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ACF Critic Series 2: Armond White’s “Better Than” List
Armond White published his 13th “Better Than” list, the only counter-cultural idea in year-end, awards-season fawning over the same overpraised film-making, usually in undercooked film criticism. Here’s the list! He joined me to talk about the sorry state of film criticism, as well as about three worthwhile movies. We discuss where they touch on greatness: Greta Gerwing’s teenage girl’s coming of age story, Lady Bird, Terence Davies’s Emily Dickinson biopic, A Quiet Passion, and the indefatigable Luc Besson’s dazzling, startlingly insightful galactic 3-D blockbuster, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Worlds.
A couple of other things to mention:
Armond White at Comicon!
How partisan blindness gets liberal film critics to both love a movie and ignore the ways it criticizes liberalism!
The worst hack who wrote E.M. Forster adaptations for the screen decades back is back for awards season, with more sentimentality and visions of class privilege!
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By the way: One of Armond White’s provocative insights: American comics & comic book movies are essentially sexless!
I’d say that’s overwhelmingly true of both the DCU and MCU films of the past decade, but not of the shows or earlier comics. Jessica Jones, to take the convenient example, was very much about sex.
Would you call it an erotic comic?
I’ve not read the comic, so I can’t comment on it. I wouldn’t call the show erotic either, though sex is integral to its story.
I saw the first season. There’s one sex scene that’s supposed to be erotic. It’s not much.
Mostly, that chick plays bored, sarcastic, wan…
Your conversation with Armond White was “Marvelous stuff.” I’d not heard about the Emily Dickinson movie – A Quiet Passion. We’ll be looking for it. Thank you.
Glad you liked it!
Fun new intro music. I’m listening now. Peace!
When I was a kid, I used to write these things I use as intros to the podcasts… Glad you liked it, MT!
So I listened to the intro music again and I really like it.
How did you record? Do you mind sharing? Thanks in advance.
I also love your desire to defend Greta Gerwig. It’s very sweet.
I need to watch more movies… thanks for this interesting discussion with a truly interesting thinker. The pair of you.
I can’t really listen to this while I’m doing something else like checking math homework or I miss stuff and have to rewind. Good craic!
No recording, just writing. I could not play all this stuff! There are all sorts of programs. I used a guitarpro, which had gotten to the 5th iteration. It has samples for any number of instrments, some of which are not terrible.
You can write the scores for anything, including percussion…
Glad you like it, Mama Toad!
Max has done a bit of that.
I was wondering if it was a computer-played score or if you and friends or you and you had recorded the parts.
All played by computer. I never got a band started. Probably, I had too high a sense of my own dignity…
Max is taking an audio engineering course and posted this little sampler this afternoon in fact that you might enjoy:
Wouldn’t have figured him for funk. Sounds alright to me. I dunno where he’s going. The trumpets are supposed to start a melody?
But it does recall something you surely will love:
Don’t tell me this town ain’t got no heart when I can hear it beat out loud!
I think he intends it for a game loop.
Give him my regards & tell him to keep working at it. He doesn’t know what might come of it!