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The Reviewer Who Wasn't
An anonymous submitter sent in a pretty timely link as we enter the summer hype, er, summer movie season. Let the ticket-buyer beware...
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...whenever I see all these people here saying, "Download the Mozilla nightly builds! Best browser ever!"
I've never quite trusted film marketers-- but these are outright lies, and might interest the FTC.
On an interesting sidenote: it seems that the film revenues for "R rated" films have gone down ever since the movie industry started "enforcing" their ratings. It used to be, of course, that "Rated R" was a draw for certain types of violent films, but now the MPAA has "learned" that such restrictive ratings tend to reduce profits. I'm not sure who to support. (I believed that a trademarked "NC-17" rating might free the artistic impulses of directors--but I guess marketing considerations will probably doom us all to kiddie safe films. sniff)
Much of the time a magazine big enough to have several columnists cover an issue will let one or two say bad things about a major advertiser's products as long as there are sycophants on staff who can be counted on to "balance" that bad press.
There are also apparently professional interviewees who give whatever comments are required to fit the slant of a particular story. Eventually you notice these guys cropping up more and more as word gets around that they can be counted on to deliver.
There was also the more benign case of Jerry Pournelle, who never called a tech support line that didn't like him when he wrote for BYTE. Everybody knew who he was so they treated him like a demigod, and it skewed his view of customer service in the industry.
Fun net.lore: How Jerry Pournelle got kicked off the ARPAnet
-- Old Man Kensey
> Are there really people that thought those quotes were real?
Oh yes there are. In fact, I'm sure there are people who still think it was the best movie of the year when it comes out in January.
The interesting thing is, though, that none of those people (generally) read slashdot. . . .
---
The movie poster quoted him "It's Time for this Message!"
I'm not making this up.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
And what exactly was deceptive?
"This year's hottest new star!" (for Heath Ledger of "A Knight's Tale") and "another winner!" (for The Animal") don't say anything at all. They don't say anything bad about any other movie. They don't promise you'll enjoy the film. They don't even say that either of the films were good.
I don't see how anything they did violated any laws. Possibly the trust of the people, but give me a break, who trusts commercials? Or movie reviews? The MSNBC (oooh! reliable trustworthy news in itself!) article says it all:
"The real question is why Sony had to conceive the counterfeit critic to begin with..."
The article goes on to say that film reviewers are bought and fed appropriate quotes as a standard practice.
Now that I think about it, the invention of a fake reviewer wasn't such a bad idea. Maybe it was political commentary by some jaded ad creative. Or possibly just desperation. The end result is a nothing. Just a bunch of embarrassed LA film execs. Nothing the FTC would worry about.
(oh yeah. I have a degree in Advertising.)
Wishful thinking... what advertising isn't deceptive?
"100% Natural"?
"No Artificial Colors or Flavors"?
"Lite"?
"New and Improved"?
Any of the hundreds of movies that are 88.5 minutes of filler wrapped around a good-looking trailer?
This is Madison Avenue/Hollywood S.O.P. Nobody (who can change things) cares and nobody (who has any influence) is going to do anything about it.
I bet two tickets to the next Adam Sandler movie that this is the last time you hear about it in the media.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
This film is the biggest pile of trash I've ever witnessed. The plot was predictable, the acting was wooden and even the editing was weak. Five minutes into the movie, I was wishing the trailer was still running. In fact, I enjoyed the jingle about not smoking and throwing out your trash better!Everyone around me seemed to agree as there were wise-cracks and booing from most of the patrons in the theater. In fact, you can tell this film is bound to fail by the amount of talking and complaining before, during and after the show. The only positive thing they could talk about was the fact that Junior Mints were only $3.75 in the lobby. It's a real shame that the director has no concept of what a romantic comedy should be. Pairing up the oafish Sam Cheeselog with the shrill and grating Gretel Necessary would thrill no one, but then have them take a six day train ride across the Siberian tundra takes the cake for sheer ineptitude. In fact, you'll consider it a triumph if you make it through this 183 minute piece of trite crap without losing your lunch, spending half of the convulsively gagging, or losing faith that there is any goodness left in the human spirit. Whatever you do, don't go see this movie.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
While I agree with your conlusion -- no one cares -- you picked some really crummy examples.
The FDA has very, very strict rules on what can go on the labels and packages of food, right down to minimum point sizes of fonts. To use your example, if the package says, "no artificial colors," then you can bet your career that it contains no artificial colors. (You can bet yours, because the entire upper and middle management of the food company has bet theirs by saying so.)
Another example: ever see a dessert marked as "no sugar added" and wonder why they don't save some ink and use "sugar free" instead? They don't have a choice. Many dairy products (yogurt, ice cream, ice milk (and there are rules on what must be called ice cream vs ice milk)) have the no sugar added mark because milk contains lactose, another natural form of sugar, which means that "sugar free" yogurt would be deceptive.
