Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Fire Joe Morgenstern
Today, we have a major milestone: We are covering a reviewer other than Armond White. I know, I know. Crazy. So who is our subject today? None other than the longtime reviewer of the Wall Street Journal, Joe Morgenstern.
What exactly can we expect from a reviewer from a newspaper whose conglomerate sibling is Fox News? Let's find out.
First, here's an interesting article about how James Cameron took Joe Morgenstern on a trip inside a 0 G simulator plane.
But don't let that skew your objectivity. I'm sure ol' Joe didn't.
James Cameron's "Avatar" takes place on a planet called Pandora, where American corporations and their military mercenaries have set up bases to mine a surpassingly precious mineral called unobtanium. The vein of awe mined by the movie is nothing short of unbelievium.
Gettit?! They both end in "um!" What a clever dude.
This is a new way of coming to your senses—put those 3-D glasses on your face and you come to a sense of delight that quickly gives way to a sense of astonishment. The planetary high doesn't last. The closer the story comes to a lumbering parable of colonialist aggression in the jungles of an extragalactic Vietnam, the more the enchantment fizzles.
Is that... Is that an actual criticism about the film?
Much of the time, though, you're transfixed by the beauty of a spectacle that seems all of a piece. Special effects have been abolished, in effect, since the whole thing is so special.
Translation: Never mind that, though. PRETTY COLORS!
The Na'vi versions of Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington in James Cameron's 'Avatar.'
The word "avatar" wasn't invented by Mr. Cameron, though everything else in the production seems to have been.
Except the story or characters.
In Hindu myth, an avatar is a deity descended to earth in human form. In computer parlance it's an icon that represents a person in virtual reality or cyberspace. In the movie it's a manufactured body that's remotely controlled—not by some hand-held clicker but through brain waves generated by a human being who functions as the body's driver.
Joe uses Wikipedia!
If this sounds technobabbly in the description, it's dazzling in the execution.
I believe that's what Kevin Costner said about "Waterworld".
No description of that scenery will spoil the experience of the 3-D process (which dispenses with the usual eye-catching tricks) or the seamless integration of live action, motion-capture, animation, computer-generated images and whatever other techniques went into the mix—maybe witchcraft or black magic.
WITCH HUNT! WITCH HUNT!
(I haven't seen the IMAX version; that's for my next viewing.)
He's waiting for the IMAX early bird special.
Some of the flora suggest an anhydrous Great Barrier Reef (airborne jellyfish, coral-colored conical plants that spiral down to almost-nothingness when touched) or, in the case of Pandora's floating mountains, represent an homage to the Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki. As for the fauna, they're not only prodigiously varied—flamboyant dragons, six-legged steeds, elephantine chargers with heads like battering rams, nature-blue in tooth and claw—but creatures with convincing lives of their own, unlike the cheerfully bizarre creations that filled the Mos Eisley cantina in "Star Wars."
But those brain-aliens with clarinets are much less likely to kill you.
Then there are the indigènes, the French term for natives being appropriate because Pandora evokes the Indochina that existed before France's doomed war against an indigenous insurgency, as well as the Vietnam that became a battleground for American troops. They're called the Na'vi, and to describe them as humanoid may be to defame them, inasmuch as they, unlike most of the film's Americans, revere their planet and live in harmony with their surroundings.
I'm sure that James Cameron was going for an allegory for the complex French/Indochina relations, aren't you?
The most beautiful of the Na'vis—at least the one with the most obvious star quality—is a female warrior named Neytiri. As most of our planet already knows from the publicity, Jake falls for her in a big but complicated way.
If by complicated you mean "Pocahontas-esque", sure.
Big because Neytiri, as played by Zoë Saldana, is so alluring—cerulean-skinned, lemon-eyed, wasp-waisted, long-tailed, anvil-nosed, wiggly-eared (trust me, it's all seductive)
Is there something slightly creepy about an elderly man commenting on the sexyness of a CGI woman he stared at on a screen?
But complicated because Jake is secretly working both sides of the jungle.
You mean like Pocahontas?
He's in love with Neytiri, and soon embraces her people's values. (Yes, there's circumstantial evidence that Mr. Cameron knows about "Dances With Wolves," along with "Tarzan," "Green Mansions," "Frankenstein," "Princess Mononoke," "South Pacific," "Spartacus" and "Top Gun.")
As much "circumstantial" evidence as the OJ Simpson trial.
At the same time, Jake is spying for a gimlet-eyed military commander, Col. Miles Quaritch. (Stephen Lang proves that broad, cartoony acting can also be good acting.) The evil colonel has promised the ex-Marine a procedure that will restore the use of his paralyzed legs in exchange for information that will help chase the Na'vi from their sacred land, which happens to be the only place where unobtainium can be obtained.
Making Jake a double agent makes everything original. That explains it.
It's no reflection on Mr. Worthington or Ms. Saldana, both of whom are impressive—though how, exactly, do you judge such high-tech hybrid performances?—that their interspecies love story lacks the heat of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet clinging to each other on the storm-swept decks of "Titanic."
