Thank you, one and all, for your suggestions for the Eric’s Bad Movies column (Thursdays at Film.com!). As always, my call to action has yielded many viable choices for future editions. More on that below.

First, let me explain (again) why I said I didn’t want any comedies. Some of you seemed to think it was OK to suggest a comedy as long as it wasn’t funny, which kind of misses the point. The point is that it’s very hard to make fun of comedies because they already don’t take themselves seriously. Often, all the satirist can say is variations of, “Boy, this sure isn’t funny!” Ask anyone who makes fun of things for a living — the people at “Mystery Science Theater,” MAD Magazine, The Onion, “Saturday Night Live” — and they will tell you the same thing. Satirizing comedy is very, very difficult.

That’s not to say it can’t be done. My experience has been that it helps if a comedy has supernatural, fantasy, or sci-fi elements. The problem is that I usually have to commit to a film before I’ve had time to watch it, not after. So I need to be pretty confident going in that it’s going to be suitable for the column, and comedies are so fraught with peril that I’ve mostly avoided them. When I have attempted them, I have often not been satisfied with the results.

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Big Hollywood is a fairly new entertainment blog whose stated purpose is to offer a right-wing perspective on what is generally considered a liberal industry. I hadn’t paid any attention to it until recently, when I stumbled across Alexander Marlow’s review of “The Hurt Locker” and was gobsmacked — not because it’s negative, but because it’s negative for illogical reasons.

After explaining what an epigraph is so he can use the word “epigraph” without confusing anyone, Marlow writes this:

If you are to the right of Bill Clinton, all you need to know about “The Hurt Locker” is its epigraph: “War is a drug.”

Incredibly, the mainstream media is trying to position “The Hurt Locker” as politically neutral. The mainstream media are dense. “War is a drug.” Drugs are bad. Thus, war is bad. This is a left-wing film. End of story. Witness the first five seconds of the movie and read the epigraph; if you still have the audacity to trumpet its neutrality, you should be committed to an insane asylum or the newsroom at MSNBC.

Do you see the logical flaw there? The complete quote that serves as the film’s epigraph is this: “The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” The point is that war, like drugs, can be addictive. The quote does NOT say that drugs are bad, nor has the film at this point said that war is bad. That’s all Marlow. Most people would agree with him about drugs, sure — but it’s not what the epigraph says. By his own reasoning, Marlow could just as easily have written:

“War is a drug.” Drugs are illegal. Thus, war is illegal.

Or:

“War is a drug.” Drugs are expensive. Thus, war is expensive.

Both of which are also true, at least in some cases, and both of which ALSO aren’t what the author of the quote was talking about.

It may seem like I’m splitting hairs, but Marlow is the one who stakes his whole case on this. After all, the film starting with the statement “war is a drug” is “all you need to know” about it. So we should probably interpret the statement “war is a drug” accurately, shouldn’t we?

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Someone named Peter posted a comment on my very negative review of “The Informers.” This is what he wrote:

Great movie, Eric and his site blows.

While I don’t dispute the second part of Peter’s statement, I’m curious about his motives. What is his desired goal in posting such a message? I assume he hopes that other readers will have this thought process:

“Hmm, Eric has written a very negative review of this film, explaining what’s wrong with it and why. But on the other hand, Peter says the movie is great, and that Eric and his site both blow. I don’t know who to believe!”

(Or maybe the person is more grammatical and thinks “whom to believe.” I bet Peter didn’t count on that, though.)

Consider also that “The Informers” has been widely panned. Rotten Tomatoes shows 62 negative reviews and only 10 positive. Is Peter visiting all 62 of those critics’ sites and pointing out that the movie is great and that those writers and their sites blow? If not, why was I singled out? Some of those critics hated the movie even more than I did, and some of them and their sites blow even more than my site and I do. Let’s be fair here, Peter.

But then I wonder if maybe I’m misreading Peter’s remarks. The punctuation is a little ambiguous, and the grammar is off. (The third-person plural form of the verb “to blow” is “blow,” not “blows.”) After a little brainstorming, I came up with these alternatives, any of which might reflect Peter’s true intent:

Great movie! Eric and his site blow.

Great — Movie Eric and his site blow.

Great, Movie Eric! And his site blows.

Great movie, Eric! And his site blows.

