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

http://photos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs090.snc1/5098_119062820751_739675751_2957213_7814915_n.jpg

i feel like this has something to do with armond white

there is a certain structure to these things.

1) build up/anticipation--"this is gonna be the best movie ever"
2) see the movie strictly within the context of the excitement generated beforehand.
3) validate build up by refusing to judge movie except within the context of the aforementioned excitement.

it's interesting because an actual engagement with the movie is really a pretext for everything else. I know people who STILL refuse to acknowledge that the new Star Wars movies were terrible.

okay so it's a couple weeks old but if Dolph Lundgren spends two hours taking out bad guys and teammates alike with masterfully bitchy zings I am all over this.

Dolph Lundgren as Gunnar Jensen, a German Expendable who is an expert at Sniping

I know people who STILL refuse to acknowledge that the new Star Wars movies were terrible.

I was all like "those people OTM!" until you got to the last two words there.

yeah true...but i mean, i understand loyalty to a series/franchise and even sometimes a director or cast member...but now there are fan sites and facebook fan groups and people hugely invested in as-yet-unreleased movies that aren't sequels or adaptations of anything already out, and in this case it's by a first time director! it's just weird.

xpost

what's that Derrida essay where he talks about the "absent center" of a discourse? haha.

1) build up/anticipation--"this is gonna be the best movie ever"
2) see the movie strictly within the context of the excitement generated beforehand.
3) validate build up by refusing to judge movie except within the context of the aforementioned excitement.

I'm worried about doing this for Tron.

easy solution--never watch trailers and smile and nod when yr friends go on and on abt movies that are not yet out. i have years of experience w/this.

yeah, that's pretty much what i do, increasingly w/ movies and music and almost anything. i'm not really paranoid about avoiding "spoilers" but once i decide i want to see/hear/read/etc. something, i kind of stave off reading about or really immersing myself in any kind of pre-release stuff before experience it in full. of course, that also means i have to actively avoid a good number of ilx threads i really wanna read for a while if i'm late to get to something.

I can't see the armondwhiteisntinsane.jpg. What is the gist of it?

it's a column of movies he liked and a column of movies he hated. i'm sure you could guess things in both.

it's funny ebert singles out "Synecdoche, New York" and "There Will Be Blood" as the movies no critic could help but praise.

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).

― Indiana Morbs and the Curse of the Ivy League Chorister (Dr Morbius), Thursday, August 13, 2009 7:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

OK, never saw that one; never liked the clips. I prefer Candy in the unalloyed brilliance that was SCTV.

― Indiana Morbs and the Curse of the Ivy League Chorister (Dr Morbius), Friday, August 7, 2009 9:02 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

morbs thinks that you can't pass judgment on movie if you HAVE seen it before

are there really people who care about a perfect score on rotten tomatoes. that is very bizarre!

in a world where Insane Clown Posse have a Greatful Dead-like following, anything is possible

people are weird, man

Filling columns of what a critic likes and hates as selectively as they made Armond's is pointless. Countless music critics may have dismissed Radiohead while enjoying a Katy Perry song, but that doesn't mean it's fair to sum a critic's career as "he thinks Katy Perry is great while Radiohead is stupid LOL," although, actually, plenty of critics would probably be proud to stamp that quote on their mission statement, so never mind.

And the Mothra is right about White being fun to read when you know he'll trash something you also hate.

he sucks

Read a dozen or so of his reviews last night, and they were for the most part alright. I could get where he was coming from. I actually agree with his review of Dark Knight about the current hip way to make a comic book movie seem 'adult' and 'serious' is to make it as grim as possible. I enjoyed that movie but left feeling that I had just gone through an ordeal that I probably won't want to revisit.

In the review of Love Guru he stops to heap praise on Cat in the Hat which is seriously one of the most disturbing things anybody could do. His noting in the aside that critics attacked it does much to help the case that he makes his living by being reactionary.

