links:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/resident-evil-retribution/6508

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/notebook-reviews-john-hyams-universal-soldier-day-of-reckoning

Wasn't vulgar auteurism a part of auteurism right from the start? Edgar G. Ulmer and Robert Aldrich and Sam Fuller rather than William Wyler and Fred Zinnemann?

Yes, to an extent, and that's part of my skepticism. I sometimes feel new generations want to find something to champion that isn't in line with the prevailing taste (so maybe it is a smidge of contrarianism, though I don't think it's as forthright as Armond's).

I like Jaime and Calum's writing a lot (and I think Jaime is higher on Jerry Lewis -- the linchpin of vulgar auteurism? -- than I am).

shove it, zachylon, i don't anyone to give a shit about what i think except me

― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Saturday, April 13, 2013 8:39 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol i didn't even mean it *like that* but ok

meh alright

I mean, I wouldn't go to Morbs' DJ night and he wouldn't go to mine and I think we're both fine with that.

i wish i had a DJ night.

AW's take on F911 actually seems mostly OTM, hard to remember a time when ppl actually took moore seriously, but citing 'kevin costner in jfk' as an appeal to authority is an all-time lol.

oh lord

http://cityarts.info/2013/05/01/spielbergs-shortcoming/

For the past seven months I’ve personally been fielding questions about why I didn’t like the movie Lincoln. Going through the unpleasant effort of explaining the film’s basic inaccuracy and unfairness to people who were prepared to love and defend it simply because it was customized to their political sentiments, made my explanation all the more frustrating. (When die-hard Spielberg scoffers praised Lincoln, I knew their commendations had nothing to do with esthetics or history, only with the film’s slanted politics and strenuously forced contemporary parallel to Obama’s lame-duck presidency.)

he sounds like a Soviet press agent from 1981.

The least coherent Soviet press agent from 1981.

meh, that's 50/50 btwn otm and crazy.

As you are 50/50 between otm and crazy, that means Armond's piece is 25/75, respectively.

It’s as bad as a Saturday Night Live skit. Or a Jon Stewart’s Early Show skit. Or a Real Time with Bill Maher skit. (Or a Morning Joe, Rachel Maddow skit, I mean, “newscast.”) That’s how low the producer of the terrific early Zemeckis-Gale comedies has sunk.

I'm a huge fan of Used Cars but man

That whole practice of acting like your personal canon is everybody's...Armond's still got it

also the "early" in front of "Zemeckis-Gale," presumably to distinguish between I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Back To The Future...I tip my hat.

There’s obscenity in joking about the media’s protection of Obama’s image and its implicit lack of decorum which began (negatively) with the media’s assault on George W, Bush’s presidency. But Nevermind. (That might have been a more clever title for the short–what, was Tony Kushner, having justly lost the Oscar, too busy reading Entertainment Weekly?).

you really have to work hard for me not to "right on" any slam of whcd horseshit. and there's no denying armond works hard.

it's maddening yet somehow unsurprising that AW fails to elaborate on the supposed 'basic inaccuracy and unfairness' of spielberg's film, but then again you'd think that a guy who thinks that jon stewart hosts the 'early show' wouldn't throw stones about stuff like that.

This guy could turn the Smurfs 2 into a WAKE UP LIBERAL SHEEPLE thinkpiece.

i so wouldn't be surprised if that review actually existed

love that Armond gets an Ebert dig in there.

I think I genuinely might find Armond tiresome now, and I am not really a fan of Obama or the WHCD (although I still think Colbert's turn was brilliant).

colbert's turn was brilliant because armond's otm about the whcd, tho. (doing it to obama would of course be nice but i don't ask anything of colbert anymore; i feel like he has already overachieved.)

that ebert line is NEXTLEVEL: just coherent enough to imply that roger ebert whitewashed america's critical discourse. also laughed out loud at this:

Spielberg boasts about Day Lewis’ method of ”becom[ing] his character: Hawkeye from Last Of The Mohicans, Bill the Butcher in The Gangs of New York and Abraham Lincoln from Lincoln. And you know what, he nailed it.” Nailing it is the correct, crucifying term for the Washington Correspondents Dinner’s deprecation of American history.

:O

"deprecation"

WHCD is horeshit, no doubt, but this whole piece is just silly axe-grinding that ropes in a number of disparate elements that he hates. Ebert comment has some merit, sure, but it's also being very selective, the same as the Maddow comment.

i can barely even parse this dude's sentences any more.

he should just move into a literal echo chamber, he'd probably get off on it.

maybe robert fripp can build him something.

tbf he's leveled that criticism @ ebert forever

xp

oh no it is absurdly selective! i am an ebert fan. armond, yknow. has a shtick.

Oh I know he has, but that's the problem. He throws in his pet peeves wherever he can, all the time. It betrays his move from criticism into vendetta.

ok sorry sorry but the brackets here.

It is not funny when Obama-as-Day-Lewis confuses things, saying “The hardest part? Trying to understand his [my] motivations. Why did he [I] pursue ‘heatlh care’ first? What makes him [me] tick? Why doesn’t he [I] get mad? If I was him I’d be mad all the time. But I’m not him, I’m Daniel Day Lewis.”

and yeah he lost all sense of perspective and grammar long ago.

I love all these fictional Spielberg haters who suddenly came rushing out to praise Lincoln after trashing the dude for so many years.

why does anyone bother reading armond white, is the question? you have no one to blame but yourselves.

you [i] have no one to blame but yourselves [obama]

:)

I'm just amazed that he waited a whole month to get in his first post-death Ebert dig. Unless I missed one, of course.

That whole practice of acting like your personal canon is everybody's

It's a critic's job not to care about everybody's canon, homie.

tbf he's leveled that criticism @ ebert forever

yeah, he should stop, you ppl have won.

you ppl have won

Yes. The ppl have also won on The Shawshank Redemption, too. Life is choosing new battles, et al.

But, wait! It gets worse!

love that comma

his piece on Portrait of Jason was his best in awhile.