Anyone who is a fan of Pauly Shore better stop reading now!

OK, now that zero people have stopped reading, I’ll tell you about this week’s edition of “Eric’s Bad Movies” at Film.com. It’s “Bio-Dome,” the last of a string of Shore comedies from the mid-’90s, and by all accounts the worst of the bunch. I had seen snippets of it on TV before, but this was the first time I’d attempted to watch the whole thing. It was hard.

Kudos to those readers who correctly predicted this entry based on last week’s clues! I like the part where some people said it was “definitely” someone else. You’re definitely wrong! I haven’t decided what next week’s Bad Movie is, so no clues this time.

Oh! Perhaps you will be interested in this “Snide Remarks” column from 2003 in which I met Pauly Shore in person and lied to him.

For readers unfamiliar with the saga of the Paramount ban, I will recap it briefly before moving on to the surprising recent developments.

In July 2006, I went on an all-expenses-paid press junket for the film “World Trade Center.” I then wrote a column making fun of the whole shady practice, in which “journalists” are essentially wined and dined in exchange for fluffy, favorable coverage.

Paramount got mad at what I wrote and banned me — not just from future junkets (which I had no interest in anyway; this was a one-time thing), but from its press screenings, too. Press screenings are held, for most films, a few days before they open theatrically. All film critics in the major U.S. markets are invited to attend them. I was now removed from this list.

Now, the way these press screenings work is that they are handled in each market by a local public relations or advertising agency. In Portland, where I live, Paramount is handled by the Seattle office of Allied Advertising, which has branches around the U.S., most of which focus on film publicity. No one from Paramount ever contacted me directly. Instead, they had their Seattle publicist at Allied tell me I’d been banned. It was this Seattle office that had set up the junket I attended.

This Allied publicist also said that, in solidarity with Paramount, they were banning me from their other clients’ screenings too. Luckily, besides Paramount, Allied in Seattle only handled the Weinstein Company and Miramax. The other big studios were handled by other Seattle agencies, and none of them cared. (One of the other publicists even called me to say how funny and dead-on she thought the article was.)

So ever since then, my understanding has been that Paramount was mad, and that Allied in Seattle had removed me from their press list entirely. I kind of assumed that Paramount had strong-armed Allied into the latter decision.

But now new facts have come to light.

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@FilmThreat Actually, I’m quite certain he was singing “I ham what I ham.” I don’t know what that means, but it makes me hungry.

Calling him “M. Night Shamalamadingdong” stopped being clever and funny after the one-millionth usage, about five years ago. So cut it out.

OMG Britney Spears was at last night’s CineVegas party! Walked right past me! I almost didn’t recognize her because she was wearing panties.

CineVegas Film Festival: I don’t want to say what opening night was like, organization-wise, but it starts with “cluster.”

My laptop crisis has been solved. Whew! It turns out to have been just a confluence of coincidences — no wifi signal, a dodgy DSL router, and an overtaxed CineVegas server — that made it seem like my computer had lost all connectivity. The fact that these things happened at midnight made it hard to troubleshoot, too.

Several readers here in Vegas e-mailed to offer help, which I appreciate. I am glad to see strangers come together in times of trouble.

I no longer have the ancient laptop, by the way. I bought a new one (well, a new used one) several months ago, and it’s fine for on-the-road purposes.

So “In the Dark” has been sent out. There is no podcast, but that’s because I’m traveling, not because of technical difficulties. “The Incredible Hulk” is good. I just barely saw “The Happening” this afternoon and don’t have a review written yet, but it’s remarkably dull, flat, emotionless, and surprise-free.

In limited release: “The Foot Fist Way” and “Mongol,” both good.

My laptop has stopped accessing the Internet, whether by Airport or by a hardline ethernet connection. It was working fine this afternoon when I plugged my friend’s DSL modem into it, then wouldn’t work at the CineVegas press office, and still won’t work back at my friend’s house tonight. I’m not accustomed to having this kind of major problem with my Macs, so I’m not sure what to do about it.

The reason this affects you is that all my Friday materials — reviews, “In the Dark” etc. — are on that laptop, with no convenient way to post them to the Internet. The fastest method would be to burn the files to a disc and transfer them to my friend’s iMac (which I’m using to post this), then post them from there. But it’s very late at night and I’ve already spent an hour trying to fix my connection problems. Maybe I’ll try the disc-burning tomorrow. 

It’s kind of a serious problem, since I’m supposed to be covering CineVegas for Cinematical, and now I don’t have any way to do that. So hopefully I can figure out why my computer has suddenly stopped accessing the Internet. In the meantime, everything is on hold.

Whoever guessed “Glitter” last week, you win a gold star! That is the subject of this week’s edition of “Eric’s Bad Movies” at Film.com. I had actually watched it once before, back in about 2002, when some friends and I threw a white-trash party, dressed accordingly, and partook of Mariah Carey’s tour de force. Strangely, when I re-watched it last week, I discovered that I didn’t remember a single detail. I take that as a good sign.

Do you like the guessing game? Well, next week’s Bad Movie is from the second half of the ’90s, and it stars one of those people where you go, “I can’t believe there was ever a time when America thought this man was funny.”

One of the reasons I used to admire Defamer.com was that you had to basically audition to be allowed to post comments. If you weren’t sufficiently literate, witty, and intelligent, they wouldn’t let you post. (They seem to have eased up the restrictions in recent months.) If I weren’t eager to increase traffic to my site — which is the one and only reason that any website allows comments — I’d implement such a system myself.

But in the meantime, here are some of the dumb things that dumb people have said in recent weeks.

(P.S. Most of you post comments that are smart and useful and contribute to the discussion! Really! Keep doing it! And especially, keep coming back to see if anyone has responded to you! That’s the important part!)

DUMB COMMENTS POSTED AT ERICDSNIDER.COM

“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”:

Hey Ericdsnider,

i want you to go into a office and say something about God you will soon see that almost everyone will stop talking to you. but if you talk about Darwinism they start asking questions. Ok Ericdsnider i want you to get out a $1 bill there something wrote there. Something that deals with…..GOD not Darwin. Maybe Everyone needs to remember what our fore-fathers based America on.

[The problem with Creationism isn't that certain elements of it are incompatible with science. It's that so many of its followers are semi-literate idiots.]

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“Iron Man”:

“IRON MAN WAS A BLAST!” You people on this site are “PICKY PICKY PICKY.”

I’m glad this wasn’t a la “CUTESY SPIDERMAN MOVIE.” Finally Hollywood comes out with a movie for everyone. Iron Man is funny, serious, has great special effects,

a great soundtrack and terrific acting by Robert Downey Jr. “WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?” [He has a point there. Once you have a great central performance and a great soundtrack, the other elements -- like plot, direction, supporting performances, screenplay, sets, costumes, makeup, lighting, editing, and cinematography -- really don't matter.] Hollywood came through this time people. You can really tell they tried to please all ages. I can no way complain. Iron Man was pure entertainment and “THIS TIME” I give Hollywood credit for their effort and Eric you should have too with a “A” review rating. “Shame on you!”

[Sometimes I put "quotation marks" around things because I think "quotation marks" are used for "emphasis." And "shame on you," movie critic, for failing to hold the same "opinion" that I "hold"!]

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