I'm Linking As Fast As I Can
Tuesday, January 7, 2014 at 12:35PM 
Vanity Fair Katey Rich on the embarassing Armond White display at the New York Film Critics Circle awards ceremony. I seriously don't know why the NYFCC risks their reputation this way each year?
BBC Jane Campion will head the Cannes jury this year. Yay! (Although this article weirdly states that Campion is the only female to win the Palme D'Or which is no longer true. Lea Seydoux & Adele Exarchopoulus won with their director for Blue is the Warmest Color
ScriptNotes with John August and Craig Mason wonder if filmmakers will ever be able to release a surprise feature a la Beyonce's surprise record
Time 50 things you didn't know about Nicolas Cage for his 50th birthday
The Carpetbagger Will Forte on his surprise detour into Nebraska
Towleroad Lily Tomlin finally marries longtime partner/collaborator Jane Wagner
THR hilarious interview about the forthcoming Golden Globes with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler
Finally...
Cinema Blend Liza Minnelli loves The Dallas Buyers Club, says to McConaughey...
And, honey, if you don't win the Academy Award, I'm giving you mine."
Next time I hear "Mein Herr" I'll think, however briefly, of McConaughey. But I hear Mein Herr so often so it won't ruin it for me (what? You watch Cabaret monthly, too, right?). In fact, I'm okay with this regifting if:
1) Matthew can do the entire choreography of Mein Herr flawlessly
2) Matthew gives Liza a supporting role in Magic Mike 2
Reader Comments (14)
No regifting of the Garland Hereditary Best Actress Oscar (unless to Diana Ross or Cicely Tyson)!
Allow me to amend your proposition of Liza's Oscar regift being okay if Matthew can do the entire choreography of Mein Herr flawlessly IN LIZA'S COSTUME.
I think Armond White is frustrated with the current state of film criticism, and justifiably so. But he is handling a horrible situation with disgusting, deplorable behavior. Do not approve.
"Maybe someday, he'll win."
TPKIA -- but he's part of the problem with modern film criticsm -- the lust for the A/F divide with hyperbole run amok
I agree, Nathaniel. But fact: White, neither in writing nor in antics, was not always this rabble-rousing. I think this is an attitude and a role that he's slowly grown into as a reaction to whatever frustration he's feeling. And to clarify, lest anyone think I'm defending Armond White, it's a petty, childish and disgusting reaction.
I agree with your larger point about the A/F divide. Just as big a problem (I think) is that when I read most critics (online or otherwise...but especially online) I find myself asking "Does this person like movies?" So much of film criticism has become about...humor if that makes sense, or ironic detachment presented as humor. And I kind of get it (if I'm not necessarily excusing it) because we live in the age of quips and soundbytes and animated gifs and shade throwing, but if I read 5 of your reviews and cannot detect a passionate love of cinema, I don't read you anymore. And lest this sound like an ageist takedown of the younger blogging set, I think the BIGGEST offender is an operator of a blog who is not exactly young and spry but he also happens to be (in my estimation) one of the WORST things to happen to film criticism and blogging in the past 20 years. I'm not convinced that Armond White started off that way, but he's definitely a part of it now in that I don't feel like I'm reading someone who loves or even likes movies when I read his work. I'd be curious to talk to him and find out what the deal is. He's not happy whatever the case is. Not to sound like a flower child, but it's got to be about love before anything else, whether I share the critic's tastes or not.
I don't always (or even often) agree with Sasha Stone or Mark Harris or Katey, Nick, Joe or yourself, Nathaniel, but what keeps me coming back to your various writing is a perceptible, no-holds-barred crazy love of movies, which is something I share. Maybe Armond White would be happy covering the latest trends in farming equipment?
You leave my farming equipment alone. Its keeping my girls fed and without farm equipment reviews, I wouldn't have known to buy a 6100 series over a 5100.
I agree about the love of film being necessary to a reviewers worth IMO. I also don't bother reading reviews where the over riding message seems to be "look at me, I'm important" rather than "I love film." White has, and this is sad, found that one of the only ways to get people to pay attention to him is bad behavior. Its like rewarding a child for being destructive.
Henry -- ha! and there are a lot of film bloggers that are rewarded for bad behavior. in a whole ocean of voices now, it's the only surefire way to get/keep attention. the rest of us just have to try to do good work and get noticed every once in a while for a random thing.
brookesboy -- you win at commenting.
White is an example for those who try to be Pauline Kael hard enough, you end up looking more like John Simon.
Sorry, the 'state of criticism' is no excuse. No excuse for telling a filmmaker, who was the son of one of your 'rivals', that he'd be better off aborted than making films. No excuse for acting like that to Belafonte and McQueen. There are plenty of NYFCC members who did not like that film who were there but were engaged by that speech. They didn't get drunk and supposedly 'truth-tell'.
Armond White can be a writer of good criticism. Check out his work he has done for Criterion. That said, he has isolated himself beyond recognition. Even his former colleagues like Keith Uhlich, Matt Zoller Seitz, and Godfrey Cheshire do not know what to make of him. He writes for a free alt weekly with minions and unfiltered content that has reduced his criticism to muck, every once in a while having an interesting paragraph amid an unreadable five.
I'm sorry, his behavior is beyond the pale at this point. This is 3 of the last 4 NYFCC Awards with such an incident.
The only issue in the matter is getting kicked out of NYFCC only further drives his persecution complex and his vendetta against J. Hoberman.
Do you think the NYFCC elders are standing around somewhere singing "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Armond?"
"He e-ven heckled Dar-ren Ar-o-NOF-sky!
Joking aside, I completely agree CMG and I don't want to make it sound like I was defending him,
Oh, and speaking of MM: Could True Detective, debuting on HBO next Sunday (with a season finale on Oscar night I think) and getting rave reviews, be the thing that seals the deal for that Best Actor Oscar?
OT: Yet another warning sign of how much "Man of Steel 2" is going to SUCK: "Wonder Woman" is now rumored to be descended from Kryptonians. So, instead of multiple planets creating multiple kinds of technological structures and aesthetic styles, y'know, the very thing that makes Marvel Studios the interesting hot ticket that it is, it's going to be squeezed through Zack Snyder's grim aesthetic blueprint. Depressingly plausible if it's true, but just one more reason why NO ONE should pay for this garbage. If you want to see it even IF this turns out to be true, I say to pirate in protest!
Matthew could reach movie person level of 'Emmy front-runner' not just on performance but earned clout that causes the Emmy people to fall over whenever a movie star comes over to TV.
TPKIA- I gotcha. But him being a 'truth-teller' of film culture and film criticism is such a paper tiger by now. You can completely predict what films he will like (Most Spielberg, most Coens, David Gordon Green, David O. Russell, Wong Kar-wei) and dislike (Nolan, Aronofsky, Fincher, Payne, PTA, McQueen, Tarantino, Soderbergh) because he's rarely moved an inch on either of those filmmakers. Ebert often didn't like the Coens but he loved Fargo. A.O. Scott was often frustrated by Haneke, but he really loved Amour. I think one of the worst things a film critic can do is be predictable in their opinions.
I also want to note that White actually tweeted that he told McQueen to his face that his film is a failure compared to Jonathan Demme's Beloved. As if we cannot have both movies- one of which is a slavery epilogue/memoriam than the actual practice depicted.
I know Nicolas Cage is nowadays considered to be a big joke who's incapable of giving a good performance because of his over-the-top hamminess, but I'd like to point out that it was this very same quality that inspired some of his best work. I know you're not a fan Nathaniel but I've always found him kind of interesting.