Not sure if you ever got this figured out, but, I would use cUrl and php’s json_decode();
Then you can just put the response in a foreach()
I should further specify. It works IF you are using a custom archive-your_custom_post_type.php file and not running a query and a loop on a page template.
After banging my face off my desk for an hour I got it figured out. Its pretty stupid too.
So Im running a ground up theme from scratch and WP 3.4.2 (incase you were wondering if this applies to your situation).
So the underlying problem is that wordpress gets confused if the value of query_posts(‘posts_per_page=2’); and the value in “Reading” section in the backend are different.
So heres what you do, get rid of the “posts_per_page” value and set that value in the back end to however many post excerpts you want to display on an archive/category page (yes it works with custom post types as well).
Hope this helped somebody