This week finds the movie blogosphere all hot and bothered over New York Press critic Armond White’s latest jeremiad, “What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Movies.” (If you’re not familiar with Mr. White’s bomb-throwing rhetorical strategies and absurdly contrarian taste in movies, please don your flame-retardant suit before reading.) Among other things, White is concerned that the internet is overrun with know-nothing idiots blathering about film, and of course, we resemble that remark. Glenn Kenny, for one, has had enough. "My friend (well, he was my friend, and then he does this) Aaron Aradillas points me to New York Press critic Armond White's latest 'everybody in the world sucks but me' screed, ‘What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Movies,’ which he kicks off by flexing his disdain for the ‘opinionated throng’ of internet critics who emulate the ‘Vachel Lindsay-Manny Farber tradition.’ That's a great start, given that only a person who has read either Farber, or Lindsay, but by no means both, could possibly conceive of yoking the two together in this way. White then goes on to piss all over the recently-grievously-ailing Roger Ebert...after which he wishes him ‘nothing but health.’ That's awfully sweet of him…Now, White's known for spewing bile at his peers in print, and then turning around and being quite affable to said peers in person—I've experienced it. And I've had it. So: screw you, Armond. Don't say ‘hi’ next time you see me at a screening because you won't get a 'hi' back. You think you're applying some form of moral rigor to your work, but the fact is that you're a bully and a hypocrite, and I don't want to know you.”
At Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeffrey Wells doesn’t take it so personally. In fact, he’s quite the White fan. “Nobody in the world -- nobody -- throws brilliant, super-analytical lightning bolts from his own incredibly fickle and ferocious orbit like New York Press critic Armond White. Judgment! Judgment! He's immensely readable, fearless, provocative. Film criticism today would be in a much poorer and less observant state without him. But he's so alone now. He's so up there and out there that he's barely seems to be breathing the same common air or standing on any kind of recognizable terra firma….Only White can say stuff that I find almost appalling (but always amusing) in its hermetic and secluded considerations, but at the same make points that I know deep down to be true, or at least worthy of serious consideration.”
Living in Cinema has a more or less even-handed take on the whole situation. “I don’t much care for Armond White and I know he wouldn’t much care for me if he knew I existed, but sometimes the man has a point….Print criticism, in part because of its for-profit nature and in part because of its cozy relationship with the very thing it would criticize, is largely a failure. It’s a monolithic dinosaur that is on the verge of extinction and I say ‘good riddance.’ I also agree that much of what has rushed to fill the void via the Internet is garbage. For starters, there is too much emphasis on box office figures….There is also, I suppose, a necessarily watered down quality to the overwhelming mass of Internet movie reporting. There are too many of us doing this and many of us kind of suck.”
Elsewhere in the worldwide web of suck, Beyond the Multiplex takes a look at the Tribeca Film Festival and wonders exactly what it’s supposed to be. “I never know quite what to say about the Tribeca Film Festival, which launched its 2008 edition on Wednesday night with the premiere of the Tina Fey-Amy Poehler comedy Baby Mama. Maybe that's because the festival's reason for existing has never seemed entirely clear. How do Baby Mama and the Wachowski siblings' Speed Racer, this year's Hollywoodized red-carpet premieres, fit into a festival that encompasses sports movies, experimental New York documentaries, unknown art films from Eastern Europe and the Arab world, and a collection of would-be art-house hits vacuumed up from other festivals? Maybe it's a dumb question. Those things stick together because they're all part of a large, diverse and incoherent film festival that clogs up Manhattan during the very nicest spring weather and fleetingly captures the industry's attention before all the film-biz bigwigs jet off to Cannes.”
And finally, from the “wish we could be there” department, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule has the scoop on the Southern California Drive-In Movie Society’s celebration of the 75th anniversary of the drive-in theater. “The Mission Tiki Drive-in has the Punk Rock Drive-in outdoor festival scheduled monthly through September, as well as its second all-day-and- into-the-night Tiki Invasion II, featuring 10 different bands, a burlesque revue, a hot rod car show and a great opportunity to see genuine drive-in movie classics like Death Race 2000, Zombie and Invasion of the Bee Girls on the giant outdoor screen, just like God intended. The Mission Tiki also has what promises to be a great all-night Monsterama Halloween horror movie festival scheduled for October…But this weekend it's all happening at the Vineland Drive-in in City of Industry, where the Southern California Drive-in Movie Society will kick off its fourth season in celebration of the 75th anniversary of drive-in history with this summer’s first Drive-in Tailgate Party.”