« Shijie (The World) | Main | "We Were Running from the Burning Houses" »
August 4, 2005
Heath Ledger is "This Year's Hottest New Star"
Via an email tip from McChris: Boing Boing reports that Sony has agreed to refund $5 (PDF) to anyone who saw Hollow Man, Vertical Limit, The Animal, A Knight's Tale, or The Patriot because they may have been influenced to see the films by a fictional film critic, David Manning, whose blurbs appeared on advertisements for these Columbia Pictures films.
Making fun of Sony's folly is too easy, even if it is tempting to compare this story to Jeff Gannon's foray into White House reporting. As the Museum of Hoaxes article on Manning points out, one has to wonder why Sony felt the need to manufacture quotes from a made up film critic when studios routinely pamper critics during the press junkets for these movies. Perhaps this more blatant lie (a made-up film critic) serves to mask the ways in which the real hype is manufactured in the first place.
I somehow managed to miss seeing all of these films in the theater (in fact, of the films, I've only seen brief snippets of A Knight's Tale and maybe Hollow Man on TBS while waiting for a Braves game to start), so I won't be able to claim a refund. But for those of you who were enticed by promises of seeing "this year's hottest new star" or, for Hollow Man, "the summer's best special effects," please claim your well-deserved refund.
Posted by chuck at August 4, 2005 12:07 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.wordherders.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.fpl/4356
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Heath Ledger is "This Year's Hottest New Star":
» misleading review blurbs from infobong.com
The use of decontextualized pullquotes is nothing new in movie marketing, but comparing the pullquote to the actual review can often offer minutes of entertainment. Here's a column online called "Blurb Racket" that documents these pullquotes and compar... [Read More]
Tracked on August 10, 2005 2:41 PM
Comments
Shoot. I went to see Knight's Tale all on my own initiative. I thought it looked like fun, which it was, although very slight and I'm sure not worth a second look. Maybe I can lie to SONY though. Or better yet, make up a disgruntled moviegoer to claim the refund.
Posted by: Lance Mannion at August 4, 2005 12:46 PM
Maybe you could probably claim "unconscious" influence. I remember the blurb for Hollow Man, and then thinking, "Huh?" A disgruntled moviegoer to claim the refund? Now that's a good idea....
Posted by: Chuck ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://chutry.wordherders.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 4, 2005 2:06 PM
I wish they covered international viewers. I should be entitled to $15.
Posted by: Walid at August 4, 2005 2:59 PM
Maybe you could claim that you read the guy's comments online? You really deserve that $15 if you've seen three of those movies.
Posted by: Chuck at August 4, 2005 3:05 PM
Here's a good Kottke post that asks why Hollywood can inflate the value of movies when estimating losses to piracy while giving a lowball estimate in a class-action settlement. The obvious answer is that they can get away with it.
But this kind of fuzzy math is eroding America's moral core, much like the SUV drivers who use the gross vehicle weight of their monster trucks to get tax breaks, but ignore rules that bar heavy trucks on residential streets. All decent Americans will agree that this "disassembling" with numbers is a threat to the American Way of Life.
Posted by: McChris at August 4, 2005 3:24 PM
Cool, I saw Hollow Man and The Patriot and I could really use ten dollars right now.
Posted by: Chris Martin at August 4, 2005 3:47 PM
Thanks for the link to the Kottke post. Given the extent to which Sony and other major studios use product placement in their films, they should probably be paying us to watch their films. After all, they are essentially selling our attention spans to the highest bidder. Shouldn't we get a small cut of that?
Posted by: Chuck at August 4, 2005 5:07 PM