Re film critic Armond White and the New York Film Critics Circle's expulsion of him.

From Walter Biggins, writing for the late Roger Ebert's website:
And even if you accept that White—or if not White, the tablemates that he failed to control—behaved badly at an awards ceremony, does that offense necessitate an emergency meeting, much less an outright dismissal from a group in which was a three-time president and dues-paying member? Isn't this a behavioral issue that could have been solved by disinviting White and his entourage from future dinners, or perhaps asking the wait staff and security at next year's dinner to keep an eye on White's table and nip any problems in the bud before they had a chance to become problems? 
Even if we agree that rude behavior at awards dinners is unacceptable—and I do—what does it have to do with anything beyond the dinners themselves? 
Nothing. 
White has always lacked decorum, often to his detriment. He can be appallingly childish. But this contretemps exposes a deeper, more systemic childishness, an unwillingness to tolerate dissenting opinion under the guise of promoting "respect" and decorum. Sometimes it is decorum itself that is stifling, that shuts down debate, that maintains a harmful status quo, and that needs to be dismantled so that rigorous, full-bodied, multifaceted criticism can flourish. Isn't that what a critics' circle should be striving toward?

A link to the entirety of Biggins' article:
http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/in-defense-of-armond-white

Feuding isn't just for literary communities--witness New York Film Critics in action.

http://www.nypress.com/article-22053-indecent-exposure.html
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/01/j_hoberman_on_a.php

Favorite quote from the Armond-said/Jim-said back-and-forth:
J. Hoberman:  "...imagine, as I wrote at the time, if I had written something about him [Armond White], rather than posting something he wrote [a negative comment about fimmaker Noah Baumbach's mother, former VILLAGE VOICE film critic Georgia Brown]!"

Sounds like something that has occurred before on SoCal poetry listserves....

When a contrarian film critic gets skewered by film publicist--plus his fellow critics.

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2010/03/white_rips_hobe.php

The above is a bit of inside-baseball, but it's a rare demonstration of what happens when a film critic's pointed opinions of a filmmaker and his work cause the critic to be 86ed from a film screening.

This happened about four years ago when then-LA WEEKLY critic Scott Foundas was banned
from a screening of Kevin Smith's CLERKS II because Foundas upset Smith's sensitivities in
panning the meant-to-be-mainstream JERSEY GIRL.

But Foundas (now working for the Film Society of Lincoln Center) hasn't aroused the kind of antipathy that NEW YORK PRESS critic Armond White has.

My opinion is that Leslee Dart, Scott Rudin and Noah Baumbach should not have banned White from the screening of Baumbach's GREENBERG. But at the same time, White hasn't done himself any favors with angry, overheated responses which have mostly devolved into settling scores with THE VILLAGE VOICE head critic J. Hoberman (at one point, White calls Hoberman's position something like "inherited hipsterism"--odd since Hoberman inherited his post from the departure of Andrew Sarris, who was definitely not in the hipster category).

This temporary exposure of film-critic feuding and filmmaker/publicist attempts at quality-review control will probably carry on for another week (GREENBERG will have a wider opening next Friday), before it becomes almost completely forgotten like the Foundas/Smith dustup.