The Armond White Thread

[Antoine Doinel]

I think he mostly posts over at The Auteurs nowadays.

[HarryLong]

Yes.
His modus operandi seems to be to read a subject headline, swoop past several pages of posts, shriek something and disappear from the ... er ... conversation ...

[mfunk9786]

Ebert knows a terrible critic when he sees one.

Also, I've never seen this before, and it's pretty damn funny to read, particularly "every single Pixar film" listed in the bad column.

[Nothing]

Ebert knows a terrible critic when he sees one.

Ebert is a fool.

p.s. I recall that AW like Ratatouille, so would question the validity of that list - although anyone with an adversion to sentimental hogwash would be quite excused for disliking Pixar. The overpraising of Wall-E says more about the state of American film criticism and American cinema-going in general than it does about Armond White.

[manicsounds]

Armond White was also the one who wrote the shitty liner notes for Criterion's Hidden Fortress right? Where pretty much every date and record is wrong.

[aox]

simplified

[Fiery Angel]

simplified

Already posted on the previous page

[aox]

Sorry about that. If this forum is going to be persistent in making sure we don't post ugly links and conceal them in sentences, perhaps a color other than the dark shade of blue should be used. I quickly glanced and didn't notice that the 'this' in the sentence was slightly off-black.

[swo17]

This thread serves a purpose, I suppose, though someone posting a link more than once is hardly the most redundant thing that has ever happened here.

Also, I know I'm supposed to look at that hate column and get all in a tizzy but I honestly only care about a handful of those movies myself.

[aox]

Also, I know I'm supposed to look at that hate column and get all in a tizzy but I honestly only care about a handful of those movies myself.

Well, I've have only even heard of maybe three or four from the good side (not even a handful). I get that that is a reflection on me and not Mr. White, but still. Is this Tyler Perry someone I should seek out while I am going through Ozu's filmography?

[cdnchris]

Is this Tyler Perry someone I should seek out while I am going through Ozu's filmography?

Most definitely!

If you're suicidal.

[knives]

Is this Tyler Perry someone I should seek out while I am going through Ozu's filmography?

Most definitely!

If you're suicidal.

Or an elderly black christian woman.

[starmanof51]

This thread serves a purpose, I suppose, though someone posting a link more than once is hardly the most redundant thing that has ever happened here.

Also, I know I'm supposed to look at that hate column and get all in a tizzy but I honestly only care about a handful of those movies myself.

Yeah, for a list that's cherry-picked to work you up, it doesn't quite get there does it? "Oh noes, he hates Knocked Up and Harry Potter movies! Oh wait, so do I!"

And about a millisecond of interwebbing indicates he liked several Pixar movies, especially but not only the Brad Bird ones. Sure Armond's a bit nutty (maybe I'll start calling him Almond), but why exaggerate the case when it needs no exaggeration?

[James]

Seems a lot like some sort of elaborate performance art stunt to me.

That's precisely what it is. I'm surprised more people don't get this by now.

[aox]

Seems a lot like some sort of elaborate performance art stunt to me.

That's precisely what it is. I'm surprised more people don't get this by now.

has he publicly said/written this? How are you privileged with this information?

[James]

Seems a lot like some sort of elaborate performance art stunt to me.

That's precisely what it is. I'm surprised more people don't get this by now.

has he publicly said/written this? How are you privileged with this information?

Well, I think Armond White's critical writings are mostly absurd, and I'd be astonished if anybody didn't realize that. Yet he comes across as completely genuine, blending these absurdities with more believable points. It simultaneously wades out the people who question his tastes and the people who question his satire. In interviews, he strikes me as a person who loves movies, but appears genuinely honest in his superiority as a critic. I do think he's trying to get a rise out of people, but I also think he's causing people to question criticism, like they do his. It may be more speculative, but it's the only way I can appreciate his original prose and at the same time, be very annoyed and generally against his viewpoints on which movies are good and which movies are bad (I still agree with his choices about certain auteurs: he likes Godard, for example, who is my choice for the greatest director). In conclusion, I don't think a critic could be serious when they write things like he does.

[rs98762001]

I have no problem with a number of the films Armond hates. In fact it's nice to see a critic who never falls for the idiotic platitudes of faux-arthouse dreck like Juno, Benjamin Button, Slumdog, etc. My problem is with the films Armond mostly likes.

[GringoTex]

Reads like a movie review Mad Lib to me.

