Don’t believe
everything you read: Fake reviews used
to sell major Hollywood picture.
By: Jay Buenaflor
January 29, 2014
Blurbs are short quotes for books
and films (“One of the year’s best”) and an ad shrouded in mystery thought it
could get away with fabricating fake commendations for “The Three Musketeers”
starring Milla Jovovich and Orlando Bloom.
The sham quotes by non-existent critics
for the $75 Million Alexandre Dumas adaptation came out in the entertainment
section of The Philippine Star in late 2011.
Together with three other dubious proclamations, “This year’s best
action movie” was attributed to a fictitious “Ray Pierce” of Variety, the
venerable Los Angeles-based entertainment-trade weekly.
Upon being informed of this, the
magazine’s editor in chief, Tim Gray, issued a terse “our lawyers plan to deal
with it” reply.
An investigation into the glowing
tributes, including one from Hollywood Reporter (“Awesome”), has concluded that
neither of the write-ups nor pundits exist.
Two other publications mentioned – Empire Movies and Screen Movies.com –
appear to be as genuine as the Hitler diaries.
Pioneer Films, the movie’s local
distributor, has denied putting out the ad in question. “That’s not ours. It’s in black and white and very wordy,” said
Ian Tan of the company’s creative department.
Various attempts to confirm with The Philippine Star who had put it out have
faced a dead-end (“Our records don’t go that far back,” replied its advertising
division).
Welcome to the world of ‘contributors.’
“This is most probably put out by someone who is a contributor,” continued Mr.
Tan. “They’re people who put out ads and
articles in newspapers and online and come to us expecting something in
return. We usually give them movie
passes, but, never money.”
A free movie in exchange for a
P65,000.00 promotion? The transaction
seems ludicrous. “They usually get space
in the papers for much less and, sometimes, for free,” countered Mr. Tan. “They
usually do this to build their credentials and go around show what they’ve done
and parlay it into paying PR (public relations) work.”
Take a quick view online and of any
local newspaper and it’s increasingly difficult to figure out self-serving
articles and those that are, uhm, objectively subjective. Here’s a tip:
The former, called advertorials or native advertising, sometimes have no
bylines.
When asked why there seems to be an
“epidemic” of dishonesty - the Napoles
story and a plagiarizing photographer, Senator and Supreme Court Justice come
to mind – University of the Philippines political science professor Clarita Carlos
said, “We have lowered the standards for rule of law so people are able to game
the system and get away with it. It is
not surprising that you have incidents of “fakes” because it is simply a
symptom of people / organizations gaming the system and enough public being
indifferent altogether.”
“We have forgotten what it means to
be ‘excellent,'” continued Ms. Carlos .
For the record, the genuine appraisals
for “The Three Musketeers” were scathing, with The Hollywood Reporter calling it
a swashbuckler wielding a “disappointingly blunt sword” and it tallying a measly
24% positive on the reviews aggregator Rottentomatoes.com.
Disturbingly, a questionable
December 18 ad for “In Fear” seems to say this nightmare isn’t over. GQ seems to proclaim it as “More terrifying
then Blaire Witch Project.” The
misspelling seems to suggest a real bad copy writer or a contributor has struck
again. I’m off to investigate.
