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

An oasis of civilization in the California desert

Some of those music video review thingys used to be (are?) up on YouTube in poor quality recordings. I watched enough of them that I'm convinced they were his best work.

I called this one:

A few years back, as chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle, I hosted a criticism panel at Columbia University and was bemused when one participant from a national weekly entertainment magazine, insisted that his “reviews are not political!” It’s demonstrable that most movie critics, like most journalists, work under an unacknowledged left bias. I was reminded of this again yesterday when a conglomerate of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics Circle, Boston Society of Film Critics, and the National Society of Film Critics all rounded their wagons, moving to disqualify Disney films from the groups’ upcoming awards consideration, subsequent to a feud — over a news article the L.A. Times wrote about Disneyland — in which the corporation refused to invite the paper’s critic to a movie screening.

Reviewers who normally resist writing political analyses of films, even when praising movies that are blatantly partisan, now presume to form a united front by issuing the quasi-political statement that Disney’s interdiction was “antithetical to the principles of a free press and set a dangerous precedent in a time of already heightened hostility towards journalists. . . . [This] should gravely concern all who believe in the importance of a free press, artists included.”

But this is delusional. It is the typical liberal “free press” blather followed by punitive action. Involvement in an individual business dispute diminishes the idea of journalistic solidarity unless there’s recognition that Disney exercised a legitimate right to choose its audience for film previews—even to withhold advertising to whatever media outlet it chooses. Ignoring the business facts of the matter to pretend this is a First Amendment issue exposes the critics’ hypocrisy.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

Disney exercised a legitimate right to choose its audience for film previews—even to withhold advertising to whatever media outlet it chooses

Would that Disney decided to stop advertising their shitty product.

This one slipped by me ... http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453744/charles-burnett-academy-award

https://www.out.com/armond-white/2017/11/30/call-me-your-names-sex-lives-rich-and-immodest

I don't regard this as actually from the maniacal side of things, but certain to raise hackles.

fabulous url

what, NRO wouldn't publish it?

Also:

nstead of powerfully exploring gay passion as in this year’s Paris: O5:59 and God’s Own Country, Guadagino’s movie is regressive. It harkens back to a pre-Stonewall sensibility in which closeted emotions are inflated due to an out-dated, introverted and mostly inept sensibility.

Did he watch the scene where Elio grabs Oliver's balls, or, like, the whole movie? Elio hides the crush from no one, himself least of all.

I don't disagree that Paris and God's were more unbridled tho. But that's certainly not the ONLY measure by which films about gay romance should be judged.

I have never used a bridle.

You're missing out.

Seven Bridles for Seven Brothers.

i’m bridling at this offtopic horseplay

Jump in the saddle, hold on to the bridle

Armond writes regularly for Out as well as Soto's favorite t.p.

God's Own Country is quite bridled

It's beautifully bridled.

Better-Than 2017: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455151/annual-better-movies-list-european-films-dominate

fucking moron of course backtracks on Lady Bird once other people loved it as well, the same as he did with The Hurt Locker.

hipsterism run amok.

hipster decadence.

without appreciating its coup de grâce rebuke of hipsterism

it's always worth control-f-ing hipsterism with Armand, it seems. I'm probably a bad person, but I do occasionally agree with him about some widely liked movies - but don't like to talk about it. But Jesus wept "Edgar Wright’s autism action film" - stfu man!

Sentence most in need of an editor: “Plain, neo-realist beauty exposes the useless, cynical sanctimony of three ahistorical, sanctimonious, paranoid fantasies.”

But Jesus wept "Edgar Wright’s autism action film" - stfu man!

Can I confess that I had no idea wtf he was talking about here? So, Baby was autistic? Or Wright is somehow crafting an "autistic" style of filmmaking (whatever that means)? Seriously, what the hell is he talking about?

It's the point behind his original review: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448901/baby-driver-almost-great-beguiled-hipsterdom-last-knight-pyrotechnics

I actually agree with about half of his review of The Post.

I'm probably a bad person, but I do occasionally agree with him

oh come on
armond is great
(imo)
agreeing with a controversial critic does not make anyone a "bad person." i'm sick of that leap people make with controversial people.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DWg1CGJXkAAoS99.jpg

oh god just heard about his latest. Look I love when he's a mischievous pill when he's writing about movies, but this kinda shit is disgusting

It's ... admirable isn't the word for it, but it's something how many deeper ends he finds to go off of this late in the game.

this is just boring though, like i don't go to armond for warmed over right wing talking points i could get from literally thousands of people on twitter, i go to him for shit like "the recent Eddie Murphy films that are so personal and ingenious, they transcend racial categorization.”

AW will be cohosting a podcast w/ Ted Nugent shortly

when you're an irredeemable asshole that everyone in your previous scene despises because you're an asshole, sometimes you run into the everlasting arms of the right-wing. they'll take any piece of shit they can use against the left.

The last straw. Never reading his shit again, not even for amusement. Fuck him forever.

and he published worse Tweets about the students than the one posted here

the thing about this piece of shit is even his film crit has been full of this stuff the entire time. bubbling under the surface, but there. ascribing the worst motives to those who are different, or hold different opinions. falsifying their positions. positioning himself at odds with everyone. his entire career and at this point his life really is a tragedy. his voice was potentially important, but since everything he's ever said has been afaict disingenuous there's no point in even engaging with his work. basically cryptosicko otm.

He really was not this way when I started reading him ('97), at least to this degree. I don't think he did at the City Sun (a black-interest weekly in NYC) either, where he was arts editor '84-96.

i remember him being surly back in '99-'00, but i think around the time this thread started he began to go off the rails considerably.

I emailed OUT earlier today asking if they were aware of his recent tweets, and if this would have any effect on his future there. Just got an email back saying that they had received numerous complaints, and while they believe in allowing a broad range of opinions on their site, Armond's column had been terminated for "budgetary reasons."

Can’t wait to see how he’ll spin that. Oh wait, that’s like his entire work history since 2004.

when you're an irredeemable asshole that everyone in your previous scene despises because you're an asshole, sometimes you run into the everlasting arms of the right-wing. they'll take any piece of shit they can use against the left.

― omar little, Wednesday, February 21, 2018 12:15 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so fucking true

Armond mostly otm on The Man Who Came to Dinner

https://www.out.com/armond-white/2018/2/27/seminal-gay-film-man-who-came-dinner-originates-art-shade

Might be one of his last things for OUT; I'm seeing on Twitter they sacked him over the Parkland shit. Can't verify.

It's discussed upthread. They claim he was dropped due to "budgetary reasons".

"We lack enough patience in our reserves to keep you employed any longer."

I checked with someone who works there and they said they had no knowledge that he'd been terminated, so.

I have the email from OUT saying that they weren't running his column anymore.

We're done now

Photoshop can be problematic. But it can also make great agit-prop. Thanks Gary L. Oliver. @greggutfeld @frankrichny @LakeGregory pic.twitter.com/EULbKW40xR

— armond white (@3xchair) January 11, 2019

His work is now impossible to read. Whenever I click a national review link, which isn’t often, I get a pop up a out being the millionth visitor click here to redeem your free ipad

His work is now impossible to read. Whenever I click a national review link, which isn’t often, I get a pop up a out being the millionth visitor click here to redeem your free ipad

Sorry for the duplicate

You're The One Millionth ILX Double Poster! You Win An iPad!

Armond's description of this as "great agit-prop" goes a long way towards explaining his taste in movies.