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

Brace yourselves

Keanu's #JohnWick Parabellum joins a great tradition against political correctness--like Lillian Gish in Night of the Hunter. https://t.co/0JgDTqDXTE #2AmendmentFilmFestivaal pic.twitter.com/BxcxyUMQKG

— armond white (@3xchair) May 18, 2019

Festivaal

the beauty of his work is there's no need to click through -- we can derive enough eye-rolling and laughs from that lede without reading a word of the actual review while understanding how bad it'd be

https://letterboxd.com/notarmondwhite/film/the-lion-king-2019/

Disney’s blatant cultural agenda explains the disaster of The Lion King. We can clarify the film’s deception by highlighting its production-purchase cycle and recognizing the unmistakable — not coincidental — political objectives of the filmmakers. This is how it works. It’s a Dishonor Roll:

Jon Favreau (Director): After turning Marvel’s Iron Man to visual dung, he is now Disney’s fake-reality hack and is key to understanding how this digitally rejiggered Lion King (like Favreau’s Jungle Book) continues the con job of Marvel’s Black Panther. Favreau’s unnamed African veldt might as well be New Wakanda.

Donald Glover (Simba): His dubious street cred as rapper Childish Gambino distorts the film’s bildungsroman concept, as he sells a CGI version of his ghetto-pathology TV series Atlanta.

Chiwetel Ejiofore (Scar): Evokes the grim horror he endured in 12 Years a Slave by voicing the mangy usurper — no longer Jeremy Irons’s effete, gayish, villain of 1994.

John Oliver (Zazu): HBO’s political “comic” becomes the herald of Pride Rock; he controls the film’s narrative.

James Earl Jones (Mufasa): The one 1994 veteran repeats his original role as Simba’s father, adding sonorous Darth Vader cred.

Alfre Woodard (Sarabi): The dotty house wench in 12 Years a Slave becomes Mufasa’s mate, Queen of the Pride Lands, and Simba’s mother. Progress?

Keegan-Michael Key (Kamari) and Eric André (Azizi): These peanut-gallery TV comics serve as Scar’s Spotted Hyenas henchmen, Antifa-in-waiting.

Seth Rogen (Pumbaa): Channels his dirtbag shtick into the warthog who sings the “no worries” theme song “Hakuna Matata,” a nihilist philosophy.

Billy Eichner (Timon): TV’s harassment comic, cast as the meerkat, harmonizing on “Hakuna Matata” about life as “a meaningless line of indifference” without irony.

Beyoncé Knowles-Carter (Nala): Not just Simba’s love interest but the era’s leading purveyor of Afrocentric kitsch. As the film’s cultural linchpin, she accuses Simba, “You don’t even know who you are!” Her rhythmic diction on “You’re not the Simba I remember” is pure Destiny’s Child. And during the live-action uprising, her call “Are you with me, lions!” awakens the Beyhive. It is the Disney corporation’s single most calculated moment since buying the Star Wars franchise.

what is "visual dung"

https://i1.wp.com/metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/poop.jpg

None of this wink-wink inauthenticity was a problem when Zack Snyder’s Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’hoole — the most exquisitely designed animated film since Fantasia — respected the moral values in coming-of-age narratives.

does anyone pay this deranged boomer clown for his literary dung anymore?

xpost

You missed the funniest, and most Armond-ish, line:

None of this wink-wink inauthenticity was a problem when Zack Snyder’s Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’hoole — the most exquisitely designed animated film since Fantasia — respected the moral values in coming-of-age narratives.

These peanut-gallery TV comics serve as Scar’s Spotted Hyenas henchmen, Antifa-in-waiting.

give the fascist narrative of the story, this is likely otm

Yeah, I realized I'd made an error not clipping the obligatory Snyder lickfest.

does anyone pay this deranged boomer clown for his literary dung anymore?

― bookmarkflaglink (jim in vancouver),

Noted dung peddlers NRO.

didn't know armond had a letterboxd, thanks

how much of that dung do lib masochists consume?

Keegan Michael-Key's casting as somehow helping to signify "antifa in waiting" is truly deranged, nicely done

character list observations tailor-made for a poll imo

I thought so too, but no forum needs 2 AW threads.

btw I'm pretty sure that letterboxd account is just someone copy/pasting armond's wise words over to that site

I'm only about 80 percent certain of that.

it's linked to his twitter

Beyonce, Queen of Afrocentric kitsch (look it up). Meghan Markle will always be a commoner. https://t.co/rkqblBdRNS @griot @Essence @TheRoot @huffpoblackvoices @Beyonce pic.twitter.com/SPVemlgSmO

— armond white (@3xchair) July 19, 2019

Who has to look up "Afrocentric kitsch"?

like that the tweet has one like from a brazilian alt-right anime fan

Not a single sentence of that character roll call makes any sense. I love this man so much.

It is the Disney corporation’s single most calculated moment since buying the Star Wars franchise.

Who has to look up "Afrocentric kitsch"?

― Pauline Male (Eric H.), Friday, July 19, 2019 7:00 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

lmfao jesus

Up to four 'likes'!

