The Armond White Thread

[Michael Kerpan]

The most intelligent (Asian) convention is putting family names in ALL_CAPS -- so that one can tell which is which, no matter what order the names are in.

JIA Zhang Ke
GONG Li
Nagisa OSHIMA
NARUSE Mikio
Maggie CHEUNG Man-Yuk
BAE Doo-na

Oh -- and I love The World (one of my favorite Jia films).

[Perkins Cobb]

I notice now that the Land of the Lost review was already discussed, albeit without quoting the money line. Apologies for my tardiness.

However, let's not get too far off the topic of pointing and laughing at Armond, please.

[zombeaner]

I love reading the comments that follow every one of his reviews. They read exactly like this thread.

[jbeall]

Land of the Lost > Jia Zhang-ke.

Time-warp jokes mixing historical anachronisms with contemporary product placement recall SNL sketch writing, but Welch sets mall-culture detritus in an interplanetary/desert setting with three moons, bug-eyed aliens and dinosaurs that spark folkloric imagination: Golden Gate Bridge, Statue of Liberty, Big Boy sign, hip-hop limousine, rollercoaster, even Cadillac Ranch with lime green and purple Caddies next to a drive-in-movie screen. These are all more expressive than the scaled-down global icons in Zhang Ke-Jia’s [sic] dull art movie The World.

Armond sure is one pretentious motherfucker, isn't he?

[domino harvey]

Matthew Arnold said...

Armond is a pure Paulette, no "mentoring" by Andrew Sarris involved. I'll never forget hearing him on the Leonard Lopate show, when Georgia Brown, then of the Village Voice, confronted him over an outragous claim that Armond had made about her (and which is reprinted in his collection), to the effect that she had written in the Voice (!) that "black people should not be allowed to make movies." Of course, he couldn't cite any actual passage remotely saying that, but instead of admitting he was wrong (and race-baiting while he was at it), he barked back, "It's not my job to point out your sins to you," or something equally belligerent. Lately, he's been taking it out on Georgia's son, the director Noah Baumbach, suggesting among other things that Georgia "should have had an abortion." That's some real thoughtful, first-rate criticism there, huh?

[Cronenfly]

Only Armond could love The Life Aquatic but wish that the movie's co-writer had been aborted to spite one of his enemies...

[Camera Obscura]

The most intelligent (Asian) convention is putting family names in ALL_CAPS -- so that one can tell which is which, no matter what order the names are in.

JIA Zhang Ke
GONG Li
Nagisa OSHIMA
NARUSE Mikio
Maggie CHEUNG Man-Yuk
BAE Doo-na

Family names in caps is the easiest solution. Everybody should get it right when this becomes the norm.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Of course the point is defeated if the writer doesn't know which is the surname in the first place. The Cannes website, for example, is loaded with examples where the given name has improperly capitalized by some code monkey who didn't know better. (There's also the issue of Vietnamese names -- they're surname-first like other Sinitic names, but it's actually standard to refer to the Vietnamese by their given names.)

In Asia, Western names are almost invariably written in their original order, with no typographical features to distinguish given and family names, and nobody seems to have much trouble with it. But here we have Zhang Ziyi's publicists telling everyone to refer to her as "Ziyi Zhang" and Japanese names being written in whichever order the writer or publication prefers (it would be nice if the Japanese themselves dumped the practice of romanizing names in the "Western" order and encouraged everyone else to do the same). Inconsistency is a big part of the problem here.

Also, when I write Chinese names, I'm unaccustomed to using hyphens to link two character given names.

It's obsolete for mainland names -- the current system only uses them for names like "Ma-Xu Weibang" where the person has appended their spouse's surname. Wade-Giles romanization used it for given names, but that isn't used on the mainland anymore (if it were, Jia would be "Chia Chang-k'o"). "Zhangke" (no space, no hyphen, no CamelCase) is correct, but even Jia's own films aren't consistent.