And then you guys beat me to it, but yeah, that's all they are. (I see he even name dropped Van Sant in a review of Transporter 3. I would have been more impressed with Godard but he saved that for Transformers 2 apparently.)

This Eiffel Tower image also recalls the postmodern epigraph that closes Godard’s In Praise of Love : “I will go to my grave with more visions than man has previously ever known.” The trashy secret of G.I. Joe is its ironic capitalizing on the fact that awesome, dread-filled visions don’t necessarily destroy childhood innocence.

[Perkins Cobb]

The NY Press offers an editorial (unsigned in the print edition, bylined on-line) defending Armond vs. the Tomatoes.

Not terribly surprising or insightful, but presented for completeness' sake.

[dx23]

The NY Press offers an editorial (unsigned in the print edition, bylined on-line) defending Armond vs. the Tomatoes.

Not terribly surprising or insightful, but presented for completeness' sake.

That guy is worst than Armond. He is the editor and allows such bad writing to be published on the NY Press. Even if we forget for a moment the tone of the reviews and the contrarian attitude, at the end of the day, Armond is submitting awful pieces of writing that don't make sense. Here is a quote from a friend of Armond that was posted in the comments section of Ebert's previously mentioned article and makes more sense that what the mediocre editor of the Press wrote:

By Sue D. O'nym on August 20, 2009 12:03 PM

I am a former colleague of Armond's and am very familiar with his work (I am writing under a fake because I like Armond on a personal level. In person, he was always nice.)

The following points have been made in previous posts, but bear repeating: Armond is a piss-poor writer and a terrible constructor of arguments.

He has a taste for five-dollar words like "fealty," "bane" and "genuflect" but lacks the skill and timing to effectively deploy them. His sentences sometimes lack necessary things, like verbs, or are structured awkwardly. His meanings are often obscured or hidden behind clutter as a result.

He doesn't build arguments. Instead, he links together strings of assertions whose truths he presents as self-evident. This can be infuriating. Imagine he was a courtroom attorney trying to make a case for a client rather than his opinion on a movie. "The idea that my client was there at the time of the murder is preposterous! Any fool could see that my client was, like any intelligent viewer of Speilberg's classic Always, enthralled in pure, childlike wonder at the time."

Look at his review for "Up," which begins with the following sentence "Pixar rules pop media like nothing since mid-20th century General Motors held sway as the preeminent American corporation (and the bane of grassroots individualism)." As with the rest of the paragraph that follows, it's a jumble of syntax and meaning. And when the individual ideas are broken down, they still require clarification. For example, is he saying that Pixar is a bane of grassroots individualism? And, for that matter, what does he mean by grassroots individualism? I think his point is that Pixar is powerful and people are reluctant to criticize them, either because Pixar is so powerful or because of cultural consensus. But then he further muddies the water with his graf-closing sentence: "this absurdity clarifies contemporary news media’s unprincipled collusion with Hollywood capitalism."

"Clarifies" is a presumably a poor word choice. He most likely wants to say the absurdity "shows," "illuminates" or "demonstrates." And that's the only verb in a sentence overstuffed with clunky modifiers. But he's tossing a bomb at Hollywood and the media which is always intriguing, right? But then even that falls apart upon cursory inspection. Contemporary news media (probably only need to say "media," but I don't want to get snippy) has an unprincipled collusion with Hollywood capitalism. What, in this context, does Armond mean by Hollywood Capitalism? What is the nature of this collusion? The idea, desperately crying for attention and care, never receives the tending it needs to blossom into something that makes sense.


In the end, his themselves opinions are worthwhile. His writing, unfortunately, is not.

Ebert: Like all of us, he would benefit from a good copy editor.

Is not that different from what many of the members here have stated before, but again, he may be a nice guy in his personal time, but Armond is setting a bad example for film critics.

[tavernier]

I love Sue D. O'nym's pseudonym.

[starmanof51]

I would agree he can write poorly, but Sue picked a bad example - I don't find his meaning hard to follow at all, and I think he absolutely meant "clarifies" rather than "demonstrates". His assertion may be over the top or paranoid, but it's not that complicated to follow.

[manicsounds]

How do you know that Sue D. O'nym isn't Armond White himself?

[Michael Kerpan]

How do you know that Sue D. O'nym isn't Armond White himself?

Sure _sounds_ like the man himself. ;~}

[MichaelB]

It's not at all unknown for people to slag themselves off under pseudonyms - Anthony Burgess was once fired from the Yorkshire Evening Post for reviewing his own novel. Which might seem an open and shut case, but it was actually a negative review.