The Armond White Thread

[Nothing]

the radical, politically engaged voices of Martel, Reygadas, and Alonso.

Not convinced by this. Reygadas mounts something of an attack on the Mexican national identity in Battle in Heaven, but nothing particularly coherent or impassioned (even though I like the film quite a bit). As for Alonso, weren't you yourself arguing a few days ago that Vargas is a man at one with his environment, that it is incorrect to read too much in the way of physchology (or, presumably, politics) into the journey he undertakes? Certainly, Alonso has maintained a persistent focus on the underclass; he is also an excellent filmmaker. But truly politically motivated / engaged? In any case, Alonso is a perfect example of someone who has been marginalised by the market swerve into middlebrow, audience-friendly 'crossover' fare under discussion here. Liverpool sold into, what, four or five territories? No US, no UK, no German, Japanese or Italian - not even any French distribution that I'm aware of.

[GringoTex]

the radical, politically engaged voices of Martel, Reygadas, and Alonso.

Not convinced by this. Reygadas mounts something of an attack on the Mexican national identity in Battle in Heaven, but nothing particularly coherent or impassioned (even though I like the film quite a bit).

Battle in Heaven is a full frontal assault on Mexican national identity, though you're right he doesn't launch it from a particularly coherent position.

As for Alonso, weren't you yourself arguing a few days ago that Vargas is a man at one with his environment, that it is incorrect to read too much in the way of physchology (or, presumably, politics) into the journey he undertakes?

On the contrary, I think psychology is generally the enemy of political cinema.

You seem to be ruing the lack of a didactic cinema that was so prevalent in third world cinema in the 60s and 70s. The Cold War proxy climate in Latin America called for such a cinema during those decades. Now things are less black and white in Latin America, less coherent, and I think it's a matter of filmmakers there no longer finding didacticism as a suitable mode of expression. I don't think it has anything to do with the tastes of Western audiences.

[MichaelB]

I'd also be curious to know just how widely the work of Glauber Rocha, Lino Brocka and Ritwik Ghatak was screened internationally during their heyday - more to the point, how many of their films actually secured proper distribution deals outside their native countries, as opposed to occasional screenings at sympathetic cinematheques.

I genuinely don't know the answer, but I'm certainly not aware of any of those filmmakers developing particularly significant followings in Britain outside a tiny band of cognoscenti.

[GringoTex]

I'd also be curious to know just how widely the work of Glauber Rocha, Lino Brocka and Ritwik Ghatak was screened internationally during their heyday - more to the point, how many of their films actually secured proper distribution deals outside their native countries, as opposed to occasional screenings at sympathetic cinematheques.

Rocha and Brocka were Cannes regulars, but Ghatak seems to have been almost completely neglected. I don't know about distribution deals.

[Michael Kerpan]

It's not like Brocka was the only important film maker from the Philippines -- back in the 70s and 80s. I think I like Ismael Bernal even more. And Mario O'Hara was highly regarded in the 80s (but I've only seen his most recent film).

[Gregory]

the second-rate aesthetics of underdeveloped cultures

Even I would have to call Armond on this, for his short-term memory if nothing else (haven't seen the Martel). But what I hope Armond meant to say is that most modern 'developing' cinema is dispiritingly second-rate. The radical, politically engaged voices of Rocha, Brocka and Ghatak have been replaced by the bourgeois dilettantism of Wong, Weerasethakul and Inarritu.

All of these terms -- "underdeveloped cultures," "'developing' cinema," and "western audiences" -- are nonsense, as far as I can tell. Underdevelopment is an economic theory that has nothing to say about the "aesthetics" (in whatever sense) of cultures within underdeveloped countries. So far as I can even make it out despite White's poor articulation, this kind of thinking comes directly out of the age of the old colonial empires.
In any national film industry that produces a decent quantity of films, most of it is second-rate (or worse). Most Hollywood films are "dispiritingly second rate," so what in the world is he talking about in regards to Martel and which part of the world she happens to be from?
Your argument about the "the bourgeois dilettantism of Wong, Weerasethakul and Inarritu" is irrelevant to defending White's point because he laps up loads of stuff that can be considered bourgeois dilettantism at best. And as GringoTex seems to suggest, throwing out a few names doesn't get us anywhere in assessing most cinema from any geographic regions of the world. I wouldn't trust extremely over-general statements such as White's even from someone familiar with huge quantities of film from countries that exist outside the arthouse mainstream, which along with Hollywood is where White seems to spend nearly all his time.