In other Disney/Armond news, he referred to what are very obviously ventriloquist's dummies in Toy Story 4 as "Pee-wee Herman dolls".

it's linked to his twitter

― flappy bird, Friday, July 19, 2019 5:22 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

it’s linked to a typo version

https://letterboxd.com/notarmondwhite/film/bottom-of-the-9th/

Bottom of the 9th comes to home video this week just as the new movie season begins. This second-chance paradox makes up for the neglect of film critics who failed to give the movie the attention that it deserved when Bottom of the 9th debuted. A rare, affecting baseball film, it’s also an unapologetic, unhip redemption tale — which is to say that the attempt of Sonny Stano (Joe Manganiello) to regain the baseball career he lost because of a youthful indiscretion depicts values that run counter to the behavior currently celebrated in our cynical culture.

Sonny’s predicament — and film critics’ general indifference to it — prove Bottom of the 9th’s special relevance. We see how Sonny, once a promising teenage baseball prospect, served a 20-year conviction for manslaughter, gets released and paroled, and then gradually recovers his love of the game, achieving a more mature sense of self.

Critics could have encouraged social consciousness and enticed viewers by comparing Sonny’s life to the Trump administration’s First Step Prison Reform. They didn’t. Ironically, the Trump bill (HR 6964) and its open-hearted White House signing ceremony received almost as little coverage from the #Resistance media as Bottom of the 9th itself did. But the film’s relevance goes deeper than politics.

It’s bold: a white ethnic story told at a time when Hollywood holds white male experience in low esteem.

open-hearted White House signing ceremony

open-heart WH surgery would get great ratings

baseball movies are almost all nonstarters, but curious that director also made the good civil-rights doc Booker's Place

https://letterboxd.com/notarmondwhite/film/annie-hall/

The first brilliant scene in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977) now has Millennial relevance. It’s when grade-schooler Alvy Singer (Allen) and his mother visit psychiatrist Dr. Flicker to find out why the boy stopped doing his homework or anything else. “The universe is expanding,” Alvy explains. His mother snaps “What is that your business!”

Now timeless, the scene should be studied by every pundit and fake-news journalist who promotes recent children’s crusades — including such poster kids as Greta Thunberg and David Hogg — as politically expedient.

(Review is actually mainly about a new movie called Socrates.)

People who are interesting in the movies are mostly reading Armond's reviews to see what deranged angle he comes up with, right? I'm sure someone's taking him at face value, but there's no way they're actually interested in film

Correct.

his is a fascinating mind. i wish he would cut the crisis actor shit. his get out review was deranged but also pretty classic

pretty sure Woody/Alvy didn't think Mom's take was enlightened

I can't even bother to hate-read this fuckface anymore.

He's genuinely unbalanced, I kinda feel bad for him.

Forthcoming book will collect long-form pieces by AW, Godfrey Cheshire, and Matt Z Seitz were all regular film critics for the NY Press weekly, and all consistently excellent.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/617082/the-press-gang-by-godfrey-cheshire/9781609809775

the misogyny was always there, followed shortly by the right-wing move, then came the transphobia. and i don't think he was ever particularly incisive, and anyone reacting strictly based on the prevailing winds of other critics is dishonest. once you get past the trolling, he's been Travers-level for most of the 21st century.

Armond's reviews make no sense at all unless you know which other critics he's tilting against. He's one of the most literally reactionary critics in art history.

I don't recall any overt misogyny in his '90s writing, but I haven't read any in awhile.

Forthcoming book will collect long-form pieces by AW, Godfrey Cheshire, and Matt Z Seitz were all regular film critics for the NY Press weekly, and all consistently excellent.

Oh excellent! Pre-ordered.

here's the US book link

https://sevenstories.com/books/4214-the-press-gang

Yeah I can't wait for that book, MZS is still writing & in top form

Armond is fun to read when he actually likes whatever he's reviewing: Intolerance, Nashville, The Image Book, anything by Wong Kar-wai... and I liked his review of the new Tarantino, which as someone said itt or on twitter, reads like a pan but ends with Armond saying it's Tarantino's best ever. Go figure. I'm still obsessed with Ned's reaction itt to Armond's Get Out review.

Armond is OTM re: Gaspar Noe

White: He’s a fraud, a deliberate sensationalist. And he’s not serious. So I think his films may be outrageous in terms of violence and sexuality and a pretend social perspective. It’s just all shock, but without the moral conviction of a Surrealist from the 1920s.

Good interview: https://filmmakermagazine.com/archives/issues/winter2004/features/the_critic.php

weighed in on Marty vs Marvel (and he's got shit to say about both)

Scorsese was reacting against the degradation of cinema’s artistic purpose more than against Hollywood practice itself. That his personal gangster-movie franchise suggests little more than a mob-violence theme-park ride is ironic; the repetitions of Raging Bull, GoodFellas, Casino, and The Departed have contributed to the modern viewer’s reliance on overwrought, impotent machismo and a thirst for irresponsible vicarious thrills. In other words, comic-book movies.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/martin-scorsese-criticizes-comic-book-movies-defends-humanism/

The enemy of my enemy of my enemy is still my enemy.

chud brain has made him even more stupid

Idk I think Armond is kind of otm there, one of the most common refrains on twitter after he dissed Marvel was, "Scorsese only makes one genre of movie anyway." it's a classic controp and doesn't approach the absurdity of a lot of his recent writing.

The beef continues.

https://letterboxd.com/notarmondwhite/film/marriage-story-2019/