A friend sent a link to AOL's PopEater
(http://www.popeater.com/2010/06/20/armond-white-toy-story-3-reviews/#comments) where the lead line is "'Toy Story' Narrowly Misses Perfect Trilogy Marks (Thank's, Armond White)."Besides not knowing how to use quotation marks, AOL's writer misses the fact that White's review came after mine. PopEater's unreliable writer Zach Dionne (who, by the way, is not accredited to contribute film reviews on Rottentomatoes) takes issue with my primary "news outlet" as ColeSmithey.com. Dionne says, "No word on who he [Cole Smithey] actually, y'know, is, or why he sits alongside the likes of Ebert, A.O. Scott, Peter Travers and Owen Gleiberman." Forget that unlike Scott, Travers, or Gleiberman, I do a weekly film review video episode that demands considerably more work than those critics put into merely writing reviews.
If lazy Zach (dig the photo of dippy-hipster-dude himself — I don't know too many fathers who would want this guy dating their daughters) had done his research, a visit to the Online Film Critics Society site would have told him that I currently write for ColeSmithey.com, Film Slate Magazine, Lansing City Pulse, Monterey County Weekly, Shalom Life, appear opposite Rex Reed in Vegas Seven, and am the staff film editor for the largest
A Google search would have informed grunge-music-throwback Zack about my extensive career as a veteran film critic — writing published film reviews since 1997 when Zack Dionne was still in grade school — who has written for over 60 national and international print publications, and half as many web sites as a paid columnist. A little tour of Rottentomatoes would have informed Zach about the 1500 reviews I have posted on Rottentomatoes against White's paltry "405."
But the real kicker came when I tried to comment in the PopEater comments section. I wrote a reply, which the PopEater screeners refused to post- — it's not an automatic system, as their instructions lead you to believe. Unlike Time Magazine's site, PopEater doesn't much care for any response from the authors they slag. Forget about the fact that they stole their story idea from Time Magazine to create a similar article — at least they reference Time in the piece.
Critics are professional arbiters of taste. Don't be shocked when we do our job. It's what we do; unlike AOL's PopEater and Zack Dionne.