[tavernier]

Typical AW quote about new series at BAMcinematek this fall:

1962, OCTOBER 26–NOVEMBER 8
BAMcinématek salutes the 75th Anniversary of the New York Film Critics Circle, the country’s oldest and one of the most prestigious film critics organizations, by bringing back 1962—the only year the NYFCC did not present awards (due to a newspaper strike). Join us as the Circle holds forth on 1962’s extraordinary slate of U.S. film premieres—both pop and art-film classics. “1962 was equal to Hollywood’s fabled 1939. We welcome this great opportunity to learn and revise film history.”—series introduction by NYFCC Chairman Armond White
FILMS INCLUDE: THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (1962) by John Ford; LOLA (1961) by Jacques Demy; LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962) by David Lean; JULES AND JIM and SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER (1960) by Francois Truffaut; WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962) by Robert Aldrich; HATARI! (1962) by Howard Hawks; RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962) by Sam Peckinpah; THE CHAPMAN REPORT (1962) Directed by George Cukor; THE ERRAND BOY (1961) Directed by Jerry Lewis; IL GRIDO (1957) Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni; and CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 (1962) by Agnes Varda.

[Nothing]

Well I guess I was asking for trouble taking any kind of lead from Armond... 8-[

"Western audiences" - I would include all indigenous citizens of first-world nations below the age of 80 and, indeed, the professional and ruling classes of developing nations. People who, to put it simply, have become used to a certain level of comfort, a certain degree of personal freedom and personal choice, ie. the ability to earn and spend, to never go hungry, to receive hospital treatment, to choose their own husband or wife.

It's a cop out, I believe, to say "oh well, most cinema is and always has been second-rate". Or to mine the obscure, the underground of the underground, for counter-examples... What matters, what makes the impression, surely, are the dominant voices of the day. These being Wong and Innaritu, not Alonso and Mendoza. Yet, in the context of developing cinema through the 60s - 80s, the filmmakers I mentioned were all major voices (and if we can move out of the admittedly dubious 'developing' box for a moment - Godard, Antonioni, Jancso; in popular cinema Leone, Peckinpah, Aldrich, even Cimino's Heaven's Gate). Call their cinema didactic if you will, I prefer the word engaged. Of course, the collapse of the USSR has changed some things. It is harder for everyone, not only filmmakers, to envisage a viable alternative to free market capitalism; to believe that protest, idealism, or even self-criticism, are valuable pursuits. A film is simply another diversion or, at best, an aspirational model, a lifestyle expression.

[Mr Sausage]

Call their cinema didactic if you will, I prefer the word engaged.

You prefer a vague, question-begging generalization that has little meaning without its preposition to a precise and accurate word that confuses no one?

[Fiery Angel]

Megan Fox needs the artistry of Michael Bay, not Diablo Cody

[rs98762001]

That article is actually the most coherent Armond has been for a while. Bay's work might be shit, but at least he knows it. In that respect, it's far preferable to Cody's shit, which she seems to think isn't shit.

[Fiery Angel]

Bay might know he's making shit, but Armond doesn't.

[tavernier]

Armond explains why Stephen Soderbergh and Michael Moore suck.

Most Armond-ish quote:

It’s the presumptuousness of Moore and Soderbergh’s approaches that is offensive. Neither film is as sophisticated as Next Day Air, where Mos Def joked, “This is America, steal something!”

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Megan Fox needs the artistry of Michael Bay, not Diablo Cody

He slags it off then gives it 4/5 stars?

[Murdoch]

Megan Fox needs the artistry of Michael Bay, not Diablo Cody

He slags it off then gives it 4/5 stars?

That's the average reader rating.

[jbeall]

Dammit, Armond, I wish I could quit you! But just like rubberneckers at multi-car pileups with body parts scattered everywhere, I keep coming back!

