The Armond White Thread
- domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
- Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm
Re: The Armond White Thread
Given the voluminous amount of arguments for and objections against from people who are not Armond White, I don't think it's as "clear" as you claim
- DeprongMori
- Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2014 1:59 am
- Location: San Francisco
Re: The Armond White Thread
I’m not talking about the debates about BoaN’s techinal merit or cinematic place. There are plenty of arguments there. I am talking about the message of the film, which is crystal clear. I’ve read extensively on the film. If someone credible has an interpretation of the film as something other than a white supremacist manifesto, I am certainly interested in reading it, and would appreciate pointers to any such material.
- thirtyframesasecond
- Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 1:48 pm
Re: The Armond White Thread
I wonder if writing for a very conservative magazine means White has to write this way e.g. he's just a paid hack, or he's just this odd?
- tenia
- Ask Me About My Bassoon
- Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am
Re: The Armond White Thread
I'd argue that since he's relatively famous, if he wasn't adhering to all the stuff he wrote, he would have been able to find another place to write for in which he doesn't have to criticize movies in ways he doesn't want to.
I mean, he's done a ton of articles like this, so many it's hard not to think he's very much OK with what he wrote.
I mean, he's done a ton of articles like this, so many it's hard not to think he's very much OK with what he wrote.
- tenia
- Ask Me About My Bassoon
- Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am
Re: The Armond White Thread
"Cannes Film Festival, a site of progressive film culture where anti-Americanism has recently ruled" ?
This isn't even the end of the first paragraph and I already don't know anymore what White is writing about.
I also strongly wonder if White at least researched the real story that the movie is about, because it doesn't seem to.
And I wonder how one can expect BlacKkKlansman to "evoke the fun of Dolemite and The Human Tornado". For someone who rants about, basically, how the movie refers in a superficial way to blaxploitation movie, this looks like a very superficial comparison.
This isn't even the end of the first paragraph and I already don't know anymore what White is writing about.
I also strongly wonder if White at least researched the real story that the movie is about, because it doesn't seem to.
And I wonder how one can expect BlacKkKlansman to "evoke the fun of Dolemite and The Human Tornado". For someone who rants about, basically, how the movie refers in a superficial way to blaxploitation movie, this looks like a very superficial comparison.
- knives
- Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm
Re: The Armond White Thread
On the matter of degree there certainly has been debate, though your larger point about it being racist is not to be qualified.DeprongMori wrote: ↑Mon Aug 13, 2018 9:16 pmI’m not talking about the debates about BoaN’s techinal merit or cinematic place. There are plenty of arguments there. I am talking about the message of the film, which is crystal clear. I’ve read extensively on the film. If someone credible has an interpretation of the film as something other than a white supremacist manifesto, I am certainly interested in reading it, and would appreciate pointers to any such material.
- Fiery Angel
- Joined: Sun Jan 11, 2009 1:59 pm
- soundchaser
- Leave Her to Beaver
- Joined: Sun Aug 28, 2016 12:32 am
Re: The Armond White Thread
This is a wild list, some of which I'm surprised to find actually makes sense, and some of which is so audacious that I sort of admire it if I turn my head and squint a little.
- tenia
- Ask Me About My Bassoon
- Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am
Re: The Armond White Thread
Some of these are quite obvious in their quality gaps, though, but it's probably "The 15:17 to Paris > A Quiet Place" that made laugh most.
- Brian C
- I hate to be That Pedantic Guy but...
- Joined: Wed Sep 16, 2009 11:58 am
- Location: Chicago, IL
Re: The Armond White Thread
I usually kind of enjoy these annual lists from him, but this one is incoherent to me from start to finish. Dude’s lost his edge.
- Gregory
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm
Re: The Armond White Thread
Was there another year in recent memory that he didn't repeatedly hammer away at the same point? Now he's making it a defining feature of the past year?Armond White wrote:It was the most politicized movie year since World War II. Hollywood confused propaganda with entertainment, and filmgoers were offered little choice between indoctrination and discovery.
Right, that more stable year 1973, when the U.S. had a major political scandal that would lead to the president resigning, and the country was reeling from the debacle of the Vietnam War. The U.S. continued to bomb Cambodia. Democracy in Chile was overthrown in a military coup, followed by massive repression and murder, with many forced into exile. Lebanon devolved into worsening violence and ultimately civil war. The October Arab-Israeli war... Huge strikes in Britain... on and on. Remember those good old days of greater stability? White's a fraud.The only great films were the re-releases of Visconti’s 1973 Ludwig and Cocteau’s 1949 Les Parents Terribles, beacons from a more stable past.
