The Armond White Thread

[domino harvey]

This is a joke account, right

[FerdinandGriffon]

(not opposed to reading the article, but I do try to avoid reading reviews of movies I have yet to see)

Don't worry, the review doesn't have anything to do with the movie.

I've enjoyed the Neveldine/Taylor movies I've seen too, and I do think that they have elements of satire in them (Gamer is pretty overt in this respect), but White's review is nonsense, not because of what it does or does not say, but because it is so garbled that it can't say anything. We can argue all we want about whether his writing is based on false premises, but the fact remains that on the level of individual phrases, it's gobbledegook. "Traduced fun, warped thrills, and debased energy"? Gak.

[Brian C]

Maybe he meant "freebased energy".

[tavernier]

He hates Springsteen's new album because it's too liberal, of course

[wattsup32]

...and for good measure: Armond White's review of The Hunger Games

This is a sort of one-stop-shopping version of AW. You get a Spielberg reference, a Toy Story dis, perhaps his longest ever list of I-like-these-directors-and-know-their-work-and-it's-better-than..., a pan of a critically successful movie, a pan of a commerically successful film, lauding a pile of poo that only White has the genius to recognize as brilliant, and insulting the audience.

[HistoryProf]

It's like the less he gets paid the more he writes. Two highlights:

"Paul W.S. Anderson’s brilliant, visceral Death Race remake"

"the tragedy of Tintin and War Horse failing at the U.S. box office"

[gcgiles1dollarbin]

breath-baiting

Presumably the ease with which your prey is caught when it hasn't brushed its teeth in a few days. I suspect the only shill he's quoting is Armond White.

[colinr0380]

The fact that anyone would laud the Death Race remake, brutally scrubbed of any satire (beyond the 'pay-per-view audience figures' one), over the spiky original in any discussion of dystopian deathsport films seems rediculous.

Though throwing Slumdog Millionaire in there actually seems a quite brilliant analysis of the way that brutal dystopian gameshows do not have to have futuristic settings anymore!

[dx23]

It's like the less he gets paid the more he writes.

The thing is that his 15 minutes of Internet fame are up and no one cares about him anymore. He is really trying as hard as ever to reclaim the spot of most hated critic but he has just become irrelevant. We will probably see more and more outrageous stuff from him though.

[bamwc2]

Breitbart's Big Hollywood celebrates White's reading of Bully as an anti-Red State polemic. The unnamed author also graces White with the following praise:

I don't always agree with Armond White, but he is at least a rarity among the critical community, someone willing to challenge the liberal orthodoxy and throw stones at sanctimonious political correctness.

He's also an extraordinarily gifted wordsmith.

Lovely.

[domino harvey]

This time, shot in color, the idea of the Stooges seems to bloom as if a new flower ready to be sniffed and examined.

[flyonthewall2983]

That's it, close the thread. Domino wins.

[Forrest Taft]

Whoa

[HerrSchreck]

So awesome that he can never un-write that. The idea of his cultural adversaries reminding him of that line at various and sundry times over the years to come seems to bloom like a new flower ready to be sniffed and examined.

[Mr Sausage]

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I use cliches,
Armond does too.

[dx23]

That should be the review tagline in the DVD/BD cover. Probably will bring more laughs that the actual movie.

[jbeall]

Schreck and Sausage are now officially in the running for funniest posts of the year.

[HistoryProf]

This time, shot in color, the idea of the Stooges seems to bloom as if a new flower ready to be sniffed and examined.

He truly is an extraordinarily gifted wordsmith.

[Robert de la Cheyniest]

According to Armond, Celine and Julie totally sux

[HerrSchreck]

I don't have all that big an issue for most of the post, but this:

This meta-movie smartness has hoodwinked the blogger generation (not the fanboy types but those with scholarly ambitions). A new, depressive hierarchy results: Hou Hsiao Hsien over Renoir. Weerasethakul over Fellini. Haneke over Bunuel. DeOlivera over Visconti and lately Naruse over Ozu, Johnny To over Clouzot. Soderbergh over Malle and Rivette over the rest of the French New Wave.

If anything, Naruse more resembles a 'classical' style of filmmaker (versus the more unique convention of delicate Ozuian subtlety, not to mention his unique style of one-shots during dialogue . . . notwithstanding unconventionally shot from the floor on top of the one shots, the emotional delicacy, and narrative subtlety) closer to the emotional conventions of narrative arcing and plotting that he misses in the names he puts on his shitlist.

A very strange invented "opposition" or "choosing" between these two directors. How many people do you actually know who take Naruse "over" Ozu??? They usually love them both.

[matrixschmatrix]

One of the most consistently irritating things about White, to me, is that he seems incapable of praising anyone without using the opportunity to attack someone else

[puxzkkx]

A very strange invented "opposition" or "choosing" between these two directors. How many people do you actually know who take Naruse "over" Ozu??? They usually love them both.

I've found a weird trend in criticism of 1950s Japanese film in labelling Naruse as the 'poor man's Ozu' which doesn't make much sense because a) Naruse is a fantastic filmmaker in his own right, and b) Naruse's style at the peak of his career is very dissimilar to Ozu's. Of course now people are attempting to "reclaim" him as a reaction. But this is an association that I gather became quite ingrained in American criticism around the time that Naruse first became noticed in the West.

I agree, though, that Armond's need to judge everything according to some sort of differential quality relationship is really puerile and stupid.

Also, this is the first time I've mentioned Johnnie To and Henri-Georges Clouzot compared at all - and does Johnnie To really have a rock-solid critical platform these days? Even with "fanboy bloggers"?

[Michael Kerpan]

These pairs of oppositions striking me as pretty loony.

It doesn't seem appropriate to discuss the complex inter-relationship between Ozu and Naruse in such a sordid venue as this thread. Maybe we could move it somewhere more suitable?

In any event, Naruse, even yet, can't get much traction in the English-speaking West. Certainly the number of fans has grown with each successive retrospective -- but his support never seems to reach critical mass with the wider viewership of classic foreign films *unlike Kurosawa, Ozu and Mizoguchi). He's a bit ahead of Shimizu (equally deserving of more recognition).

I have encountered a few individuals who prefer Naruse over Ozu -- but not many. I personally rank Ozu first (but only a little away from a photo finish with Naruse).

[zeroman987]

I've found a weird trend in criticism of 1950s Japanese film in labelling Naruse as the 'poor man's Ozu' which doesn't make much sense because .....

Maybe one critic said it and meant that Naruse deals with poor people while Ozu deals with upper middle class people and other critics misunderstood?

[FerdinandGriffon]

The Naruse-Ozu comparison actually seems like the least absurd to me. HHH and Renoir! Bunuel and Haneke! He's defending a critical stance no-one would ever dream of attacking, because they would never dream it exists. Totally paranoid behavior from a perennial martyr.