Joe misses the nude-sketching scenes.
Teenage girls will not return to see this film half a dozen times or more unless they possess a rogue gene for wigglable ears. But then "Avatar" revises the relationship between everyone in the audience and the characters on screen. Actors have always been avatars; they've always represented our hopes and fears in the virtual reality of motion pictures. In much of this film, however, they've been transformed by technology into a new and ambiguous breed of entertainment icon—not the quasihuman denizens of "The Wizard of Oz," or the overgrown glove puppets of "The Polar Express," but nearly palpable fantasy figures that inhabit a world just beyond our reach.
We get it, Joe, you liked the Special effects.
The fantasy quotient of "Avatar" takes its first major hit when the Na'vi take their first hit from the American military. Mr. Cameron has devoted a significant chunk of his movie to a dark, didactic and altogether horrific evocation of Vietnam, complete with napalm, Agent Orange and helicopter gunships (one of which is named Valkyrie in a tip of the helmet to "Apocalypse Now.") Whatever one may think of the politics of this antiwar section, two things can be said with certainty: it provokes an adrenalin rush (what that says of our species is another matter), and it feels a lot better when it's over.
No anti-war stuff! This is the Wall Street Journal, remember!
Other narrative problems intrude. For all its political correctness about the goodness of the Na'vis, "Avatar" lapses into lurid savage rituals, complete with jungle drums, that would not have seemed out of place in the first "King Kong."
Jungle drums = Savages?
While Ms. Weaver's performance is a strong one, it isn't clear what her character is doing as an avatar, or how the Na'vi perceive her.
You're right, it isn't clear at all why the person heading the Avatar research group has an Avatar.
What couldn't be clearer, though, is that Mr. Cameron's singular vision has upped the ante for filmed entertainment, and given us a travelogue unlike any other.
Except it didn't end in a plug for "Expedia".
I wouldn't want to live on Pandora, mainly because of the bad air, but I'm glad to have paid it a visit.
The bad air didn't stop you from drinking the kool-aid.
Now I'm not going to imply anything about Joe's lack of journalistic integrity.
But I will show this picture:
Joe is on the far left, James Cameron is in the center, getting chummy.
What exactly can we expect from a reviewer from a newspaper whose conglomerate sibling is Fox News? Let's find out.
First, here's an interesting article about how James Cameron took Joe Morgenstern on a trip inside a 0 G simulator plane.
But don't let that skew your objectivity. I'm sure ol' Joe didn't.
James Cameron's "Avatar" takes place on a planet called Pandora, where American corporations and their military mercenaries have set up bases to mine a surpassingly precious mineral called unobtanium. The vein of awe mined by the movie is nothing short of unbelievium.
Gettit?! They both end in "um!" What a clever dude.
This is a new way of coming to your senses—put those 3-D glasses on your face and you come to a sense of delight that quickly gives way to a sense of astonishment. The planetary high doesn't last. The closer the story comes to a lumbering parable of colonialist aggression in the jungles of an extragalactic Vietnam, the more the enchantment fizzles.
Is that... Is that an actual criticism about the film?
Much of the time, though, you're transfixed by the beauty of a spectacle that seems all of a piece. Special effects have been abolished, in effect, since the whole thing is so special.
Translation: Never mind that, though. PRETTY COLORS!
The Na'vi versions of Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington in James Cameron's 'Avatar.'
The word "avatar" wasn't invented by Mr. Cameron, though everything else in the production seems to have been.
Except the story or characters.
In Hindu myth, an avatar is a deity descended to earth in human form. In computer parlance it's an icon that represents a person in virtual reality or cyberspace. In the movie it's a manufactured body that's remotely controlled—not by some hand-held clicker but through brain waves generated by a human being who functions as the body's driver.
Joe uses Wikipedia!
If this sounds technobabbly in the description, it's dazzling in the execution.
I believe that's what Kevin Costner said about "Waterworld".
No description of that scenery will spoil the experience of the 3-D process (which dispenses with the usual eye-catching tricks) or the seamless integration of live action, motion-capture, animation, computer-generated images and whatever other techniques went into the mix—maybe witchcraft or black magic.
WITCH HUNT! WITCH HUNT!
(I haven't seen the IMAX version; that's for my next viewing.)
He's waiting for the IMAX early bird special.
Some of the flora suggest an anhydrous Great Barrier Reef (airborne jellyfish, coral-colored conical plants that spiral down to almost-nothingness when touched) or, in the case of Pandora's floating mountains, represent an homage to the Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki. As for the fauna, they're not only prodigiously varied—flamboyant dragons, six-legged steeds, elephantine chargers with heads like battering rams, nature-blue in tooth and claw—but creatures with convincing lives of their own, unlike the cheerfully bizarre creations that filled the Mos Eisley cantina in "Star Wars."
But those brain-aliens with clarinets are much less likely to kill you.
