Last night was the scene of the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, an esteemed organization of which Armond White, our favorite thesaurificent cantankeramous, happens to chair. White being an old-school gangsta of the country club Gutentocracy who once told producer Scott Rudin to “go throw a cell-phone at some PA, you thin-skinned pussy”, there were bound to be some fireworks. Wait, did I say fireworks? I mean TRUTHBOMBS BURSTING IN AIR/PROOF THROUGH THE NIGHT A-DUBZ STILL HERE SKEET SKEET!
Armond White brought up ‘Black Swan’ director Darren Aronofsky to present an honor to his cinematographer. Immediately, Aronofsky seemed to be channeling his own black swan. [*queeeeef* -Ed]
“Keep it up,” Aronofsky said to White, “because you give us all another reason not to read New York Press.” [VillageVoice]
OOOOH SNAAAP. Meanwhile, Armond White is the ONLY reason anyone reads the New York Press.
It may have been a response to White’s review of Black Swan, which accused Aronofsky of “ethnic denial” and went on to discuss how much better Kanye West’s video for “Runaway” was.
But White is not “the Don Rickles of film criticism,” so his responses came off as “pompous and scolding,” [shocking. -Ed] the attendee says. Another person who was there describes it as “a mess—Armond broke the bank on insulting award winners he didn’t agree with.”
Like when he insulted Michelle Williams by introducing her with praise for her role in 2004’s Land of Plenty, which got mixed reviews. “I made that movie almost 10 years ago,” Williams said from the stage, according to people who were there. “I can’t imagine what you’ve said about me since then if you had to go back that far to say something nice.”
The only person he insulted by praising Michelle Williams’ acting was every other actor. Look, I’m all for the criticizees getting their digs in on the criticizer (myself included), but you gotta do better than “I can’t believe he only praised a movie of mine that’s so old!” By the way, your math sucks.
White also introduced playwright Tony Kushner, who was there to award The Social Network best picture, by saying, “Maybe he can explain why it won best picture.”
THIS AU-COURANT APPROBATION FOR THE SHAMELESS EXALTATION OF THE BOURGEOIS COMPUTOCRACY AIN’T FOOLIN A-DUBZ, BIATCH!
White did publicly express his gratitude to the assembled critics for their failure to award any honors to Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg. [ZING!]
At the end of the evening, Annette Bening got emotional and called for peace when she accepted her award for best actress for The Kids Are Alright: “Bening, tearfully, came close to lecturing critics for being mean little sh*ts,” one attendee said. Said another: “She said something like, ‘Can’t we all just get along?'” [Gawker]
Sidenote: Annette Bening is great, but The Kids Are All Right was terrible. It was a Tyler Perry movie for white people. God help us if we start praising poorly-made comedies just because they have unrealistic lesbians in them.
When he was alone at the microphone again, the critic said, “That’s all right. Darren reads me. That’s all I want. And because he reads me, he knows the truth.” [VillageVoice]
STOP CRYIN’, GIRL. A-DUBZ ONLY TRUTHBOMBS BECAUSE HE LOVES YOU SO MUCH.