The Cole Smithey Thread

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DrChristianTroy said:
Cinema Snob is also a comedic character. Cole takes it super serious. I also doubt he has a sense of humor.
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Perhaps he does, but even after decades of being totally over his past for srs you guys, he still keeps up barriers.

One wonders how his wife managed to penetrate said barriers at all.
 
Artard said:
I couched it earlier but it's painfully obvious that Cole bought thousands of likes for his Facebook page.

Yet if he's concerned about appearances -- this looks really bad. His actual level of popularity, in one screenshot:

NWYFbkN.png

It's something of a perverse accomplishment to take a popular movie title, put it in the title of your youtube video and get numbers this low.
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My shitty dramatic readings, my Let's Play of a kids' GBA video game, and my iPhone-filmed video of me and a classmate on a human gyroscope have more views than this.
 
Henry Bemis said:
Perhaps he does, but even after decades of being totally over his past for srs you guys, he still keeps up barriers.

One wonders how his wife managed to penetrate said barriers at all.
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I'm trying so hard not to make a :pickle: joke. *sigh*


Altissimo said:
My shitty dramatic readings, my Let's Play of a kids' GBA video game, and my iPhone-filmed video of me and a classmate on a human gyroscope have more views than this.
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Haha. I looked up a video I uploaded for a co-worker's birthday and forgot about (it's 11 seconds and makes no sense to anyone) and it has more.

If he were just doing this because he loves movies and writing nobody would care how popular/unpopular he was. (Though if he loved movies and writing, they'd actually probably have more views.) But he's just pretending. He's been at this for years and pretending he's speaking to the masses when in reality he's speaking to a half dozen random people looking for pirated movies on YouTube.

He's had one moment in the spotlight aside from being Chris' brother, and his response to criticism then was a reflexive appeal to his supposed popularity. That's what's funny about the Facebook likes he bought. Ignatiy Vishnevetsky is an actual critic who is published in a wide variety of outlets and he has about 1,000 likes on his Facebook page. That's about right for a young movie critic if you're not on TV regularly.

I'm sure Vishnevetsky is a "heinous cur" or something because of his association with Ebert, though, so you can imagine Cole rage-clicking more fake likes by the thousand. "SEE, I'm 25x as famous as that Ignorant Fishnet Something!"

Cole isn't a boring, mediocre or unremarkable person. He's a ridiculous person, in some ways as ridiculous as his brother.
 
I tried to tell him to have his brother as a guest on his show. And now I'm not allowed to post on his facebook page anymore.
 
Datiko said:
I don't get the hate on Cole for possibly living off his wife. I would love for my wife to be the main breadwinner so that I could be free to do what I am passionate about full time.
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The point is that he's lying to everyone by pretending to be some bigshot film critic, when in reality his criticism gig isn't worth the bandwidth it takes up. It's the classic Weston arrogance and dishonesty that we don't like.
 
Most of Coleslaw's reviews feel like they were written by a 15 year-old who just remembered he has an essay due the following morning for "To Kill a Mockingbird" (which he hasn't read), and his only resources are Sparknotes, a thesaurus, and a piece of paper handed out at the beginning of the school year explaining the standard format of an essay.

But then again, who knows? Is he really THAT bad? Maybe it's just our bias against Mr. Smithey that makes us think his reviews are shit. Maybe he's actually on par with the bigshots, but we are too busy picking on him for being the narcissistic hipster nobody brother of OPL. Or maybe his reviews really ARE shit. Golly gosh oh gee, this is confusing, guys! That's why I propose a new game:

Ebert and Coleslaw
Choose a film that both Cole and his favorite critic of all time have covered, and post the text of each review (even better if they disagree). It is up to the rest of us to figure out which is which and who does a better job at conveying their opinion to the reader.

The film: "To the Wonder" (2012)
Critic #1 said:
Released less than two years after his "The Tree of Life," an epic that began with the dinosaurs and peered into an uncertain future, Terrence Malick's "To the Wonder" is a film that contains only a handful of important characters and a few crucial moments in their lives. Although it uses dialogue, it's dreamy and half-heard, and essentially this could be a silent film — silent, except for its mostly melancholy music.

The movie stars Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko as a couple who fall deeply, tenderly, transcendently in love in France. Malick opens as they visit Mont St. Michel, the cathedral perched on a spire of rock off the French coast, and moves to the banks of the Seine, but really, its landscape is the terrain is these two bodies, and the worshipful ways in which Neil and Marina approach each other. Snatches of dialogue, laughter, shared thoughts, drift past us. Nothing is punched up for dramatic effect.

