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Perkins Cobb wrote:Land of the Lost > Jia Zhang-ke.

Armond White wrote: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.

Interesting Pro-White Blog Post [url=http://www.thehousenextdooronline.com/2007/12/white-power-ten-armond-white-quotes.html?showComment=1197312660000#c7818512898505542017]Rebuttal[/url] wrote: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?

Michael Kerpan wrote: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

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

jbeall wrote:Armond... likes Transformers???

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?

Joseph Kahn’s near-miraculous Torque

rs98762001 wrote:Armond's Quote of the Day:

Joseph Kahn’s near-miraculous Torque

kaujot wrote: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 wrote: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).

Vic Pardo wrote:It used to be a great paper when Russ Smith owned it.

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

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

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.