The Cole Smithey Thread

  • 🏰 The Fediverse is up. If you know, you know.
  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
Tragi-Chan said:
It's a really odd selection. He goes a little bit Hollywood with Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, presumably because of the satirical element. Yet as satire goes, it's really heavy-handed compared to, say, Verhoeven's more popular film Robocop. He includes Night of the Living Dead, but not the arguably superior sequel Day of the Dead. And I don't know what The Rocky Horror Picture Show is doing on there - it's not exactly an arty film, it runs out of plot halfway through and the only artistic message it has is, "B-movies are great, here's a guy in a corset so you can pretend you're really worldly for watching this."
Click to expand...

These are good examples. The "satire" in Starship Troopers fell flat largely because the original did the same thing but took it seriously, so anyone familiar with the original may very well have been thrown by the fact that it just seemed to be doing what the novel did, but doing it badly.

Night of the Living Dead really does deserve on a best of list, but best of horror, really. It was an excellent movie, but does not belong in a top 100 ever. Perhaps Dawn of the Dead does. I assume you mean that and not Day of the Dead, generally considered the weakest of the trilogy.

And Rocky Horror is the very definition of a cult movie. It is largely known for being one of the first movies with an extra-large spergy fandom that followed it around and tarded out in theaters, allowing it to be perpetually screened within driving distance of most major populations for basically forever. This is kind of cool, but not top 100 material.

It's just a dumb list.

Plus Salo. Seriously. Get real.
 
Night of the Living Dead really does deserve on a best of list, but best of horror, really. It was an excellent movie, but does not belong in a top 100 ever. Perhaps Dawn of the Dead does. I assume you mean that and not Day of the Dead, generally considered the weakest of the trilogy.
Click to expand...
I do indeed mean Dawn. Night is a great film, but I think in a sense it's more notable for the influence it had on horror than as a film in itself. I know it's wrong, but I actually did quite like Day. I'm not going to pretend it was as good as the others, but I enjoyed it.

And Rocky Horror is the very definition of a cult movie. It is largely known for being one of the first movies with an extra-large spergy fandom that followed it around and tarded out in theaters, allowing it to be perpetually screened within driving distance of most major populations for basically forever. This is kind of cool, but not top 100 material.
Click to expand...
See, I'm really surprised it's on there, because I really get the impression from reading Cole's reviews that it's the sort of thing he'd normally dismiss. Cards on the table, it's a film I enjoy, but it's very flawed. Cole is pretentious as hell, so why he'd pick this film is something of a mystery to me.

The list would be more interesting if it said anything about the films. Why Night and not Dawn? Why these Kurosawas and not the better known ones? What makes him think that 1900 deserves the number one spot? Are these his personal favourite films, or does he think these are the best films ever made? Does he want us to agree with him? How is he going to persuade me, the reader, that A Man Escaped is a film I should watch? As it is, it's just a bit of a wank.
 
Last edited:
DykesDykesChina said:
Cole Smithey's Top 100 Movies
Click to expand...

At first, I was embarrassed that '1900' was at the top of his list (the last thing I want is some hipster cocksucker masturbating all over that film).

Then I thought about why he placed it so high: the first act of the film includes a plot about one boy, Alfredo, who loves his grandfather and despises his father, and another boy, Olmo, who never learns who his real father actually is, but also loves his grandfather.

Hits a little close to home, doesn't it Cole?
 
I_Am_Honor_Roll said:
At first, I was embarrassed that '1900' was at the top of his list (the last thing I want is some hipster cocksucker masturbating all over that film).

Then I thought about why he placed it so high: the first act of the film includes a plot about one boy, Alfredo, who loves his grandfather and despises his father, and another boy, Olmo, who never learns who his real father actually is, but also loves his grandfather.

Hits a little close to home, doesn't it Cole?
Click to expand...

I bet the worst thing Bob actually did to Cole was just not be the sophisticated New Yorker that Cole fancies himself to be, despite being a second rate hipster wearing the hipster equivalent of those sped glasses Chris wears.
 
AnOminous said:
I bet the worst thing Bob actually did to Cole was just not be the sophisticated New Yorker that Cole fancies himself to be, despite being a second rate hipster wearing the hipster equivalent of those sped glasses Chris wears.
Click to expand...
I was referring more to the fact that Cole had to ask Chris and then hire a Private Investigator in order to find out who his father was, but I guess that works...too?
 
anephric said:
This guy lists two Kurosawa films but neither of them is Seven Samurai or Ran?
Click to expand...
Rashomon is an amazing film, and I think it is superior to Ran. Ran has pageantry and is epic in scope but Rashomon is almost Hitchcockian in the story it tells and was clearly a huge influence on filmmakers like Tarantino.

But placing Ikiru on the list over Seven Samurai? Unforgivable.
 
