I just discovered this news item from Salt Lake City in April. It seems a would-be robber walked into Cafe Trio, held out a bag to the cashier, and said “fill the bag.” Alas, the cashier thought the crook’s request had been to feel the bag — “feel” and “fill” are often pronounced identically in Utah — and so proceeded to reach out and feel the bag. The crook reportedly said, “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” and stormed away empty-handed.

I feel bad for the criminal here. Apart from the attempted robbery, he did nothing wrong. “Fill the bag” is a reasonable thing to say, and he said it correctly. It’s not his fault people around him are used to hearing “fill” as a mispronunciation of “feel.” Let this be a lesson to those of you considering a career in crime. You must beware of regional homophones.

(P.S. Despite KSL’s assertion to the contrary, the restaurant is spelled Cafe Trio, not Cafe Treo. It’s an Italian place and the food is quite delicious.)

This week’s edition of “Eric’s Bad Movies” at Film.com features “Over the Top,” which has long been regarded as the “Citizen Kane” of arm-wrestling movies.

I’m astonished by how many bad movies Sylvester Stallone has made. I suspect this will not be his last appearance in “Eric’s Bad Movies.”

Oh, and I have a favor to ask. Would you mind posting your comments regarding the article at the article itself, at Film.com? I know, I know, you have to register a user name to post there, but comments are like gold nuggets for the writers. It’s a cheap way of making the Film.com overlords think that readers love us. Thanks, ‘preciate ya.

We’ve already amply covered the subject of negative reviews of “The Dark Knight” being attacked by the movie’s fans (or pre-fans, since most of them hadn’t yet seen it when they went ballistic). But it turns out you can write a glowing, extremely positive review and still upset some of the fanboys!

Here is an e-mail I got yesterday from an anonymous person. His or her — oh heck, let’s assume it’s a guy — e-mail address contains “86,” which usually suggests the year of birth, and the word “kelly.” So it’s probably a 22-year-old guy named Kelly. At any rate, this is what he said:

I have an objection to your superficial and colorless description of the Joker as “the devil.” [Actually, I said he’s like the devil.] How very lazy it was for you to make that comparison.

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Earlier this month, a very sad thing happened: Utah Valley State College became Utah Valley University.

Longtime readers will recall that when I lived in Utah Valley (i.e., the Provo/Orem area) and worked for a newspaper there, UVSC was one of my favorite things to make fun of. In fact, it was a favorite thing for many people in that region to make fun of. I wrote several “Snide Remarks” columns for the sole purpose of mocking UVSC, and mocked it in passing in several others. (Search for “UVSC” on this site and you’ll get plenty of hits.)

Becoming a university instead of a state college doesn’t automatically mean it’s now a really awesome center of learning, of course. It may be on the right track, but it still has open enrollment, which means you can go there no matter how stupid you are. I will continue to childishly poke fun at the place regardless of what it’s called.

So why is the switch from UVSC to UVU sad for me? Because it invalidates my song “UVSC,” which was a parody of “Under the Sea” and cannot survive a change in lyrics. I’d have to write a whole new song. And if you’ve heard “UVSC” — which you can do for free here, or download it for 99 cents here — you know that it’s a thing of beauty that can never be duplicated. Not that I do a lot of shows in Provo (the only place the song is funny) anyway, but still. It’s the end of an era.

Farewell, UVSC! I shall always remember you and laugh. (At you, not with you.)

I have an old friend named John Williams. Not old in the sense of being elderly, and not John Williams in the sense of being a famous film-score composer; old in the sense of I’ve known him a long time, and John Williams in the sense of being a guy in his mid-30s from Utah.

Anyway, this John Williams, like the other one, is a talented musician. When we were living in the same dorm at BYU, he was in a band called Anyone For Squash, which practiced in our basement and which some of us uncharitably called Anyone For Guitar Lessons. They went on to record a fine CD and do some shows around town and goodness knows what else, and then they all graduated from college and did other things.

John graduated from college a couple times, actually, and was an English teacher at Utah State University for a while before moving to Southern California, where it is my understanding that he continues to be both a college student and a college instructor of some kind. He’s super-smart,  and also a good singer and musician.

