The Armond White Thread - THE GRANDMASTER and THE WORLD'S END

Avarice wrote:

I'd say writing from beyond the grave is an impressive feat, regardless of quality.

It's common academic parlance to use the present tense when referring to writers alive or dead.

Sharky wrote:

I think it's fair to give thread to in honour of the greatest living film critic - Armond White.

Greatest living film critic? Never even heard of the man till now.

Harmsway wrote:

Sharky wrote:

I don't think that's an unfair claim to make, or too contradictory to the protestant tradition.

Depending on what side of the Protestant tradition. The High Protestant traditions, no. But White claims the Low Protestant traditions (High and Low here should not be read as statements of legitimacy, but rather approaches to religious knowledge). The religious traditions with which White associates himself are, relatively speaking, of the more anti-intellectual thrust.

Granted, but I still don't think it even conflicts with the so called "Low Church" of Pentecostalism. White places a big emphasis on pop culture - its mass appeal, its power and so forth. He's a big Motown fan, and does some pretty interesting analyses of music videos.

As I said, I just think he's defending his profession. Not that someone articulate and well informed about cinema can't debate with him, but how those are who have only a superficial "hipster" perspective on film, can claim the same title of film critic. In other words, its not the idea of democratisation in itself, but more the specific way it's destroyed film criticism. He's still a big supporter of good indie films, the latest technical advances, and the accessibility of digital film. He just puts them under the same close scrutiny as any other work of art.

Harmsway wrote:

Sharky wrote:

If someone not as educated as him, were pose to him an argument, he wouldn't shut them out. He will engage with them and try his best to tackle that argument.

I'm not so sure about that. In an interview, White said he wouldn't waste his breath defending Spielberg to someone who disagreed with him.

I'm don't know what context that's in. If someone said "Spielberg sucks. He makes Hollywood fairytales for children. He's not a director, he's a confectionist etc." Why should White waste his breath on that? If however, someone presented a clear argument on how say SCHINDLER'S LIST is schizoid, confused film - with much potential - then he might try and have a debate.

He comes off as pretty agreeable here:

http://thefilmtalk.com/blog/armond-white-interview-christmas-carol-podcast-review/

Harmsway wrote:

Sharky wrote:

I think that's more your lack of familiarity with White, Harms. I think I've figured some of it out.

Oh, I can figure out what he's against and what he's for, but I can't entirely figure out why, or what the floating references to Christianity and religion actually boil down to, and how that tradition ultimately relates to his outlook. I see more dissonance than coherence here.

Very few of us are free of that cognitive dissonance, between faith and once's philosophical outlook. For instance, while I was brought up and still associate with the Anglican tradition, I have issues with its "via medea", diluted take on Catholicism and the Reformation. I can fully understand John Henry Newman's rejection of that compromise.

Harmsway wrote:

Care to elucidate White on these points?

I don't want to go into that now.

Loomis wrote:

Sharky wrote:

I think it's fair to give thread to in honour of the greatest living film critic - Armond White.

Greatest living film critic? Never even heard of the man till now.

What rock you been living under Loomis? :cyclops:

To be fair, Sharky, Armond White is mainly well known only in the circle of film criticism, and even then largely as a joke. Taking him seriously, as you do, is the minority opinion within that circle, as you must be aware. White has no regular column in a newspaper, nor television show, nor anything else that would give him the kind of mainstream profile of an Ebert, Kael, etc.

You're acting like a hipster who grows angry at someone for having never heard of their favourite lo-fi indie band.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

You're acting like a hipster who grows angry at someone for having never heard of their favourite lo-fi indie band.

I'm wasn't angry at Loomis. Far from it. It was meant to be kinda tongue-in-cheek, hence the smiley.

If I was angry, it'd be this.

:roll:

or

:evil:

Sharky wrote:

I'm don't know what context that's in.

Someone asked him in an interview, where he just tossed that sentence off. White didn't seem particularly cantankerous when he said it, and the interview, on the whole, seemed pretty charitable, though the way the question was phrased, I believe, wasn't stated.

Sharky wrote:

Very few of us are free of that cognitive dissonance, between faith and once's philosophical outlook.

The dissonance is, to a certain extent, inevitable. But those of us of faith should strive to unify them as much as possible, particularly in places where we continually make our faith and philosophical interests public, and those philosophical interests are supposedly governing our judgment.

Sharky wrote:

For instance, while I was brought up and still associate with the Anglican tradition, I have issues with its "via medea", diluted take on Catholicism and the Reformation. I can fully understand John Henry Newman's rejection of that compromise.

As can I. Anglican tradition, while it is one in which I have participated for a while now, is a muddied affair with dubious origins. It's not as pure as some of the other forms of Protestantism, the Catholic, or Orthodox faiths.

