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

I would say that now in 2020, 4 years after that (very good) Current Affairs piece was written, that there are still depressingly few willing to even acknowledge the existence of, let alone listen to and ruminate at length on, the multitude of obnoxious and problematic things about Hamilton. So hackneyed right wing trolling aside I don't have a problem with AW or anyone else reiterating them.

― Sabre of Paradise (trevor phillips), Saturday, July 4, 2020 5:02 AM (fourteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

OTM

Armond's best review since Get Out.

It's Dylan's Trump album, a brilliant warning to cancel culture. https://t.co/F7WI73CMqu @bobdylan @realDonaldTrump #RoughandRowdyWays #MurderMostFoul @billboard

— armond white (@3xchair) July 24, 2020

“Murder Most Foul” offers a cultural and moral history lesson that Black Lives/Antifa don’t know, a lesson that the movement’s enablers — those desperate, still agnostic Sixties liberals — conveniently disregard. That’s why even Dylan’s devout followers are in denial about the obvious contemporary allusion in “Murder Most Foul.” It is clearly a Trump song, an epic poem that summarizes the self-annihilating resentment amassed in the anger of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Consider how Dylan’s “Key West (Philosopher Pirate)” song references pirate radio stations — the alternative media we all long for in the wake of Silicon Valley’s shadow-banning conservative speech.

I ... don't know who to root for in this round.

Uh, wasn't "Murder Most Foul" pulled from the vaults? Was it even recorded after Trump started running? I thought he cut most of this record in 2013.

“Murder Most Foul” is significant to me. Dylan’s troubadour sorrow is in touch with our own, it feels like a song for this moment

but “the self-annihilating resentment amassed in the anger of Trump Derangement Syndrome”, “the alternative media we all long for in the wake of Silicon Valley’s shadow-banning conservative speech”...fuck off

I said the soul of a nation has been torn away
And it's beginning to go into a slow decay
And it's 36 hours past Judgment Day

Play Ben Shapiro
Play Bari Weiss

from Pitchfork review....

“The size of your cock will get you nowhere,” he grumbles to a sworn enemy, who might be death itself, in “Black Rider.”

How Taylor Swift's Folklore album leads the BLM/Antifa Folklore Wars. https://t.co/eYNyPtueDM @taylorswift13 #Folklore pic.twitter.com/HqSuEGljM2

— armond white (@3xchair) July 29, 2020

A Bob Dole conservative might be surprised that anodyne romanticism can be so threatening, but conservatives today had better beware of the dangers presented by the Folklore War and its deceptive consensus. Consider Folklore the 1619 Project of pop music.

even by his low worst standards that's lazy stuff

this is funny? i guess? also sad, and dumb.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/antifa-films-25-movies-that-turned-generation-into-nihilistic-anarchists/

Gus Van Sant’s homoerotic version of academic class war between Boston Southies and Cambridge preppies turned a Horatio Alger story into a Howard Zinn movie.

Vertigo - "Hitchcock’s most obsessive love story became a how-to manual for “people who are not sure who they are but who are busy reconstructing themselves and each other to fit a kind of social ideal.”"

come on

vertigo undoubtedly a huge influence on the antifa generation

The Harry Potter films (2001–2011): The dullest, most inept franchise in Hollywood history was not harmless; it served to subvert C. S. Lewis and Christian Sunday School parables

i'm shocked this is the worst he can think to say about harry potter - seems like a line is missing. was he in such a rush that he seriously couldn't squeeze an obama dig in there? something about "teaching kids to worship a charismatic magician-huckster"? jfc do i have to write this guys stuff for him?

He remains 100% correct re: The Dark Knight, but you know, a broken clock.

he's more like a thermometer that insists he's a clock

Gladiator (2000): Another comic-book movie for those who never read Gibbon, Virgil, Horace, Socrates, Plato, Ovid, or Steve Reeves.

"those who never read...steve reeves."

“A Steve Well-Reeved: A Memoir”

staggering number of bad takes in one place i think.

New board description?

Movies were never his first love.

Comments are surprisingly good. This guy gets it.

