The Thought That Counts Can someone please tell Armond White that ...

t Counts

Can someone please tell Armond White that he is the smartest film critic in the world? [“Spielberg Climbs Another Mountain,” Dec. 21] That’s all he wants. Just once.

I mean, when was the last time someone walked up to Armond and said: “Armond, we know how hard it is to be you, we understand that you might just be some kind of human singularity, and we just wanted you to know that we’ve been thinking a lot about this, and we all agree that you’re, like, the smartest, most creative, most insightful person we’ve ever met in our entire lives.” Is that too much too ask? Is it too much to ask that you take Armond out for a beer and put your hand on his shoulder and say, “Armond, that scene, at the end of Munich, when Eric Bana is going all Zalman King on his wife, we’ve been thinking about it, and we agreed that you’re right, it’s the most humbling, most humane, most complex scene that anyone in the history of the medium has ever dared put on the screen.” Would it kill you to do this? Would it kill you to rent Amistad one more time, for Armond? I don’t think so.

And while you’re at it, can someone please send away for one of those signed headshot-type pictures of Steven Spielberg, the kind that they put behind the cash register at the dry cleaners and in famous delicatessens? They’re not that expensive. Have it signed: “To my biggest fan Armond, Best, Steven Spielberg.” Remember, it’s the thought that counts.

Chris Okum, via email

Martyr Complex

Armond White’s review of Cache is by turns arresting and laughable. [“The Expendable Other,” Dec. 28]. As usual, he’s come at the movie sideways and made some lucid arguments, and (also as usual) he’s undercut his own arguments with some bizarre comparisons—in this case, to Munich, which is not only a muddled mess that only a Spielberg apologist might love (and love it White did) but is also hardly germane to the discussion of Cache.

White attacks Haneke’s film—and others—for being “high-toned,” while clinging to his own high-toned ideals, suggesting none too subtly that anyone who doesn’t love the films and filmmakers he does is either uninformed or kidding themselves. I happen to think he misreads Cache (perhaps willfully). The film is not the icy closed-circuit he describes: the final shot hints at reconciliation and progress, the very things he asserts the film bypasses.

Cache is another example of Hanek’s odd but fervent brand of humanism, and White’s refusal (rather than inability) to see what the director is actually working toward speaks more to his own entrenched intellectual and aesthetic agenda than to what’s actually in the film.

It’s sad to see someone so smart devote his energies to the construction of straw men —ironically, the same thing he baselessly accuses Haneke of doing. White’s tendency to deride his detractors as uninformed—or, even worse, as “hipsters”—leads me to believe he won’t read this letter, and that if he does, he won’t care: far better critics than me have taken their shots at him, and I think it feeds his martyr complex.

But as someone who has read him regularly for years — and  I would cite him as an influence on my own development as a critic — I just need to get it off my chest. The Cache review was just the tipping point, and my frustration doesn’t stem from mere disagreement. Mr. White, you’re letting your worst tendencies get the best of you, and it shows.

Adam Nayman, Toronto

Sins of Omission I

I read with great interest Robert Clark Young’s recent article about Brad Vice. [“A Charming Plagiarist, Nov. 30]. I do want to report one very important factual error—Brad Vice’s book was not the winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award this year. Each year the press picks two winners. I know because I am the other one—for my book (ironically enough entitled) Copy Cats.

It would have been nice if Mr. Young had not given your readers the mistaken impression that the award lived and died with Brad Vice’s book. My book it out there and doing pretty well.

David Crouse, via email

Sins of Omission II

Another issue, another missing my favorite writer... Where’s Brad Lockwood?  The articles he wrote for you were the best, grammatically and visually—“Interior Amiss” and “Ghosts of Georgia” showed what real writing is all about. His work is balanced, perceptive, subtle and brilliant more of his words should be filling your pages instead of other hacks and want-to-be journalists.

Where’s Brad Lockwood? I want more! I know that I’m not the only NY Press  reader hoping that he isn’t another amazing talent you’ve lost. Matt Taibbi can’t be replaced, and neither should Lockwood.

[Lockwood will be appearing frequently in New York Press for as long as he likes. As to Taibbi, good riddance to bad (and self-aggrandizing) rubbish. —The Eds.]

Emily Amgen, Brooklyn

Sins of Omission III

Hector Meza’s Christmas mix list [“What To Put on a Christmas Mix Tape,” Dec. 21]. was interesting but omitted “Weird Al” Yankovic’s classically perverse “Christmas at Ground Zero,” which is about cheerfully celebrating the holiday season during a nuclear holocaust. (It predates 9/11 considerably, so no, it’s not that Ground Zero.)

Lisa Braun, Manhattan

A Sin of COmmission

The lead for Stephen Silver’s NFL update (“As the NFL reeled from Friday’s news that Colts coach Tony Dungy’s son had passed away, the games went on Saturday and Sunday, and the playoff picture in both conferences began to come into focus.”) sets a new standard in blithe and callous stupidity. [“Bring the Pain,” Dec. 28].

P.S. The kid didn’t “pass away.” He died. In fact, was a suicide.

Bill Marsano, Manhattan