The Armond White Thread

[matrixschmatrix]

This combo review of the Karate Kid and a film called The Lottery that has no connection whatsoever to the KK remake is just bizarre, in addition to being nearly impossible to read or follow. I don't know what in the hell his point is supposed to be.

http://www.nypress.com/article-21317-no ... ehind.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

God damn there are like a dozen moments of fucked up semi racist code language in that drivel

[eljacko]

This combo review of the Karate Kid and a film called The Lottery that has no connection whatsoever to the KK remake is just bizarre, in addition to being nearly impossible to read or follow. I don't know what in the hell his point is supposed to be.

http://www.nypress.com/article-21317-no ... ehind.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

if I may hazard a guess, he seems to be arguing that both films function as a cry out against the contemporary American education system, but while The Lottery argues for legitimate change, The Karate Kid is mere escapist fantasy while reinforcing the idea that to get a good education, your family must be rich.

Whether or not that's his point, he buries it under the absolutely terrible prose he is so well known for. And I think he accuses Obama of being a representative for both films' viewpoints? I'm not really sure.

[wattsup32]

Unreadable.

One of the comments, however, was both readable and funny:

"If only some visionary director would merge the two films. The Klottery Kid would be sure to deliver the social message I should heed along with the vengeful violence I crave."

[wattsup32]

In the comments for his Jonah Hex review, someone posted the typical "Armond White sucks" comment. Directly below it, someone posted this:

"Sad, isn't it, that this malicious person probably has more hatred for Armond than BP!"

I thought that comment was brilliant satire (I'm assuming the person wasn't serious). How apt to defend White by comparing one completely unrelated entity to another via non-sequitur.

[Duncan Hopper]

IFC Indie eye has its say on the Toy Story 3 story.

[HistoryProf]

On the universally panned Grown-ups, White compares Dennis Dugan to Renoir. you know, the guy who directed You Don't Mess With the Zohan and I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry.

Grown Ups’ multi-ethnic premise presents men who find themselves fixed in marriages with annoying in-laws (Rock), unruly children (James), demanding spouses (Sandler, Schneider) and desires that remain unsatisfied into middle-age (Spade). It recalls the rich humanism that was Paul Mazursky's specialty during the 1970s. Sandler now uses contemporary sarcasm to mock the juvenile pretenses of these indulgent males—a Mazursky-deep move whereas Apatow is just vulgar and sentimental.

....

Grown Ups has a natural, spontaneous sense of how friends of shared sensibility grow apart yet stay instinctively intact. The mocking personalities are never guileful; the insistence on friendship resembles Leigh’s insight and Renoir’s grace but crossed with stand-up comic candor. Sandler’s wardrobe of collegiate T-shirts humorously reveals the missed opportunities Feder never confesses: Grown Ups is nicely subtle about mid-life regret and lifelong promise. Unassuming as it is, Grown Ups' best moments suggest a humanist work of art.

yes....he called it a work of art. \:D/

[domino harvey]

Armond White is that guy in Intro to Film who won't stop saying mise-en-scene and makes desperate defenses of the garbage he liked before being exposed to actual cinema. I don't want to check, but at this point I'm guessing Armond White likened Luke Greenfield's the Girl Next Door to De Sica and insisted it did him one better

[Zombie-Luv]

I don't mind his essays (they're pretty good), but I can't stand his reviews. They're incomprehensible garbage for all I care.

[Jeff]

I can't help but thinking it's all a big put-on: some sociology experiment where he makes ridiculous comparisons, praises horrible lowbrow tripe, and pans films that otherwise receive critical acclaim just to see how people react. I can't wait for his eventual book, How I Fucked With America for Over 20 Years.

The Hurt Locker Incident (in which he let out a rare early review effusively praising what he believed would be perceived as a Katheryn Bigelow B-movie action potboiler, but quickly started writing weekly missives about how awful it was when it started receiving critical acclaim) kind of gave away his game.

[Mr Sausage]

I guess this means we can place Humanism along with Nihilism among the philisophical concepts Armond White doesn't understand.

[Jeff]

I guess this means we can place Humanism along with Nihilism among the philisophical concepts Armond White doesn't understand.

Don't forget fascism and communism (he once accused Hoberman of both in the same article).

[Mr Sausage]

I guess this means we can place Humanism along with Nihilism among the philisophical concepts Armond White doesn't understand.

Don't forget fascism and communism (he once accused Hoberman of both in the same article).

Yeah, right before he accused him of being a national socialist. I guess that means we can also include the latter.

[HistoryProf]

so what are the odds on Armond giving M. Night Shamalama's latest disaster a thumbs up? it's sitting at 6% (2 for 34) right now.

[neal]

Hating the Player, Losing the Game: The Armond White Meta-Review

[matrixschmatrix]

Hating the Player, Losing the Game: The Armond White Meta-Review

That's brilliant- actually grappling with text, and holding White line-by-line to what he said leaves no wiggle room, and it's very satisfying to have all the 'wait, that's not right...' reactions a White review always inspired hauled out and examined.

