The Armond White Thread

[Fiery Angel]

Bob Dylan's Trump-Card Album

[Brian C]

Bob Dylan's Trump-Card Album

Not that White is the only one that’s done this, but it’s a real sign of the times that the media as a whole has decided to unquestioningly regurgitate the misleading marketing claim that Dylan just got his first #1 single. It’s true the song hit #1 ... but on the “US Rock Digital Song Sales” chart.

[Fiery Angel]

He unsurprisingly hates Mank

[Brian C]

He unsurprisingly hates Mank

Haven’t seen the film but I didn’t make it past White’s second paragraph, where he grinds his axe against a bunch of irrelevant pop-culture figures while deliberately conflating “the media” and “millennials” ... all while calling other people hacks.

[Big Ben]

I honestly can't tell if his conflation of Far Right Fascism with left wing politics (Notably Upton Sinclair) is sincere or not. But then again he appears to be more concerned with throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks so perhaps I'm giving White more credit than he deserves when it comes to political self awareness.

[Reverend Drewcifer]

The Social Network is a "hagiography." Who knew?

[TheKieslowskiHaze]

He unsurprisingly hates Mank

In a disparaging tweet about it, did he tag the wrong David Fincher?

(click here if you don't get the reference)

[domino harvey]

I bet you can guess how much he loves the Sight and Sound poll - actual LOLs at him referring to Daisies only as "Vera Chitilová’s obscure Czech feminist screed"

...but God help us, many of the films he proposes as "better than" are, for once, actually better than

[spectre]

I feel like AW is a much more interesting critic for what he does like than the seemingly much longer list of what he doesn't (which tends to be tiresomely predictable, as is the case again here).

I also think the reference to Akerman's suicide as some kind of evidence of her anhedonia is a pretty low dig, even for him. It's clear he either never saw or is deciding to ignore films like Golden Eighties, A Couch in New York and Tomorrow We Move, or any of her more comedic shorts like Saute ma ville, Family Business, Sloth or Le déménagement (the last of those is particularly wonderful; I was just watching it again the other day and adored every minute of it). Even if one sees Jeanne Dielman as a dour film – and I wouldn't necessarily go to the mat to argue it isn't – there was plenty of life and buoyancy running through her work. I guess it's convenient for White's diatribe to overlook that, and he knows full well that his readership isn't going to know any better.

[swo17]

His alternative shorts list is pretty good (though the two that actually made the list are great to begin with--but what do I know, I'm just an avant-garde elitist!)

Not a great look though to replace all the women-directed films with films by men about "exploring the gender experience." Could he really not think of any women directors that fall outside of the political zeitgeist he's critiquing? Same question for non-white directors

[colinr0380]

Sounds like he's proposing making his own poll, with blackjack and hookers.

I do also agree with furbicide about the bringing up the suicide as if it proves his point. If anything, since it occurred in the wake of the death of her mother (and soon after the No Home Movie documentary she made about her mother's day to day life in her apartment, which kind of bookends her career with Jeanne Dielman), it perhaps more suggests just how connected Akerman was with that maternal figure, and perhaps could not exist in a world without that presence.

[brundlefly]

He didn't attack Sciamma, maybe because he couldn't decide whether she was "abounding" or "defying." She's white, so she's not qualified to "infiltrate."

So sad so much of his thinking has devolved to schtik, and so many of his wokeness rants boil down to, "Hey no fair I'M the provocateur! [drops pants]"

[tenia]

Not a great look though to replace all the women-directed films with films by men about "exploring the gender experience." Could he really not think of any women directors that fall outside of the political zeitgeist he's critiquing? Same question for non-white directors.

I don't believe he thinks anything about this, but is just assuming by default that these movies are worse than supposedly-better white-male-directed movies because that's his whole point : a few women-directed movies, a few non-white movies, 2 short movies, that's already too much, these movies can't be that liked for regular reasons, because these aren't regular movies : these are subcategories that can only be that mentioned for sociopolitical movies, not because they're considered to have the same qualities than white-male-directed ones.

Which, to put it bluntly, simply is racist and sexist, ie discriminating works solely based on the gender or the ethnicity of those credited for them. Who would have guessed.

It's also interesting to note that 12 of his 17 sound-movies alternatives are US English-speaking movies. Ethnocentrism : a definition.

[wattsup32]

I feel like AW is a much more interesting critic for what he does like than the seemingly much longer list of what he doesn't (which tends to be tiresomely predictable, as is the case again here).

This has always been my feeling about him and I have encountered some terrific films (Chameleon Street comes to mind) by seeking out the films he loves. For whatever else he does to try to drag the world down, he adds value if you figure out what of his schtick to ignore. Luckily, he makes identifying what to ignore fairly obvious.

[rrenault]

I feel like there'd be a point in there somewhere in all of his hectoring and polemics if he didn't insist on always throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[Fiery Angel]

Armond on the latest Truffaut Blu-rays, complete with gratuitous swipes at this year's Oscar contenders

[tenia]

Mississippi Mermaid vs Avatar 2, I mean : thanks captain Obvious !

[swo17]

Wait, he even bags on the new Spielberg? I like how he eventually gives up on the one-to-one comparisons and just says that the last film bests "all of this year’s Oscar-nominated junk"

[Fiery Angel]

he's been bagging on Spielberg for awhile now, at least since "Lincoln"

[Brian C]

White seems to be getting lazier - the connections he makes between films in his Better-Than lists are already usually pretty tenuous, but here they're just straight up non-sequiturs. "The Bride Wore Black is great! It surpasses [spins wheel] ... The Banshees of Inisherin." He could have put any other movie in place of Banshees and it would make no difference at all - he doesn't bother to come up with even a superficial link between the two.

Same with The Wild Child - it's "richer than Everything Everywhere All at Once," full stop. Neat!

Sadly, his thesaurus let him down by the end. The Bride Wore Black "surpasses". Mississippi Mermaid "transcends". The Story of Adele H. "supersedes". But by the time we get to The Green Room, he has to make do with saying it "bests". Lame.

[Lemmy Caution]

He was saving obliterates...

[tenia]

Same with The Wild Child - it's "richer than Everything Everywhere All at Once," full stop.

I've never seen The Wild Child but have seen EEAAO : is the Truffaut a family story setup against a multiverse adventures background ?

[spectre]

I think Armond might have gotten that one mixed up with the Truffaut film The Man Who Loved Every Woman Everywhere All at Once.

[Big Ben]

Armond's review of Barbie for National Review is something else.

Barbie opens with a riff on 2001: A Space Odyssey where sullen little girls smash old-fashioned baby dolls (i.e., the idea of motherhood). Non-maternal Barbie (Robbie) towers over these fitful tykes, shadowing them like Kubrick’s black slab and inspiring violent resistance. Doll babies are tossed in the air, then fall into Barbieland, because the idea of women’s liberation has been weaponized.

Yet Gerwig’s artifice defies the special feeling that females might know — the fulfilling, personal escape into free femininity, childbearing, family, homemaking, and romance that should be the essence of a Barbie movie. She ignores the childhood fantasy in which kids dream of being wives, moms, teachers, nurses, etc. — roles essential to the world.

Fact is, tough-blonde Robbie lacks slim, doll-like fragility.

[domino harvey]

Did he just call Margot Robbie fat?