(I could go on for hours. You can learn an amazingly cool amount of stuff when your dad has a master's in food chemistry.)
Unfortunately, the watchdog organization for movie reviewers is a little more open to money-greasing than the FDA is.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Right. In particular, to be slander or libel, something has to be both "factual" (not a matter of opinion) and believable. I think (but am not sure) that you must also demonstrate that you were materially harmed...
Thus, saying that a restraunt's food is terrible, that the proprieters are ugly, and the staff is rude are not slander. Saying the beef is actually rat meat, and you are in trouble.
Likewise, if you say that George Bush shot Lincoln, it is obviously false, and therefore not slander.
The 2600 case is interesting as it isn't clear what they were saying -- they never really said "ford registered fuckceneralmotors.com" -- in fact the nameserver responses presumably came from 2600's nameservers. On the other hand, most people do not know enough about internet infrastructure to realize that you can't really prevent people from pointing domains at your website.
The real lesson here is that if you don't want this kind of thing to happen to you, set your webservers to reject Host: headers not from your domain.
Am I the only one to appreciate the irony of this story, appearing on M$N ?
This seems to me as just the sort of Anti-Sony FUD I've been expected from arch-King of FUD; Micro$haft. Especially likely when you consider that very soon, Sony becomes Micro$haft latest competitor.
Just ask the question "Who do you trust to produce quality content of any type?" M$ or Sony, tough one that :)
Ford is suing 2600 for implying that Ford is sponsoring the www.fuckgeneralmotors.com domain because 2600 is pointing the domain to Ford.
This is a situation where Sony is actually stating that this non-existant person actually works for this newspaper.
Fight Spammers!
Rather, I look at who the studio is quoting. If it's Scooter McGee of the Hicksville Tribune, the movie is crap. If it's, say, Roger Ebert, then the movie is worth considering. This system hasn't failed me yet.
Bonus fact: The junket-critics mentioned in the article are referred to by real critics as "quote whores".
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
So, Sony's a "Karma Whore" too?
COOL!
krystal_blade, going to invest in Sony because "They're Just Like ME!!"
screw Napster... I want BOOKSTER!!
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
And he is different from Joel Siegel et al. precisely how?
sulli
RTFJ.
I've heard of sneaky deceptive advertising, but this just about takes the cake, to use to old cliché.
I think it won't be long before the US Federal Trade Commission has a nice long talk with Sony management on what appears to be a violation of our Federal laws in regards to deceptive advertising.
Just when you thought MS and NBC could do a bad enough job of journalism on their own, now Newsweek is part of the mess? It boggles the mind.
Given how quickly all major news outlets are congealing into one corporate mouth piece, it's startling they let even this mildly anti-Hollywood article seep through the cracks. I like the central message though -- "The movie industry basically lies to you constantly, but tough, it's not like you can do anything about it. You'll watch what we tell you to watch, you mindless drones. Hahahahahaha."
Does this mean those constant Survivor stories on CBS "news" outlets, weren't just solid reporting on a popular social interest? CBS did those stories on iWon.com because it's a groovy site, not because they invested $50 million in it, right?
You can read science fiction books about people getting brain washed en masse, or you can flip on the television for the interactive version.
Wait. We're not a brain washed society. The Chinese are the brain washed ones. We're all about democracy and free speech. Sure, Napster tried to crush free speech by misuing "free use" copyright concepts, but that's been fixed now. The New York Times Company says this is a fair democratic land we live in, and that if it weren't for a couple stray politicians having sex and their underaged children drinking beer, everything would be just perfect. Whew! I was scaring myself there for a minute.
Anyway, I've gotta go. I'm late, and those "Knights Tale" tickets are selling out quickly for some reason.
20/20 had a story about this a few weeks ago. Apparently some would-be reviewer stated "Paul Hogan's back, and the croc rocks!" in his extremely slanted Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles review.
:)
Upon further investigation, this reviewer and one other (who said "A great family film") seemed to hate nothing. Supposedly, they get paid off to say they love the bombs.
I'm wondering why we would ever dream of trusting these no-name critics. Would you trust a complete stranger to tell you how to spend your money? The only critics I remotely trust to review a movie fairly well are Ebert (he doesn't seem to be too commercially influenced) and my friends.
That said, I always knew Jon Katz used pseudonyms.
Do you like German cars?
... when the books about this time before the fall of the MPAA and the great studios are written, we'll be able to look at their back covers and reflect ...
.... I couldn't put it down!"
"An absolute must read!"
- Ridgefield Review of Books
"... engaging
- Edmonton Self-Examiner
Hell, I once wrote a report on a book that doesn't exist.
Got a B on it too. In the context of the MSNBC article, I suppose you could say "It was the best review the book ever got!"
*snicker*
Popular Culture? Popular Culture wants a damn site that can handle some traffic. -- ska187