It's no secret that Rolling Stone's Peter Travers is the biggest blurb whore in all of Hackdom. Last year alone, his name appeared below 65 gushing quotes (in advertisements for 65 separate films) and he's already racked up another 53 so far in 2006. Hollywood Bitchslap, a website that obsessively catalogues such things, even named its "Whore of the Year" Award in his honor.
The less-cynical side of us wants to believe that Travers isn't the despicable corporate shill he appears to be when he writes sentences like, "Mission Impossible III is the movie to beat in the race to push your pulse rate past the danger zone." Or, "Shaun of the Dead is a blast of fright and fun! Keeps the blood and the laughs gushing!" The man thinks in blurbs.
But after this week's full-page blurb-icle on Borat in Rolling Stone, it looks like the once-respected critic has finally cashed in the tattered remnants of his integrity. As a service to our friends at 20th Century Fox, we've excerpted the following easily digestible nuggets of marketing gold, all of which appear in the same review: