While walking through Union Square in New York on Saturday, I passed a man handing out fliers for a preview screening of the upcoming Sandra Bullock/Ryan Reynolds romantic comedy “The Proposal.” Here is what the flier says, with italics, bold, and underlining reproduced accordingly.

SPECIAL ADVANCE SCREENING
“THE PROPOSAL”

THE PROPOSAL is an all-new fun-filled comedy starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds.

Margaret, a powerful female executive (played by Bullock), oversees a glamorous New York City publishing firm — while Andrew, her under-appreciated, stressed-out male assistant (played by Reynolds) dreams of getting promoted. But the tables get quickly turned when Margaret stunningly learns that she faces deportation back to her native Canada. Faced with no other way to stay in the country, Margaret is forced to marry her assistant Andrew! Now with the upper-hand, Andrew goes along with the sham marriage and takes Margaret to rugged Alaska to meet his quirky family. But as the mismatched couple bicker up North — they just might be able to find love where they least expected it.

Featuring hilarious comedy and charming romance, THE PROPOSAL also stars Craig T. Nelson, Mary Steenburgen, Malin Akerman, Betty White, and is from Anne Fletcher, the director of 27 Dresses and Step Up.

This invitation will admit you and one guest.
Both you and your guest must be ages 16 to 54. There will be no admission charge.

DATE: Monday, April 27, 2009

TIME: 12:00 PM noon Start Time. Please arrive early as seating is available on a “first come, first served” basis and no one will be admitted once the movie begins.

PLACE: Regal E-Walk Stadium 13 Theatres
247 West 42nd Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues)
New York, NY 10036

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Happy April 20 to you! For some of you, 4/20 means celebrating marijuana. For others, it means celebrating Hitler’s birthday. For still others, it means celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Columbine shootings. Whatever your celebration of choice, I hope you are able to spend it with friends and loved ones, stoned.

Speaking of Columbine, one of the movies that got blamed for it was “The Basketball Diaries” — which, coincidentally was released April 21, 1995, and is the subject of this week’s edition of Eric’s Time Capsule at Film.com.

Last week’s Time Capsule was “James and the Giant Peach.” You may recall that this film was blamed when a disturbed youth hijacked a giant peach and rolled over his aunts with it.

Filling in for the ailing Mike Russell, I appeared on KUFO’s Cort & Fatboy program Friday to discuss “State of Play” and “Crank: High Voltage.” You can hear it in the C&F podcast, available here. I show up about two-thirds of the way in. (If you download it, I’m at 38:45.)

My late reviews of “Crank: High Voltage” and “17 Again” are also online, for your approval.

Elsewhere, Eugene Novikov summarizes the weekend box office in the style of H.P. Lovecraft.

Here’s FX’s safe-for-TV edit of Samuel L. Jackson’s famous line from “Snakes on a Plane.”

At Post Modern Barney, there is a list of uncomfortable plot summaries (some of them involving adult language). For example, “The Empire Strikes Back”: Boy is abused by midget, kisses sister, attempts patricide.

Finally, my 2-year-old nephew Logan says: “Wait, what?”

This is what I got when I searched for “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” on Amazon:

As a matter of fact, I did mean “Paul Bear: All Cop.”

[MOVIE TRAILER]

Meet Paul. He’s a regular police officer, with a regular partner and a regular life. Except for just one little thing: His father was a bear! [record scratch]

PAUL: Rroowwr!

Now he’s the only one who can stop an evil corporation from destroying a national park — if he can stop thinking about honey, that is!

He’s exercising his right to bear arms — and his right to arm bears!

Put your food in a bag and hang it from a tree branch, because here comes “Paul Bear: All Cop”! He’s part ursine, but he’s all police officer!

“Paul Bear: All Cop” — in theaters this summer! You’ll bear-ly be able to stop laughing!

My pal Jeff Bayer has a site called The Scorecard Review, which rates various elements of a film on a scale of 1-10, making it the perfect movie-review site for numerophiles and illiterates. He also has the TSR Movie Awards, designed as an alternative to the Oscars, and he is eagerly awaiting YOUR vote! Yes, YOURS!

He writes:

It’s that time again …

The Academy Awards just don’t cut it. Every year I watch, and every year I think they get something wrong.
Not only that, why can’t there be more than five nominations? Categories that fans care about (no offense “Best Achievement in Sound Editing), and why can’t we know who got second place?

Instead of sitting still — I created the Scorecard Movie Awards.

Categories range from the typical (Best Overall Cast, Best Actor, Best Film) to the atypical (Best Ending, Best Quote, Funniest).

If you have seen two movies or 200, it doesn’t matter. You only vote for the films you have seen.

