Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

So I read what has to be the most positive review I've ever read by Armond White.

...

It's for a 27 minute short directed by Spike Jonez to supplement the deluxe version of the album The Suburbs by Arcade Fire. (Or available freely on mubi.com for a couple days )

http://www.nypress.com/article-22576-white-heat.html

I mean give credit where credit is due, Jonez is an excellent filmmaker and Arcade Fire are critically acclaimed (I'm not their biggest fan), but it's just odd to see Armond White gush over it.

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

so.....is it very bad or what?

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

When I saw this thread (not realizing it was necro-bumped), I immediately thought of this article and wanted to post it b/c I completely agree with just about everything White says in the piece about the state of film criticism and Roger Ebert specifically.

That being said, I absolutely do not read Armond White's film criticism because for me it serves no purpose. I have my own theory about Armond White's "approach" and while he employs some of the practices of your common internet troll, I think he is doing it for a sincere purpose. There was a time when film criticism mattered. People would argue intellectually about film. Critics would have intellectual feuds with other critics (Sarris v Kael is the big one). In today's day and age, there is none of that. It is a pure populist approach. The standard reply by the average person being engaged in a serious debate about film is to preemptively withdraw by stating, "It is all subjective. Everyone's opinion is equal." This is exactly what White is railing against. The overriding anti-intellectualism that has demolished everything film culture and film criticism was. So, why does he troll? I think it is his vain effort to re-kindle the debate. He has the knowledge base to engage in deep film criticism debates and every inane piece of trolling copy he publishes is a glove slap to the critical community. He wants someone to challenge him. He is like 50 Cent and other rappers who manufacture beefs with other rappers to drum up interest for their next album. Only, he is trying to drum up interest for an entire profession. Trying to move society away from the blather and back to intellectual debate and discussion.

I feel the ends justify the means with White. Only, we have not and sadly never will reach the desired end (a return to serious film culture in American society). That is the very long-form reasoning behind why I voted "Indifferent."

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

On paper I'm down with all of this. I won't go so far as to say the non-professional critic is devoid of insight and valid reactions, but I certainly agree that we have woefully become anti-intellectual and anti-expert as a society. I have a history degree and I do my damnedest to avoid discussing anything that might lead to history in most casual conversations because my background is actually a liability to me now. Rather than defer to me, or at the very least take my perspective seriously, anyone who disagrees with me insists that I've only been instructed in some kind of brainwashing program and that the "truth" was withheld from me. I would love to know how they have access to information I didn't, but no one ever has an answer for that.

Back to White, if he was serious about rekindling intellectual discourse he wouldn't lord over everyone that his authoritative word ought to be the final judgment on a film. Film is ultimately an art form and therefore interpretations are subjective (though there are some objective conversations to be had, such as contrasting career longevity, box office performances, award nominations and wins, etc.), so an expert cannot necessarily have the final word about film as would an expert about science (if a scientist tells you that two atoms of hydrogen combine with one atom of oxygen to form water, that's pretty much that). But even without having an objective, inarguable position to put forth, a film expert should lead discussions not to declare, but to encourage exploration.

White could present himself as an elder statesman, which would legitimize his arguments. Rather, he is content to be little more than a shock jock. It's a shame, because he's actually one of the handful of people in the position to influence how the public perceives and responds to professional film criticism.

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

I've so longed for the day when people can argue intellectually about Mr. 3000, White Chicks, and Little Man. :up:

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

I absolutely agree with that statement and many of the critics I do read, do exactly that for me. Unfortunately, there just is not a lot of that around today. I find that the critics that do the most "discussion leading" or in other words, who style their pieces of criticism more along the lines of a professor that is introducing a work to a new audience are those who write about home video releases. Dave Kehr of the NY Times is probably the best at this. I feel like rushing out and buying a handful of movies after each piece of his I read, and many times the title being reviewed might not even be one of the handful. He is just keen on discussing films in the context of film history, both before and after the film in question.