The real zinger for me was

Vanessa Hudgens and Alyson Michalka played more complex and affecting versions of these roles in Bandslam—and neither was embarrassed with the name Needy. Between Juno and Needy, Diablo Cody pathetically reveals her own personal issues.

Now I'm not a fan of Diablo Cody, but I don't know her and certainly don't feel any compulsion to psychoanalyze her based on the names she gives to her title characters. You could rip her plot, you could rip her dialogue, but to suggest that these are indications as to Cody's tortured pathology should be too presumptious even for Armond White. But apparently it's not. That sentence says a lot more about White than it does about Cody.

[wattsup32]

Did anyone here ever frequent the site, "firejoemorgan.com"? it was a baseball sabremetrics site dedicated to outing the idioitic analysis of baseball announcers/commentators in general and joe morgan specifically. we ought to start the same site for our mr. white.

that's essentially what's been done here, but it certainly could be more fun as a site all its own. plus, we could add others to the group to talk about film criticism in general as the joe morgan site did.

i don't know...just a thought...

[starmanof51]

Did anyone here ever frequent the site, "firejoemorgan.com"? it was a baseball sabremetrics site dedicated to outing the idioitic analysis of baseball announcers/commentators in general and joe morgan specifically. we ought to start the same site for our mr. white.

that's essentially what's been done here, but it certainly could be more fun as a site all its own. plus, we could add others to the group to talk about film criticism in general as the joe morgan site did.

i don't know...just a thought...

Loved firejoemorgan.com! One of the main contributors, Ken Tremendous, revealed himself to be a writer/producer on "The Office."

I've had that basic thought before (firejoemorgan model applied to film criticism). A friend started his own blog to try something of the sort (criticritic.com), but he simply hasn't been able to give it the determined effort it would need. I think he'd need at least a few other people contributing as well. You have to really want to get down in the snark.

[med]

Someone already did it:

http://armonddangerous.blogspot.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I can't recall where I read this—earlier in this very thread, maybe?—but supposedly the reason the blog is no longer updated is White found out who was responsible for it. Why that made the person stop, I don't know.

[domino harvey]

Armond likes Where the Wild Things Are, invoking everything from "Silver" by Nirvana to Altman's Popeye in the process

[Cde.]

By now, my reaction to yet another Armond 'controversy' has become 'who fucking cares?'

It's been years people. Let it go.

The only reason that I can see that people still get riled up over his latest masterwork is that it drags a film's tomatometer in a direction the fanboys don't approve of.

His reviews can be pretty hilarious, but I don't see how anyone who truly cares about cinema and accepts the idea that a variety of different people with different tastes are inevitably going to be responding to it could find Armond's continuing career a source of indignation.

I found reading Armond's take on Up amusing, because after all of the fury it provoked, his criticisms lined up neatly with my own. I don't doubt that the sentiment expressed in the review was 100% genuine.

As for Where the Wild Things Are, who knows? He's right about the quality of Altman's Popeye.

[dx23]

Although he like the film, this review of Michael Jackson's This is It is just incredible unintentional comedy.

[swo17]

That’s the opportunity lost by such pop-attuned directors as Scorsese, Stone and, especially, Spielberg—who betrayed Jackson by cutting off ties following the witchhunt and erroneous accusations of bigotry that met the 1995 release of "They Don’t Care About Us." Spielberg’s failure to engage Jackson on a movie-musical project (Peter Pan or Earth Song or Childhood) deprived the world of a possible Minnelli-level masterpiece.

Sounds like someone's sleeping on Spielberg's couch tonight. 8-[

[dx23]

By the way, I think Rotten Tomatoes removed White from their Top Critics group.

[colinr0380]

Spielberg’s failure to engage Jackson on a movie-musical project (Peter Pan or Earth Song or Childhood) deprived the world of a possible Minnelli-level masterpiece.

Is he talking Vincente or Liza? Because neither would seem to fit.

It does seem strange to praise a film for having the courage to show the 'thinking, devising, improvising' Jackson when that is just an unintended consequence of having an unfinished concert film that likely would if all had gone to plan have resulted in a slick concert film of the kind White is beating the other directors up as cowards for making.