There are 27 questions including the Hall of Fame.

Enjoy.

Here’s the link. Go vote! Come on! WHO’S IT GONNA HURT??

I neglected to tell you that “Dear Zachary,” one of the year’s best films and an extraordinarily moving documentary, was airing last Sunday on MSNBC. I totally forgot. Did MSNBC promote it? Would someone who never watches MSNBC have had any way of knowing it was coming up?

Anyway, we are in luck, because MSNBC is showing it again this Sunday at 1 p.m. PST (4 p.m. EST). Set your DVR and steel your emotions for an engrossing true-crime drama, a touching tribute to a murdered friend, and a gut-punching story about good’s attempt to triumph over evil.

In the meantime, avoid reading too much about the film. My review is safe, and so is the trailer (below), but some reviews and YouTube comments have been careless about spoilers. The less you know beforehand, the better.

P.S. I’m told that while the theatrical version has some swears — and you’d swear too, in these circumstances — they’ve been bleeped for MSNBC’s broadcast.

So I wrote that parody of “Twilight” a couple weeks ago, and some of the comments people have posted have demonstrated something I should have thought of beforehand: If you write about a subject that interests teenage girls, a lot of teenage girls will respond, and a lot of teenage girls aren’t very smart!

In particular, there seems to be a lot of confusion over a very non-confusing sentence in the parody’s preface. I wrote:

["Twilight"] has been enjoyed by millions of readers, and hailed as the best book they’ve ever read by people who don’t read a lot of books.

Note that I didn’t say the only people who enjoy the book are those who don’t read much. I said the only people who say it’s the best book they’ve ever read don’t read much. Enjoying the book: fine. Believing it to be the best book you’ve ever read: you don’t read enough.

But apparently some of my readers don’t read enough, because their reading comprehension skills are questionable.

For example, comment #79:

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For the most part, my writing in Toronto was focused into “dispatches” containing mini-reviews of two or three films. Here’s a handy list o’ links to them, with the pertinent titles indicated.

For Film.com:

Dispatch #1 (“Burn After Reading,” “Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” “The Brothers Bloom”).
Dispatch #2 (“JCVD,” “Il Divo”).
Dispatch #3 (“Rachel Getting Married,” “Genova,” “The Burning Plain”).
Dispatch #4 (“The Wrestler,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” “Zack and Miri Make a Porno”).
Dispatch #5 (“Pride and Glory,” “What Doesn’t Kill You,” “Religulous”).
Dispatch #6 (“The Burrowers,” “Synecdoche, New York,” “Miracle at St. Anna”).

For Cinematical:

Dispatch (“Ghost Town,” “Dean Spanley,” “RockNRolla”).
Review: “Nothing But the Truth”
Review: “The Lucky Ones” (which I actually saw at a pre-Toronto screening)
Review: “Lovely, Still”

(More to come for Cinematical, too. Will update.) (Nope, that’s it.)

Finally, if you’re curious, here’s a list of everything I saw at the Toronto International Film Festival, in order. The links do NOT go to my reviews (which for the most part I haven’t written yet), but to the films’ pages at IMDB. I’ve also indicated what my grade will probably be for each movie, though you must bear in mind that letter grades are an inexact science and sometimes change between seeing the movie and writing the review.

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Bad news, Harry Potter fans. The sixth movie, “Half-Blood Prince,” originally scheduled for a Nov. 21 release, has been pushed back to next summer.

Adjectives Actually Used to Describe Wine in the New Film “Bottle Shock”:

round
woolly
chewy
unctuous

Adjectives That Should Also Be Acceptable to Describe Wine, Then, If Those Are OK:

blasphemous
pouty
ambidextrous
runny
bow-legged
pentagonal
quixotic
digital
off-Broadway
unverified
bi-curious
hirsute
circumcised
surreal
unmarried
ergonomic

A reader named Dan sent me a nice e-mail that reads as follows:

Just wanted to say that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed your reviews over the years and to keep it up!  But I have a quick question…. what movies that are universally regarded as classics do you feel are overrated??

Ooh, that’s a fun question! I don’t like to say “overrated,” though. That term implies a certain arrogance: “The people who liked this film over-praised it, whereas I am praising it exactly the right amount.” Just because a lot of people loved something and you didn’t doesn’t mean they’re all wrong or deluded or something. It just means you have different opinions.

But I know what you mean. You mean movies that are supposed to be great that I, personally, didn’t care for. I can think of a few.

“2001: A Space Odyssey” does very little for me. It’s a technical marvel in many ways, especially considering when it was made, and I like its ideas. But the way it’s dragged out feels interminable to me.

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