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Armond White - The "Movie Critic"

TsunamiaTsunamia
edited August 2010 in Entertainment
I have been listening to just about everything podcast that talks about Inception. Today I listed to the /filmcast today. It was good for the first part until they bought in their guest, film critic Armond White. I had no idea who Armond White was but after listening to the podcast I now know never to read any of his reviews. I cannot believe that anyone thinks Transformers 2 is a good film and that Jason Statham is the most consistency great actor working today. Is this guy real, or is this just some Andy Kaufman prank?
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  • DJJoeJoeDJJoeJoe
    edited July 2010
    armondwhite.jpg
    Armond White wrote:
    Despicable Inception is full of second-rate aesthetics
    I actually saw that guys face a bit ago, since I generally look at the crazy reviews that often populate the low end on metacritic. He thinks toy story and inception are terrible, and I think his smug face deserves some sort of large object. He couldn't get over that toy story has toys in it, called it consumerism etc... it's freaking toy story, and I didn't remember it being plagued by ad placement like Alan Wake was etc. Which by the way, was still fine really (Alan Wake).

    Should check out his wiki: Wiki | Armond White
    This is also a good read: Armond White: America’s most hated movie critic - herald-review.com
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  • LuminousSpecterLuminousSpecter
    edited July 2010
    I only heard of Armond White this year. While he did like Transformers 2 (which I liked save for many things), he hated Toy Story 3. Not only that, but he was wrong. We all know that everyone is free to have an opinion about something, but in the case of TS3, Armond White's opinion is wrong. And that is categorical. Not once in his tirade does he even mention anything of the story or characters. Instead, he only talks about "product placement." Seriously, he ignored the content of the film and it's as if he only watched the trailer to the film, then wrote his review, and if he's actually seen the movie is debatable.

    Wow, and then I read the above comment, and realized that you already mentioned this. LOL!
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  • oneironautoneironaut
    edited July 2010
    To make matters worse he gave Jonah Hex a positive review. I'm not sure if you could say his reviewing is an Andy Kaufman prank as he's a professional critic and although I can't find exactly when and where, apparently he is/was a film professor. I can't stand Roger Ebert, especially lately when he sounds like an old curmudgeon that doesn't understand young people anymore, but to say that Roger Ebert "destroyed film criticism" is a bit much.
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  • LuminousSpecterLuminousSpecter
    edited July 2010
    Where did Roger Ebert come into this? :-) I'm not a fan of Ebert either, though.
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  • oneironautoneironaut
    edited July 2010
    Armond White said it. http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/07/20/armond-white-i-do-think-it-is-fair-to-say-that-roger-ebert-destroyed-film-criticism/
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  • DJJoeJoeDJJoeJoe
    edited July 2010
    I actually listened to the slashfilm podcast you speak of Tsunamia, and I have to say I'm more sympathetic towards Armond then previously. I don't really agree with his actual opinion but I definitely see where he's coming from. It's just a shame that no one actually cares about 'art' the way he seems to, we just want good stuff that is entertaining. Who cares if not everything you see changes your life with completely unique revelations, honestly it's a bit elitist to ask of this. That kinda thinking leads you to only enjoying things that no one else does, and having to scrap around the edges to be entertained.
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  • AsterionAsterion
    edited July 2010
    Armond White is simply a troll, and deserves no heed really.

    Adrian Martin did a nice report on him for Filmkrant:
    Twenty years ago, in the pages of Film Comment and other publications, I appreciated and enjoyed the trenchant attacks by American critic Armond White on the growing trend of 'thumbs up-thumbs down' film reviewing, and his tenacious lists of all the brave, little films overlooked by mainstream US culture (two decades ago, that list included the Belgian Crazy Love and the Australian Dogs in Space).

    But today, primarily in the pages of New York Press, White (whom I do not know personally) faces the problems of any self-styled maverick who once hurled his provocative bombs from the margin of culture, but now finds himself at its centre. White is still proudly in attack mode: but who, exactly, is the enemy? And now that he has stormed the citadel of popular film reviewing, can he deliver the alternative critique that he once called for?