Brian Silenus
6 days ago
(Edited)
Antifa syllabus?! LOL. This reads like every incel, 8chan, right wing edgelord’s favorite movie list.

hilarious list and commentary

Javier Bardem as the “hero” in No Country For Old Men is a pretty out there take

Picked up the New York Press anthology and it's a really good reminder, for those who only know of National Review-era Arm0nd, why he was worth following in the first place. But ... has his bio always included books that, so far as I can tell, don't exist? He's credited with Make Spielberg Great Again, which sign me up, but doesn't look to be on sale or even connected to a publisher at all. A previous bio promised a full retrospective anthology of his own writings too, at one time.

an essential book to buy right now. MZS and Godfrey's work is equally indispensable.

the Steve Reeves line has me reeling, that comes really close to Norbit "transcending racial categorization"

Aaaaaand a reminder of what's become of him now: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/marvin-gaye-whats-going-on-political-decoy/

From the album’s opening party vibe, Gaye offers a masterful blend of harmoniousness, the thing that the angry Left forbids. The album’s lack of harshness, its soft rhetoric and tenderly voiced petitions, do not match today’s tantrums — they contradict the violence and stubborn unwillingness to compromise or express empathy and compassion. What’s Going On is non-militant whereas the Black Lives Antifa movement has proven destructive. It is necessary to call out this BLA alliance in order to clarify the usurpation of black American social and spiritual aspiration by the plainly political, even satanic aims of social domination. This is key to understanding how Gaye’s entreaty opposes today’s inflammatory, anarchic rhetoric.

uh

what's going on

I love this guy:

Nominate Van Morrison not Dr. Fauci for Entertainer of the Year. https://t.co/oUjjulrvlg

— armond white (@3xchair) December 3, 2020

Needs a pointless out-of-nowhere comparison to really "pop" as an Armond tweet imo. Something like "Van Morrison shows us bravery, and how the left's blind worship of Fleetwood Mac is anything but"

damn wait i just looked at the original tweet not the retweet, looks like armonds got me covered LOL

I will say this for Armond, he’s one of the few film critics my kids can name becz his reviews get trolled so much on social media.

My kids have actually asked me, “What’s the deal with Armond White,” which is one of those parenting questions you’re never really ready for.

you haven't had the talk yet?

the goat. still one of the greatest living film critics

All I read are the links that get posted in this thread, meaning I only read him at his worst. With that in mind, he barely strikes me as a critic right now--he's got an axe to grind, and with many films his response is a thousand percent predictable, never good.

Fincher makes a god out of a Hollywood super-hack in the same way that the media praise Steve McQueen, Jordan Peele, J. J. Abrams, Alfonso Cuarón, Megan Rapinoe, Kylie Jenner, Colin Kaepernick, Taylor Swift, John Legend, and Shaun King. Millennials can’t tell the difference between artists, athletes, intellects, and influencers. So Mank inflates a story about the obscure co-screenwriter of a film that has no impact on the culture, turning it into a Netflix pseudo-event.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/12/review-mank-david-fincher-facile-fascism/

(Poll?)

Saying that Citizen Kane had no impact on the culture is the most insane thing he's said yet.

It's allegedly Trump's favorite movie (but we know it's really Bloodsport)!

i feel lightheaded after reading that... like im floating

not sure i can handle the increasing intensity as Armond approaches the singularity of Pure Challop

Citizen Kane not having impact on the culture is...I know, roll your eyes and move on. The logical construct, I suppose, is that it had a tremendous impact on the course of film history, therefore film has had no impact on the culture.

the full review goes hard on the idea of Mank being a film made by and for millenials

Quoting witticisms already well known to every film buff is the same as name-dropping, a sign of Millennial triteness where nothing is sacred except one’s own ego.

lol, God forbid you use an actual quote in a biopic.

those people who quote people - is nothing sacred for them?

Doesn't mention Mindhunter when summarizing Fincher's career (House of Cards, yes).

I think what I hate most is what seems to be his starting point so often: a film can't just be okay--if it's not good or great, it has to be The Worst Thing Ever (fascistic, bogus, confused, ignorant, etc.) Even Kael, who has come to define hyperbole for many people, wrote middling reviews of films she neither embraced or dismissed--half her reviews were like that, picking out a few good things in otherwise marginal films.

(He does say "Citizen Kane was a game-changer — it’s what birthed film noir among other innovations" a little farther down from the "no impact" line, so--putting aside the crime of using "game-changer"--I guess that was meant as a sarcastic jab at Fincher.)

I won't click on Armond's reviews anymore out of fear that hits might equal even a fraction of a cent making its way into his pocket, but that passage quoted by jaymc is some kind of masterpiece of whatever it is that Armond does.