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In this interview with Armond White, film critic for the New York Press, he claims that Roger Ebert destroyed film criticism, but he makes no mention of the fact that he himself is an insufferable, pompous, contrarian creep. Weird.
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If I was smart and had internet skills I would post a gif of Ebert and Siskel playing that boxing video game from the 80s where Ebert shimmies and wobbles around. Rad gif.
To be fair Armond White is just perpetually stuck in Opposite Day
Not to hate on Ebert – who is better than Armond White – but Ebert did unfairly blame the 9/11 attacks on Zoolander in his review of said movie. The low point of his career in my opinion.
No, he didn’t.
The opening line of Ebert’s Zoolander review (dated 9/28/01) kinda sounds like he did:
There have been articles lately asking why the United States is so hated in some parts of the world. As this week’s Exhibit A from Hollywood, I offer “Zoolander,” a comedy about a plot to assassinate the prime minister of Malaysia because of his opposition to child labor.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20010928/REVIEWS/109280304/1023
Even Steve Winwood is right twice a day.
Everybody makes mistakes, White just makes a lot more of them, like being completely wrong all the time
No, he didn’t.
Who is that lesbian on the right?
left?
This from the guy who coined the phrase “ab”.
“Abortionhory” is what I thought I’d typed.
I don’t consider myself a film expert, but I find it funny how often White throws around the kind of film references and such that I learned about in one semester of film theory. You have to give it White, though. If trolling is an artform, he’s Picasso…
By the way, I mean 70-years-old Picasso, of course.
Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole, but Armond White did
Pablo Picasso is an asshole.
Pablo Picasso is dead
I can resist Armond White’s stare.
i forgot where i saw it but some dude on rotten tomatoes started a petition to ban his reviews…he has the worst taste, but i do agree with him on one of his higher rated movies…Death Race is superb
As Gabe often says, being White is hard.
Armond White, are you asking for an ultra beatdown?
Thing is, White makes some valid points here, but he makes them in such a way as to generate maximum assholery.
Only Armond White can rave about Transformers 2 and still come off as pretentious.
“It can be said with certainty that any reviewer who pans ["Mission to Mars"] does not understand movies, let alone like them” — Armond White
Actual quote.
Seeing Mission to Mars was the only experience I’ve ever had where the audience turned on the movie. I’ve seen horror movies in theaters before where people in the audience were yelling at the screen*, but this turned into a full-on MST3K episode.
*My personal favorite: During Halloween: H20 when the girl’s leg gets stuck in a dumbwaiter as she’s trying to escape Michael, the guy behind me yelled, “Tear it off and get a peg leg!”
I just want you to know, Wolf Pangs, that I read your comment and burst into laughter at “peg leg”. Thank for helping out my tomatobank lolk.
No problem!
I had not heard of this guy before today, but WOW do I not like him. I agree that film ‘criticism’ doesn’t really exist anymore due to the internet and widespread access anyone and everyone has to it. But does that have to be a bad thing? It’s not like I can’t make up my own mind about a movie just because Roger Ebert liked it.
Somehow I get the feeling that if you plopped Armond White down in the “golden age” of film criticism, he’d bitch about it and pine for the days when film reviews could only be carved onto cave walls. Gabe probably remembers it.
“Because really, the reason why I do what I do is because I think there are things that need to be said about movies, about culture, about the world, that nobody’s saying.”
Change “movies” to “politics,” and that kind of sounds like Glenn Beck…
Maybe no one else is saying them because no one else as dumb as him has somehow managed to hang on to their job this long.
White’s reviews are awful. His negative reviews generally don’t even have anything to do with the movie, they’re actually just reviews for other movies he liked better (most of which are awful). He also throws around a TON of SAT words in what I assume is an attempt to appear cultured and well-read, but a lot of his sentences are either a garbled mess or utterly meaningless.
“Inception proves this is Nolan’s moment—a beginning-of-the-end moment for film culture, ha, ha—because it’s conceived to amuse an era hungry for hokum and a geek audience who, after his gross The Dark Knight pulled in $500 million, is primed for more baroque fantasia.”
I’m sorry…what the fuck did you just say? I kind of get what he’s going for…but what does that little aside between the hyphens mean? Anyone?
Basically this guy is full of shit, and I feel bad for him if he’s not a troll because that means he’s just a dumbass. If he wants to trash great movies, fine, but to then go ahead and praise utter garbage like Transformers 2 and Jonah Hex just shows a complete lack of understanding of how film works.
You can all criticize White, but are you professional filmcritic-critics? Do you even KNOW the history of the form?
Sure, Armond White suggested in a published review that a movie director’s mother should have aborted him. Sure, he did coin the term “abortionhorny,” which is quite possibly the most misogynistic fantasy ever encapsulated in a single made-up word. (That’s all.)