For some reason, it is very very hard to find such criticism for theatrical releases. Partly, it is just downright lack of skill by the critic and other times it is fear of divulging too much in our spoiler alert culture. Although, if a film is homage/allusion heavy like Shutter Island or a Tarantino flick, the critic generally will try to hit the allusion checklist to flex their intellectual muscles a bit.

As for White, I think he has seen where measured, reasoned approaches to film criticism get other critics...nowhere. To discuss film, or most things really, in pure intellectual terms while also passing subjective judgment, you need to be pretentious. For me, the best critics tend to the ones with the stronger opinions and the more objective reasoning to back up those strong opinions. To other people, they are the snobbish writers. So, you have someone like David Edelstein (NYMag) writing from a pretentious position and getting killed for being pretentious by lay readers who disagree with him. They do not attack the criticism on its merits or make counterarguments, they simply call him a snob and prob cite box office figures as a counterargument.

White is seeing their bet and trying to raise it. "If you're going to attack me for being pretentious for being a truly good film critic, then guess what, I'll go out of my way to be a bad film critic." Instead of being measured in his approach like Edelstein was with Dark Knight and getting killed by fanboys, he is trashing every single critical darling to try to force a real critic to take up the fight on behalf of the fanboys. He wants a Tony Scott (NY Times), to engage. To say, "Look, here Mr. White you are wrong b/c..." And if a feud between critics begins over an immensely popular film, then the fanboys will take notice, and suddenly real film criticism debate/discussion is being read by those who would otherwise reject it.

He is baiting critics moreso than film fans or fanboys. Unfortunately, I think we are at a point that even if there was a battle royale over a popular film, the fanboy segment would dismiss it. Of course, everything I write about White and his motivations are pure speculation on my part. He could very well be a complete loon and I'm over here fitting a pig for a silk hat.

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

While I would agree that Ebert contributed to a simpler, more baseline style of film criticism, he's not just a populist. His blog in particular has many fascinating insights, the kind of insights White could never have because he obscures every point through a veil of pseudo-intellectualism that is designed to ensure no one else can in fact argue with him. That's why I would say he's trolling and not trying to genuinely kickstart a new wave of film criticism.

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

Ebert is somewhat problematic. I agree with White that Ebert's reviews have often amounted to little more than a summary followed by like/dislike verdict with little meaningful substance. But you are quite right to mention his blog, which I consistently find one of the most rewarding things online. The debate about video games as art last summer was quite engaging and thoughtful, for instance.

I think a fairer and more accurate point for White to have made is that Ebert's TV reviews were often reductive and shallow. I don't know that there are many critics who have gone before the camera who haven't fallen into that same trap, though, so it's not exclusive to Ebert, and clearly online Ebert has been much more thoughtful in his criticism than he was on TV. I think TV is the common denominator and offender, rather than a particular critic.

Which is actually fairly reasonable, when you figure that most critics learned their craft originally in an era where critics were read, not seen or heard. Even those who seem comfortable speaking in front of a camera (Gene Shalit and Leonard Maltin come to mind) speak in the same truncated, simplistic fashion as a political journalist on Letterman or a scientist at a fundraiser. Even when they're passionate and knowledgeable, without an audience reacting to them they have no idea whether they've lost the attention of the people watching so they're reluctant to go into "brainy" mode.

In this aspect, then, I think the Internet is far more viable for film criticism than TV. And I think Ebert's blog bears this out; he has often responded to comments and even writes a follow-up post reacting to insights brought to his attention by readers of his initial thoughts. There's no equivalent to that on TV, unless the critic hosted a Q&A--and even that would lack the orderliness of the web.

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

I agree. In this case, the medium is the issue. Unless you're watching a four hour documentary on AMC, chances are the demands of TV aren't going to allow for meaningful film criticism.

And, as much as Armond White may dislike a simpler style of criticism, when Siskel was alive their show was at best a very good indicator of how a majority of people would discuss these kind of movies. After Siskel died it wasn't the same, but the two of them together did make for compelling television, even if it was lightweight criticism.

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

Ebert's reviews themselves...yeah sometimes they can be a bit hit or miss. Personally I tend to like them, but I always read after seeing the movie, since he can get spoiler heavy. But his Great Movies essays are top notch.

