The character Max in Chronicle is fond of quoting philosophers, which I found sort of obnoxious (he felt like the least fleshed-out character), but leave it to Armond White to take the ball and run with it. He starts with Plato and it goes from there. The distinguished former chairman of The Golden Seal Bull Moose Moving Picture Appreciation Society of the 1934 World’s Fair found much to love in Chronicle, but especially the serendubitable opportuniciousness to burnish the effervescent patina of his own erudite literocracy. ETHEL WATERS! ETHEL WATERS! ATTICA!

Chronicle alludes to the metaphoric hormonal urges of DePalma’s classics Carrie and The Fury—in fact it’s loaded with pop references. Screenwriter Max Landis throws in plot concepts and gimmicks (like Obama and the cousins’ pursuit of a female video blogger) without ever achieving the concentration on moral quandary and mythology that distinguished last year’s Trollhunter, the Scandinavian upgrade of the witness-to-horror stunt premise.

“Hello, Max? Hi, yeah, it’s Armond, at the studio. We were reading your script, and we love it. LOVE it. I mean we REALLY love it. Everyone says you’re a genius, truly. But a couple of us, well, we just thought the whole ‘moral quandary and mythology that distinguished Trollhunter‘ thing could use a little more… well, concentration, you know? I mean give that moral quandary a Ritalin, am I right?? Anyhoo, call me back, babe, we’ll scat.”

Landis and Trank only play around with that potential (also tossing in Let the Right One In allusions). But when the three friends discover an ability to fly and play football in the sky, the metaphor for prowess and transcendence blends digital video effects and genuine cinematic spectacle into the damnedest thing since the skydiving scenes in Point Break. From there, Chronicle’s play with spectacle and imagination is almost a fascinating version of Plato’s allegory.

I have nothing to add. That is the most Armond White paragraph ever written. I don’t have the slightest idea what it means, but I have the overwhelming urge to invite it to my house and make it shit-talk Hoberman.

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Much like Bucky Larson, Katherine Heigl’s One for the Money was abruptly Trojan-horsed into theaters without being screened for critics this past weekend. But unlike Bucky Larson (still 0% after 35 reviews), One for the Money was able to win one fan (sort of!), bumping its recommended rating up to a whopping 3%. I’ve compiled here the ten most glowing quotes from Scott from MovieBuff‘s beaming two-and-a-half-star review. I also added exclamation points, because although they weren’t in the original review, I felt they captured the spirit of the review.

I think my favorite was “She never quite pulls off the Jersey persona but she comes close enough!”

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I’m not going to falsely eulogize him by pretending that I read his reviews (they seem okay), but long-time Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman (I’ll admit I have sort of a knee-jerk dislike for newspaper writers who use initials as a first name) has been s-canned after 34 years with the paper. Here’s S.T. VanAirsdale’s succinct recap:

Fun fact: Hoberman’s 34-year relationship with the Voice commenced with a high-low glimpse at David Lynch’s experimental blast Eraserhead (“Eraserhead‘s not a movie I’d drop acid for, although I would consider it a revolutionary act if someone dropped a reel of it into the middle of Star Wars“) and concluded this week with a high-low glimpse at Ken Jacobs’s experimental blast Seeking the Monkey King (“This homemade slingshot has the capacity to resist and pulverize the idiotic visual aggression of a commercial behemoth like Transformers. It’s a ’60s vision happening today—beautiful, terrifying, and determined to storm the doors of perception”). |Movieline|

Those seem to me the kind of reviews that say a lot more about the critic than they do the movie he’s watching, but I realize not everyone’s a low-brow shitheel like myself. Anyway, it’s not like he’s dead, just probably moving to a medium that has the money to pay him. Mainly, I was aware of him as the guy Armond White thinks is racist. Is that unfair to Hoberman? Probably, but you find me something funnier than two peacocking New York intellectuals in a feud. “THERE’S BEEN A BLOODLESS COUP! THE BULL MOOSE FILM APPRECIATION SOCIETY OF THE 1962 WORLD’S FAIR HAS A NEW LEADER!”

Here’s video of Armond White talking about the beef:

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If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to be the Today Show’s film critic for THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS (since 1973), the answer seems to be two-fold. One, look like Chester A. Arthur’s eccentric pocket watch merchant. Two, act as if your every pun is mankind’s greatest achievement. At least, it’s worked for Gene Shalit (fun fact: he’s 85. The upside of looking like a bizarre caricature is that you barely age.). After the jump, I’ve got a supercut with nothing but his best puns, and it is simply delicious.

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He's changin' thar lahfes

Oh, Twitter, bringing people together one child-like missive at a time. So late Christmas night, A/V Club critic Scott Tobias sent out a fairly innocuous tweet, saying “Explaining to relatives why I hate THE HELP precisely as awkward as explaining why I hated THE BLIND SIDE.” (I had a similar experience, but that’s another story). A few hours later, Tobias was met with a response Tweet from Leigh Anne Tuohy, the actual person who Sandra Bullock’s Blind Side character was based on, who apparently sits around Googling “The Blind Side” when she’s not busy running pass-blocking clinics.

@scott_tobias Dont b a hater But if u must then hate cancer, homelessness, war, poverty, child abuse, animal cruelty but a movie. #sadforyou

Ugh. Matt Ufford had a nice piece about “#FirstWorldProblems” people a while back, who are a close cousin to “SHOULDN’T YOU BE MORE CONCERNED ABOUT CANCER?!” people. Yeah, that’s the easy way to get out of criticism, just bring up muscular dystrophy and Darfur. If it were up to these people, Twitter would be 10 million people tweeting “u kno wat i h8? animal cruelty and war!” and another 10 million @ replying “u go gurl!” So, basically, an exchange between P Diddy and his followers.

Tobias responded:

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