Saw an amusing LA Times item about Sony admitting someone in its marketing department created a fake reviewer so they could put some phony blurbs in its The Animal movie ads. A reporter discovered this while doing a story about "junketeers," which means studios paying the way for reviewers from marginal publications/dot comes to do softy reviews that they can pick review blurbs from.

What happened to the good old days of just taking things out of context. :) You know, a review says "The Animal is an outrageous, amazing piece of garbage."

And the blurb says:
"Outrageous, amazing!"
Says John Smith of the Weekly Fish Wrapper

Pearl Harbor ads have no review blurbs at all. So you can either commend them for not stooping (I'm sure Jeff Craig of Pay Me For Good Reviews Inc had something great to say), or laugh that the reviews are so poor there aren't any blurbs to be had.

I'm sure gaming companies will resort to this too, if they aren't already. EIDOS in particular! :)

"I'm sure gaming companies will resort to this too, if they aren't already."

Game publishers don't seem to be particularly shy about quoting previews without distinguishing them from reviews.

BTW, Rotten Tomatoes shows Pearl Harbor running at about 25%. That's a horrible score, but they still have over 25 positive reviews cited there, including some major newspapers: The LA Times, the Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Chronicle. So if Disney wanted to use quotes in their ads, they wouldn't have to resort to cheesy practices.

The (fake) guy was also used in another review, A Knight Tale, I think. Seems more like some guy in marketing just got lazy and wanted to write his own blubs rather than take the time to actually misquote an actual person! :)