eFilmCritic has compiled their annual Criticwatch list, designed to shame the most offensive quote whores in film criticism, and they’ve given top honors for “an incredible amount of supercilious douchebaggery” to Pete Hammond, the MAXIM critic whose reliably, absurdly positive blurbs appeared on a whopping 88 film campaigns in 2007. Hammond, a Criticwatch veteran from way back, has long been considered to have few peers in the quote whoring game. As Erik Childress writes:

Hammond is more than just a cancer on the film critic profession. He’s the poster boy for everything that’s wrong with an American media preaching to the lowest common denominator and a vocation that receives its most vocal criticism from outsiders when it’s actually doing its job of criticizing…

We have announced in the past that we have no plans to give Pete Hammond his own award name – because that will take away his pre-determined advantage to winning it each year. If he can aspire for 88 quotes in 2007, who knows how far he can go in 2008 & beyond. I will amend that statement though. The day Hammond is eliminated from our discussion; such a day when we no longer see his name on a film ad – I promise, here and now, to offer him his own memorial award.

That day might arrive sooner than later. Towards the end of the post (which also includes a full Top Ten countdown of the year’s biggest blurb whores and minute calculations on the emptiest/most overused blurb language of the year and is basically a sterling example of the kind of inside baseball nerdiness that I can get lost in for an entire afternoon), Childress notes that while the gang at eFilmCritic were compiling this document, they got word that Hammond has been fired.

No specific reason for Hammond’s caning was given, other than that he, well, sucks, and that the magazine has a new editor who is apparently looking to do more tabloidy celeb coverage. Which doesn’t necessarily mean anything––Hammond’s actual “reviews” have never been much more substantial than the 200 word all-positive blurbs found in the back of US Weekly––but the mag hasn’t announced a new film critic hire, nor have I heard that they’re searching for one.

Is it possible that MAXIM would prefer to employ no film critic at all over a film critic whose whoredom, whilst totally obnoxious to anyone who cares about criticism, admittedly splashes the magazine’s brand name across trailers and TV ads every week? And if so, is the Fall of Hammond a victory for the state of criticism? Or is it a pointer that any kind of conversation about films––no matter how shallow and studio-stroked––just has no place left in mainstream lifestyle journalism? Or both?