Armond White:"Can Jay-Z and Diddy save hip hop?"

"It was not a great day for the race when the entertainment industrial complex took on the artisanal productions of urban youth, eventually taking over their dreams."

Right, because it's fine to let urban youth dream of being celebrated for their talents, so long as they have no chance of actually making any money out of it.

first time for everything, right Phil?! ;-)

I used to watch rap videos all the time in 1991 and I don't remember them all looking the same at all. I remember pink cadillacs flying in front of the moon, another car ploughing into a burning cross, Queen Latifah knocking giant chess pieces off a board, and scenes shot in Egypt.

Sideburns, ducktails, money, blood and sex–that’s the satirical surface of 3000 Miles to Graceland. Underneath is a pretty fair assessment of American ambition gone wrong. Kevin Costner plays Murphy, a sociopath obsessed with Elvis Presley who rounds up a gang to rob a Las Vegas casino during an Elvis imitators’ convention. If the symbolism’s bloated, so is the idolatry that Costner and director Demian Lichtenstein deride. Presley’s legend haunts the movie as a fat, gaudy, bankrupt ideal that still serves to motivate the disheartened.

Murphy and his partner Michael (Kurt Russell), desert mom Cybil (Courteney Cox) and her ragamuffin son Jesse (David Kaye) aren’t doomed, they’re pathetic, double-crossing each other in ways that suggest the hollowness of life predicated on money; losers who console themselves with the world’s plunder. 3000 Miles’ early climax–the robbery sequence–is the most calamitously violent action scene ever to put a thought in the audience’s mind. Unlike Kubrick’s inexorable fatalism in The Killing, this sequence is just blunt. "As wild and as daring as anything on the American landscape," says a startled tv reporter. (Or else, simply the best contemporary shootout Walter Hill didn’t direct.) Though it’s similar to the kind of pointless bang-bang moviegoers accept as a Saturday Night Special, I vouch for the split-second editing that catches a bullet going through an Elvis cape. And I salute the cut to the exterior that shows a chopper coming to rendezvous with Murphy’s band. Suspended in midair–and time–this image, hovering over the casino, is breathtaking.

The entire movie has the feel of being in moral suspension. Despite the caper plot and bloody intensity, this isn’t a typically cynical neo-noir. That War in Vegas sequence establishes a spangly, neon miasma so that we watch the peacetime story appropriately aghast at the evidence of contemporary dissolution. 3000 Miles tracks pessimistic ex-cons, broken families on the road, boys without role models, casual venality, the familiarity of violence. It’s flashy but it’s also uncanny. The story of Michael’s corruption opposes Murphy’s hopeless corruption (announced in the 3-D credit sequence). It seeks decent, humane gestures (among them, Ice-T keeping thieves’ honor through a spectacular sacrifice) and, with a sense of topsy-turvy grace, moves toward light. Michael, Cybil and Jesse sail off into uncertain political waters just like the characters in Peckinpah’s The Killer Elite. If critics mistake 3000 Miles for a Renny Harlin jamboree (or instead, find it inferior to such trash), it will prove how far we’ve fallen, no longer looking for meaning or emotion in action movies.

No actors are more empathetic than Russell and Costner. Both leathery and wizened, they’re surrounded by character types (David Arquette, Bokeem Woodbine, Howie Long and Christian Slater) distinctive enough to sharpen Jesse’s–our entire culture’s–sense of role-model fatigue. That Murphy, with his scorpion belt buckle, was a Nam medic before going bad signals deep distress that might be vague to today’s audience. Still, Lichtenstein, searching for the right, meaningful detail, uses the action genre as a dramatic form expressing the modern generational dilemma–without being lugubrious like Sean Penn’s The Pledge. Lichtenstein and cowriter Richard Recco come up with a saying for our times when Murphy, in a fight, is told, "That’s your criminal right!" The line transcends sarcasm; it bravely discloses a genuine social imbalance–as in such nonpresumptuous action flicks as George Armitage’s Vigilante Force. I fear that 3000 Miles might speed past many people’s heads just as the 70s road-movie alienation of Duets did last fall. These entertaining little movies hint at Americans’ barely articulated desires for a change of priorities and enlightened models of behavior. That overworked, blustery Elvis image (which serves as a conscripted uniform for Murphy’s gang) should provide a wake-up call even to those who share Greil Marcus’ wet dream.

Seriously, looking at the original article again, what the flying fuck. You couldn't have done a better parody article on the subject if you tried.

He has a hard-on for DePalma, Altman, Walter Hill, Alan Rudolph, Tupac, the Smiths, and few others.

I actually like his movie reviews. I mean he doesn't shy away from letting you know how he really feels. Also, they tend to be pretty memorable. I think I see his "overblown tendencies" as strong emotional resposes. Not what you usually get with movie reviews, i guess unless you count "hated it" or "loved it."

strong emotional responses are overblown tendencies when you can't write well. so many words i'd rather read "hated it" or "loved it" with a picture of him smiling smarmy, lips hiding teeth, eyes hollow. hated it!

1) "partake in its spectacle"

(1) lots of black musicians played in all-white clubs during the '20s and '30s; not sure what yr overriding point there is.

(2) Armond White is, in fact, black.

i actually don't like reading his essays per se but he sometimes has short little pieces in film comment that are ok, sometimes he has interesting reasons for talking about something. his taste is really perverse and unpredictable, which is good and bad.

http://altreport.hipsterrunoff.com/2010/04/jay-z-drops-ultimate-douchebag-quote-describes-bono-using-dirty-projjies-lyric-stillness-is-the-move.html

^^ amazing

while he did throw shapes abt these indie bands to drum up publicity for blueprint 3, the common source of this for both jay-z & d projectors is probably new-agey self-help stuff. it's a p ancient idea.

jayzheadnod.gif

haha!

Armond on The Smiths' Girlfriend in a Coma

God I hate to be "well actually" but girlfriend in a coma isn't even in the top 10 of controversial morrissey/smiths songs

i've never been a fan of armond but that was a pretty decent piece imo

did we ever get this sorted lads

somewhere in my hellsite of a flat i have a copy of a new york city sun (from 1992 i guess?) which contains two long articles by armond white (while it lasted he was its critic-in-chief)

1: is a long detailed look at malcolm x the historical figure and malcolm x the movie
2: the other is a long favourable look at morrissey, who AW was very evidently drawn to

given both their subsequent trajectories i think this is both telling and -- to be fair to AW -- perceptive

(the movie came out the exact month of the madstock/union jack controversy, which is where inklings of doubt did begin elsewhere; can't recall if the city sun piece discusses this or predates it; should probably look it out and report back, perhaps a month off-line wd do me good)