Great movie? Eric and his site blow?

Great. Movie, Eric, and his site blow.

Peter, if you’re reading this, please let us know what your intentions were so that we may better understand your analysis.

Here’s the story of how I botched my interview with Paul Rudd and Jason Segel.

I usually don’t do celebrity interviews, not because I’m too good for that kind of fluff, but because I’m lazy. (Side note: I am also too good for that kind of fluff.) The interviewing part is easy; transcribing the recording afterward is tedious and time-consuming. So at every film festival, when every publicist contacts every journalist offering interview opportunities with every actor in attendance, I always decline. It’s just not my thing. There are many writers whose thing it is, and they are welcome to it.

But the publicists for “I Love You, Man” flattered the higher-ups at Film.com by offering a one-on-one (well, one-on-two) interview with Rudd and Segel, saying that such an opportunity had only been offered to a few websites. And I like Rudd and Segel, and I knew my Film.com overlords would be delighted to have an interview, and the time didn’t conflict with anything, so I said sure, why not?

I was told via e-mail that I’d have 15 minutes with the duo, starting at 11:45 a.m. at Austin’s Four Seasons hotel. (Actually, I was told Four Season’s, but I knew what they meant.) They assumed I could find the Four Seasons hotel on my own, which is a reasonable assumption. Before I left for Austin, I googled it, saw where it was on the map, and made a mental note: It’s on 2nd Street (or so I thought), between the convention center and Congress Avenue. No problem. I’m basically familiar with that part of downtown.

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Browsing at my old stomping grounds, eFilmCritic (a mirror site for Hollywood B****slap), I saw the first paragraph of David Hollands’ one-star review of “Slumdog Millionaire” and knew I didn’t need to read any further. In just two sentences, Hollands does four things that are at least annoying and possibly flat-out amateurish.

Here’s what he wrote:

When a film garners as much critical praise as “Slumdog Millionaire” has, one assumes watching the movie will be like witnessing the second coming of Christ. When I heard the praise growing, I didn’t join in the chorus; “Slumdog Millionaire” is directed by Danny Boyle, one of the most overrated filmmakers of all time.

Here’s what’s wrong with it:

When a film garners as much critical praise as “Slumdog Millionaire” has, one assumes watching the movie will be like witnessing the second coming of Christ.

If one does assume that, then one is setting oneself up for disappointment. Is Hollands, as a movie critic, saying that he lets himself get so overwhelmed by hype and buzz and publicity that he goes into films with crazily unrealistic expectations? Beware of any critic who does that.

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Robert Koehler’s review of the new film “Fired Up,” published in Variety, says it’s just “a sad, cheapo bid to be the ‘Bring It On’ of the ’00s.”

One problem, Bob: “Bring It On,” released in August 2000, is already the “Bring It On” of the ’00s.

Two final updates on JeffWellsOxfordGate 2009 (see previous items here and here) and then I believe the matter is closed.

At the Oxford Film Festival’s awards ceremony Saturday night, one of the prepared comedy bits involved a category for Best Performance by a Local Actor in a Film Not Appearing in the Festival. These included two clips from actual films involving actual local actors, and then a third one: “Jeffrey Wells in ‘The Media Panel.’” This was accompanied by a graphic of an empty chair with a sign on it reading “Reserved for Jeffrey Wells.” It got a huge laugh.

I mention this in particular because Wells’ language in his last couple blogs and comments suggests it’s only his colleagues (“the cool kidz”) who think he did something wrong by ditching the panel, and that no one else minded. Believe me, that’s not the case. If nothing else, this joke is evidence that to the festival organizers, blowing off the panel was a big deal.

Wells posted what is presumably his final blog entry on the whole affair, and it is a masterpiece of deflection and justification. As it turns out, every single element of the ugly incident was someone’s fault other than his! That includes his grumpy refusal to go to the panel, which one of us ought to have prevented by talking to him when we saw him looking so downcast in the hotel lobby that morning.

I’m serious! Read his blog! That’s really what he says!

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Jeff Wells update! The festival provided a fantastic lunch yesterday at a local restaurant called City Grocery. It was for the filmmakers and the fest’s invited guests, including, apparently, those who had not actually done what the fest brought them here for. Wells was there, enjoying the free food and drink, and asking them to serve his lunch upstairs at the bar, instead of downstairs at the tables with everyone else.

