Reviewer Wank: Scream 4 and spoilers and critics, oh my!
Small, and somewhat late, but the mousie who wrote this up for wank_report did such a good job that I thought it had to be done. One caveat, however: due to the vagaries of my internet connection, I cannot access Twitter right now, so I have no way of telling whether or not my links are working. If I've ballsed anything up, please let me know and I will try to fix as soon as I can. Anyroad:

Listen and attend, o my beloved. Once upon a time in a town called Melbourne, just north of Antarctica, there was a newspaper called The Age. And in The Age lived a happy little film critic called Jim Schembri. Lots of people hated him because of his unremitting dislike of Australian films - one film maker famously said "Fuck you, Jim Schembri!" as he accepted an Australian Film Institute award. Schembri once wrote a stingingly accurate satire on bloggers that I post here to demonstrate his acute grasp of new media.

But that doesn't matter right now. Suffice to say, the man has form.

The latest turn in the Schembri saga began when he spoiled the ending of Scream4 in the first sentence of a review that appeared online on the Fairfax news site for around 24 hours, and consequently spent a few hours at the top of the Rotten Tomatoes website. This, predictably enough, caused some online unrest, with upset tweeters saying things like "Douchebag! You spoiled the film!" etcetera. So the review's wording was slightly changed the following day so that the spoiler was not so evident. Fair enough. A mistake was made and rectified. But - and this is where the wank begins - some special internet magic happened.

It turned out that THERE HAD NEVER BEEN A SPOILER. Jim Schembri has a twitter account, notable for the fact that under his "following" tab is the number 0. Yes, he follows absolutely no one. And he posted a tweet which said that those who had seen the spoiler were hallucinating, or something.

Clearly, an Age critic is NEVER WRONG.

In brief: the story continues here and here, as picked up by fellow critic Luke Buckmaster.

But then came the truly bizarre twist: a crazy flurry of tweets in which Schembri started going on (and on) about a time machine - and making a mock, or so he thought, of Luke Buckmaster.

Buckmaster updates the story on his blog.

Much hilarity ensues on twitter, especially as Jim signs his tweets with his own name. But then...

He follows up with a series of breathless tweets promising the TRUE STORY of the Twitter outrage!

And lo and behold, my beloved, in today's Age the explanation is unfolded in its full glory. It was a social experiment! He planned it all along! Jim Schembri "punk'd the Twitterverse!" He's just like Noam Chomsky!

[Editor's note: A hint, dear critic: no-one, but no-one, is like Noam Chomsky. Possibly not even Noam Chomsky is like Noam Chomsky.]

The "twitterverse", naturally, is less than impressed, but highly amused to have its low expectations so richly rewarded. Also puzzled that a once respected Melbourne broadsheet daily is prepared to publish such drivel. How the mighty have fallen.

The moral of the story, children, is simple. See how much more work you make for yourself when you can't 'fess up to a simple mistake? How many keystrokes you waste? How the Will o'the Wisp of Vanity leads you ever deeper into the Swamps of Delusion and Stupid?

Bonus: Max Lavergne on That Time Machine.

Also, Schembri's twitter account