Author Archive

Willy the Shake

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts our town, Arts our town downtown, Arts west side spirit, Our Town, Our Town Downtown, West Side Spirit

Joss Whedon introduces fanboys to the Bard During a public trailer for Much Ado About Nothing, some guy in the theater let out an exasperated yawn: “Oh, Boy!” Having already seen the film, I appreciated his foresight. Joss Whedon’s modern-day, black & white version of Shakespeare’s comedy means to be delightful but falls way short.
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

Ill-Gotten Booty

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts our town, Arts our town downtown, Arts west side spirit, Our Town, Our Town Downtown, West Side Spirit

The Bling Ring translates as Sofia Coppola’s girls’ club Sofia Coppola has finally made an interesting movie. The Bling Ring circles around Sofia’s typical poor-little-rich-girl subject by dramatizing that infamous group of Southern California high-school housebreakers fixated on such tabloid celebrities as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan who they idolize, envy and then burglarize. It’s
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

Beauty vs. Beastliness

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts our town, Arts our town downtown, Arts west side spirit, Our Town, Our Town Downtown, West Side Spirit

Michael Douglas as Liberace in Behind the Candelabra. Soderbergh’s Liberace pic confuses sympathy with politics From the actors’ perspective, Behind the Candelabra looks like a compassionate portrayal of the pianist and singer Liberace‘s relationship with Scott Thorson. The older established celebrity’s involvement with a younger man, masked for the public from 1977 to Liberace’s death in 1987, gets exposed here as an example
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

Like Father Like Ingenue

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts our town, Arts our town downtown, Arts west side spirit, Our Town, Our Town Downtown, West Side Spirit

Will Smith and Jaden Smith in After Earth. Will Smith guides his son through Hollywood Darwinism in After Earth Boys without fathers are the target audience for Will Smith’s After Earth. Its story of a boy Kitai Raige (Jaden Smith) trying to live up to his father Cypher Raige’s (Will Smith) survivalist code is a potential blockbuster, combing futuristic whimsy with street hardness
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

Accounting for Bad Taste

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts our town, Arts our town downtown, Arts west side spirit, Our Town, Our Town Downtown, West Side Spirit

What The Hangover Part III means in terms of Hollywood economics You might laugh at The Hangover Part III but you won’t laugh as hard as Todd Phillips, the film’s director and co-screenwriter, who laughs all the way to his offshore Cayman Island account. The Hangover Part III continues what’s advertised as “The Wolfpack Trilogy”
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

The Lady in the Glass Booth

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts our town, Arts our town downtown, Arts west side spirit, Our Town, Our Town Downtown, West Side Spirit

Hannah Arendt’s biography as an intellectual romance Filmed under the working title “The Controversy,” Margarethe von Trotta’s bio-pic Hannah Arendt (now at Film Forum), about the renown German Jewish critic and philosopher, combines fun, gossipy insight into the New York literary society of the 1960s with a more serious story of political morality. Those seemingly
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

Fast vs. Facile

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts our town, Arts our town downtown, Arts west side spirit, Our Town, Our Town Downtown, West Side Spirit

How Fast & Furious 6 crushes Iron Man 3 The cynicism that makes Iron Man 3 so lousy is defied by the good-time camaraderie of Fast & Furious 6. Dominic Toretto and Brian O’Connor (Vin Diesel and Paul Walker) are more likable than Robert Downey’s snarky Tony Stark and their friendship makes for greater drama
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

Thin Man and Woman

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts our town, Arts our town downtown, Arts west side spirit, Our Town, Our Town Downtown, West Side Spirit

Why won’t Linklater, Hawkes and Delpy shut up? Following Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004), Before Midnight’s ongoing chronicle of an aging, talkative, narcissistic couple Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy (he’s author of two books This Time and That Time; she’s artistic) threatens to become the The Thin Man series for indie movie hipsters.
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

Mumblehattan

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts our town, Arts our town downtown, Arts west side spirit, Our Town, Our Town Downtown, West Side Spirit

Decoding Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha Frances Ha runs a very long 84 minutes. It offers an obnoxiously self-satisfied portrait of a young white New Yorker — played by Greta Gerwig — running out her parent’s stipend, roommating with other New York hipsters, sometimes skipping the pond to Paris, all the time pursuing her goal to
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

From Zoom to Whoosh

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts our town, Arts our town downtown, Arts west side spirit, Our Town, Our Town Downtown, West Side Spirit

Baz Luhrmann’s Gatsby is not Great The ad campaign for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is pretty snazzy, the movie itself not so much. The poster’s anachronistic Art Deco silver letters on a black grid evoke the chrome of shiny old Dusenberg’s plus the velvet casing of jewelry boxes. It’s about luxury and that’s what
[ read more... ]

Be the first to comment on this post

..