comment #1

actionman says ...

I can't take Armond White seriously. He thinks that War and Torque are masterpieces in the action genre.

I haven't seen Ballast though I want to very much.

comment #2

corey3rd says ...

For a guy who is so anti-White people on the screen - he really needs to change his last name. Is black or White?

he's still bitter that he wasn't cast as a Cosby kid.

comment #3

frankbooth says ...

I felt the same way watching Maria Full of Grace. Somehow, the whole thing struck me as phony and ridiculously over-praised. Then I turned on the commentary, and sure enough, the director was a pompous young white guy. Which shouldn't matter if he pulled it off -- but I felt that he hadn't.

(And White is still a goof who takes Kael-style contrarianism to outrageous new heights.)

comment #4

JD says ...

Why even post this item? The guy had his film picked up by IFC then got out of the deal when they refused to give it a decent release. Now he's carrying the film on his back, self-distributing to the best of his ability ... and you decide to compound White's bashing because he might be a "rich kid"?

comment #5

gruver1 says ...

Wells to JD: A friend who moderates a sneak-review type film class, mostly attended by middle-aged milquetoast types, recently showed "Ballast" and had lots of walkouts. A stream of them. I'm not saying that Robert Koehler and Manohla Dargis and Owen Gleiberman and the rest of the chorus don't know what they know -- they're all brilliant -- but hearing the walkout story tells me that the people have spoken, and that's the bottom line.

Wells to frankbooth: Maria Full of Grace is a far more absorbing and compelling film that Ballast. It doesn't suffer from the same syndrome at all.

comment #6

Ghost072 says ...

What is the problem with Fresh? I thought that film was one of the more original and interesting takes on the gangster genre, with great performances, an excellent script and a truly impactful ending. There are plenty of the types of films that I think White is talking about, without bashing Fresh.

comment #7

JD says ...

JD to Wells: The people have spoken, huh? Well, if cinema is only allowed to function as mass entertainment where popularity equals quality, give the Oscar to Beverly Hills Chihuahua now. Dim-witted twits with low attention spans also walked out of the films of Antonioni, Bresson and Tarkovsky (not that Hammer is on that level, though I wouldn't know yet anyway). Fine, art cinema's not their cup of tea, but to suggest that this means of expression -- in all its miniscule niche glory -- is somehow lesser cinema because it requires greater sophistication from the viewer is deeply unfair. In this age of cinematic conformity, we should commend filmmakers that dare to take chances with unpopular techniques, whether we appreciate them or not.

comment #8

BurmaShave says ...

Well said, JD.

comment #9

MilkMan says ...

Let me just say that I do not like Armond White. His unprovoked attack on Lumet last year was one of the most mean-spirited, cowardly pieces of bile I have ever read, his constant Spielberg flag waving is getting close to parody, and yes, his championing of Torque and War is a sign that his contrarianism is out of control. That being said, I have seen Ballast, and Lance Hammer is a dilettante/tourist who is applying the latest maninstream Euro-Art aesthetics (Dardennes, in his case) in the most facile way possible. Lance Hammer is the directorial equivalent of Blues Hammer.

comment #10

jimjonesiii says ...

Maria Full of Grace may be far more absorbing and compelling film that Ballast, but it was also full of white liberal condescension.
So Maria leaves her small and beautifully depicted town in Colombia (and her shitty job as well), suffers a lot, but a the end triumphs when she becomes a pregnant illegal alien under the Bush administration?

comment #11

Jeremy Smith says ...

"Lance Hammer is the directorial equivalent of Blues Hammer." Brutal.

comment #12

storymark says ...

Yeah, that "Peiople walked out, so it must be bad" rationelle is akin to saying "Of course transformers is good! Look at how much money it made!"

comment #13

corey3rd says ...

we are in a period of time where the Arthouse cinema is a graveyard of good intentions.

The sad thought is that even if Armond White praised the crap out of this film, his opinion would pretty much mean zilch to the box office. Critics dealing with indie film are worthless. They can't create buzz that turns ieyeballs on the page into eyeballs at the arthouse. I'm part of a film that received raves from Ebert and the NY Times and I will probably never see a dime out of the production since it's NYC box office didn't even equal the price of striking 35mm prints.

A film critic in the 21st century is about as useful as a electrician at an Amish farm..

comment #14

cwratliff says ...

"The people have spoken, and that's the bottom line"?

Come ON, Wells. You know better than this. Earlier this year, you said that if a person laughed heartily at Step Brothers, it said something about their "refinement" and their "vistas."

Surely there is a healthier place somewhere in between those extreme viewpoints. You've championed plenty of great movies that "the people" never warmed to. And Armond White is HARDLY a barometer of what "the people" like anyway-- he's more a professional contrarian than a film critic, as he tends to form his opinions in direct response to what he thinks will or won't be popular with both critics and audiences, so that he can stake out the most extreme opinion that can possibly contradict BOTH points of consensus, if he can.

I don't know if Ballast is any good-- it might not be, I haven't seen it, so I couldn't say-- but I do agree that it seems churlish to pile on to a self-distributed low budget indie just because ARMOND WHITE didn't like it either. Fair enough, you didn't care for it and you said so-- but was this film really crying out for the extra negative comment?

comment #15

drturing says ...

Andrew O' Hehir wrote a halfway there piece about the overusage of the underclass and the pseudodocumentary style... Armond White took the idea where it needed to go.

http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/feature/2008/10/01/ballast/

Of all the pretenders to this nonsense the only one I can stand is Half Nelson, because it's about the white middle class kid's viewpoint as a fuckup attempting to be authentic in an outsider culture while making an ass of himself.

But it was pretty funny to read Filmmaker's 25 to watch this year and half of them seemed to be Columbia grads who "rushed to make a Katrina doc".

Not that there isn't anything worthy about such, but unless you're gonna go the route of a David Simon or Ed Burns don't even try to write this shit.