Then there are the indigènes, the French term for natives being appropriate because Pandora evokes the Indochina that existed before France's doomed war against an indigenous insurgency, as well as the Vietnam that became a battleground for American troops. They're called the Na'vi, and to describe them as humanoid may be to defame them, inasmuch as they, unlike most of the film's Americans, revere their planet and live in harmony with their surroundings.
I'm sure that James Cameron was going for an allegory for the complex French/Indochina relations, aren't you?
The most beautiful of the Na'vis—at least the one with the most obvious star quality—is a female warrior named Neytiri. As most of our planet already knows from the publicity, Jake falls for her in a big but complicated way.
If by complicated you mean "Pocahontas-esque", sure.
Big because Neytiri, as played by Zoë Saldana, is so alluring—cerulean-skinned, lemon-eyed, wasp-waisted, long-tailed, anvil-nosed, wiggly-eared (trust me, it's all seductive)
Is there something slightly creepy about an elderly man commenting on the sexyness of a CGI woman he stared at on a screen?
But complicated because Jake is secretly working both sides of the jungle.
You mean like Pocahontas?
He's in love with Neytiri, and soon embraces her people's values. (Yes, there's circumstantial evidence that Mr. Cameron knows about "Dances With Wolves," along with "Tarzan," "Green Mansions," "Frankenstein," "Princess Mononoke," "South Pacific," "Spartacus" and "Top Gun.")
As much "circumstantial" evidence as the OJ Simpson trial.
At the same time, Jake is spying for a gimlet-eyed military commander, Col. Miles Quaritch. (Stephen Lang proves that broad, cartoony acting can also be good acting.) The evil colonel has promised the ex-Marine a procedure that will restore the use of his paralyzed legs in exchange for information that will help chase the Na'vi from their sacred land, which happens to be the only place where unobtainium can be obtained.
Making Jake a double agent makes everything original. That explains it.
It's no reflection on Mr. Worthington or Ms. Saldana, both of whom are impressive—though how, exactly, do you judge such high-tech hybrid performances?—that their interspecies love story lacks the heat of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet clinging to each other on the storm-swept decks of "Titanic."
Joe misses the nude-sketching scenes.
Teenage girls will not return to see this film half a dozen times or more unless they possess a rogue gene for wigglable ears. But then "Avatar" revises the relationship between everyone in the audience and the characters on screen. Actors have always been avatars; they've always represented our hopes and fears in the virtual reality of motion pictures. In much of this film, however, they've been transformed by technology into a new and ambiguous breed of entertainment icon—not the quasihuman denizens of "The Wizard of Oz," or the overgrown glove puppets of "The Polar Express," but nearly palpable fantasy figures that inhabit a world just beyond our reach.
We get it, Joe, you liked the Special effects.
The fantasy quotient of "Avatar" takes its first major hit when the Na'vi take their first hit from the American military. Mr. Cameron has devoted a significant chunk of his movie to a dark, didactic and altogether horrific evocation of Vietnam, complete with napalm, Agent Orange and helicopter gunships (one of which is named Valkyrie in a tip of the helmet to "Apocalypse Now.") Whatever one may think of the politics of this antiwar section, two things can be said with certainty: it provokes an adrenalin rush (what that says of our species is another matter), and it feels a lot better when it's over.
No anti-war stuff! This is the Wall Street Journal, remember!
Other narrative problems intrude. For all its political correctness about the goodness of the Na'vis, "Avatar" lapses into lurid savage rituals, complete with jungle drums, that would not have seemed out of place in the first "King Kong."
Jungle drums = Savages?
While Ms. Weaver's performance is a strong one, it isn't clear what her character is doing as an avatar, or how the Na'vi perceive her.
You're right, it isn't clear at all why the person heading the Avatar research group has an Avatar.
What couldn't be clearer, though, is that Mr. Cameron's singular vision has upped the ante for filmed entertainment, and given us a travelogue unlike any other.
Except it didn't end in a plug for "Expedia".
I wouldn't want to live on Pandora, mainly because of the bad air, but I'm glad to have paid it a visit.
The bad air didn't stop you from drinking the kool-aid.
Now I'm not going to imply anything about Joe's lack of journalistic integrity.
But I will show this picture:
Joe is on the far left, James Cameron is in the center, getting chummy.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Armond's 2010 Wrapup
Hey folks, welcome back to Fire Armond White! It's been a long four months, but we're back from hiatus and ready to roll. Now of course the Academy Award Nominations came out this morning. More on that when we're ready to process it.
From here until Oscar Night, we'll be discussing several other reviewers and film journalists who we feel are deserving of tomatoes in the face, but for now, just to get back in the spirit of things, here's a nice little piece from Armond White that wrapped up his 2010 in cinema. Now as usual, our pal Armond couldn't do a end-of-year review the old fashioned way - picking boring Top 10s and Bottom 10s or whatnot. Instead, he decided to post his alternatives to movies considered the best of the year by other critics. Classy move.
