The first film he ever reviewed was Trainspotting, which he loved, and he developed a style of short (around 150 words), no-nonsense capsule reviews that fit perfectly with the nearly endless stream of pithy opinionating that developed on the web.
He had an epiphany reading Sight and Sound, and when he moved to New York in 1997 he began to find work as a film critic. He got a book listing the top hundred films of all time, and worked his way through the list, renting the movies from the public library. Smithey was a drama student at San Diego State in the early ’80s, but after getting fed up with the program’s politics, he joined a punk rock band called Rockin’ Dogs and eventually moved to San Francisco. In Sight and Sound magazine last month, they queried a bunch of people to get their favorite books on film, and he was the only person to cite his own book as one of his favorites. “I think he’s somebody who’s really interested in getting his name out there. He isn’t overjoyed to find himself aligned with White, a critic he doesn’t much like. The banner headline calls him “The Smartest Film Critic in the World,” and there is a link to a PayPal page where you can donate money to “help support Cole Smithey online.” He writes for a bunch of little publications, but his main venue is his website. Well, Capital gave Smithey a call, and it turns out he lives right here in the city, on the Upper East Side. As the blog Popeater put it, “No word on who he actually, y’know, is.” But what of Smithey, his companion in the lonely corner? Smithey is a lesser-known critic. On Thursday, BlackBook asked, simply, “When Will Armond White Review Toy Story 3?” “How long,” they went on, “before good ol’ Armond just has to be the one to drop the figurative deuce into the swimming pool?” The very next day, White delivered his verdict: “ Toy Story 3 is so besotted with brand names and product-placement that it stops being about the innocent pleasures of imagination-the usefulness of toys-and strictly celebrates consumerism.” Whenever there is a universally popular film, Armond White of the New York Press arrives to pan it with an intellectual-ish spin. One of the party-poopers was a predictable one.
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