That was all anyone saw of him yesterday. He didn’t show up at any of the evening’s screenings (at least not that we saw), or at the parties (he definitely wasn’t there). And then this morning he posts this:

The Oxford Film Festival cool kidz (Rocchi, Voynar, Yamato, etc.) are shunning me, or certainly not initiating contact. I guess yesterday’s cruddy wireless funk along with my subsequent disinterest in taking part in yesterday’s media panel was a factor. In any case this feels like high school all over again. The cool kidz didn’t hang with me back then either.

So he stays away from all public gatherings, then says everyone’s shunning him. Because he’s always the victim, you know. Everything is always everyone else’s fault but his.

But as it happens, yes, everyone in Oxford who knows what he did yesterday thinks he’s a jerk. The only person in the entire world who is informed on the details and still sides with Wells is Wells.

Today he sent an e-mail to Melanie, the festival organizer, and copied it to me, Weinberg, and other pertinent invited guests. Lacking his permission to print it in its entirety, I will paraphrase, with key phrases quoted directly:

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There is a film blogger named Jeffrey Wells, whose site, Hollywood Elsewhere, is fairly well read within the industry. He’s not a film critic, per se, though he does often express his opinions about movies. Mostly he writes about the whole Hollywood business, everything from behind-the-scenes deals to ad campaigns to distribution strategies.

He was one of the people invited to appear on the panel about film criticism this morning at the Oxford Film Festival, and I was eager to meet him. Though we’ve been attending many of the same festivals for several years, I’d never actually talked to him, and I was curious to learn whether he was as much of a condescending, humorless curmudgeon as he seems in his blog. Maybe it was all an act, or maybe in person it would be funny and not off-putting. I’ve certainly been misinterpreted before, so I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions about him as a person.

Our introduction was affable enough, and we chatted briefly at the opening-night party. My impression was that maybe he plays the role of the ever-offended grouch online because it’s interesting and is perfectly reasonable in everyday life.

And then he refused to appear on the film criticism panel because he couldn’t get wifi in his hotel room.

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I am pleased to announce that the archive of my movie reviews (now well north of 2,300 entries) has been revamped to be more searchable, sortable, and time-waste-able than ever before!

You access the Archives under the Movie Reviews tab, and there you’ll find four columns: Movie Title, Rating, Grade, and Date. (That’s the date it was released, not the date I reviewed it.) The default setting is to list them alphabetically by title, but you can click any of the other three labels to sort them that way. Click the label again and it’ll list them in reverse order.

The new improvement is that if you mouse-over a heading, a little arrow will appear at the right-hand side of the column. Click that arrow and new options will be presented to you.

Under Movie Title, you can type in a particular word and have the database call up only the titles that contain that word. Under Rating, you can select one or more ratings (G, PG, etc.) and have it only show those films; the Grade filter does the same thing for the grades (A-F) that I give. Under Date, you can have it show only films released in the last 30 days, or from any of the years 1999-2008, or from pre-1999. And then, of course, you can re-sort the results however you like by clicking the appropriate column.

Furthermore, you can narrow down the results even more by selecting additional options from the other labels. After bringing up, say, only the films released in 2006, you can go under Rating and ask to only see those rated PG or G, and then of those see only the ones that got a B+ or better. Or you could ask how many films from 2004-2007 had the word “Girl” in the title. Or you could see how many F grades I’ve given to R-rated films since 2001. The possibilities are endless!

Thanks to my webbrother Jeff for implementing the new system. A similar scheme has been set up with the “Snide Remarks” columns, and with the individual actor and director pages that you get when you click on a person’s name in a movie review.

Finally, as a matter of housekeeping, I recently went through and fixed the release dates, where necessary, so that they reflect when the films were first released in the United States. In the old days, I went by when the films opened where I lived (Salt Lake City until mid-2005, Portland after that); that system was left over from when I wrote the reviews for a newspaper and we published them when they opened locally, which (in the case of independent, art house, and Oscar-bait films) was often a few weeks after they opened in New York and L.A. Now that I exist only on the Internet, there’s no reason to provide “local” release dates, so I’ve retrofitted the reviews appropriately. None of this matters to you, probably, but I wanted it on the record.