It’s been a while since we last checked in with Armond White, everyone’s favorite vociferant contemptularian, and three-time exalted cyclops of the Bull Moose Moving Picture Society of the 1934 World’s Fair. On the A-Dubz docket today, IFC Films’ Room 237, a documentary about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining told through interviews with the most outspoken Kubrick lovers. As is so often the case, Armond actually has a valid point to make, about how the middlebrow has come to worship ambiguity for its own sake, because middlebrow critics aren’t smart enough for critical thinking. And as always, A-Dubz’ valid points are almost completely upstaged by his own verbidinous thesaurification and intense desire to keep his lawn clear of pre-pubescent whippersnappers.

Which is to say, he uses the word “nerd” seven times. Seven. And that’s not counting uses of the term “geek.” And let’s keep in mind, he’s an Ivy League-educated film critic.

Room 237 lets the nerds loose

Comprised of theories spoken by five different Kubrick nerds over an assemblage of movie clips and diagrams by director Rodney Ascher, Room 237 pretends to dissect Kubrick’s 1980 movie The Shining. Ascher’s film—a true mockumentary if ever there was one—is named after the Overlook Hotel suite where little Danny sees Kubrick’s most disturbing visions due to his gift for “shining.” Every nerd wants to shine.

Three times. He used “nerd” three times. And we’re still in the first paragraph, people.

Fans seem unable to recognize the film’s failings and so try to make virtues of its mistakes.  “Kubrick often in many of his movies would end them with a puzzle so he’d force you to go out of his movies saying ‘What was that about?’” So claims one zealot who responds to cinema the way a child reacts to a video game, trusting that the manufacturer cares about his response.

“who responds to cinema the way a child reacts to a video game.” So… joyfully? By calling the other viewers “fag” on a headset? I love the phrase, I’m just not sure what it means. “…trusting that the manufacturer cares about his response.” Again, this is coming from a guy who writes about movies for a living.

Another nerd says “[Kubrick] is like a megabrain for the planet who is boiling down, with all of this extensive research, all of these patterns of our world and giving them back to us in this dream of a movie.”

NERDS! NERDS! NERDS! God, what I wouldn’t give to see Armond White giving some Christopher Nolan fanboy a swirly. I’d like to think Armond could do it without even mussing his cravat.

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On this week’s Frot, Alison Stevenson returns from LA where she recently moved to pursue her dream of becoming a Palindrome Android, and we talk Killer Joe (briefly), Armond White calling Samuel L. Jackson an Uncle Tom, Jodie Foster’s Golden Globes speech, Dredd 3D, whether there’s more than one good Michael Crichton movie, and of course answer all your questions about relationships and poop. Alison shares the story that led up to her crying during a preview for Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I’ve got time-stamped notes after the jump courtesy of Adam.

IMPORTANT USER PARTICIPATION: What would you like to hear on the best-of 2012 Frotcast? Tell us in the comments.

UPCOMING SHOWS: I’ll be doing comedy at Milk Bar on January 29th as part of SF Sketchfest, and February 27th at the Hollywood Improv.

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Email us at frotcast@gmail.com. Voicemail us at 415.275.0030. Follow me on Twitter. Follow Alison Stevenson on Twitter. Follow Ben on Twitter. Follow Bret on Twitter. Fan us on Facebook.
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As mentioned in the previous post, the New York Film Critics Circle had their awards ceremony this week, and as a three-time former chairman of the circle, our favorite old curmudgeonarion thesaurasaurus Armond White was in the audience. At one point, Michael Moore took the stage to present an award for How to Survive a Plague, at which point White and a friend began to heckle him, shouting “F*ck you!”, which is much less Armond White-like than when he shouted “Ethel Waters!” at Viola Davis last year.

Moore was on hand to present the award for Best First Film to David France, whose feature “How to Survive a Plague” is a salute to ACT UP, the radical protest group whose most notorious action was to send thousands of protesters to St. Patrick’s Cathedral during the Christmas season in 1989. Dozens stormed into the December Mass to disrupt the prayers and desecrate the Host, which Catholics believe is the Body of Christ. A stunned John Cardinal O’Connor looked on in horror. The publicity stunt was denounced by David Dinkins, Mario Cuomo, Ed Koch and the Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Rights.

Moore, saluting the ACT UP film, said the American public was indifferent to the AIDS crisis as it happened and indeed breathed “almost a collective sigh of relief that it [AIDS] was primarily victimizing gay men.” Moore went on to say he liked the film’s reminder that “the Cardinal couldn’t get through Mass at St. Patrick’s.”

Moore stated, “I personally like that one. I say that as a former seminarian.” But White and a friend shouted, “[Bleep] you!” “You liar!” “Shut up!” and “Drop dead!”

Moore responded, “I’ve pissed off the Catholics,” and began a blessing in Latin. He then went on to say that “those who would deify Reagan and Pope John Paul II are responsible for the deaths of thousands of people . . . because of their bigotry.”

You see, in the world of Armond White, Catholicism is almost as sacrosanct as those benefirous priapizians of modern masculinity, Neveldine and Taylor, whose effervesphorescent tours de force in multi-dimensionarious explosiatalitarianism out-patinas the lambency of even Paul WS Anderson and Jack and Jill. As such, a vulgar interloafer like Michael Moore must be punished with the most withering pejoratives in the junior high milieu. Read the rest of this entry »

Boulder? Armond ain't care.