And now he’s in a new band! They are called Faded Paper Figures, their MySpace page is here, and you can download their album, “Dynamo,” from CD Baby. You can also listen to their stuff for free at both places, to see if you wanna download it.

Faded Paper Figures belongs to the genres of indie and electronica, or “indietronica” as some of the kids are apparently calling it. They remind me of The Postal Service: electronic but not techno, and indie but not emo.

I like the album a lot, and maybe you will too! At any rate, good luck to you, John. It was great to hear your work again in the new Indiana Jones movie.

You think “Dark Knight” fans are bad? You should have seen the fervor when Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” was released! That’s the shaky premise of this week’s “Snide Remarks” column, entitled “The Fanboys Respond to ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ 1595.” Enjoy and forsooth and stuff. Oh, and there’s not a podcast version because much of the effect is lost when it’s spoken rather than written.

Holy posthumous Oscar, Batman! Get a load of Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight,” a groundbreaking and all-around excellent superhero flick that happens to feature one of the most fascinating, most unnerving villain performances ever. I use this term facetiously now and then, but I mean it when I say that this Joker is good old-fashioned nightmare fuel.

For that reason and others — the film’s length, its overall darkness, the gruesome and awful things that happen to people in it — I want to emphasize that it is NOT a movie for children. Teenagers, sure. But young kids? No way. Take that PG-13 rating seriously for once.

Also opening wide today is “Mamma Mia!,” a terrible musical! with a stupid plot! draped around some great ABBA songs! The continued success of the stage version mystifies me, although I suspect it’s a lot more energetic and fun in person than it is on film.

“Space Chimps” (reviewed at Film.com) is a pretty good animated comedy for the kiddies and their parents. It’s gonna make about $3 at the box office this weekend, but if you’ve already taken the tykes to see “WALL-E” and “Kung Fu Panda,” this is a good Plan C.

Finally, in limited release is a comedy called “Kabluey” that’s well worth checking out. It was the opening-night film at the Oxford (Mississippi) Film Festival that I attended back in February (my account of the weekend is here), and I’m delighted that it’s getting some kind of theatrical release, albeit not a very big one. You can visit the film’s website to keep an eye on when/if it’s coming to a theater near you.

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As expected, this week’s edition of “Eric’s Bad Movies” at Film.com is “Batman & Robin,” the disaster that brought the Batman franchise to a screeching halt 11 years ago. One of my rules for this column is that I don’t want to do films that I already reviewed, but I made an exception here because my original review wasn’t a proper one. It was a he-said/she-said thing with another writer at my college paper, and it hardly counts. Plus, ’tis the season, what with that new Batman movie coming out tomorrow.

By the way, one of the reasons I don’t want to use already-reviewed films for “Eric’s Bad Movies” is pretty straightforward: If it’s bad enough to warrant EBM attention, that means it’s bad enough that I don’t want to watch it again. Time had dulled my memory of how awful “Batman & Robin” is, but it all came rushing back when I rewatched it, compounded now by the fact that I knew what was going to happen. At least the first time had the element of surprise, that flavor of fresh badness. The second time was like re-taking a crap.

Next week: a movie starring someone who has already been featured in “Eric’s Bad Movies” as a director, and directed by someone who has a prior directorial offense on our list, too. Using those clues, the EBM archives, and IMDB, you could actually figure out exactly what next week’s movie is. The first person to post the correct answer wins … something. Possibly nothing. But it would be cool, right?

So I was in the shower Wednesday morning, and I was thinking about the Rotten Tomatoes users’ unusually vicious responses to negative reviews of “The Dark Knight,” and you know me, I’m always looking for a little fun, so I thought, “I should post a negative quote on Rotten Tomatoes just to see if they wish fiery death upon me, too.”

And so I did. I wrote a “review” of the film that simply said this:

This is easily the worst Batman film so far, and I include “Batman & Robin” in that statement.

Just kidding. It’s fantastic. My real review will be posted Thursday. I just wanted to see if a negative quote on Rotten Tomatoes would get me the same kind of psychopathic comments that other negative reviews have gotten. If it does, I guess that means those idiots really are just going by the one-sentence quotes, and not actually clicking over to read the whole review.

At Rotten Tomatoes, I gave it a “Rotten” rating and posted the first sentence as my quote: “Easily the worst Batman film so far, and I include ‘Batman & Robin’ in that statement.”

(Didja know that the RT staff doesn’t assign Fresh or Rotten or choose the quotes, but that the critics themselves usually do it? I suspect the big-time critics like Ebert have interns do it for them, or maybe the RT people give them special consideration. But most critics — particularly those of us on the lower rungs — provide our own quotes.)

I did all of this just before 10 a.m. Within 45 minutes, there were 67 comments posted. You can read them all here. To my great surprise, almost everyone did actually click the link to read the whole review before they posted, and thus saw the joke and laughed at it. In fact, the sudden massive influx of traffic clogged my site for several minutes.

At the moment, 37 reviews of “The Dark Knight” have been linked at Rotten Tomatoes, most of them ecstatic. But four are negative, and this does not sit well with some of the movie’s most ardent supporters — most of whom, I should point out, have not actually seen the movie yet.

And since RT has a useless system that allows people to comment on reviews — or, more often, on the one-sentence excerpts from those reviews that are quoted on RT — we are able to peer into the dark, terrifying minds of some of the Internet’s most mentally unstable anonymous cowards.

You’re probably thinking that people’s reactions are along the lines of “You suck!” or “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” But no. It is worse than that. Feel free to have a quick look at the comments posted on any of these four reviews: David Denby, The New Yorker; David Edelstein, New York Magazine; David Fear, Time Out New York; Marshall Fine, Star Magazine.

(It is a curious coincidence that all four negative reviews are from New York critics, and that three of the critics are named David. However, other New York critics have written positive reviews, and so have other Davids.)

Here’s a sampling of people’s responses to these pans:

he’s not just gay, he’s piss-filled *** bag.

Look at his ugly *** face. Just by looking at it you can tell this guy has no life and craves attention

You do not deserve to live.

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Those of you who watch a lot of reality TV may find this montage amusing. Those of you who don’t watch a lot of reality TV may be reminded of why you don’t.

I double-checked with the publicist, and I’m not supposed to publish my review of “The Dark Knight” until Thursday at the earliest. (Friday, really, but since there are screenings at 12:01 a.m. Friday, no one will freak out if the review goes live sometime Thursday.) I’d be inclined to wait until then anyway, just to follow the natural order of things. If I post this review early just because some people are eager to hear about the movie, then why not post the next one early, too? And the one after that? Where does it end?

As you will learn when you see “The Dark Knight,” it is very important that society follow a system of law and order. Otherwise there is chaos.

So this is not a review, it’s simply an observation:

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG

Here’s your piping-hot delivery of new “Snide Remarks,” a saucy little number entitled “I Learned It from Watching You” that lists some of the more important things that the films of 2008 have taught us. It includes visual aids, which as you know is caused by visual hiv. (What?)

I would also like to mention that I’m seeing “The Dark Knight” today at noon, and, more to the point, that you are not. Sometimes I don’t bother to get excited about movies because I know I’m going to see them all anyway, so what’s the point in getting worked up about it? But I’ve been looking forward to this one. Digital IMAX projection, a press-only screening, no rowdy unwashed masses detracting from the experience — this is one of the perks of being a film critic. It balances out things like “Meet Dave.”

Finally, a reminder that if you’re on the Twitter you can follow me if you want to. My Twitter name happens to be EricDSnider.

This week’s “Snide Remarks,” including the audio version, is here.
The audio version (i.e., the podcast) is also here.
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I don’t really love anything this week. None of the new movies, I mean. I still love other things.

“Hellboy II: The Golden Army” is fine. Visually spectacular, sometimes funny, kind of exciting, kind of meh. Likewise, “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (which I’ve reviewed for Cinematical) is good enough but not great.

“Meet Dave,” on the other hand, is quite terrible, as expected. (My review is at Film.com.) It’s like Eddie Murphy’s doing it on purpose now. I note that the film is so bad, even Eddie Murphy didn’t want to sit through it.