- mfunk9786
- Under Chris' Protection
- Joined: Fri May 16, 2008 4:43 pm
- Location: Philadelphia, PA
Re: The Armond White Thread
I liked A Star Is Born, but good on him for this:
You know what they say about broken clocks.Vox Lux > A Star Is Born
Director Brady Corbet and star Natalie Portman present the personal horror within millennial pop spectacle, investigating spiritual trauma — Ludwig for the millennium. while Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga root for idiotic celebrity worship in a cliché-ridden, big-screen version of The Voice for losers without a voice.
- domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
- Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm
Re: The Armond White Thread
I watched this via Cohen's recent Blu-ray only a month ago and I already barely remember it. He's right to like L'amant double, but even without having seen Mary Poppins I know perfectly well the two have nothing in commonLes Parents Terribles
- Dead or Deader
- Joined: Sun May 08, 2016 12:47 am
Re: The Armond White Thread
Two mentions of First Reformed and BlackKKlansman. We know Armond has the knives out for Spike, and Schrader seems to be his latest victim of crusade. Even his golden boy, Spielberg, has become a scapegoat after being nice to President Obama.
- tenia
- Ask Me About My Bassoon
- Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am
Re: The Armond White Thread
And yet, this guy has his own thread here so I guess whatever works.
- whaleallright
- Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2005 12:56 am
- Morbii
- Joined: Sat Nov 27, 2004 3:38 am
Re: The Armond White Thread
I was just thinking that Spielberg was his golden boy, and wanted to ask what became of that. Didn’t have to!Dead or Deader wrote: ↑Tue Jan 08, 2019 4:50 pmTwo mentions of First Reformed and BlackKKlansman. We know Armond has the knives out for Spike, and Schrader seems to be his latest victim of crusade. Even his golden boy, Spielberg, has become a scapegoat after being nice to President Obama.
- Brian C
- I hate to be That Pedantic Guy but...
- Joined: Wed Sep 16, 2009 11:58 am
- Location: Chicago, IL
Re: The Armond White Thread
I thought LINCOLN was what actually made White turn.
- Fiery Angel
- Joined: Sun Jan 11, 2009 1:59 pm
Re: The Armond White Thread
He loved DePalma too until REDACTED.
- Fiery Angel
- Joined: Sun Jan 11, 2009 1:59 pm
- The Elegant Dandy Fop
- Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2004 3:25 am
- Location: Los Angeles, CA
Re: The Armond White Thread
I've remarked this before, but the man does knows how to write . Though I disagree with him 99% of the time (especially politically), I find unfiltered Armond White still more fun than unfiltered Johnathan Rosenbaum who just comes off as another self-loving boomer. I'm surprised he was able to pull a vaguely right-wing message out of the film with a slant toward Islamophobia, which seems to be as distant from Godard's politics as I could imagine, but White did it.
- Fiery Angel
- Joined: Sun Jan 11, 2009 1:59 pm
- Gregory
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm
Re: The Armond White Thread
The most paranoid/batty review I've seen from him in a while was his Mary Poppins Returns one, trying to pass the movie off as a socialist screed. He reaches so far to inject politics into it that he interprets a song about balloons and hope as Stalinist because of a line about letting go of past troubles and looking to the future. The menacing Soviet erasure of history apparently is contained entirely in a line late in the song: "Let the past take a bow / The Forever is now" (huh?). Never mind that earlier in the song the lyrics explicitly address the importance of historical memory: "The past is the past / It lives on as history / And that's an important thing." (White omitted that last line from his quote because it negates his thesis, so he's actually the one practicing ideological erasure.
The headline of the piece screams that the film carries a subtext that endorses socialism, but then we get only an aside about how admittedly "minor characters" play out the socialist subtext by "campaigning for underpaid workers"—horrors! So by using that description, White himself acknowledges that the workers are underpaid, but an organization advocating for their rights is of course evidence of some kind of socialist evil. Funny how that works.
He also makes a weak head-scratcher of a joke about Emily Blunt's name (was she "named after a truncheon?") and complains that she performed the nanny as being too "asexual," because of course a nanny in a PG Disney movie should be expected to project a certain degree of sexuality, right? But his censuring the mindless happy balloon song as an example of damnatio memoriae is the best thing of all here.
The headline of the piece screams that the film carries a subtext that endorses socialism, but then we get only an aside about how admittedly "minor characters" play out the socialist subtext by "campaigning for underpaid workers"—horrors! So by using that description, White himself acknowledges that the workers are underpaid, but an organization advocating for their rights is of course evidence of some kind of socialist evil. Funny how that works.
He also makes a weak head-scratcher of a joke about Emily Blunt's name (was she "named after a truncheon?") and complains that she performed the nanny as being too "asexual," because of course a nanny in a PG Disney movie should be expected to project a certain degree of sexuality, right? But his censuring the mindless happy balloon song as an example of damnatio memoriae is the best thing of all here.
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- Joined: Sun Jun 02, 2019 9:13 pm
- therewillbeblus
- Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm
Re: The Armond White Thread
I laughed at the line about Netflix being Obama’s boss