His Transformers review should be summed up in two sentences:

Sam’s insipid subplot is less urgent than the Iraq War plot; neither gains from the sci-fi metaphor (although the sense of American freedom in both suggests why envious cultures hate us).

which is fairly senseless doublespeak propaganda straight from W's mouth. And..

When the Transformers explode from common tools into super beings, the kinetic imagery fulfills the surrealism of Fernand Léger, El Lissitzky—if only they had digital.

which is a huge insult to "Ballet Mechanique"

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v371/ephender/armond.jpg

It may be fun to write fake AW reviews for movies he hasn't done. Or maybe just to write a list of rules:

1. If movie is made/set in the 1980s, mention Ronald Reagan in every paragraph.
2. If movie is critically lambasted for being shallow trash, praise its glorification of American pop culture.
etc

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).

― Indiana Morbs and the Curse of the Ivy League Chorister (Dr Morbius), Thursday, August 13, 2009 7:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

OK, never saw that one; never liked the clips. I prefer Candy in the unalloyed brilliance that was SCTV.

― Indiana Morbs and the Curse of the Ivy League Chorister (Dr Morbius), Friday, August 7, 2009 9:02 PM (1 week ago)

That's no contradiction bcz I'm not even talking about the same things there, new anti-me obsessive. The first post is about the merits of your ideal/choice of viewing medium. I think the second one is about Planes Trains, which I never wanted to see. Now drink your milk.

"all films must be seen in the theater before being reviewed"

=

"All his films are fucking terrible.... ok I didn't see that one, but I didn't like the clips"

perhaps you saw the clips in the theater?

it was John Hughes doing adults, looked like bad TV

I'm sure Only the Lonely looks like bad tv if you've only seen clips too.

no, Chris Columbus can actually direct.

Hahaha, LOCK THREAD.

Glenn Kenny tries some parsing:

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2009/08/we-went-to-white-castle-and-we-got-thrown-out.html

he's right funny tho

ArmondWhite @hoosteen I find your opinions to be of the misguided nature, typical of intellectual juveniles like Peter Jackson. TRUTHBOMB!12:52 PM Sep 8th from web in reply to hoosteen

s1ocki??????????

Follow!

haha no!

I noticed Armond shoehorned another gratuitous Roy Andersson reference into his "District 9" review.

haha now I'm kinda curious: five years on, do people here still vehemently disagree with that Fahrenheit 9/11 review? it's overlong and ranty and repetitive and over-strident for a piece that's criticizing Moore, but I don't know that I disagree with it all that deeply.

As Kevin Costner worried in JFK, we are indeed through the looking glass now.

Michael Moore is a POPULIST* worth defending, to a point

really, ppl who passionately voted for a Change Agent bought by Wall Street give MM shit for staying in nice hotels? Sit 'n spin.

also mm makes fun movies

not really tho?

fun?

yeah theyre hella entertaining and hilarious

his movies are variable, and guilty of some of the superficial sins armond and others accuse him of, but at he's best he's a good rabblerouser (which includes being a good entertainer). the tendency on the left to disown him seems like a needlessly defensive move. he's not right about everything, but god knows his heart is in the right place. and he's a much better filmmaker than a lot of the diy documentarians who have come after him.

harassing congressmen from an ice cream truck - challenging phil knight to a footrace - paul wolfowitz w/the spit comb

guy is putting full effort into entertaining us and all anyone can do is complain abt how hes not a serious upright truth broker - talk abt missing the boat jeez

and generally hes right abt the big picture stuff in a way most people w/a public voice will not fuck with ever

aye.

really, ppl who passionately voted for a Change Agent bought by Wall Street give MM shit for staying in nice hotels? Sit 'n spin.

― A Patch on Blazing Saddles (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, September 22, 2009 4:12 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

in my experience there is no overlap between these two groups

G Kenny finds that AW is making sense lately, in praising A Serious Man and panning An Education (scroll to end):

http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/1130

i've found that to be a v distressing turn of events

o shit @ his precious review

lotsa folks saying the same thing really -- my editor: "Stuff White People Like"