By Armond White One story isn’t enough for Neil Jordan. Byzantium is full of twists and turns, memories and revelations that zigzag through the tortured history of men, women, birth, death, sexuality as well as the history of Irish and English literature and Catholic guilt. Two female vampires, teenage Eleanor …
By Armond White What’s derisive in the American title A Pig Across Paris (now playing at Film Forum) drives home the bitterness hidden in the original French title La Traversee de Paris (Crossing Paris). This 1956 release hasn’t been shown in the U.S. in more than 50 years probably because …
By Armond White Michael Bay sees like an ad-man gone wild— glorifying everything–a vision that corresponds to the age’s consumerist sensibility: greed and the need for speed. In Pain & Gain this style—and it is a genuine style, not fake flashiness like Trance or Side Effects—expresses the lusty and acquisitive …
By Armond White Funny that the Film Society of Lincoln Center paid tribute to Barbra Streisand on April 22 with its 40-year-old Chaplin Award even though Streisand’s movies are not the kind typically shown in Film Society programming. As a fundraiser, it was unparalleled. Co-chair of the event, Ann Tenenbaum …
By Armond White The difference between Antonio Fargas playing a pathetic Black queen based on Jason Holliday in Next Stop Greenwich Village and Jason Holliday playing himself in Portrait of Jason is crucial. Fargas, a real actor, conveyed the multiple and paradoxical meanings in a dramatized character; Holliday, as an …