Tragi-Chan said:
And I don't know what The Rocky Horror Picture Show is doing on there - it's not exactly an arty film, it runs out of plot halfway through and the only artistic message it has is, "B-movies are great, here's a guy in a corset so you can pretend you're really worldly for watching this."
Click to expand...
Or a British examination of American sexual hang-ups through the lens of horror and sci-fi B-movies, which, as genres, have always been more interested in tackling present anxieties (read: sex and personhood) rather than ghoulies.

It hurts to know that, somehow, Cole would find a way to take that silver-platter explanation and make it interminable.
 
Cole Smithey is the kind of gigantic faggot who blows Ted Rall.
 
Henry Bemis said:
It hurts to know that, somehow, Cole would find a way to take that silver-platter explanation and make it interminable.
Click to expand...

Cole was the same guy who wrote about The Lego Movie being a film about "socio-political resistance with an anti-1% message" and bored us with a textwall article about it when it was just a movie created to sell cheap plastic junk to children. Adding unnecessary conjecture like that is easy, makes you seem smarter than you actually are (to people who wouldn't know otherwise at least, read "not Cole's intended audience" ironically enough) and anyone can do it without even watching a whole movie (which is probably why Cole does it). For example...

"Wayne's World is a seething critique of post-modern intellectual values personified through two staunchly anti-industrialist auteurs who, utilising satirical but subjectively reformist television broadcasts, attempt to challenge now consistent Fordist and post-Fordist norms that have started to seep into the entertainment industry and turn creativity into a process of self-destruction and systematic control with a pseudo-panopticon scheme."

Now multiply that times ten and you have a Cole Smithey "review." I put review in quotes because he almost never talks about what actually happens in the movie, but makes it seem like a review by making it about 80% filler. It reminds me of the way I wrote essays for literature class in secondary school and never actually read the book I was writing about outside of Sparknotes summaries at the most.
 
Last edited:
Rize Kamishiro said:
Now multiply that times ten and you have a Cole Smithey "review." I put review in quotes because he almost never talks about what actually happens in the movie, but makes it seem like a review by making it about 80% filler. It reminds me of the way I wrote essays for literature class in secondary school and never actually read the book I was writing about outside of Sparknotes summaries at the most.
Click to expand...

I had a roommate as an undergrad who would often take SJW type courses in shit and write ludicrous arguments like this for papers.

We'd sit around and smoke dope and come up with the most stupid shit imaginable to put in these papers, lace it with some quotes from Foucault and Derrida and so on and he'd get As on this outlandish bullshit.
 
AnOminous said:
I had a roommate as an undergrad who would often take SJW type courses in shit and write ludicrous arguments like this for papers.

We'd sit around and smoke dope and come up with the most stupid shit imaginable to put in these papers, lace it with some quotes from Foucault and Derrida and so on and he'd get As on this outlandish bullshit.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, that's Cole's way of doing things too, only he's serious about it and considers it his job.

Try reading Cole's review of The Interview and take note that he literally never writes about the movie itself for the entire article. It's supposed to be a review of a movie but it's nothing but political conspiracy tripe from start to finish. To me, Cole doesn't even write proper reviews of movies. I don't know what to call them, but it's movie reviews in the same way Sonichu is an original character.
 
Rize Kamishiro said:
Oh yeah, that's Cole's way of doing things too, only he's serious about it and considers it his job.

Try reading Cole's review of The Interview and take note that he literally never writes about the movie itself for the entire article. It's supposed to be a review of a movie but it's nothing but political conspiracy tripe from start to finish. To me, Cole doesn't even write proper reviews of movies. I don't know what to call them, but it's movie reviews in the same way Sonichu is an original character.
Click to expand...
A Collection of Essays Kinda Inspired by Movie Titles by Cole Smithey

Sounds like a best seller, if you ask me. :tomgirl:
 
Rize Kamishiro said:
To me, Cole doesn't even write proper reviews of movies. I don't know what to call them, but it's movie reviews in the same way Sonichu is an original character.
Click to expand...
To be fair, ColeSlaw isn't the only "movie critic" that writes this kind of crap. A good movie review is supposed to be a fairly unbiased review of the quality/entertainment value of the movie, while a good reviewer shouldn't be bringing his political views into play, nor should his review consist of a blow-by-blow summary of the plot points. However, too many reviewers want to make their reviews about *them*, rather than about the movie.

Back in 2008, when Roger Ebert was in the hospital, his editor/webmaster took over his reviewing duties for a couple of weeks. This guy wrote a review of "Iron Man" that was so bad (http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/iron-man), Roger needed to write his own review when he returned. Just like ColeSlaw, this guy used a movie review as a platform to discuss his political beliefs and to show off his cinematic knowledge rather than as, y'know, a conversation on a movie about a guy in a metal suit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom