Author Archive
Brother Auteurs
The Dardennes’ Kid Takes Us for a Ride Of all the fine fraternal filmmaking teams, Belgium’s Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne do what feels like the most even-handed, disinterested work. That’s both a compliment and a complaint inspired by their latest film The Kid with a Bike. Its story about high-strung little Cyril (Thomas Doret) who...
Casa For 12-Year-Olds
Will Ferrell’s Failed Grindhouse Experiment Because Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby was the funniest movie to come out of the Bush era’s Red State/Blue State divide, I looked forward to Will Ferrell’s Casa de mi Padre, expecting another fresh cultural exploration. Hopes were dashed immediately at the opening credit sequence of fake print...
Class Clowns and Cop Clowns
Jump Street Reboot is Junk By Armond White “You shot him in the dick! I’ve never seen that!” Channing Tatum exclaims as Jenks, a rookie cop partnered with the doughy, uncool Schmidt (Jonah Hill) in 21 Jump Street. The duo have not outgrown their adolescent rivalry or immature sense of amusement that began in high...
Wall-E as a Sequel
John Carter Reveals the George Lucas Syndrome Andrew Stanton’s John Carter fulfills the promise of his previous film Wall-E. The dystopian state of our film culture is apparent in every luckless scene that adapts Edgar Rice Burrroughs’ 1917 adventure novel A Princess of Mars. Burroughs’ boys’ fiction had recognizable influence on pulp cinema landmarks from...
CITYARTS ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Not-So Brilliant Disguise
Following this week’s CityArts cover theme, Bruce Springsteen’s ballyhooed new album Wrecking Ball is considered by Editor Armond White and critic Ben Kessler who examine the contradictions when artists pursue the personal in the political. Read it here, only at CityArts. Springsteen’s New Album Wrecks Faith “Why does he sing like that, he’s from...
Father + Son = Obligation
Being Flynn Gets Human Award Season is over and we can try to get back to films as part of our culture and not some meaningless race between vanity (actors), greed (the film industry) and celebrity-worship (the media) competing to see who can run our culture into the ground fastest. And Being Flynn, being the...
Occupied Comedy
Marino Waxes, Rudd Wanes in Wanderlust Wanderlust starts with an idea borrowed from Albert Brooks’ 1986 Lost in America–a yuppie couple respond to career setbacks by embarking on a cross-country journey that tests their mettle. Here, George (Paul Rudd) and Linda (Jennifer Aniston) leave their tiny, expensive Manhattan studio apartment and fall in among a...
The Also-Rans: Mommie Artiest: Must We Talk About Kevin?
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...
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...
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...