Marina, a single mother, decides to move with her little daughter, Tatiana, to America with Neil, and the setting suddenly becomes the flatlands of Oklahoma, a land seen here as nearly unpopulated. Oh, there are people here, but we see few of them and engage with only a handful. Again there is the hushed serenity as in France, but differences grow between them, and there is anger now in some of their words. Neil reconnects with Jane (Rachel McAdams), an American girl he was once in love with, and romantic perfection between he and Marina seems to slip away.

In Oklahoma, we meet Father Quintana (Javier Bardem), a priest from Europe, whose church is new and brightly lit. We can almost smell the furniture varnish. His faith has been challenged, and many of his statements are directed toward Jesus Christ, as a sort of former lover. Quintana visits prisoners, the ill, the poor and the illiterate, whose dialogue is half-understood even by themselves.

As all of these relationships intertwine, Malick depicts them with deliberate beauty and painterly care. The mood is often similar to the feelings of the early small-town scenes in "The Tree of Life." Malick has a repertory of fundamental images he draws upon.

We don't need to be told Malick's in an autobiographical vein here; these memories surely belong to the storyteller. In both films, he is absorbed in living and dining rooms, looking out upon neat lawns and neighborhood pastoral peace.

As the film opened, I wondered if I was missing something. As it continued, I realized many films could miss a great deal. Although he uses established stars, Malick employs them in the sense that the French director Robert Bresson intended when he called actors "models." Ben Affleck here isn't the star of "Argo" but a man, often silent, intoxicated by love and then by loss. Bardem, as a priest far from home, made me realize as never before the loneliness of the unmarried clergy. Wandering in his empty church in the middle of the day, he is a forlorn figure, crying out in prayer and need to commune with his Jesus.

A more conventional film would have assigned a plot to these characters and made their motivations more clear. Malick, who is surely one of the most romantic and spiritual of filmmakers, appears almost naked here before his audience, a man not able to conceal the depth of his vision.

"Well," I asked myself, "why not?" Why must a film explain everything? Why must every motivation be spelled out? Aren't many films fundamentally the same film, with only the specifics changed? Aren't many of them telling the same story? Seeking perfection, we see what our dreams and hopes might look like. We realize they come as a gift through no power of our own, and if we lose them, isn't that almost worse than never having had them in the first place?

There will be many who find "To the Wonder" elusive and too effervescent. They'll be dissatisfied by a film that would rather evoke than supply. I understand that, and I think Terrence Malick does, too. But here he has attempted to reach more deeply than that: to reach beneath the surface, and find the soul in need.
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Critic #2 said:
Terrence Malick still hasn’t made a remarkable film since 1978. That was the year he made “Days of Heaven” — not to be confused with “Heaven Gates.” Although the “Heaven” movies do have something in common: they ruined their respective filmmakers’ careers — Michael Cimino made more of a splash because he took United Artists down with him. Malick went overboard by shooting most of the movie during the gloaming — a 25-minute period at dusk that Malick referred to as the “magic hour.” He then spent three years editing it.

“To the Wonder” is a shorthand cinematic poem told with such slightness that there is nothing for an audience to identify with beyond some vague apologia about God’s ability to put human beings through as much heartbreak as they can endure. It’s an airy cinematic sermon that mumbles for two-hours. Atheists will be bored; believers will scratch their heads. Pretentious film critics will out themselves.

Malick has made an experimental movie that fails because it’s all agenda and no substance. There’s so little character development or narrative cohesion that the viewer feels alienated through the whole experience. The filmmaker’s oh-so-deep philosophical musings, as tinged with religious inflections, are oddly apolitical. Malick’s micro-meta bubble is small and foggy. It’s a fundamental rule of screenwriting to never preach to your audience. Terrence Malick breaks that rule with impunity.

In Paris, Neil (Ben Affleck) courts Marina (Olga Kurylenko), a sensuous Ukrainian woman with a ten-year-old daughter named Tatiana. The Eiffel Tower, the gardens at Versailles, and Mont Saint-Michele make for plenty of postcard-perfect compositions via Malick’s handheld camera. Dialogue is sparse, very sparse. Malick flits between indulgent shots of streaming sunlight on suburban landscapes to fill in copious narrative blanks in his script.

The would-be family moves to Neil’s hometown of Bartlesville, Oklahoma to reside in a cloistered suburban housing community bereft of personality. Neil is giving Marina a relationship trial run. Is she marriage material? Tatiana certainly thinks so. However, Marina’s mood swings make her seem bi-polar in a “Betty Blue” kind of way. Languorous episodes of romantic harmony give way to ugly, if muted, outbursts of anger. A devil’s advocate vantage point could view Malick’s film as an unintended observation on the toxic effect of American suburbia on romantic relationships. But that would be a stretch.

Javier Bardem creeps around the story as Father Quintana, a priest who worries over the limits of his ability to help the impoverished and ailing Americans who live around him. During a sermon, he tells his parish, that a husband “does not find” his wife “lovely.” Rather, “he makes her lovely.”