Drive is by far the best film of the year so far, White is once again full of it. How's it going, Largo? You used to be normal, a long time ago...

I plan to see this tomorrow.

Klown wrote:

Drive is by far the best film of the year so far, White is once again full of it. How's it going, Largo? You used to be normal, a long time ago...

How've you been, Mr. Klown?

Klown's here? How did I miss that? Oy, Sharky and Klown -- my personal hell is now complete! ;) Just jokes, man, a belated welcome to B&B!

I haven't seen the new Straw Dogs, and I'm not likely to, until it hits the blu-ray, one-week favourites rentals.

Having seen most of Peckinpah's films, I must say I enjoyed Armon's comments regarding the Straw Dogs re-make (thanks for posting Shark).

He's certainly caught the pulse of Peckinpah's work. Great read. Armon has steered me away from wasting cinema money on the re-make.

Quote :

Peckinpah’s daring should not be forgotten but deserves to be met with daring, rigorous critical standards. Initially the rape in Straw Dogs (source of the film’s politically incorrect controversy) drew more ire than the rape in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange due to Peckinpah’s Titian-like pitilessness. Peckinpah didn’t distance horror with Kubrickian cool or with Lurie’s trite politics. Critic Kyle Smith aptly ridiculed Lurie’s remake by juxtaposing it with Kenny Rogers’ more honest and affecting pop hit “Coward of the County.”

In the original Straw Dogs, Peckinpah’s fraught sensuality and compacted male fears subverted p.c. feminism so much even non-feminist Pauline Kael sought different terms to critique it. Her slam “fascist” reacts to the unsettling power of what Peckinpah evokes; it peculiarly tags the film as something it isn’t. The sex and violence in Straw Dogs are the brushstrokes Peckinpah uses to convey man’s personal confusion. After David’s manly defense of home, he drives into the dark with his doppleganger idiot who complains, “I don’t know my way home.” David’s response “Neither do I” isn’t fascist triumphalism but boldly admits personal moral alarm. It’s different from the utter moral and aesthetic confusion that Lurie stirs up. If we recover our cultural standards and make useful critical comparison of original and remake, we will realize, like Smith’s apples-and-oranges comparison, how Peckinpah’s apple kicks shit out of Lurie’s Clockwork Orange.

Don't think I need (nor do I have any intention) to see whatever sh*tty remake of Straw Dogs they've wheeled out to know that Armond's probably spot-on about it. Lurie should have at least had the common sense to have the villains/homebreakers be smackheads trying to break into a decent man's house and rob his plasma telly, so that at least it would be relevant for our times and actually say something about what the f*ck decent people who just want a quiet life are having to put up with. But no, it's probably even got explosions and CGI knowing the market it's aimed at.

FTR, I love that there's a cantankerous old c*nt like Armond who'll set straight all of the laughable hyperbole which accompanies all of these sh*te to mediocre modern blockbusters. God bless Armond White.

Mr. Brown wrote:

Klown wrote:

Drive is by far the best film of the year so far, White is once again full of it. How's it going, Largo? You used to be normal, a long time ago...

How've you been, Mr. Klown?

Pretty good, Mr. Brown. Yourself?

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

Klown's here? How did I miss that? Oy, Sharky and Klown -- my personal hell is now complete! ;) Just jokes, man, a belated welcome to B&B!

I haven't been online for months, but I joined in March, as you can see. Might start posting semi-regularly again, dunno.

Klown wrote:

How's it going, Largo? You used to be normal, a long time ago...

Alright, I guess. Where've you been, Auric?

What you mean - "normal?"

here, there and everywhere
i mean, not burdened by fanatical love for White's inane opinions, naturally

Seeing as I've managed to compile a sizable list of films I don't want to expend cinema money on, I might have to check out Drive this weekend, if I wind up going to the movies.

But I will be sure to re-read Armond's review so I know what properly sucks about the film. I do trust the great man's pov.

A predicable but nevertheless respectable article on Paul Kael.

Quote :

Pauline Kael, Criticism’s Last Icon
by CityArts on Oct 12, 2011 • 2:29 pm

By Armond White

Pauline Kael’s reputation as America’s most distinguished film critic is secure. She is defended by high-placed friends fighting the misogynists and elites who have spent the 10 years since her death trying to erase her influence on film culture.

Several new books maintain Kael’s legacy—The Library of America’s compendium The Age of Movies, Brian Kellow’s appreciative but unfortunately titled biography A Life in the Dark and James Wolcott’s diaristic Lucking Out. Yet Kael’s 13 books of collected criticism are all out of print. This tells us that criticism has lost its cachet in the 21st century’s media free-for-all, revealing the dire state of pop culture and the fine arts.

Celebrating Kael isn’t that simple. It means looking back at the glory days of film criticism (when Kael outstripped Clement Greenberg, Alfred Kazin, Irving Howe and Meyer Shapiro) and lamenting the passing of those titans’ critical acuity and intellectual openness.

Nowadays, criticism is subordinate to the consumerist reflex of media hype. Kael’s legendary maxim, “In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising,” goes unacknowledged. Box office numbers now drown out aesthetic curiosity. There’s hardly an independent source of arts information left. And Kael’s reputation, based on good writing and personal assessment, gets reduced to gossipy recollection—that is, celebrity.

Kael’s output towers over the profession that still shamefully calls itself criticism. It’s criticism—Kael’s life’s passion—that’s in trouble. Despite the publishing world’s flattery (and a New York Film Festival panel discussion on Kael), there is little enthusiasm for movies as a sensitive, thinking person’s amusement. Schools don’t teach critical thinking and mainstream media warps it.

Yet, Kael’s revival is propitious because there are now generations of people who don’t know what criticism is. They’ve pacified themselves sucking Roger Ebert’s thumbs, unaware that an honest, intelligent response to art (and not just movies) has nothing to do with numbers, grades or tomatoes. Desperate for groupthink, not Kael’s educated individuality, millennial mobs see art (and that includes movies) as less important than consensus; movies become fashion statements or confirm one’s status. Audiences have lost the feeling for revelation and challenge that vital pop art once regularly provided.

“Perhaps more deeply than any other writer, Kael gave shape to the idea of an ‘age of movies,’” art critic Sanford Schwartz writes in the Library of America collection he edited. “Deeply” is a Kael euphemism; she actively attacked the lofty heights of intellectual pretense. Her style transformed the once staid New Yorker—and culture writing in general.

Kael significantly diverged from the haughtiness of film critic authorities Graham Greene, James Agee and Robert Warshow—men who all harbored mid-20th-century guilt that there were greater, more intellectual pursuits than movies or movie criticism. Kael, no less professional than they were, brandished guilt-free enthusiasm, not because she was illiterate or a vulgar sensationalist but because she was a literate, sensual aesthete who appreciated those qualities in the most kinetic of art forms.

Kael never received the same intellectual respect as her contemporaries Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe, credited as ’60s New Journalists for bringing personal flair and temperamental commitment to the duty of intellectual reporting. Schwartz cites another contemporary: “Her overall thinking, which was that of a liberal writer admonishing what she saw as the myopia of her fellow liberals, had much the same drive [as] Jane Jacobs in her 1961 classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities.”

Schwartz’s best implication is that Kael made film criticism matter. “As concerned with audience reactions as with her own, she could be caught up in how movies stoked our fantasies regardless of their quality as movies.” But it’s this notion of “getting caught up” that stymies many Kael followers who insist on going down a hedonist path. (That way lies Ebert.) It misses out on the important development of political analysis (that other, personalized criticism out of England and France) that scrutinized social ideology in movies and has been the profession’s only advance since Kael appeared.

Readable as the new Kaeliana may be (Wolcott’s memoir is the most captivating), there’s no substitute for the actual volumes of her reporting/criticism. Against the age of hype, Kael’s criticism stands as a demonstration of how an active intellect can function despite the ebb and flow of trends and fads. It’s regrettable that the Library of America omitted Kael’s 1974 cri de coeur “On the Future of Movies,” the best display of critical thinking in the cultural moment. In that piece, Kael did what’s now unfashionable: She looked skeptically toward the future but weighed the value of what was at hand.

http://cityarts.info/2011/10/12/pauline-kael-criticism%e2%80%99s-last-icon/

Quote :

Beam Me Down, Lars
by CityArts on Nov 8, 2011 • 6:14 pm

Take Shelter from Melancholia

By Armond White

Lars von Trier’s new prank Melancholia collides with Amerindie Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter. Both films are about facing Armageddon, but it’s hard to prefer the attitude of either. Nichols (who made the surprisingly timely, heartfelt Shotgun Stories) charts the pulse of American dissatisfaction to a remarkable, recognizable degree. But von Trier’s Eurotrash decadence is so insistently pessimistic that this time his phoniness is almost captivating—it feels less annoying than Nichols’ sincerity.


Kirsten Dunst in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia.

Make no mistake: Melancholia is not at all enjoyable—its title is especially unfunny because it’s meant to be a joke. A planet on course to crash into Earth is named Melancholia to match the depressed mood of a young bride (Kirsten Dunst) and her jealous, paranoid sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg) who are stuck on palatial, Marienbad-like grounds somewhere in Europe.

In Take Shelter, Ohio miner Curtis (Michael Shannon) suffers a nervous breakdown when he envisions storms and weather changes as signs of catastrophe, disrupting his work and family life.

There’s an unavoidable political dimension to Nichols’ fear, as there was in Shotgun Stories; his sense of terror seems to arise from a post-9/11 social dissatisfaction that most filmmakers, repeating blue state attitudes, don’t even think about. The paranoia in Take Shelter goes way beyond the mainstream media’s Hurricane Katrina apologetics. Something worse is coming, Nichols suggests, and it’s not just in Curtis’ head. (A church social freak-out turns him into a millennial prophet.) Given Curtis’ workplace distractions and income expenditures, the coming catastrophe is vaguely social, perhaps tied to the current recession.

Yet Nichols has no sense of metaphor (and thankfully lacks a political pundit’s shamelessness). Instead, his one-track realism—which felt powerful and inevitably tragic and cathartic in Shotgun Stories—becomes agitated and overwrought, especially when the naturalistic performances by Shannon, Jessica Chastain as his wife and Shea Whigham as a trusting coworker are put into exaggerated, horror-movie contexts. The mounting fear doesn’t gain credibility—it just seems as if Curtis has beamed up to the planet Melancholia.

But in von Trier’s perverse wedding party, a pathologically fickle bride, Justine (Dunst), offends her guests and cheats on her husband (Alexander Skarsgård), then indulges her sister and brother-in-law’s (Kiefer Sutherland) fears of the apocalypse. This allows von Trier to mock his own Dogme peers (1999’s The Celebration) while pointedly offering an anti-humanist retort to Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married. It’s a hostile gesture that confirms that Demme’s life-force comedy had indeed uncovered the foundation of contemporary social anxiety and agape and so must be rebutted.

In von Trier’s smash-the-planet, chop-down-Malick’s-Tree-of-Life mode, he touches upon modern skepticism as well as age-old Christian anxieties to no perceivable purpose other than to deride them. Art mockery is this prankster’s stock-in-trade.

Von Trier, who is not untalented, makes pretty pictures of waste, dejection, hopelessness and entropy, first with a pre-credit montage of mysterious, frightening prophecies staged in slow-motion dioramas. These images are strikingly aestheticized but banal tableaux, the kind typically seen in music videos—which the audience then has to sit through again in von Trier’s dragged out, aimless narrative.

Melancholia’s glossy, stylized, repetitive slickness contrasts Nichols’ straightforward blue-collar anxiety. Von Trier’s joke is making the fantastic meet the mundane, but Nichols doesn’t go for jokes. He suffers with his Middle American characters, partaking of their eschatological neuroses. Von Trier and Nichols both dispense with a spiritual or religious explanation for their end-times visions, they simply wait for the end of the world; one with a sick grin, the other with a no more helpful sense of destiny.

How does one take shelter from Melancholia? Maybe by watching more substantive and stimulating movies like Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Colombiana and Attack the Block. Unfortunately, the art house pretense that got von Trier’s Melancholia into the New York Film Festival isn’t so different from the indie nihilism that Nichols succumbs to in Take Shelter. Both fail similarly: von Trier exploits the what’s-it that’s got Nichols aggrieved, and each film is a modern demonstration of secular panic in the face of the ineffable.

Curtis’ obsession with building a storm shelter recalls the mania that gripped Richard Dreyfuss’s Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. One of that film’s many rich levels suggested that Neary’s unknowable drive also came from a great, inexplicable inspiration—essentially an artistic impulse. In the end, von Trier’s bride and Nichols’ grunt are not artists or believers; they’re just fashionably doomed.

http://cityarts.info/2011/11/08/beam-me-down-lars/

Looking forward to MELANCHOLIA. I noticed it's made its way into the theaters around NY.

I also just got a hold of ANTICHRIST and will be checking it out tonight.

Mr. Brown wrote:

I also just got a hold of ANTICHRIST and will be checking it out tonight.

God help you.

I'm looking forward to both MELANCHOLIA and TAKE SHELTER. White's criticisms in this case strike me as very plausible. Nevertheless, I'm eager to give 'em a look (but not before I get to see Almodovar's THE SKIN I LIVE IN).

Mr. Brown wrote:

Looking forward to MELANCHOLIA. I noticed it's made its way into the theaters around NY.

Have you seen it yet? I'm watching it on Friday.

I know I'm not Brown, but I saw MELANCHOLIA the other night. Found it quite dull. That said, I prefer Ed Gonzalez's review to Armond White's.

Nah, lousy review that. Too much time wasted on mind-numbing synopsis .I've always liked the way Armond draws parallels and contrasts between other films.