Author Archive

A Dog of Flanders

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Mellow Nello The dog in A Dog of Flanders isn’t really the scruffy black Bouvier, but the motherless boy Nello (Jeremy James Kissner), raised by his poor, ailing grandfather. Delivering milk to his neighbors with a cart pulled by the abused mutt he rescued, nursed back to health and renamed Patrasche, Nello struggles innocently, selflessly.
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Introducing Dorothy Dandridge

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

  Surrender Dorothy Halle Berry would probably make a better Lena Horne than a Dorothy Dandridge. Not as vivacious as Dandridge, Berry’s non-threatening cuteness really does recall Horne’s poised beauty (try Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes for a parallel Dandridge temperament). So in the HBO movie Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, Berry makes the best of loose-fitting apparel.
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The Iron Giant

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

The Brad Bird Project The kids are not all right. The public’s veritable rejection of The Iron Giant confirms it. Hollywood has succeeded in creating a moronic youth audience, a subset of capitalism’s larger audience of robotic consumers. Like last year’s Babe: Pig in the City, The Iron Giant should have been immediately recognized as
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Those Who Love Me…

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

A Dream Bestirred  “Our lives could be more inventive,” says Francois (Pascal Greggory), a scowling, handsome art critic defining the failures of his set in Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train. They’re a mean bunch–drug addicts, homosexuals, clinging wives, cheating husbands, cruel parents and crueler children–all traveling from Paris to Limoges for the funeral of a painter-professor, Jean-Baptiste Emmerich,
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Jack Valenti’s Ass

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

This catastrophe was confirmed by last week’s letter from a majority of the New York Film Critics Circle to Warner Bros. about the Motion Picture Association of America (the organization that administers movie ratings) requiring that Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut be altered to qualify for an R rating. The letter charged the ratings board had “become a punitive and
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The Wood Reclaims Black Youth Culture

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Turn Back The Hands of Hiphop Vinyl records are used as souvenirs of childhood in The Wood, linking memories of growing up in the 1980s to contemporary trials of friendship faced by three responsible young men. Reading the record label logos as they spin on a turntable is enough to make those artifacts numinous, to recall the time of
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Blair Witch’s Corruption

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

A Cinematic Wedgie “Kill it before it grows!” Bob Marley sang. I’m cringing at the puerile celebration of The Blair Witch Project. This home video by the Florida-based team Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez is the worst of this year’s movie offenses so far. Calling it a “movie” is a bothersome technicality (it’s been transferred to celluloid and is being
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Kubrick: The First Film Nerd

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

After the July 11 screening  of Lolita, both the Museum of Modern Art and the Anthology Film Archives concluded their early career tributes to Stanley Kubrick. These mini-fests are part of what TheNew York Times has described as mounting expectation for this week’s opening of Eyes Wide Shut. But seeing Kubrick’s 1956 racetrack thriller The Killing for the first time
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An Ideal Husband

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

An Ideal Husband directed by Oliver Parker   Culture’s End Riding a bus to the Hamptons, a friend recently watched An Ideal Husband, on video. So did I—but in a theater. An oddly appropriate experience, since Oliver Parker conducts this adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s love roundelay just as a tv director would: mostly closeups and perfunctory medium shots for
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My Son the Fanatic, When Love Comes

Written by Armond White on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

My Son the Fanatic directed by Udayan Prasad Taxi Driver A remnant from the 80s when multiculti was chic, international smart aleck Hanif Kureishi grows up with My Son the Fanatic. He has finally found a sober, wise use for that spark of intelligence and humor first seen in his screenplay for My Beautiful Laundrette but later squandered in
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