I’ve often said that it’s unfair to call Armond White, the venerefficent curmudgeonarianist and three-time chair of the Bull Moose Moving Picture Appreciation Society of the 1934 World’s Fair, a contrarian. But that’s not quite true. He is a contrarian, it’s just that he’s a born contrarian, not an opportunist. A black, gay (I think?) republican, he’s a paradox wrapped in a contradiction wearing a monogrammed ascot standing on a thesaurus. He’s strange and confusing and wonderful, like a verbose platypus laying truth-eggs, and hardly a day goes by that he doesn’t enrich my life in some way. Today I was drawn first by an old Twitter exchange in which he chastised a fellow premiere goer who called him out for falling asleep halfway through Wuthering Heights (Armond: “Instead of spying, introduce yourself. Why not drop the monicker, be adult, professional, courteous?“). This in turn led me to Armond’s most recent review, of the recently re-released Raiders of the Lost Ark. Armond adores Steven Spielberg, it’s one way in which he’s actually a conformist (kissing Spielberg’s ass being practically a cottage industry), but it seems that even when he’s agreeing, Armond finds a way to do it his own way. Behold:

Despite the historical impact that Raiders of the Lost Ark made in 1981, each succeeding sequel has surpassed it.

!!!!

Now it can [be] said: Raiders is the least of the quartet, despite its early 80s novelty, coming at the tail-end of the ‘70s American Renaissance when filmmakers brought modernist revisionism to Hollywood genre. Raiders is preferred by those who refuse to take Spielberg (and pop culture) seriously. It’s actually less elegant than the widely disliked Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which is, in fact, far richer. [...] Crystal Skull builds on Raider’s ideas and complicates them. Arriving two decades later, it is the series’ true sequel–refined and elegant.

Wait, what was the elegant part, Shia Labeouf leading an army of monkeys through the trees or the frequent cutaways to a family of CGI gophers? And the sequence of waterfalls, was that refinement? DON’T ASK QUESTIONS, BITCH, I JUST ADJECTIVE’D THAT SH*T!

The rest of the piece is less contrarian, with Armond doing his signature thing, posing interesting questions sparked by wild, overreads of a film’s minutiae, mixed with an obtuse word soup of dizzying allusions. Here’s one of my favorite:

As teenage Indy goes from horse to train (a semiotic condensation of John Ford’s The Iron Horse and Buster Keaton’s The General in the guise of Barnum and Bailey circus transport), Spielberg achieved one of the most cinematically resonant sequences in modern movies (until Joseph Kahn paid homage to it in the train/motorcycle/gun race of Torque).

WAITER! Can I get a new caviar fork, please? This one’s got water spots from all the semiotic condensation. Don’t you cover these at night?

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U mad?

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, it’s unfair and reductive to call Armond White “a troll.” If he was just a troll, he wouldn’t be that interesting. He’s often right and says things that need to be said, but he tends to fire his truth bullets while wearing an elaborate ghillie suit of utter insanity. His insight is well-camoflaged in total crazy – that’s what makes him so interesting. This week, the veneriforous curmudgeonarian of the Bull Moose Moving Picture Society of the 1934 World’s Fair took on the two Paul Andersons, that imbecilic feebleton Paul Thomas, responsible for cretinous sewage scrapings like Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood; and his exalted ecumenical high holiness Paul WS, ennoblifical architect of such patina’d effervesticals as Death Race, Aliens vs. Predator, and Resident Evils 1, 4, and 5. As it turns out, Paul WS Anderson is such an obviously superior filmmaker to Paul Thomas that it’s almost not even worth Armond’s time. 1100 words? Armond White could write 1100 words on the dump he just took, if a gentleman so well-read as Armond White ever deigned to take a dump.

Compare the unoriginal use of 3D in Hugo–standard diorama compositions with objects poking out toward the viewer–to Paul W.S. Anderson’s astonishingly lively 3D compositions in Resident Evil: Retribution where heroine Alice (Milla Jovovich) fights the Umbrella Corporation’s viral experiments that produced a plague turning mankind into zombies. Anderson’s images vivify the entire expanse of the wide screen to keep your eyes busy surveying the breadth of action while also pulling your vision inward for an appreciation of depth–and emotion.

That was the first paragraph. He opened the article by bashing Scorsese while praising the guy from Death Race. This is the critical equivalent of “First off, f*ck ya bitch and the clique you claim...” The article isn’t even about Scorsese. He just needed an example of someone he thinks sucks, and his first thought was Martin Scorsese. This is a natural thought process for Armond White. Friends, if you’re out begging f*cks, steer clear of the White hacienda for there they will not be given.

And in case you philistinic loafwits – Hobermanites, probably – missed the subtext of that first graf, A-Dubz will break it down for you.

My point isn’t to measure Paul W. S. Anderson against Martin Scorsese; that’s too easy–an almost unfair contrast of innovative imagination to uninspired convention.

Why, it’d be like comparing velvety, ambrosiacal Mountain Dew to that stagnant, hog-swaddled fecal tea, Dom Perignon. WE GET IT, ARMOND! YOU DON’T NEED FIVE ANALOGIES TO EXPLAIN THAT THE SKY IS BLUE! WE’RE WITH YOU, STOP PANDERING!

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