Karina on SpoutBlog

eFilmCritic has compiled their annual Criticwatch list, designed to shame the most offensive quote whores in film criticism, and they’ve given top honors for “an incredible amount of supercilious douchebaggery” to Pete Hammond, the MAXIM critic whose reliably, absurdly positive blurbs appeared on a whopping 88 film campaigns in 2007. Hammond, a Criticwatch veteran from way back, has long been considered to have few peers in the quote whoring game. As Erik Childress writes:

Hammond is more than just a cancer on the film critic profession. He???s the poster boy for everything that???s wrong with an American media preaching to the lowest common denominator and a vocation that receives its most vocal criticism from outsiders when it???s actually doing its job of criticizing…

We have announced in the past that we have no plans to give Pete Hammond his own award name ??? because that will take away his pre-determined advantage to winning it each year. If he can aspire for 88 quotes in 2007, who knows how far he can go in 2008 & beyond. I will amend that statement though. The day Hammond is eliminated from our discussion; such a day when we no longer see his name on a film ad ??? I promise, here and now, to offer him his own memorial award.

That day might arrive sooner than later. Towards the end of the post (which also includes a full Top Ten countdown of the year’s biggest blurb whores and minute calculations on the emptiest/most overused blurb language of the year and is basically a sterling example of the kind of inside baseball nerdiness that I can get lost in for an entire afternoon), Childress notes that while the gang at eFilmCritic were compiling this document, they got word that Hammond has been fired.

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Under discussion:

A History of Violence  (2005)

Eastern Promises  (2007)

“Should Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck be determining the president of the United States? No, because if they do, then your policies are sure to be goofy.”

That’s what passes as homerun humor coming from Dennis Kucinich. In this Debate Porridge clip from New Hampshire, the Democratic presidential candidate accuses ABC and parent company Disney of usurping the function of the election’s first primary by making the decision months in advance to exclude him from last weekend’s debates. He’s joined in the clip by recent Cronenberg muse Viggo Mortensen, who has been tirelessly campaigning for Kucinich in New Hampshire for several days. Whether by coincidence or design, Mortensen has not worked for Disney since 2004’s Hidalgo. After this, will he again? Am I posting this for any substantion reason other than to siphon traffic off Google searches for “New Hampshire”? So many questions…

If you’re on the East Coast or time zones further down the clock, you may have been already out the door by the time the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and NBC finally, officially conceded their mutual defeat: there will be no Golden Globes, there will only be Golden Globe winners, announced at a one-hour press conference telecasted by??????gulp??????NBC News. It took several hours for the film and entertainment blog worlds to chew up this news and thoroughly spit it out. Here then, a timeline, culled from my RSS reader, of the blogosphere’s coming to terms with The Fall of Globes, without a doubt the greatest tragedy of our…week. So far.

6:02 PM EST??????The Cold Hard Facts: “The mechanics of the one-hour announcement itself are muddled. The original idea was that at some point during the parties the HFPA would stop the proceedings and make the declaration of the winners. Cameras would be poised on the nominees at the different parties, so that there would be reaction from Atonement’s Keira Knightley, for example, at the Universal/Focus party. This concept was scratched by the WGA.” — Anne Thompson

7:21 PM??????Let’s Focus On What’s Really Important: “Who aren’t you wearing?! … Sorta hard to have a ceremony when no stars are gonna show … we’re just sayin’.” — TMZ

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