earl dittman Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Our own Scott Weinberg recently told you about the canning of quote whore Pete Hammond from the pages of Maxim Magazine, and brought you many of Hammond's incredible quotes, culled all year long by the indefatigable Erik Childress at efilmcritic.com. Now Childress has announced his annual Criticwatch "Whores of the Year" list, saving his "2007 Michael Medved Bag of Douche Memorial Award" for Hammond. Jeffrey Lyons and Earl Dittman made the top ten this year, along with young E! Online critic Ben Lyons -- son of Jeffrey -- for calling I Am Legend "one of the greatest films ever made." Says Childress: "If he were 12 and had only seen 50 movies in his lifetime it would STILL be one of the dumbest god damn statements ever made by a human being named Lyons."

Apparently Childress has taken on the superhuman effort of combing through every blurb on every movie ad for the entire year and cataloging them in such a way as to reveal their hidden hypocrisies. How many films in 2007 were called "masterpiece"? At least 20, and that's including Dittman's assessment of Halloween. Even more films were called "spellbinding" and "a must-see!" I personally escaped this year, but several of my critic friends did not. Even Cinematical's James Rocchi is mentioned, for having used the phrase "raw sexuality and fever-pitched emotion" in his review of Red Road. A big thanks to Erik for keeping score.

When Erik Childress over at eFilmCritic.com prepares a new "CriticWatch" feature, as he does on a regular basis, well, it"s like Christmas comes early for movie lovers. Well, happy holidays, because Childress has prepared a scathing report on the first part of 2006. Not content to merely go after obvious targets like Earl Dittman (what is Wireless Magazine, anyhow?) and Jeffrey Lyons, Childress also has an eye on up-and-coming contenders in the stable of "critics" who, it seems, will give a rave to the film on your frickin" teeth -- like Maxim"s Peter Hammond (pictured at right) and Shawn Edwards of Fox"s Kansas City affiliate WDAF. Chock full of number-crunching, great research and the dedicated sifting through dead cliches we"ve come to expect from Childress and the CriticWatch crew, it"s the must-read of the week. Are there any egregious offenders you especially hate, readers -- or do you actually care about the credentials of the people whose bold-faced praise flies out of every TV commercial and print ad?