Friday, January 18, 2008

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Armond the Hammer

Somebody Else's Meta-Review
This [review for There Will be Blood] is the worst movie review I have ever
read (“A Guilt-Soaked Epic,” Jan. 2-8). Aspects of it lead me to believe that
your reviewer [Armond White] is mentally deficient for failing to grasp
painfully obvious plot elements, such as the “estranged brother” character, who
is not an estranged brother at all, but a charlatan, which is where the gravitas
of the Plainview character is fully manifest. He not only fails to recognize the
best dramatic performance of the last 25 years, but his incessant name-dropping
of irrelevant RELICS is not only obnoxious, but confuses even the most patient
reader. This review, honestly, belongs in the SAT examination, as an object of
boredom to be mocked and sworn at, representative of film criticism at its most
masturbatory. This is the nadir of film criticism, and your reviewer is a
blithering idiot.—Daniel Simon

Since reading White's "The Resistance," I've been on the lookout for his reviews and reactions he provokes. Kevin over at GiTM mentioned him in passing the other day as well. I'm standing by my Second-Best-Film-Critic vote until I borrow "Chuck and Larry" from JD and confirm my suspicion that it's a piece of crap.

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Why Armond White is My New Favorite Movie Critic (After Filthy)


'"The Bubble,' featuring the year's best original screenplay, is one of the peaks of the gay cinema breakthroughs that critics pretended to welcome with the big-budget, name-star 'Brokeback Mountain' but then ignored as a matter of habit. Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox's symbolic situations, recognizable characters and nuanced dialog surpasses even the superb (and unfairly maligned) 'I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry' in realistic details. Fox's script isn't a satire but a political romance that dares give unprejudiced clarity to the inequities of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, global homophobia and middle-class privilege." -- Armond White [indieWIRE]

Is he brilliant or totally wack? I'm not sure, I guess I'd have to netflix ' ... Chuck and Larry' to find out, a step I can't bring myself to take; but, I like that I'm almost always surprised by his reviews.
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