I'm asking for it by posting this, since it's only a matter of time before someone does something similar with movie critics, but The Shins Will Change Your Life is pretty hilarious. It's nothing but excerpts from fawning music reviews, with no other commentary. Here are a couple of my favorites (both from Pitchfork, coincidentally):
Hearing "Hide and Seek" at the climax of The O.C.'s second season finale was one of those pull-over-to-the-side-of-the-road moments where space and time collapse and the world holds its breath.
I don't know if driving while watching TV is such a good idea. And if space and time are collapsing, I don't think holding your breath is going to do much good.
And then there's...
Young Liars is a phantom Frankenstein, a bulletproof yet sensitive creature reared through unmitigated nurture that seemed to reap havoc where it never stepped.
"What the hell does that mean, 'China is here?' I don't even know what the hell that means!" - Jack Burton
Via MetaFilter
Hello! Linguistics Department, line 2.
Have you linked to the David Cross deconstruction of those terrible reviews? Too funny! "Ostensibly about a young girl who loses her shoes in a cockfight she mistakenly attends during Thanksgiving 1959, it's really about the universal themes of loss, angst, candy and damp clothing."
P.S. RIP Victor Wong (1927-2001)
Jack Burton: What is that stuff?
Egg Shen: It is black blood of earth.
Jack Burton: You mean oil?
Egg Shen: No, I mean black blood of earth.
Lo Pan would have these writers taken to the Hell Where People Are Skinned Alive, that's for sure.
One of my tests for how good a movie is doing is who they have raving about it in the commercials. If the best a studio can do is grab a quote from some reviewer in a tiny market, but they throw it on screen in huge letters, that's a sure flopsweat indicator.
If the best a studio can do is grab a quote from some reviewer in a tiny market, but they throw it on screen in huge letters, that's a sure flopsweat indicator.
Especially if it's from "Wireless Magazines."
Also, see if they're running commercials a week or so after release featuring interviews with people who just left the movie. Sure sign of a bomb in the making.
"I saw the shit out of it!"
They call them "quote whores" in the film industry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quote_whore
Perhaps what these obtuse and fawning reviewers need is a dose of good old-fashioned ancient evil in the form of Lo Pan.