Neil isn’t really that into Marina. Without explanation he sends she and Tatiana packing. The unreliable protagonist briefly dallies with Jane (Rachel McAdams), an old romance from childhood. Like Marina, Jane is needy to a fault.

A romantic reversal occurs. Marina abandons Tatiana to her father’s family and returns to Neil in Oklahoma to start their lives together. Domestic troubles percolate and boil over around moot narrative details. I suppose, if you’re a believer, “To the Wonder” will bring you closer to God in as much as it will push you two-hours closer to your ultimate demise. Personally, I’d rather watch Malick’s “Badlands” (1973) or “Days of Heaven.” There was a time when Terrence Malick made incredible movies. Those days are gone.
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(nvm he sucks)
 
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phanatic said:
Please. The mans Facebook page is pathetic. At least I commented on it. You can't tell me that having his brother review a movie with him wouldn't increase his views?
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:roll:

Goodbad Girl said:
Most of Coleslaw's reviews feel like they were written by a 15 year-old who just remembered he has an essay due the following morning for "To Kill a Mockingbird" (which he hasn't read), and his only resources are Sparknotes, a thesaurus, and a piece of paper handed out at the beginning of the school year explaining the standard format of an essay.

But then again, who knows? Is he really THAT bad? Maybe it's just our bias against Mr. Smithey that makes us think his reviews are shit. Maybe he's actually on par with the bigshots, but we are too busy picking on him for being the narcissistic hipster nobody brother of OPL. Or maybe his reviews really ARE shit. Golly gosh oh gee, this is confusing, guys! That's why I propose a new game:

Ebert and Coleslaw
Choose a film that both Cole and his favorite critic of all time have covered, and post the text of each review (even better if they disagree). It is up to the rest of us to figure out which is which and who does a better job at conveying their opinion to the reader.

The film: "To the Wonder" (2012)




(nvm he sucks)
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http://cwckiforums.com/threads/cole-and-chris-at-the-movies.1524/
 
I would be more empathetic towards Cole and his reliance on his spouse if he was actually good at what he did. There's a difference between a starving artist and a well-fed bum.
 
CatParty said:
:roll:




http://cwckiforums.com/threads/cole-and-chris-at-the-movies.1524/
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That thread is a creative project where posters write the dialogue of a film review starring Chris and Cole. My post is just a retarded little game comparing two actual reviews by Ebert and Cole (not enough potential to warrant it's own thread). It's been a while since I read through this entire thread, but somewhere in here was a game where somebody posted a poorly-written movie review, and it was up to the readers to figure out if it was pulled out of the poster's ass or written by Coleslaw himself.

If anything, it would be interesting to see that brought up again, mainly because almost all of the content in this thread is just repeatedly stating "Cole is a hipster-wannabe loser who mooches off his wife and he sucks at writing" (guilty as charged). To to be honest, that's pretty much all there is to say about the guy.

(Totally off-topic, pointless trivia, but after looking into it a little more, I realized the review I posted was actually the last one Ebert wrote before he passed away. (:_( )
 
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It's "Heaven's Gate" you fucking moron and the four hour cut of it is exceptional. It was released in 1980 and directed by Michael Cimino who had won the previous year's Best Picture Oscar for "The Deer Hunter." The story is based on the Johnson County Wars waged between European immigrants and mercenaries hired by the cattle barons of Wyoming at the end of the 19th century. It is lush and magnificent and you feel like you could touch it. Vilmos Zsigmond lit this movie like a fading tin-type photo, shot through dust and sunlight that touches everything in shades of ochre and gold and David Mansfield's score is heartbreaking. It is one of my favorite westerns, yet it isn't really a western, it it the portrayal of the dying of the open range of Manifest Destiny and the building of the rural American community and the families and civilization that came with permanent settlement. It features Christopher Walken, Sam Waterston, Mickey Rourke, Brad Dourif, and Willen Defoe in some of their earliest roles and they are fantastic. True, the production was an unmitigated mess -- John Hurt got so tired of sitting around that he went off and shot "The Elephant Man" while he was waiting for his scenes -- but what really contributed to the collapse of United Artists was the studio's decision to cut the film from its initial running time of 219 minutes to 149 minutes in order to accommodate more showings per screen per day. Also, it was released in the autumn of a summer dominated by the release of "The Empire Strikes Back" -- still going strong at the box office -- and the western as a tried and true American movie staple was well on its way out. "Heaven's Gate" was a financial and critical disaster and with the guts of the film ripped out and the layers of character development stripped from the story, it is nothing but a pretty and confusing walk that wanders from the University of Harvard, to the Plains of the U.S. and concludes aboard a steam yacht off the Eastern Seaboard that makes no sense whatsoever. Thankfully, "Heaven's Gate" was restored to his original running time and is available. If you are a student of film or the American West I hope one day you find it. It is glorious when it is seen in its entirety, and I promise you the "Heaven's Gate Waltz", played so beautifully by Mansfield, will be hard to put out of your memory.

