Earlier this year there was a film called “Teeth,” which you might remember hearing about even if you didn’t see it. It’s a horror comedy about a teenage girl who discovers she has teeth in her lady parts, and they act as a defense mechanism against unwanted intruders. In other words, when someone tries to rape her, he gets his wang bitten off. Eventually she learns to use this as a weapon against unsavory men.

The concept was upsetting to some men, as evidenced by comments they posted on my review. Some samples:

So, if someone made a movie where women’s breasts were cut off, would that be hailed as an artistic success? Of course not. I’m willing to bet that all of the men in the film are bad in some way, in order to justify what she’s doing. Geez… just another movie for angry and sadistic women to enjoy, and if we don’t agree in every detail then we’re sexists.

find me one positive male in this movie and then tell me it’s not sexist. And by the way, woman can rape too. The analogy would be perfectly apt if the movie was about a penis that shot acid into women’s vaginas. But no. It’s violence against men — horrific violence, for that matter — so it’s funny.

It seems that this is an example of how extreme violence towards men is somehow acceptable in the media, a film basically that centres around men having their penis’s bitten off, i’ve yet to see a film where the hero of the movie tears wombs out with his barbed penis and then justifies it with sexual political rhetoric!

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Two big-budget comedies open today, and early word on both of them has been unpromising. Both are doing poorly on Rotten Tomatoes at the moment. And yet I liked them both — one a lot, and one a little (but enough to lukewarmly recommend it). What can I say?

“Get Smart” is the one I liked a lot, and I’m not entirely alone in that, though I am in the minority. It screened last weekend as a special CineVegas event, and I reviewed it for Cinematical’s film festival coverage.

The other one is Mike Myers’ “The Love Guru,” which I’m one of only a very few critics to give a “recommended” grade to. I was torn between C-plus and B-minus — the dividing line between recommended and not — and I eventually settled on B-minus because my overall feelings were more favorable than not. But it’s not exactly a glowing recommendation.

I was in Las Vegas when it screened, and the local screening was being handled by Allied Advertising, my relationship with which I have recently chronicled. Normally, my plan would be to check with the local publicist to get invited to the screening, but I already knew the Denver and Seattle offices of Allied were against me, and I didn’t want to test whether the Phoenix office had gotten the memo, too. So I just went to the screening and bummed a spare pass off one of the civilians in line, easy as that. Just in case you were wondering.

Oh, and my review of “The Happening” is up now, too. It’s not good.

The “In the Dark” podcast will return next week, when I’m back in Portland.

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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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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Just drove from Portland down to my brother’s house in Stepford, Utah (which the signs call Eagle Mountain, but they’re not fooling anyone). He just mentioned how annoying it is when writers leave “I” off the front of their sentences. Thought I’d try it. Am annoyed by it too. Anyway, the point is, I’m tired from all that driving, so this entry will be purely functional.

This week’s “Snide Remarks” is entitled “Art Depreciation.” There will be no column the next two Mondays because I’m travelin’. A few days in Utah, then down to the CineVegas Film Festival, then down to California to give my parents a thrill. Everything else should be business as usual, just no “Snide Remarks.” So enjoy this one, and savor it for the next couple weeks.

This week’s “Snide Remarks,” including the audio version, is here.
The audio version (i.e., the podcast) is also here.
Subscribe to the podcast’s feed with this URL.

First Texas, now the Zohan — I can’t mess with anything anymore! “Zohan,” an overlong mixed bag, is the subject of my review at Film.com this week.

Then there’s “Kung Fu Panda,” which is pretty funny and very well animated. Not just one of the cheapo throwaways.

Also new: “The Strangers” (scary), “The Fall” (trippy), “Sangre de Mi Sangre” (dreary), and “Savage Grace” (tawdry). (In secret code, I have named four of the Spice Girls.

Sign up for the “In the Dark” e-zine here.
Listen to this week’s podcast version here.
Subscribe to the podcast’s feed with this URL.