Happy news to start off 2008… unless your name happens to be Pete Hammond or you’re one of his dependents. According to Radar, Hammond has been let go from Maxim, the magazine where he writes breathlessly quote whoring reviews for the worst movies you could possibly imagine. Hammond won eFilmCritics’s Michael Medved Bag of Douche Memorial Award for 2007. It turns out that of the 189 films that Rotten Tomatoes listed for Hammond, he gave 133 of them Fresh ratings, meaning he liked about 70% of what he saw this year. He was blurbed a record 88 times this year as well, for films like The Number 23, The Game Plan and The Heartbreak Kid. Further, Hammond has changed quotes for studios to make them happy.
I don’t like to see bad things happen to anybody*, but it’s hard not to be a little bit happy when you realize that at the very least losing his pulpit will mean that Hammond will have a hard time keeping up his shill numbers for 08. I bet Earl Dittman, who has been off the whoring game the last couple of years, is happy that one of his rivals is out, at least for now. I’m sure that Hammond will set up shop somewhere else soon enough – you can move the whores off the corner tonight, but they’ll be back tomorrow.
Head over to eFilmCritic to read all of Pete Hammond’s various crimes about film, and then read up on the rest of the dipshits who like their names in print so much they’ll call I Am Legend ‘One of the Greatest Movies Ever Made.’ Seriously.
*I’m totally lying. Schadenfreude is like my middle name.