I first learned of Armond White when I saw him at a film critics panel at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in 2007. I've read some of his reviews since but have grown tired of them. I still haven't seen Toy Story 3 and I've avoided reviews, but I do know it has an almost perfect tomatometer score due to an infamous review by White.
The House Next Door writes a wonderful review of White's review of Toy Story 3 that's worth reading. Hating the Player, Losing the Game: The Armond White Meta-Review. My favorite part is this, which I completely agree was my fascination in him at all.
"What makes Armond's reviews perversely fascinating is that he is so obviously intelligent, yet this intelligence has been harnessed to the warped imperatives of an increasingly frustrated personality. Where your average critical hack job is just banal, White's ability to disconnect the dots exerts a kind of bizarro brilliance. Try to take any of his recent reviews as seriously as he insists and you'll find yourself, like Alice and the Red Queen, running in hermeneutic circles, getting nowhere fast. It makes for mediocre criticism but lurid psychodrama."
3 comments:
I won't spoil anything about the movie except to suggest that, when you do see it, look at it from three points of view:
1. the POV of a nine-year-old child who was born and raised on TS1 and TS2, watching them a thousand times over and loving every moment of them.
2. the typical parent, worried about violent imagery possibly scarring their children's psyches.
3. the typical parent who doesn't want their children to grow up too fast.
Armond White is none of the above, so how can he write a decent review? It would be like me writing a review about tai kwon do. I know many people are into it, I've seen people do it here and there, but I've never experienced it myself so I'm no authority on it.
I don't know. I'm none of those three and I think I could write a decent review after seeing the movie (so that handles your tai kwon do comparison).
Point taken, offense not implied, and best of luck with your tai kwon do classes. But as Paul, sitting next to me right now, points out, White says "....I don't babysit children." It's not that he's never had kids, not that he doesn't family with kids, it's that he's so divorced from the concept of children that the best he can say is "I don't babysit kids."
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