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

Re Ebert:

I don't like his film criticism, but do enjoy his non-film criticism essays and posts from his blog. His essay about 3D cinema is a good one.

His film criticism style is simply that of a film fan as White says. He rarely ever addresses what is going on on the screen (discussion of camera angles, influences, etc). While I don't mind a critic touching upon a film's message, Ebert will spend the occasional review as a platform for his own personal moral qualms with society (see: Kick-Ass review where he doesn't even critique the film, just the kid violence).

So, yeah, his reviews and his show, tend to represent how the "average person" would discuss a movie with their friends, but that is simply not what I want from a film critic.

And his utilization of a grading system has destroyed film criticism. I hate hearing people walk out of a theater and "discuss" the film with, "Yeah, that was like 2.5 stars."

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

Funny since Ebert doesn't actually like the idea of the rating system.

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

Yeah, I don't think a single film critic or anyone who evaluates art would ever say they like grading systems because it just doesn't really make sense.

It's just that Ebert popularized it with his show to the point where basically everyone uses it from tv guide to just about every film/dvd review site.

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

Stars/rating systems existed and were popular long before Ebert's show.

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

Pre-Ebert film criticism is before my time, so I've read most of it in archived form either online or in bound collections. So, maybe something got lost, but which film critics accompanied their thoughts about a film with a rating score before Ebert?

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

Is it any different than coming online and seeing everything reduced to "That was awesome!" and "Fail." as "reviews?" I get tired of walking out of a theater, and when I prod even my own friends for reactions they're often content to say they liked it or disliked it. If it's part of a franchise they might rank it against its predecessor(s) or speculate about sequel possibilities, but that's about it. It's hard to fault Ebert solely for this breakdown in critical thinking skills.

He does go into a lot of that kind of technical information in the commentary track for Casablanca. I believe he recorded five or six other commentary tracks, and I'm given to understand that this is the kind of stuff you'll find on those as well. Good stuff if you're interested.

I don't have an absolute position on this style of criticism and I'll tell you why. Art--and film is firstly an art form--exists to reflect and to question society. How and why an individual responds to a given work is entirely informed by his or her life experiences and values. John Wayne despised High Noon as communist propaganda, for instance. Would a viewer coming to that film today have the vaguest idea how he ever formed that point of view without researching it? I doubt it. Instead, I'm sure people of various persuasions over the years have identified with the theme of being turned away by the very people you counted on to help you confront a problem. Its theme is universal, and yet it has its opponents. The only explanation for this is that people see things differently. I think it's worth knowing why they see things the way they do.

So when Ebert waxes about how tolerant, and even encouraging, our society is of violent children it may not account for how well paced the film is, whether the dialog is stilted or whether the screen is dominated by closeups, but it does inform me of the mindset of the person telling me why the film made him uncomfortable. When you're told to "consider the source," this kind of insight into the critic is the most helpful information to have.

That said, I do wish that Ebert would make a more concentrated effort to anchor his context to the film at hand. Sometimes it seems the film is little more than a pretext for what he really wants to write about. I wish in those cases he would simply present it as a post about that topic and pepper in some remarks about the latest film that fits into his thesis. In that instance, then, we'd have gotten a "Kids Are Too Violent These Days" piece that mentions Kick-Ass rather than a Kick-Ass review that quickly devolved into a "Kids Are Too Violent These Days" editorial.

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

According to this article it started back in the '20s.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123265679206407369.html

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

Thank you!

I tried editing my last post (via my cell) to include a link to that article, since I turned to google to answer my own question, but couldn't get the Opera link to work properly. Hence, the "edited" time stamps on the post and no actual edits.

Interesting read, but at least according to the article, it didn't really catch on initially. The NY Daily News still does it to this day. Cahiers du Cinema seemed to be the first Rotten Tomatoes in the 50s and then the article cites Ebert's show as accelerating the practice's popularity.

I'm still pining the mass adoption of the practice on Ebert and his show.

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

I'd rather take someone who speaks plainly and simply, even at the risk of being overly simple, than someone who is as intellectually dishonest as White.

