Author Archive
Perverse Anticipation: More art movie nihilism in Michael
Not to be confused with Carl Theodor Dreyer’s profound 1924 Michael (Mikaël), the new Michael, by Austrian filmmaker Markus Schleinzer, is far from a masterwork; in fact it is the most revolting new movie since ’s Funny Games. Schleinzer (who was casting director on Haneke’s Children of the Corn-type epic The White Ribbon) plays a...
LIGHT BULB ARMOND WHITE 2.22.2012
In “Turning Journalism Into Art,” Marsha McCreadie describes a show currently running at the Brooklyn Museum, but she also sums up our mission here at CityArts. This issue covers the wide range of art experiences on offer in New York from the perspective that it makes city life more interesting—not just a place to be...
Heavy Metal Gothic: Ghost Rider Redeems and Critiques
If the filmmaking team Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor wrote out their thoughts on how contemporary pop has traduced fun, warped thrills and debased energy in the art form they love, it would be a great provocative piece of criticism—although few film publications would want such a principled view of the destructive entertainment that’s routinely...
The Also-Rans: Shame on Steve McQueen
This exclusive CityArts series will chart recent releases that failed to get Oscar nominations. Yet, just like the Oscar-nominated fare, these movies are not a part of film culture, but exist outside what moviegoers care about and talk about. Their staggered release delays the effects of film on the public; they don’t want for popular...
The Whitney Houston Dream: Broadway Lessons from a Pop Diva
Among Broadway’s young theater gypsies, Whitney Houston’s 1994 performance at the American Music Awards has been circulating as a unique theatrical tribute. Houston never appeared in a Broadway show, but her AMA medley of “I Loves You Porgy” and “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”—preserved in a 10-minute YouTube clip—connects to the current...
Tiresome Threesome: Movie Star Casualties in ‘This Means War’
In the stultifying Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, British actor Tom Hardy briefly appeared in a romantic subplot as a heartbroken, repentant operative who laments all the impenetrable death and subterfuge simply because it cost him the woman he loved. For a few fleeting moment, Hardy’s alert eyes, sensual lips and magnetic ruddiness broke through film’s...
The Also-Rans: Rampart’s Hipster Cop
This exclusive CityArts series will chart the recent peculiar releases that failed to get Oscar nominations. Yet, just like the Oscar-nominated fare, these movies are not a part of film culture but exist outside what moviegoers patronize and talk about. The films’ staggered release from December 2011 to early 2012 delays the effects of film...
Rihanna’s True Confession: A Pop Star’s Music Video Rebellion
“Trust the tale, not the teller,” D.H. Lawrence’s essential dictum, applies to Rihanna’s recent music video “We Found Love.” Transparently autobiographical in its reference to the 2009 assault incident involving Rihanna and Chris Brown, “We Found Love” answers back to those tellers—in this case gossip-mongers and pundits—whose pontifications reduced Rihanna and Brown to domestic-abuse stereotypes....
Art vs. Controversy
Everyone’s ‘Porgy and Bess’ Stephen Sondheim failed to set the agenda for Broadway camp followers when he decried the new production The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess. Instead, his argument that the DuBose and Dorothy Heyward and George and Ira Gershwin collaboration was inviolable wound up setting the stage for its 21st-century reception, proving why the...
Light Bulb Armond White 2.8.2012
History interacts with our contemporary art experiences. That’s what keeps New York’s cultural scene lively and enriches our appreciation. At the Carnegie Hall concert for Philip Glass’ 75th birthday, the premiere of a new work (Glass’ Symphony No. 9, reviewed by Judy Gelman Myers) was also a reminder of his impact on the course of...
Denzel Goes Rogue: Safe House Chases Fake Politics
Safe House, an espionage chase film set in South Africa, is rotten enough to be a sequel to District 9, where South African racial issues were treated to a dumb sci-fi alien allegory. Here, the alien is Denzel Washington, who first appears walking down a Johannesburg street in a Malcolm X beard and fedora. But...
Tarr and Horse Feathers: Art Movie Turns to Glue
Bela Tarr’s The Turin Horse isn’t funny at all but it sure is laughable. A Hungarian farmer with a bum arm, Ohlsdorfer (Janos Derzi), lives in a drab, yet limitless cabin with his morose spinster daughter (Erika Bok), who boils potatoes that go half-eaten. This goes on for two and half hours. What’s laughable are...
Theory Vs. Practice: A Dazzling Allegory In Chronicle
“Ever hear of Plato’s allegory of the cave?” one teenager asks another in Chronicle. This philosophy quiz was unexpected in the midst of a thrill ride movie but Chronicle is so surprisingly interesting, I wondered if its makers ever saw The Conformist (1971), where Bernardo Bertolucci visualized Plato’s allegory. When it’s good, Chronicle is less...
Jar Jar Binks Goes to War
Lucas crashes Red Tails George Lucas’ sales tactics for Red Tails, his $93 million production about the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American pilots in the armed forces, make a bigger bang than the film itself. On the publicity rounds, Lucas has talked about the dearth of movies with African-American heroes, promising that Red Tails will...
Spielberg’s Game Changers
Movie watching can never be the same after the doubleheader of Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin, his first animated film, and his live-action War Horse. Each film upgrades the way our imaginations construct the world, the way we see ourselves in the digital age. All art devotees should recognize the history being made. Tintin,...
LIGHT BULB ARMOND WHITE 01.17.12
Virtuosity—the quality that lit up the best of arts culture during 2011—turns out to be the quality least appreciated in this transitional period for technology, economics and politics. It’s ironic that artists like Steven Spielberg, Kanye West, Jay-Z and Picasso (revived at a Gagosian retrospective), who had the inspiration to see past the confusion and...
The Art of Noise: Dolly and Latifah reclaim glee
Todd Graff’s Joyful Noise tells the story of a Pacashau, Ga., church choir entering a gospel music competition against better-financed groups. It’s an underdog fable that neatly parallels Graff’s own career since directing his 2003 debut film Camp, the underappreciated—yet secretly influential—pop music celebration set at a training school for young musical theater aspirants. This...
The 2011 Better-Than List
Armond White looks back at the best movies that surpass and defy the year’s worst We’ve reached the point where movies are less popular than other forms of pop culture yet remain compelling—as much for what they recall about the humanities as the inhumanity they routinely deliver. Thus 2011′s year-end mania for the specious cultural...
Thug Cinema
Guy Ritchie’s Dastardly Sherlock Reboot Guy Ritchie’s calculations in his sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows are so low-down they’re almost diabolical. He has retooled the famous fictional detective character with no respect for either Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s literary creation or the ticket-buying audience. Against tradition (previous incarnations of Holmes that emphasized mystery...
The P Word
Pariah is such a decent film it is a shame that its title seems designed to keep people away. The “P” word title is too close to Precious, the abomination that set back the recent cultural progress. In Pariah, debut writer-director Dee Rees tells a coming-of-age story rooted in the family and social customs of ...
The Incredible Tom
Cruise’s Mission Impossible Victory Brian DePalma’s 1996 Mission Impossible was a cartoon even though he didn’t direct it like one. The sheer, exhilarating pleasure of Mission Impossible IV (officially subtitled Ghost Protocol) comes from star-producer Tom Cruise’s ingenious decision to cast animation master Brad Bird. This is easily Bird best film since The Iron Giant...