    On April 23, White published an over-3000-word opinion piece titled 'What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Movies' (www.nypress.com/21/17/news&columns/feature3.cfm). It offered a summary of White's feisty opinions and his inflammatory rhetorical procedures. The Internet reaction was instantaneous and voluminous, both pro and con (see the discussion at Glenn Kenny's Premiere blog, http://glennkenny.premiere.com/blog/2008/04/white-noise.html).

    In the field of film criticism, White is against everyone: reviewers, promoters, bloggers, cinephiles. They are not merely myopic, in White's estimation, but 'wilfully blind' to the truth before them on the screen and in the world, because of ideological bias, or their desperate need to flee reality. But what is that truth, this reality? In his essay, White spontaneously offers 'ten current film culture fallacies' - ranging from 'Gus Van Sant is the new Visconti when he's really the new Fagin, a jailbait artful dodger', to 'Only non-pop Asian cinema from J-horror to Hou Hsiao Hsien counts, while Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou and Stephen Chow are rejected'.

    That list is Armond White in a nutshell: it's all dubious assertion (only 'non-pop' Asian cinema is acclaimed?) and even more aggressive counter-assertion (Van Sant is a phony), in a non-stop, strident loop. There is no argument, no development, no depth in this writing - for the simple reason that White is always dancing on the surface of ideas, a polemical 'moving target'. His modus operandi is confusion, as in this thumbnail account of Apichatpong Weerasethakul: all critics (except White) apparently ignore the 'fundamental terms', 'the facts of his Asianness, his sexual outlawry and his retreat into artistic and intellectual arrogance that evades social categorisation'. So is he for or against the filmmaker? Who can tell?

    White's fancy moves are partly a result of his intriguing political profile: he is simultaneously progressive (black, gay, a supporter of edgy pop culture) and a 'post 9/11' conservative, taking his adversaries to task for their lack of religious education, or their 'kneejerk liberalism'. And, as a critic heavily influenced by Pauline Kael, he is fatally caught between extolling cinema as an art and over-identifying with the assumed taste of 'the people'. Just like Richard Corliss of Time ('Do Film Critics Know Anything?', www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1693300,00.html), who thinks that No country for old men is an 'elitist' taste! These are strange days indeed, when White interprets the absence of 'popular hits' from critics' end-of-year lists as ultimate 'proof' that they 'have failed to rouse the moviegoing public in any direction'...
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  • ScironSciron
    edited July 2010
    Yea the dude is a troll. Like, I really think he's riding the fame wave of hatred. Publicity is publicity, no matter how you look at it.

    Though, I rarely agree with any movie critic, and often thoroughly enjoy the ones they hated the most(transformers).
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  • DJJoeJoeDJJoeJoe
    edited July 2010
    Well it often seems 'enjoyment' isn't a category most critics measure, they mostly look at movies based on their own history of watching movies and thus alienate 90% of actual movie watchers. Which is fine, cause based on enjoyment there's a ton of really bad movies that are just nice to watch and enjoy even if they don't rock your world artistically. I'm really glad that I'm not a person that seems to need everything to tell me a fancy story, I can really easily fall down to whatever level something wants me to just to enjoy something as much as possibly from it's own perspective.
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  • odjodj
    edited August 2010
    He is a troll, simple as, and what do we not do with trolls? Feed them. Which is what this thread is doing.
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  • ghostshootsghostshoots
    edited August 2010
    DJJoeJoe wrote: »
    Well it often seems 'enjoyment' isn't a category most critics measure, they mostly look at movies based on their own history of watching movies and thus alienate 90% of actual movie watchers. Which is fine, cause based on enjoyment there's a ton of really bad movies that are just nice to watch and enjoy even if they don't rock your world artistically. I'm really glad that I'm not a person that seems to need everything to tell me a fancy story, I can really easily fall down to whatever level something wants me to just to enjoy something as much as possibly from it's own perspective.

    This is exactly why I review movies in two ways - entertainment and artistic merit. They can be wildly different.
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