[kaujot]

I'd like to stick up for the codemonkeys really quick, mainly because I am one, and just point out that it is highly unlikely that anyone who coded/designed their site had anything to do filling it with content. More likely, some intern got the capitalisations wrong.

[cdnchris]

Agreed. It's the data entry monkeys that are the problem.

[jbeall]

Armond... likes Transformers???

[tavernier]

Armond... likes Transformers???

The comments below his review are already priceless.

Best one (so far):

No offense Mr White, but you are the worst movie critic in the universe. You make Rex Reed look like a genius. Why do you hate cinema so much?

[cdnchris]

And you're shocked?

I love his reviews just for the comments that usually follow.

[kaujot]

It's very easy to tell if Armond is going to like a film or not.

Just ask yourself this question:
Do the majority of critics like this film?

If yes, Armond hates it. If no, Armond loves it.

[jbeall]

I know, but it's funny how his justification for the film is basically one moment that conforms to Armond's morality, allowing him to overlook the fact that the rest of the film is a) warmongering, and b) an aesthetic failure (as all Bay movies tend to be).

[rs98762001]

Armond's Quote of the Day:

Joseph Kahn’s near-miraculous Torque

[cdnchris]

Armond's Quote of the Day:

Joseph Kahn’s near-miraculous Torque

I was working on a complex solution at work today which involved more math than I like handling and developed a headache a little after completing it. I swear the moment after reading that quote my headache instantly got 10x worse. What an idiot.

[kaujot]

Does he really have that much of a readership that justifies the NYPost keeping him on? I mean, I know his online reviews get plenty of comments, but I just assume it's a bunch of members from this forum and others trashing him. For crying out loud, he still has a job!

[John Cope]

Armond's been an advocate of that film for years now, since it came out. And he's not entirely wrong about it, just typically OTT in his praise. Still, that's not entirely inappropriate either given the nature of the film. It kind of calls for it, you see. And I think, ultimately, that very unapologetic, very unqualified confrontational effect is what motivates his enthusiasm. It 's part of what lies behind his championing of stuff like this and the Transporter pictures. I think he sees them as celebratory rather than cynical; joyful rather than ashamed of their genre/heritage, which is what he sees as nihilism. Also, the unrestrained hyperkinetic quality of these films allow them to transcend the banality of adhering to any kind of "real". They merely deign to proceed from a place of recognition. Their goal is to embrace a plasticity of vision, the plasticity of the medium and its potentiality for imagination. In this way, they thrust us fully into a freshly rejuvenated realm of very genuine and authentic fantasy (this is the real that counts). Certainly the great "breaking-the-sound-barrier" finale of Torque always thrills me, as does the Mountain Dew/Pepsi face-off scene which is a particularly wonderful, nuanced moment as, of course, Pepsi produces both. That acknowledgment of self-enclosure and parameters to the fantasy seems very intentional and has the effect of shaping what it can do and where it can go. It's an acknowledgment of standard product placement without it degrading the picture; rather, it's elevated through the acknowledgment of how contemporary identities are assimilated and built, a blissful light shining on the walls of Kahn's torqued-up world itself.

Beyond all this theorizing however, there is the undeniable fact that AW sees much of worth in Joseph Kahn's whole aesthetic stance as indicated here. There's a whole series of these lectures available on Youtube actually and their quite observant. Unfortunately, I still get distracted by the fact that Armond's shirt could use a good ironing (it appears to have been packed away in one of those vacuum sealed plastic containers).

[gokinsmen]

Is Armond's Torque worship really any worse than this?

[Vic Pardo]

Does he really have that much of a readership that justifies the NYPost keeping him on? I mean, I know his online reviews get plenty of comments, but I just assume it's a bunch of members from this forum and others trashing him. For crying out loud, he still has a job!

