Armond White is literally the worst, and by comparison, I am the best
If the inane, insufferable, and in fact brutally incoherent Armond White deserves a paid writing gig for your publication, I think I do too. This man is a cretin, and his pieces are often not even language but simply mere lists of words. Similarly, they are rarely subject to the logical framework of things like “thought” and “ideas” but fragments of tired and senseless memes colored by a fundamental misunderstanding (which every thoughtless complaint monger falls prey to) of our political and aesthetic culture.
The point being, of course, that there is a moral principle of equivalence (much like the physical one in alchemy) that demands that I be given a paid position with at least as much exposure as the charlatan Armond.
—Sheena
Obamafluke
C’mon, the movie [Hancock] was planned and made before Obama had a website (“The Pursuit of Crappyness,” July 2-8).
—James Day
Same Title, Different Story
Well, there you go again! It’s fair to criticize Trumbo as appearing too much the egotist (“Blacklist Blame,” June 25-July 1) to be the communist populist he purported to be, but why criticize him for Mission to Moscow, which he didn’t write? Howard Koch may not have known Trumbo, but Koch, not Trumbo, wrote Mission to Moscow (except the “Brother’s Keeper” ending producer Robert Buckner substituted for Koch’s original rhetoric about turning swords back into ploughshares…). An examination of the University of Wisconsin/Warner Bros. script library files clearly shows no official or unofficial involvement of Trumbo in Mission to Moscow, whether one agrees with his and/or Koch’s politics, it’s unfortunately a disservice to both of them to suggest—inaccurately— that Trumbo worked on the film. He didn’t…and [it’s] clearly a Howard Koch (sole-credited) script!
It’s an eerie coincidence that Trumbo won his screen story Oscar on Irving Rapper’s The Brave One now that the title of another Rapper film (not Trumbo), Deception, was also used for a current film with a different story. And now M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening (“Shock and Denial,” June 11-17) uses the titles of a 1967 Eliot Silverstein film that marked Faye Dunaway’s film debut and preceded her diving into Bonnie and Clyde.
I don’t dispute that Night earned his success with The Sixth Sense, even if it soon proved more controversial for him to show too many gratuitously dead people at the outset of Unbreakable a year before 9/11. Is death supposed to be a spectacle? Now Night has another superfluous film in The Happening, and it’s too bad Mike Myers wasn’t more of a satirist to remember why at least a few bars of Diana Ross and the Supremes’ hit, “The Happening,” actually would have been appropriately funny for The Love Guru (“Love Me True,” June 25-July 1). What’s more akin to that fat bastard Khrushchev banging his shoe at the U.N. while screaming “We will bury you!” is for film critics today to refuse to mention that new films called The Brave One, Deception, The Happening should not be confused with or mistaken for earlier films with same title, different story!
—Mike Snell, NY
Bryk in the Bag
I am very glad to see that William Bryk is back (“Bigger Than a Bread Box,” June 18-24). I always enjoyed William’s pieces in the New York Press, especially the ones that dealt with New York City history, and I was sorry when his pieces suddenly disappeared. Now that William is back, I’ll be a regular reader of the Press again.
—Jerry Weinberger
If the inane, insufferable, and in fact brutally incoherent Armond White deserves a paid writing gig for your publication, I think I do too. This man is a cretin, and his pieces are often not even language but simply mere lists of words. Similarly, they are rarely subject to the logical framework of things like “thought” and “ideas” but fragments of tired and senseless memes colored by a fundamental misunderstanding (which every thoughtless complaint monger falls prey to) of our political and aesthetic culture.
The point being, of course, that there is a moral principle of equivalence (much like the physical one in alchemy) that demands that I be given a paid position with at least as much exposure as the charlatan Armond.
—Sheena
Obamafluke
C’mon, the movie [Hancock] was planned and made before Obama had a website (“The Pursuit of Crappyness,” July 2-8).
—James Day
Same Title, Different Story
Well, there you go again! It’s fair to criticize Trumbo as appearing too much the egotist (“Blacklist Blame,” June 25-July 1) to be the communist populist he purported to be, but why criticize him for Mission to Moscow, which he didn’t write? Howard Koch may not have known Trumbo, but Koch, not Trumbo, wrote Mission to Moscow (except the “Brother’s Keeper” ending producer Robert Buckner substituted for Koch’s original rhetoric about turning swords back into ploughshares…). An examination of the University of Wisconsin/Warner Bros. script library files clearly shows no official or unofficial involvement of Trumbo in Mission to Moscow, whether one agrees with his and/or Koch’s politics, it’s unfortunately a disservice to both of them to suggest—inaccurately— that Trumbo worked on the film. He didn’t…and [it’s] clearly a Howard Koch (sole-credited) script!
It’s an eerie coincidence that Trumbo won his screen story Oscar on Irving Rapper’s The Brave One now that the title of another Rapper film (not Trumbo), Deception, was also used for a current film with a different story. And now M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening (“Shock and Denial,” June 11-17) uses the titles of a 1967 Eliot Silverstein film that marked Faye Dunaway’s film debut and preceded her diving into Bonnie and Clyde.
I don’t dispute that Night earned his success with The Sixth Sense, even if it soon proved more controversial for him to show too many gratuitously dead people at the outset of Unbreakable a year before 9/11. Is death supposed to be a spectacle? Now Night has another superfluous film in The Happening, and it’s too bad Mike Myers wasn’t more of a satirist to remember why at least a few bars of Diana Ross and the Supremes’ hit, “The Happening,” actually would have been appropriately funny for The Love Guru (“Love Me True,” June 25-July 1). What’s more akin to that fat bastard Khrushchev banging his shoe at the U.N. while screaming “We will bury you!” is for film critics today to refuse to mention that new films called The Brave One, Deception, The Happening should not be confused with or mistaken for earlier films with same title, different story!
—Mike Snell, NY
Bryk in the Bag
I am very glad to see that William Bryk is back (“Bigger Than a Bread Box,” June 18-24). I always enjoyed William’s pieces in the New York Press, especially the ones that dealt with New York City history, and I was sorry when his pieces suddenly disappeared. Now that William is back, I’ll be a regular reader of the Press again.
—Jerry Weinberger