[domino harvey]

At least the "Candians" are stepping up

[Jeff]

At least the "Candians" are stepping up

That condescending and nonsensical little blurb by the "editors" of The New York Press is hilarious. The controversy generated by White's contrarianism and intentional button-pushing is literally all they've got going for them. You would think that White would be they kind of guy that would be offended that they're whoring him out to drive traffic and registrations to their site.

I don’t think like the mainstream. As a pedigreed film scholar, I take movies seriously.

He's turned into a professional wrestling villain, trying to draw cheap "boos" from the crowd. I'm sure he realizes that his fellow, um, "pedigreed film scholars" are the ones who find him most laughable.

[Mr Sausage]

Hating the Player, Losing the Game: The Armond White Meta-Review

That's brilliant- actually grappling with text, and holding White line-by-line to what he said leaves no wiggle room, and it's very satisfying to have all the 'wait, that's not right...' reactions a White review always inspired hauled out and examined.

It really is exhilarting to see someone take a piece of prose and reveal, clearly and articulately, every single bit of poor logic, sloppy rhetoric, bad writing, and bad thinking within.

For all of White's self-vaunted "pedigree," and for all of his experience, he hasn't been able to match the lucid thinking and analytical insight of that guy's blog post. Hilarious.

[HistoryProf]

That might be the single greatest literary ass-kicking i've ever seen. I'm truly in awe of the patience that exercise required to complete so thoroughly.

And while the entire review - like everything he rights these days - had me ass backwards and upside down trying to understand what he was even trying to say, the Metropolitan part did have me scratching my head. The fact that he's even getting his own favorites wrong now suggests his laziness has reached epidemic levels. In the end, that's all it really says to me: he's a smart guy, but become so full of himself that he doesn't even try anymore, and this laziness fed by his massive narcissism results in the stilted, condescending and impenetrable prose he seems to truly believe is categorically unfettered brilliance.

[Zombie-Luv]

I'm sold!

[Jeff]

The "despicable" Inception may very well suck, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how or why based on that utterly incomprehensible review. Is Armond White the only person working at the New York Press now? Is there no copy editor that can make sense of his stream-of-consciousness horseshit? All I can glean from that piece is that Armond doesn't like the film, and those who do like it are so naive that they have been conned into it. It's the newish Armond White go-to response for a film: "I can't believe you guys fell for that movie. It was awful and only tricked you into thinking it was good."

Christopher Nolan doesn’t have a born filmmaker’s natural gift for detail, composition and movement, but on the evidence of his fussily constructed mind-game movies Following, Memento, Insomnia and the new Inception, he’s definitely a born con artist. Who else could rook Warner Bros. out of $200 million to make Hollywood’s most elaborate video-game movie and slap on a puzzling, unappealing title?

[swo17]

I mostly like where he laughs at his own joke:

Inception proves this is Nolan’s moment—a beginning-of-the-end moment for film culture, ha, ha

Also, what bizarre capitalization rules is this review following?

[wattsup32]

Doesn't he have a copy-editor? Names are not capitalized nor is every single instance where the letter "i" begins a sentence (as a word itself or a part of one).

Shot at Toy Story 3. Ya know, because I was unclear about his feelings on the film from his TS3 review.

I like Nolan, in general. Apparently, that makes me "hungry for hokum." Is hokum Thai food? Because if it is, he's dead on.

[Murdoch]

I mostly like where he laughs at his own joke:

Inception proves this is Nolan’s moment—a beginning-of-the-end moment for film culture, ha, ha

That sentence is actually the best summation of his writing, so esoteric in meaning that only he can derive enjoyment from it.

[John Cope]

I don't think Armond's points are that difficult to parse out here; now whether we can agree with them is another matter. He has been totally consistent in hating Nolan from the beginning but I must admit that I've never really understood that. He seems to regard Nolan's work as fixating on characters whose moral state is ultimately just accepted as a given and unexamined for any larger implications or real-world conflicts. But it isn't incumbent upon Nolan to do that. If he were just presenting dark visions for the sake of being "cool" than I guess I can see the disreputable aspect of that but he includes other facets to his characters humanity that sufficiently complicate the rationalist disourse. I have never understood, for instance, why Armond saw Memento as so terribly nihilist. To me it was not a broad definitive declaration of some absolute, foundational truth about humanity's base level inclination to deceive itself but rather just an incisively honest portrayal of an aspect of humanness, something available to us that we often do indulge in and that is to some degree inextricable from notions like commitment. To that degree Lenny most certainly courts our sympathies because we recognize the truth in that portrayal; if in his case it must be a definitive truth it is only because of his circumstances which exist as a metaphorical way to acknowledge a pre-disposition he has from which he cannot be dissuaded. It inspires sympathy but also a recognition that the only way to avoid this being a determing truth about ourselves is to understand the ironic quality of any of our convictions and to be open to an integration of new information and new ways to self-conceptualize or comprehend knowledge and experience. Nolan's film does not advocate that as its mission statement but, once again, neither is it incumbent upon it to do so.