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

Ignorantly, erroneously, and misguidedly... but hey why let that get in the way of an agenda? :up:

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

So what exactly is "ignorant, erroneous, and misguided" about the claim that Roger Ebert's show spurred the mass adoption of the grading/rating practice in the film critical community?

Please tell me, aside from the writers for the New York Daily News, which major/popular film critics (as Siskel and Ebert certainly were/are) used a deductive rating to accompany their reviews before Roger Ebert's show?

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

(ahem) Reductive. I'm sure it was a typo, of course.

As for the nature of Siskel and Ebert in making that kind of review mainstream, I still maintain that it was the medium of television rather than the critics themselves that was responsible. Note that Prof. Peary does not indicate that Siskel or Ebert advanced that style in their print reviews. It wasn't until they were competing for the short attention span of the TV viewer that it became standard to eschew thoughtful criticism for a template of synopsis followed by summary judgment.

Ultimately, the nature of a film review on TV is to answer the question, "Should I pay money to go see this?" which only invites one of two answers: "Yes" or "No." This is why the thumbs up/thumbs down template made sense for the format: TV viewers aren't interested in hearing about the use of religious iconography or how a film might be a social allegory for the plight of minority women in the South. They just want to know whether someone who has seen the movie thinks it's a good idea for them to spend their money to see it.

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

I'd rather take neither, but at least White seems to be trying to raise the bar that Ebert has done oh so well to lower.


You can blame the medium of TV if you like, but who were the original television film critics? Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. They transitioned film criticism from print to television. So, to simply blame the medium of television and not the people who utilized the medium seems like quite the disconnect.

The problem is that film criticism is not about "Should I pay money to see this" and if it is, the answer lies in the analysis of the film by the particular critic and then the reader decides if that type of film is for him or worth his/her time. Ebert set the bar lower by moving to television. And his show's popularity caused people to expect all film criticism to answer the "bottom line" question of if one should spend their money on it or not. Film criticism is the evaluation of art, not a goddamn consumer product review, which is exactly what it has become when you frame the criticism in terms of answering the question of if the reader/viewer should spend money on the film as opposed to simply evaluating the film on its face and letting people decide on their own if based upon your analysis of the film, they are intrigued enough to see it (spend money on it).

It is a guns don't kill people, people do argument. Television does not make people dumber, the creators of crap television content do. Ebert could have easily made a show that did not pander to the lowest common denominator and actually was a program of intellectual discourse between film critics. Instead, they went for the lowest common denominator and spurred a "consumer product review" style of film criticism that persists to this day.

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

Again, read his blog. Ebert is a smart, insightful man who is capable of discussing things with people instead of just telling them they're too stupid to talk to him. White's ranting and raving is not what I would consider raising the bar.

I can see how you might not like Ebert, but White is not a preferable alternative.

Re: Armond White: The Love Him or Hate Him Thread
 

I don't see it as a disconnect. Chronologically, "Thumbs Up/Down" came after Siskel and Ebert went to TV--it was not part of their criticism style before. Ergo it was TV that was the deciding factor, not the critics themselves. Where you see accountability, though, I see inevitability. Look at Gene Shalit, for instance. He was more charismatic and certainly hairier, but his reviews still led to a pass/fail verdict. I don't know the timeline about it, but I believe that Shalit would have done it that way even if the world had never heard of Siskel or Ebert.

Well said. We can do that in print, be it in a magazine, newspaper or online forum discussions. And you can even have that kind of criticism in a conversation between two people or an entire symposium. What you can't do, at least not easily, is make that good TV.

I agree entirely that content providers sell audiences short. We would be remiss, however, to categorically dismiss them all as unimaginative cowards. Remember when the Christian activists crusaded against Teletubbies because they were convinced that purple one was some kind of brainwashing agent of homosexuality? Who could run a TV network today and not have to appease the pitchfork and torch mob?

It's not that content providers don't want to be thought provocative. It's that there are a lot of people who resist thinking and unfortunately, TV is the one medium that has the most exposure. It's a double-edged sword and the only way to not be cut regularly is to keep the blade at a distance.