He starts off by "Unfriending" the facebook movie The Social Network.
Mainstream Consensus names The Social Network the film of the year but everybody knows it lacks the power and popularity of true consensus-making films like On the Waterfront, The Godfather, E.T. and Saving Private Ryan. The questionable unanimity around TSN proves the disconnect between pundits and the public and exposes how so-called critics' tendency to flatter their own caste fails to grasp genuine film art.
That's right. Everybody calls The Social Network the best film of the year, but everybody knows it sucks. Don't snicker, we're getting valuable insight into how Armond thinks.
This year's Better-Than List provides an opportunity to see how a great year for movies, highlighted by a renaissance of cinema's Old Masters—from Resnais and Bellocchio to Chabrol and Haile Gerima
Do you know who any of those people are? Me neither. Moving on.
—has been obscured by the media preference for slick new images of its own noxious, select kind. The Social Network rewards immorality, but this list knows better.
It's noxious, but is it nihilistic?
Wild Grass > The Social Network
By "Wild Grass", he is of course referring to film released only in France. Remember, Armond is not an elitist!
Alain Resnais concocted one of the year's two best films with a constantly inventive fantasia on our common idiosyncrasynot polarized like the high-tech bullying that David Fincher burnishes and sentimentalizes.
He's breakin' out the thesaurus. "Idiosyncrasynot" means... oh hang on, it's just a typo, he meant to just say "idiosyncrasy". Much better.
Now from here on out we get a barrage of picks:
Vincere > Carlos
Mother and Child > The Kids Are All Right
Life During Wartime > The King's Speech
But then we get this:
Another Year > The Social Network
Mike Leigh looks at the middle-aged need to connect sympathetically, exquisitely, while Fincher and Aaron Sorkin's TV-glib script reduces human relations to a sophomoric power grab.
Sophomoric power grabs in a movie about a sophomore grabbing power? Inconceivable.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World > Inception
Edgar Wright finds a funny, sexy, visually exciting way to illustrate the mind while Christopher Nolan bends the frame—and fanboys—into mindlessness.
You heard it here first. Armond White finds Michael Cera sexy and visually exciting.
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole > Toy Story 3
Zack Snyder's such a compelling visionary he can credibly turn owls into human surrogates while resurrecting the moral meaning of narrative; Toy Story 3 is a full-length commercial for dupes who mistake merchandizing for culture.
And for those who mistake "merchandizing" for a legitimate criticism.
City Island > The Social Network
Gotta have at the Facebook movie once again,
Have at it. Always follow your dreams!
if only to counter the fallacious consensus that no other movie dealt with the Internet phenomenon.
Armond is in fact discussing the other movie made about Facebook, entitled "This Movie Does Not Exist".
Ray De Felitta's emotionally large family comedy and Andy Garcia's warm comeback performance epitomized timeless, non-cyber interfacing.
Or no, actually he's discussing... "City Island", a movie that has nothing to do with... Facebook... or the Internet...
But that doesn't matter. You keep going, Armond. Don't let anybody stop you.
From here until Oscar Night, we'll be discussing several other reviewers and film journalists who we feel are deserving of tomatoes in the face, but for now, just to get back in the spirit of things, here's a nice little piece from Armond White that wrapped up his 2010 in cinema. Now as usual, our pal Armond couldn't do a end-of-year review the old fashioned way - picking boring Top 10s and Bottom 10s or whatnot. Instead, he decided to post his alternatives to movies considered the best of the year by other critics. Classy move.
He starts off by "Unfriending" the facebook movie The Social Network.
Mainstream Consensus names The Social Network the film of the year but everybody knows it lacks the power and popularity of true consensus-making films like On the Waterfront, The Godfather, E.T. and Saving Private Ryan. The questionable unanimity around TSN proves the disconnect between pundits and the public and exposes how so-called critics' tendency to flatter their own caste fails to grasp genuine film art.
That's right. Everybody calls The Social Network the best film of the year, but everybody knows it sucks. Don't snicker, we're getting valuable insight into how Armond thinks.
This year's Better-Than List provides an opportunity to see how a great year for movies, highlighted by a renaissance of cinema's Old Masters—from Resnais and Bellocchio to Chabrol and Haile Gerima
Do you know who any of those people are? Me neither. Moving on.
—has been obscured by the media preference for slick new images of its own noxious, select kind. The Social Network rewards immorality, but this list knows better.
It's noxious, but is it nihilistic?
Wild Grass > The Social Network
By "Wild Grass", he is of course referring to film released only in France. Remember, Armond is not an elitist!
Alain Resnais concocted one of the year's two best films with a constantly inventive fantasia on our common idiosyncrasynot polarized like the high-tech bullying that David Fincher burnishes and sentimentalizes.
He's breakin' out the thesaurus. "Idiosyncrasynot" means... oh hang on, it's just a typo, he meant to just say "idiosyncrasy". Much better.
