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

Armond's writing style lends itself quite well to being misunderstood and misinterpreted.

"retroactive abortion", though? that's a jokey way of saying murder

it's pretty clear what white was saying: "Mr. Jealousy" has references to the director's mother, other critics are saying nice things about the movie because they are sucking up to the director's mother in lieu of giving a baby shower gift, but I think the film is bad enough that georgia brown should have killed noah baumbach as a kid before he made it. ha ha.

amazing that he thinks he can say he meant something else and expect anyone to believe it.

and no i don't think he "really" meant to say baumbach should be killed really actually in real life

is this much different from "I KIlled Christgau with My Big Fucking Dick"?

― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, March 17, 2010 12:14 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

did noah baumbach make a movie about how much he hates armond white?

meetings of the ny film crix circle must be kinda tense

How did he ever get voted president or is it decided by lottery?

Pauline Kael appeared to him in a dream.

did noah baumbach make a movie about how much he hates armond white?

that was only the entire subtext of Margot at the Wedding, jeez, how did you miss that. the entire movie was a subliminal dig at Armond

he inspired Jack Black's character iirc

he is right about publicists and critics, of course

(guessing those of you who dutifully trot out to every hyped stinker on opening weekend hv no comment there)

of course

can't believe i still haven't read this

probably too busy dutifully trotting out to every hyped stinker on opening weekend

Greenberg, the big-budget mumblecore movie by Noah Baumbach, should enter the language as Woody Allen’s Zelig did—a title that goes beyond ethnic specificity to stand for a particular social disorder: the tendency toward vanity, suppression and censorship.

this is all kind of awkward isn't it? im not 100% sure what it means. the word greenberg should go beyond the specific (jewishness? am i reading this right?) to the particular (vanity, suppression, censorship)?

Jim Hoberman joined the crackdown, exhibiting his own case of Greenberg syndrome.

wait what? the hobes has moved to LA to deal with some personal shit?

take it easy max, i dont even know what you thought of Dooly Appointed etc.

It was an honorable, cordial system until—after the mid-’80s rise of entertainment media—studios and their publicists exerted greater control over media access to films, insuring favorable/biased coverage. Publicists’ power increased as the media gave itself over to non-inquisitive, low-integrity forms of celebrity news and gossip.

morbs, he isn't otm about this. the idea that the publicity machine only got going in the mid-80s is ludicrous. i mean, just off the top of my head, you have the whole kael/beatty thing in the 70s. but apart from that, publicists have always, always tried, as they are paid to, to get favourable responses to films. access, baby, access.

"got going" i take to mean bringing it to a whole new level, tail wags dog, etc.

well, yeah, alright.

these arguments should be made by someone who isn't mental tho.

("bringing it to a whole new level" is not very morbs imo.)

imo hoberman should "step up to the plate" and respond

yeah, publicists go back before the 80s. the difference is the perception of the relevance of critics, and their increasingly disposable nature when it comes to marketing films (it seems more important in the case of Greenberg, but maybe that's part of where the outrage comes from).

dudes you are NOT taking an armo article seriously right?

he has good points amid the craziness, almost always. You know, like music writers.

The abortion uproar seems more serious, but it’s easily dismissed as a mere nit-picking gripe. Even if I had advised abortion (which I did not), fact is, abortion remains a hallmark of the privileged class that extols Baumbach.

yah thats really good but this is my favorite part btw:

It’s unfortunate to have to point out that it is also a racist lynching by white critics of a black critic. Fact: Year after year, Hoberman never even deigns to review movies with black subjects, and he passes this racist contempt on to his epigones. That’s hegemony.

lacks some of the subtlety of other passages but makes it up for just going top level on the racial shit + fact colon construction

would it be possible to reconstruct armonds political philosophy

is it some kind of n/l right-wing marxism?

xpost Not without a claims adjuster.

j-hob responded btw:

Further unburdening his mind, Armond expresses displeasure that I criticized Pauline Kael's review of Shoah, panned a number of Steven Spielberg's movies, and most recently gave "traitorous praise to the movie Green Zone for encouraging insurrection in the American military." Sanity has prevailed, though. At least he hasn't called for my "retroactive abortion" (yet), even if I am "the scoundrel-czar of contemporary film criticism," a publicist-coddling representative of the film industry status quo as well as "a force behind racist snobbery in the film festival circuit (which led to such cultural disasters as Precious)" who, "like some nefarious, shadowy dictator in a Fritz Lang silent" exerts an influence that "stretches from coast to coast, institution to institution." It's true!

Tomorrow, I plan to get universal health care, settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and bring the Dodgers back to Brooklyn.

Can Hoberman and Dart’s objections to the very mention of abortion mean that they are, in fact, Pro-Life? (I remember Hoberman railing against Juno for choosing life while praising the Romanian abortion thriller 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.) Can’t wait to see Hoberman and Dart defend their Pro-Life position on the Glenn Beck show.

fuck that, give armond his own show imo

hoberman is pro-life! he hated the pro-life juno! he's pro-life!

i shamefully admit that i would watch this guy on tv

funnier than Arrested Development, but then so was Shoah.

u shldnt play tball when were discussing the pros here doc

is it some kind of n/l right-wing marxism?

gramscian whos been mugged

Shoah was objectively pro-jewish and pro-Netanyahu.

has anyone read his bio of Tupac?

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/03/armond_white.php

hoba weighs in

ayo i just posted that

dudes you are NOT taking an armo article seriously right?

― by another name (amateurist), Thursday, March 18, 2010 3:04 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

only film crit to take seriously imo

Armond has a charming talent for piling adjectives and adverbs as if the use of them transformed the object of his wrath into whatever he thought of him.

Like if he called Hoberman a "narcoleptically slavish ladybug."

It exposes the hidden conspiracy by him and his backward children (you know who you are) to control film discourse.

kind of impressed that hoberman didn't take too seriously all these weird "global conspiracy" zingers

rly dunno how anyone can defend a. white here. this is the most transparently bad faith shit-talking i've seen displayed in serial public utterances this side of an NRO Corner writer

http://flann4.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/strangelove.jpg

j hoberman and the "inner circle"

"ok yeah i DID call for someone to be retroactively aborted, but it's not like he's offended, RICH PEOPLE love abortion!! ps he's RACIST, because of Precious!!"

armond white always reminds me of his fellow esteemed critic meredith merridew:

http://www.filmdope.com/Gallery/ActorsM/12385-19246.gif

Gore Vidal?

"Given this crisis, I can no longer keep silent about the conspiracy"

My favourite line. Reminds me of something you'd find in a very long letter in a local newspaper's crank file.

That’s hegemony.

^^^^ great title for a musical version of this white/hoberman dust-up

I'll bet Glenn Kenny is cursing his new years resolution to stop dicking on other critics.

From Armond's Participation in the Slate's 2004 Movie Club:

A review should be judged by its substance. Its argument should be engaged. Name-callers who ignore the argument are just being insulting; it's a feeble attempt to simply dismiss the argument.