New York Press, not New York Post. It's a free paper, available in sidewalk boxes. He's the only writer of note on the staff and probably the only one who gets paid. It used to be a great paper when Russ Smith owned it. But White's reviews are the only things worth reading in it now.

[starmanof51]

Armond's been an advocate of that film for years now, since it came out. And he's not entirely wrong about it, just typically OTT in his praise. Still, that's not entirely inappropriate either given the nature of the film. It kind of calls for it, you see. And I think, ultimately, that very unapologetic, very unqualified confrontational effect is what motivates his enthusiasm. It 's part of what lies behind his championing of stuff like this and the Transporter pictures. I think he sees them as celebratory rather than cynical; joyful rather than ashamed of their genre/heritage, which is what he sees as nihilism. Also, the unrestrained hyperkinetic quality of these films allow them to transcend the banality of adhering to any kind of "real". They merely deign to proceed from a place of recognition. Their goal is to embrace a plasticity of vision, the plasticity of the medium and its potentiality for imagination. In this way, they thrust us fully into a freshly rejuvenated realm of very genuine and authentic fantasy (this is the real that counts). Certainly the great "breaking-the-sound-barrier" finale of Torque always thrills me, as does the Mountain Dew/Pepsi face-off scene which is a particularly wonderful, nuanced moment as, of course, Pepsi produces both. That acknowledgment of self-enclosure and parameters to the fantasy seems very intentional and has the effect of shaping what it can do and where it can go. It's an acknowledgment of standard product placement without it degrading the picture; rather, it's elevated through the acknowledgment of how contemporary identities are assimilated and built, a blissful light shining on the walls of Kahn's torqued-up world itself.

Beyond all this theorizing however, there is the undeniable fact that AW sees much of worth in Joseph Kahn's whole aesthetic stance as indicated here. There's a whole series of these lectures available on Youtube actually and their quite observant. Unfortunately, I still get distracted by the fact that Armond's shirt could use a good ironing (it appears to have been packed away in one of those vacuum sealed plastic containers).

=D> You had me for about half of this

[tavernier]

It used to be a great paper when Russ Smith owned it.

I wouldn't go that far, but I do miss Mugger's idiotic ramblings.

[jbeall]

Now that the early reviews of Transformers 2 are in, I'm even more amazed that such a self-righteous (black!) critic like Armond likes it. I'm trying to decide which is the most racist film I've seen in the past decade or so: Lethal Weapon 4, Phantom Menace, or Transformers 2?

[foggy eyes]

Armond's shirt could use a good ironing (it appears to have been packed away in one of those vacuum sealed plastic containers).

Hilarious. It makes perfect sense to me that Armond would step out in something like that. It's very interesting watch him talk too, but I couldn't escape the feeling that there's an awful lot of pent-up frustration (and, dare I say it, hate) behind that genial exterior. Such an angry man. Where does it come from?

Anyway, JC, I always value your posts & opinions, but just can't get my head around your point of view here.

the unrestrained hyperkinetic quality of these films allow them to transcend the banality of adhering to any kind of "real".

So, in order to make vindicate Torque (and others), any kind of "real" must, by comparison, be relegated to the "banal"? Any kind? What does that even mean?

Certainly the great "breaking-the-sound-barrier" finale of Torque always thrills me, as does the Mountain Dew/Pepsi face-off scene which is a particularly wonderful, nuanced moment as, of course, Pepsi produces both. That acknowledgment of self-enclosure and parameters to the fantasy seems very intentional and has the effect of shaping what it can do and where it can go.

I looked this up on YouTube, and you might have to expand on what is "wonderful" or "nuanced", rather than ham-fisted and downright ugly, about the sequence. Imaginative potential?

Also, on a side note, I wish Armond wasn't so patronising towards "pop culture" - the models he uses as exemplars of "pop" art are, from what I can tell, invariably simplistic, lurid, brash, abrasive, overly sentimental, etc. I have no idea why he so often confuses barrel-scraping with "essence".