Wow. I now have a least favorite film critic.

White: I’m not a contrarian at all."

GOLD, JERRY, GOLD!

And he wrote a book on Tupac.

I didn't see a single instance of him "getting it right" from what I've seen. It's just another example of post-modernist bashing down of traditional standards & not bothering to build up any new ones. He also seems to be completely ignorant of form in cinema, as well as completely out-of-touch with the avant-garde:

It’s just all shock, but without the moral conviction of a Surrealist from the 1920s.

hmm...I'm sure that sounded REALLY good in your head, White. It probably should have stayed there....

i don't have enough respect for his ideas to hate him. same with Spielberg, who I think of more as a Barnum and Bailey type entrepreneur than a cinematic artist. I can never forgive him and Lucas for what they did to destroy the validity of film as an art & turn it more into a cultural event that serves only to build hype to buy cheap plastic toys and collector Coke glasses.

White is simply one of those pseudo-intellectuals who gets a thrill out being the first person to hate the films every one loves and love the films everyone hates. And he has the nerve to call Noe a "sensationalist"?

White calling the kettle black...

but carry on.

no offense, but such a pomo retort may just put you in that category....

BTW Spectator, I don't know where the whole Noe thing came out of. I'm not even a big fan of his films, but I ended up being the lone duck championing him because everyone seems to be jumping on Armond's band-wagon of dismissing him based on content & giving no consideration to his formal achievements.

As I've often said, I don't give a shit about plot/characters/"moral value" (what the hell is this kick lately with dismissing films as "nihilistic" BTW--it sounds like a bunch of Bill O'Reilly blowhardism) in films--i care about mood, atmosphere & form, and most importantly, thought and appreciation of one's medium & an understanding of what makes a piece of art distinctly "cinematic".

And I don't think White, or any of his followers, care about that. For someone who spouts of so often & accuses his fellow critics of "not caring" about the cinema. he's incredibly obtuse when it comes to considerations outside the realm of the script. He doesn't know a thing about aesthetics & he doesn't have a progressive bone in his body.

But then again, he is a critic.....

could you point to a specific review of white's that is emblematic of the problems you believe his criticism has?

Spielberg (as a director -- I'd agree he's sponsored a lot more sludge via exec-producing or Dreamworks) is certainly not responsible for the infantilization of Hollywood. Filmmakers who took the superficial aspects of his work without the skills are to blame, and the TV-narcotized audiences who can't tell the diff.

White is Jekyll & Hyde tastewise, but when you say he lacks aesthetics I don't know what you mean.

Ken, I'm going to the Rivette/Ogier film today, not the one she's at.

He's better than Peter Travers, however.

yeah, no shit smart ass--and how exactly did my phrasing not express that to you?

"As for The Passion of the Christ, having spent the year outnumbered—because it seems no mainstream publication will hire a Christian movie critic (and I'm not talking about me)—I have found the discussion too oppressively lopsided, if not totalitarian. I can only "discuss" this movie on home turf. And that enrages me, because I have not read a single mainstream review that sought to appreciate Gibson's basic, powerful imagery on its own terms. Does atheism rule? Does blindness rule criticism? To have this movie reviewed only by nonbelievers and half-thinkers is tantamount to fascism."

Yeah, damn those media outlets persecuting those poor Christians! A Gentile just can't get a critic gig these days.

Last I checked, something like 80% of Americans self-identify as Christian which should be similar to the numbers for film critics.

Moreso here, where it's set up as a dichotomy of "secular humanist" and "Christian" critics - so the dissenters of The Passion's greatness are either non-Christians or (even better, and more consistent with Armond's argument) not 'real Christians.' The latter just adds another fallacy to the rest.

Even still, most Christians are extremely adept at playing the part of a secularist in secular society. Whether that makes them bad Christians is a different topic for debate.

now this was the impression i got over those few short weeks when these reviews in queston came out. you may want to call "bullshit" and i may have a poor memory. so maybe im being unfair.

i should ALSO say, as a disclaimer, that i didnt find the film particularly great or even good. but the reviews were just basically trite.

This is how, Colostomy Brain:

>his criticism was pretty shallow and juvenile--"he's a sensationalist". Wow, Armond, no shit...<

I believe yer position, thusly, is Noe is great and a sensationalist. Q-E-fuckin' D.

>He also seems to be ... completely out-of-touch with the avant-garde<

Which is represented by, let me guess, Noe? I think White wrote a rave of the recent Brakhage DVDs, for one.

He's said nice things abour RAMMS+EIN.

His Spielberg/DePalma obsession is bordering on pathological, but hey, I think Paul WS Anderson is an actual auteur, so I can't throw too many stones here.

Who were the last "exciting" critics who wrote in English, on at least a weekly basis? Kael and Sarris in the '60s? I like Jonathan Rosenbaum a lot, but "exciting" is a steep standard.

(btw, let's not forget that Kael was something of a DePalma obsessive herself. I think hyperbole inevitably finds its way into the dialogue when one champions artists others consider superficial or lowbrow.)

There are a plenty of gauche-fancy wordsliners around--it's the prefered, post hip/beyond hip mode that White rightly rails against.

I think a big prob is the nature of film distribution. Every city's on a near-lteral other page.

White might be the only reviewer I've read to not like Sofia Coppola, which is something, but I have trouble trusting anyone who sees her movies as completely worthless. Certain scenes are amazing...

http://blogs.indiewire.com/thereeler/archives/006548.html

"Well, these other films didn't have the benefit of a multimillion dollar promotional campaign from Universal and General Electric," White argued, referring to the parental hierarchy of Brokeback's distributor Focus Features. "There are good films that go for want of praise and want of attendance simply because they're not promoted well enough. When it comes to something like Brokeback Mountain, where I see the media I guess congratulating (themselves) for being tolerant--'Rah rah for gay marriage'--I think of all the better films about gay issues that opened this year that no critics paid attention to."

..."Everybody has an agenda," White said. "So I'm not ashamed to say my agenda is that I want a movie that does not insult me, and very simply, basically, I want what everybody wants from art: I want art to show me something about myself, something about others--tell me something about the world that I wouldn't have understood until I encountered this work of art."

"But something positive," Holden said.

"No," White said. "No. Not necessarily positive. I believe in that Leslie Fiedler line, 'No! in Thunder': Not necessarily positive in a namby-pamby sense, but positive in a profound sense. If we're living in a cynical age, why do we need more cynical movies? We can get cynicism really easily-- just pick it out of the air. Living in a cynical age we need movies that teach us how to remember that we're human. To remember that we're like others."

Panel moderator Michael Zam jumped in. "So what are some movies that make you feel that this year?"

"Munich," White replied. "The great, great Munich."

"Oh my God," Adams groaned.