Now from here on out we get a barrage of picks:
Vincere > Carlos
Mother and Child > The Kids Are All Right
Life During Wartime > The King's Speech
But then we get this:
Another Year > The Social Network
Mike Leigh looks at the middle-aged need to connect sympathetically, exquisitely, while Fincher and Aaron Sorkin's TV-glib script reduces human relations to a sophomoric power grab.
Sophomoric power grabs in a movie about a sophomore grabbing power? Inconceivable.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World > Inception
Edgar Wright finds a funny, sexy, visually exciting way to illustrate the mind while Christopher Nolan bends the frame—and fanboys—into mindlessness.
You heard it here first. Armond White finds Michael Cera sexy and visually exciting.
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole > Toy Story 3
Zack Snyder's such a compelling visionary he can credibly turn owls into human surrogates while resurrecting the moral meaning of narrative; Toy Story 3 is a full-length commercial for dupes who mistake merchandizing for culture.
And for those who mistake "merchandizing" for a legitimate criticism.
City Island > The Social Network
Gotta have at the Facebook movie once again,
Have at it. Always follow your dreams!
if only to counter the fallacious consensus that no other movie dealt with the Internet phenomenon.
Armond is in fact discussing the other movie made about Facebook, entitled "This Movie Does Not Exist".
Ray De Felitta's emotionally large family comedy and Andy Garcia's warm comeback performance epitomized timeless, non-cyber interfacing.
Or no, actually he's discussing... "City Island", a movie that has nothing to do with... Facebook... or the Internet...
But that doesn't matter. You keep going, Armond. Don't let anybody stop you.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Armond's Evil
Hello, boys and girls! Long time, no see! Today we're looking at Armond White's review of "Resident Evil: Afterlife." Enjoy!
Sometimes directors grab an opportunity just to stretch their filmmaking muscles. That explains both Mark Romanek’s new venture, Never Let Me Go, and why Paul W.S. Anderson has essayed Resident Evil: Afterlife, his second movie in the Resident Evil series, which he initiated with the fantastically swift, streamlined and compelling original film in 2002.
If by "original", you mean based on a long-running series of Japanese video games, sure.
In Afterlife, Anderson confirms his astonishing gift for imagery and frighteningly good action craft. Despite the grim, pessimistic CapCom video game premise where Alice (Milla Jovovich) fights a constantly mutating, globe-threatening virus—like Ripley always battling those aliens—Anderson finds ways to depict apocalyptic scenarios that actually suggest foresight.
Foresight of Apocalyptic scenarios, that is. It's not like Anderson was predicting the economy in Q3 of 2012 or something.
They have a stylish, sharp-witted sense of the future and a dreamy, exciting faith in human resilience embodied in Jovovich’s lithe, resourceful, strikingly lovely Alice, as well as a group of survivors that include actors Boris Kodjoe and Ali Larter.
Some of the best actors of a generation, to be sure.
But I get it now: Armond prefers apocalyptic futures with faith in humanity. Just like I prefer my skiing to be extra rocky.
If critics and fanboys weren’t suckers for simplistic nihilism
DRINK!!!!!
and high-pressure marketing, Afterlife would be universally acclaimed as a visionary feat, superior to Inception and Avatar on every level.
You know what, Armond? You're absolutely right. If "critics" and "fanboys" didn't … like… other… movies… they… would… like… this… one.
Brilliant!
Just look at how Anderson activates his canvas in the plane crash sequence. First, the shock of the crash is solarized in a wide shot, then he cuts to the interior where the imagery is frozen yet the camera pans left, moving through suspended time, characters and objects, all composed in perfect pop-art balance like a James Rosenquist panorama, and then the camera pivots—and in 3-D.
Holy Sh*t! He has a wide shot of a crash! Then an interior shot! An interior shot that MOVES! IN MOTHAF*CKING 3-D!
What incredible, mind-blowing, innovating directing! Wide-shot then interior shot… WOW!
Did someone forget to mention to Armond that there are two Paul Andersons, and this is the other one?
Anderson redeems that techno-gimmick which James Cameron foolishly hawks as a gateway to new perception because he realizes it’s just a play thing, not a New Age talisman.
Anderson redeems 3-D because he realizes its a gimmick and uses it anyway? Is Barry Bonds redeemed for realizing steroids were shrinking his junk but using them anyway?
Anderson toys with 3-D for artistic caprice, constantly shifting levels, distance, perspective, layers.
3-D has layers. Like Onions. Or Ogres.
He’s a clear-eyed visionary who expiates videogame cynicism, insisting on imaginative potential. When Alice is resurrected from her android state (“Thank you for making me human”), it confirms Anderson’s ingenuity as a life force.
So, to recap, not only is Anderson a magnificent, visionary director, he's an ingenious "life force"!
Afterlife opens with deceptively dark movie homages to Demy’s Umbrellas of Cherbourg, plus teasing riffs on Hitchcock’s The Birds, Terminator, even The Texas Chainsaw Massacre when Jovovich and Larter team up to facedown a terrifying male behemoth—
You can call them "homages". You can also call them "rip-offs".
it’s a stunning bad bitcharama.