So THERE, Cole! (and seriously, this film is really overlooked and has never deserved its unfortunate reputation -- oh, and, everyone's a critic...).
 
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Null said:
I would be more empathetic towards Cole and his reliance on his spouse if he was actually good at what he did. There's a difference between a starving artist and a well-fed bum.
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^^ This. Cole isn't good enough at what he does to warrant being a douchenozzle. His work doesn't speak for itself (at least, not in a way that benefits him) he has no real qualifications, and no one of note follows him. He's trying to present himself as an artistc mind but he has absolutely nothing to back that up. It's all the hat, the headshots, the empty blog, and craft beer nights. Cole sells himself on the image because the substance of the matter--his work-- is lacking.

Like another poster said, he's barely more than a guy in a "film critic" Halloween costume.
 
phanatic said:
Please. The mans Facebook page is pathetic. At least I commented on it. You can't tell me that having his brother review a movie with him wouldn't increase his views?
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No one is arguing that if Chris reviewed a movie people wouldn't want to see it. We're just arguing that you are trying to come off as an epic troll for posting on his facebook about it.
 
ChurchOfGodBear said:
^^ This. Cole isn't good enough at what he does to warrant being a douchenozzle. His work doesn't speak for itself (at least, not in a way that benefits him) he has no real qualifications, and no one of note follows him. He's trying to present himself as an artistc mind but he has absolutely nothing to back that up. It's all the hat, the headshots, the empty blog, and craft beer nights. Cole sells himself on the image because the substance of the matter--his work-- is lacking.

Like another poster said, he's barely more than a guy in a "film critic" Halloween costume.
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I don't really blame him for that. It would be hard for him to write reviews and sell himself without pretending, to himself and to others, that his reviews are useful and relevant.

If he is shitty (I know nothing about movies, so I will take this on faith from y'all) then it is fine to make fun of him for being shitty. But I don't think he should be obliged to go around saying that he is shitty all of the time. (Sorry, I know that is a bit of a parody of your point).
 
timtommy said:
I don't really blame him for that. It would be hard for him to write reviews and sell himself without pretending, to himself and to others, that his reviews are useful and relevant.

If he is shitty (I know nothing about movies, so I will take this on faith from y'all) then it is fine to make fun of him for being shitty. But I don't think he should be obliged to go around saying that he is shitty all of the time. (Sorry, I know that is a bit of a parody of your point).
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Saying he pays the bills by doing type copy or filing isn't the same as saying he's shitty. There's no shame in your passion not being your day job (IMO).

Full disclosure: I did the online film critic schtick for a while. Very, very few people in that role do it full-time. It's pretty much expected that you have a day job, which is why I don't think the question was out of line. Occasionally, your day job becomes relevant to your criticism, so when you're not dealing with an Ebert or a Roper, it's very fair to wonder what someone's background contributes to their writing.

I was a nobody. And yet, I had tons of positive feedback on my work and a fair number of regular readers... Occasionally even the filmmakers themselves. And yet I'd never present myself in public the way Cole does. His accomplishments are precisely jack and shit, and he literally wants to act like Ebert is beneath him.

Sorry, I'm not trying to attack you personally, nor am I trying to make this about me. It's just that I find Cole's attitude professionally objectionable, and as an artist, I'm thinking you can understand my views, even if you don't agree with them.
 
ChurchOfGodBear said:
Saying he pays the bills by doing type copy or filing isn't the same as saying he's shitty. There's no shame in your passion not being your day job (IMO).

Full disclosure: I did the online film critic schtick for a while. Very, very few people in that role do it full-time. It's pretty much expected that you have a day job, which is why I don't think the question was out of line. Occasionally, your day job becomes relevant to your criticism, so when you're not dealing with an Ebert or a Roper, it's very fair to wonder what someone's background contributes to their writing.

I was a nobody. And yet, I had tons of positive feedback on my work and a fair number of regular readers... Occasionally even the filmmakers themselves. And yet I'd never present myself in public the way Cole does. His accomplishments are precisely jack and shit, and he literally wants to act like Ebert is beneath him.

Sorry, I'm not trying to attack you personally, nor am I trying to make this about me. It's just that I find Cole's attitude professionally objectionable, and as an artist, I'm thinking you can understand my views, even if you don't agree with them.
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This is honestly the best summation of Cole I think I've ever read. His ego causes his unlikable nature, not what he does.
 
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