Now I know why Armond enjoyed this film.
Anderson never got the respect he deserved for his great Death Race.
Don't forget his epic masterpiece "Mortal Kombat".
But now that opportunity’s knocked again, he knocks it into the stratosphere.
Wait… Opportunity knocks, he knocks Opportunity into the stratosphere? You mean like instead of taking said Opportunity, he hits it so far away from him it ends up in the atmosphere? Did Armond mix up what he was saying?
Either Armond was being surprisingly honest here or he needs to brush up on his metaphors.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Armond White on /Filmcast
Our pal Armond appeared on the /Filmcast to more or less explain himself in front of the virtual lynch mob that's been lighting their torches and sharpening their pitchforks ever since he panned District 9.For right now, there's far too many gangrenous quotes from Mr. White for me to wade through here, but expect a post detailing some of my favorite Armond soundbites.
Although I did take a listen to the part where Armond defends himself and explains why Transformers 2 is a "piece of art" while Inception is a horrible film without any redeeming qualities. His defense boiled down to:
"I'm smart and can point out why Transformers 2 is better. I can't do that here, but I could if I had a Moviola on me."
Nicely done, Mr. White.
Podcast can be found here:
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Armond vs. Toys
On Thursday, we looked at Armond White's pan of Inception. I have now seen Inception. More on that later.
Today, let's take a look at Armond's other critical sucker-punch (or more like an arm flail that resembles a punch), his review of Toy Story 3.
Now, if you're like me, and have fond childhood memories of seeing the original 'Toy Story's (sp?) in the theatre, having Toy Story 3 come out was a bit like revisting old memories. Not for Armond White. For him, it was like revisiting old bowel movements.
Let's jump in!
Pixar has now made three movies explicitly about toys, yet the best movie depiction of how toys express human experience remains Whit Stillman’s 1990 Metropolitan.
Armond jumps right in by saying Toy Story 3 doesn't match his own Indie adult drama. I'm not going to go for the easy joke that this line is pretentious as hell. But I won't.
But you admit this line doesn't match the human pretentious experience as much as David Edelstein's review of Maria Full of Grace. Right?
But Toy Story 3 is so besotted with brand names and product-placement that it stops being about the innocent pleasures of imagination—the usefulness of toys—and strictly celebrates consumerism.
The lesson, ladies and gentlemen, is that Armond White enjoys seeing characters in movies drinking "KING COLA" and getting their e-mail through "UMAIL.COM".
I feel like a 6-year-old
That explains a lot.
having to report how in Toy Story 3 two dolls—Sheriff Woody (Tom Hanks) and Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen)—try to save a toy box of childhood playthings from either disuse or imprisonment as donations to a daycare center because their human owner, 17-year-old Andy, packs them up as he heads off to college.
You're watching a G rated CGI family film - did you expect adult-sounding plot points?
Like Woody must deal with the kidnapping of his adopted step-son after the death of his wife in Iraq after a drug deal gone wrong.
But none of these digital-cartoon characters reflect human experience; it’s essentially a bored game that only the brainwashed will buy into. Besides, Transformers 2 already explored the same plot to greater thrill and opulence.
BWAHAHAH!!! HAHA!!! Uhaha - uh... He was joking, right?
I must be brainwashed!
I admit to simply not digging the toys-come-to-life fantasy (I don’t babysit children, so I don’t have to)
Sorry to break it to you, Mr. White, but you babysit your own mind, so there -
Toy Story 3 suckers fans to think they can accept this drivel without paying for it politically, aesthetically or spiritually.
I always knew Toy Story 3 was a political allegory!
Look at the Barbie and Ken sequence where the sexually dubious male doll struts a chick-flick fashion show. Since it serves the same time-keeping purpose as a chick-flick digression, it’s not satirical. We’re meant to enjoy our susceptibility, not question it, as in Joe Dante’s more challenging Small Soldiers.
I was a huge fan of Small Soldiers once... When I was 9.
Have shill-critics forgotten that movie?
What's Small Soldiers again?
Do they mistake Toy Story 3’s day for 4th of July patriotism opening ?
Did you mistake Toy Story 3's opening for election day? Politics and Pixar mix like Shrek and torture porn.
Only Big Baby, with one Keane eye and one lazy eye, and Mr. Potato Head’s deconstruction into Dali’s slip-sliding “Persistence of Memory” are worthy of mature delectation
He sure likes the word "delectation", doesn't he?
The Toy Story franchise isn’t for children and adults, it’s for non-thinking children and adults. When a movie is this formulaic, it’s no longer a toy because it does all the work for you. It’s a sap’s story.
non-thinking children and adults? Then why didn't you like it, Armond?
BOOOM! SUCKER-PUNCHED!
Friday, July 16, 2010
Armond White: Punny Inception
To kick off our new website with a bang, I present you Armond White's review of Inception.
Enjoy. Pretension is like... fine wine.
Christopher Nolan doesn’t have a born filmmaker’s natural gift for detail, composition and movement, but on the evidence of his fussily constructed mind-game movies Following, Memento, Insomnia and the new Inception, he’s definitely a born con artist.
How nice! Everybody knows you start off a review by insulting the director!
When I reviewed Avatar, the first thing I wrote was "F*ck you, James Cameron, you suck."
Maybe I'm not as eloquent as Mr. White here, but I subscribe to the same school of thought.
Inception proves this is Nolan’s moment—a beginning-of-the-end moment for film culture
Holy crap! The Mayans were right! Film culture really is ending in 2010!
Be afraid, ladies and gents. Our buddy Armond says it is so...
It takes the form of a sci-fi adventure movie, updating the old Fantastic Voyage for the digital age, but instead of exploring the human body, Leonardo DiCaprio as dream extractor Dom Cobb goes inside people’s unconscious with the help of his young exploratory team: Joseph Gordon-levitt, Ellen Page and Tom Hardy.
Right, because a movie about people exploring the inside of a human body in a spaceship is very similar to a movie about people trying to steal ideas from a person's subconscious... Did our Friendy Neighborhood Armond even watch this movie?
Its essential con is that, as in Memento, Nolan ignores the morality of his characters’ actions; he accepts that they will do anything—which is the cynicism critics admired in Memento, the con-man’s motivating nihilism.
OMFG - did you see that? Armond dropped the N bomb... Nihilism! I really didn't think he would do that. I mean, I know his reviewing style depends on the shock of using that word so frequently, but... man. It never gets old.
On a serious note, ignoring morality is great fun. You should try it some time Armond.
Stuck in film-noir mode
...As opposed to jumping in and out of film noir mode? What, did you want Inception to be the next Last Action Hero?
Like Grand Theft Auto’s quasi-cinematic extension of noir and action-flick plots, Inception manipulates the digital audience’s delectation for relentless subterfuge.
Excuse me for a moment while I consult the dictionary. Delectation means delights, okay... Subterfuge means "A statement or action resorted to in order to deceive." Ah, back with the old Nolan-is-a-con-man routine. Excellent. On a more serious note, we, the "digital audience" want to be tricked?
Is that why Armond liked Transformers 2? Because it was so damn simple he didn't feel tricked?
Cobb never runs into paradisaical visions like What Dreams May Come—only terror, danger and violence.
Oh yeah? And the music didn't match the brilliance of High Noon, and the cinematography wasn't as brooding as Dark City, and oh! oh! the action didn't match the high-intensity chaos of Armond's favorite Death Race?
See, I can do it too.
Nolan out-Finchers Fincher and seeks Kubrickian misanthropy—but there’s a simple-minded sappiness at the heart of this cynical vision.
Am I the only one who is wondering how a movie can be nihilistic and sappy at the same time? Would that be like a version of "The Blind Side" where at the end Michael goes on a killing rampage for the hell of it?
Inception is full of second-rate aesthetics, yet when shoddy aesthetics become the new standard, it’s sufficient to up-end the art of cinema.
Boom! Take that, modern cinema which I'm currently making a living on!
Nolan’s fascinated by his cast of narcissistic criminals indulging their own treacheries—nihilism chasing its own tail.
Someone needs to tell Armond that he doesn't need to use the N word to be funny.
it distracts from how business and class really work. his shapeless storytelling (going from Paris to Mumbai to nameless ski slopes, carelessly shifting tenses like a video game) throws audiences into artistic limbo—an “unconstructed dream space” like Toy Story 3—that leaves them bereft of art’s genuine purpose: a way of dealing with the real world.
Ooh - Armond smackdown on Toy Story 3!
That's like a 60 year old man wrestling a teddy bear. It's hilarious, but at times... Sad.
Cobb’s dream obsession suggests pop-culture addiction, mirroring how consumers habitually escape reality with video games and movies. But Nolan never critiques this as Neveldine/Taylor did in Gamer.
Oh really, Armond? Does every negative review from you spiral into talk about pop-culture/materialistic societies?
And OMG, how did I forget Gamer, with its 29% Approval rating on RottenTomatoes!
It was, lest we forget, a 21st century masterpiece.
this conceptual failure is apparent from DiCaprio’s glib characterization. Nolan finally has the budget to work with his look-alike (Leo’s an irresistible movie star), yet fails to write him a good role. Cobb suffers the same marital nightmares leo had in Shutter Island; this isn’t depth, it’s morbidity and the confusion is all over the screen.
Forgetting the Hi-Larious misuse of capitalization in his review, Armond does have a point - Inception, written in 2001, is clearly mooching off of Shutter Island, which came out in February.
Inception should have been called Self-Deception.
Hey! That's punny! 'Cause they both end with "ception"!
Maybe it should have been called "Contraception"! Because it's like birth control! Most like it, but for some it rips and we end up with a crying baby.
Armond, you are that crying baby.
Enjoy. Pretension is like... fine wine.
Christopher Nolan doesn’t have a born filmmaker’s natural gift for detail, composition and movement, but on the evidence of his fussily constructed mind-game movies Following, Memento, Insomnia and the new Inception, he’s definitely a born con artist.
How nice! Everybody knows you start off a review by insulting the director!
When I reviewed Avatar, the first thing I wrote was "F*ck you, James Cameron, you suck."
Maybe I'm not as eloquent as Mr. White here, but I subscribe to the same school of thought.
Inception proves this is Nolan’s moment—a beginning-of-the-end moment for film cultureHoly crap! The Mayans were right! Film culture really is ending in 2010!
Be afraid, ladies and gents. Our buddy Armond says it is so...
It takes the form of a sci-fi adventure movie, updating the old Fantastic Voyage for the digital age, but instead of exploring the human body, Leonardo DiCaprio as dream extractor Dom Cobb goes inside people’s unconscious with the help of his young exploratory team: Joseph Gordon-levitt, Ellen Page and Tom Hardy.
Right, because a movie about people exploring the inside of a human body in a spaceship is very similar to a movie about people trying to steal ideas from a person's subconscious... Did our Friendy Neighborhood Armond even watch this movie?
Its essential con is that, as in Memento, Nolan ignores the morality of his characters’ actions; he accepts that they will do anything—which is the cynicism critics admired in Memento, the con-man’s motivating nihilism.
OMFG - did you see that? Armond dropped the N bomb... Nihilism! I really didn't think he would do that. I mean, I know his reviewing style depends on the shock of using that word so frequently, but... man. It never gets old.
On a serious note, ignoring morality is great fun. You should try it some time Armond.
Stuck in film-noir mode
...As opposed to jumping in and out of film noir mode? What, did you want Inception to be the next Last Action Hero?
Like Grand Theft Auto’s quasi-cinematic extension of noir and action-flick plots, Inception manipulates the digital audience’s delectation for relentless subterfuge.
Excuse me for a moment while I consult the dictionary. Delectation means delights, okay... Subterfuge means "A statement or action resorted to in order to deceive." Ah, back with the old Nolan-is-a-con-man routine. Excellent. On a more serious note, we, the "digital audience" want to be tricked?
Is that why Armond liked Transformers 2? Because it was so damn simple he didn't feel tricked?
Cobb never runs into paradisaical visions like What Dreams May Come—only terror, danger and violence.
Oh yeah? And the music didn't match the brilliance of High Noon, and the cinematography wasn't as brooding as Dark City, and oh! oh! the action didn't match the high-intensity chaos of Armond's favorite Death Race?
See, I can do it too.
Nolan out-Finchers Fincher and seeks Kubrickian misanthropy—but there’s a simple-minded sappiness at the heart of this cynical vision.
Am I the only one who is wondering how a movie can be nihilistic and sappy at the same time? Would that be like a version of "The Blind Side" where at the end Michael goes on a killing rampage for the hell of it?
Inception is full of second-rate aesthetics, yet when shoddy aesthetics become the new standard, it’s sufficient to up-end the art of cinema.
Boom! Take that, modern cinema which I'm currently making a living on!
Nolan’s fascinated by his cast of narcissistic criminals indulging their own treacheries—nihilism chasing its own tail.
Someone needs to tell Armond that he doesn't need to use the N word to be funny.
it distracts from how business and class really work. his shapeless storytelling (going from Paris to Mumbai to nameless ski slopes, carelessly shifting tenses like a video game) throws audiences into artistic limbo—an “unconstructed dream space” like Toy Story 3—that leaves them bereft of art’s genuine purpose: a way of dealing with the real world.
Ooh - Armond smackdown on Toy Story 3!
That's like a 60 year old man wrestling a teddy bear. It's hilarious, but at times... Sad.
Cobb’s dream obsession suggests pop-culture addiction, mirroring how consumers habitually escape reality with video games and movies. But Nolan never critiques this as Neveldine/Taylor did in Gamer.
Oh really, Armond? Does every negative review from you spiral into talk about pop-culture/materialistic societies?
And OMG, how did I forget Gamer, with its 29% Approval rating on RottenTomatoes!
It was, lest we forget, a 21st century masterpiece.
this conceptual failure is apparent from DiCaprio’s glib characterization. Nolan finally has the budget to work with his look-alike (Leo’s an irresistible movie star), yet fails to write him a good role. Cobb suffers the same marital nightmares leo had in Shutter Island; this isn’t depth, it’s morbidity and the confusion is all over the screen.
Forgetting the Hi-Larious misuse of capitalization in his review, Armond does have a point - Inception, written in 2001, is clearly mooching off of Shutter Island, which came out in February.
Inception should have been called Self-Deception.
Hey! That's punny! 'Cause they both end with "ception"!
Maybe it should have been called "Contraception"! Because it's like birth control! Most like it, but for some it rips and we end up with a crying baby.
Armond, you are that crying baby.
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