On the more delightful side of things, “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl” is a perfectly pleasant thing to take your young daughter to. I bought a ticket for “Hancock” when I saw it, lest I appear creepy to the teenager selling tickets. My reputation among movie-theater employees is of the utmost importance to me.

Finally, there’s an independent film called “Garden Party” that isn’t very good and doesn’t have any stars and that you probably weren’t going to see anyway.

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Dinosaurs, or at least their cheap-looking equivalents, are at the heart of this week’s edition of “Eric’s Bad Movies” at Film.com. It’s “Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend,” a throwaway offering from Disney in 1985 that stars William Katt, best known for playing the lead in TV’s “The Greatest American Hero.” He appears in the film shorn of his trademark curly blond afro, however.

Do other people approximately my age (33) remember this film? I never saw it, but I vividly remember the commercials for it, and the title and premise have always been at the back of my mind. Maybe it made a big impression on me because it involved dinosaurs, which are very cool to 10-year-olds. What I never realized at the time was that the movie is really, really bad.

Next week’s film will be timely and appropriate. That’s your only clue.

A couple of readers recently posted “WALL-E”-related questions that warrant attention…

I don’t know much about the Oscars, but are animated films eligible for best picture? (I’m thinking of “Wall-E” here obviously).

Yes, any type of film is eligible for Best Picture, including types for which there is also a special category, i.e., animated films, documentaries, and foreign films. Only one cartoon, “Beauty and the Beast,” has ever been nominated, though, and the addition in 2001 of the Best Animated Feature category kind of ghettoizes cartoons, in my opinion. Academy voters figure, “Oh, we don’t have to bother considering the animated films for the top honors, because they have their own special category over here.”

But the fact is, animated films are often among the very best movies of any kind in a given year, and there’s already talk that “WALL-E” might break through the barriers and get a Best Picture nomination. At any rate, it’ll definitely win the Best Animated Film category.

Can it be nominated in both categories? Yes.

Thanks to the many people who offered suggestions for “Eric’s Bad Movies” when I put out the call last week! There were some excellent recommendations that I have added to my Netflix queue. The people at Netflix, meanwhile, must think I’ve recently suffered brain damage, or married someone stupid.

By my count, you suggested a total of 177 different films. Many of those had to be eliminated because I’d already reviewed them (including three that were the subjects of “Eric’s Bad Movies,” AHEM), or because they are unavailable on DVD (including “North” and Michael Jackson’s “Moonwalker”), or because I consider them too obscure. I might get to the obscure titles eventually, but for now I think there are enough suitable candidates that are well-known.

I also had to eliminate some for not being bad enough, or, in some cases, for not being bad at all. A few more, like “American Psycho 2,” were disqualified for being direct-to-video films. At least one film had to be disqualified for not existing — unless the person who suggested “Daisies” meant the 1966 Czech film by that name, in which case it’s disqualified for being obscure, as well as for being actually rather well-regarded by those who are familiar with.

Some people freely admitted that the films they were suggesting were ineligible, yet suggested them anyway, presumably because they like to hear the sound of their own voices. You see that a lot on the Internet: “I have nothing useful to add to this discussion, but I must speak anyway, lest others be deprived of my words!” So if someone really, really wanted a forum to post their list of least favorite movies, most of which aren’t eligible for this feature, then I guess I’m glad I could provide an opportunity.

But I wound up with about 30 titles that I’ve added to my list, including several that made me say, “Oh! Yes! Of course! How could I have forgotten ‘Inspector Gadget’?!” (for example). Between those and the ones I’d already come up with, we should be set for a year of “Eric’s Bad Movies.” And that’s if I hold myself to only one Stallone movie! If I cover each of his cinematic offenses, we’re set until the year 2014.

New “Snide Remarks”! Called “Gas Pains”! Topical!

This week’s “Snide Remarks,” including the audio version, is here.
The audio version (i.e., the podcast) is also here.
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The “Eric’s Bad Movies” feature at Film.com is three months old now, and it’s time for me to request your help once again in coming up with appropriate selections for the column. Many of you gave suggestions when I first announced “Eric’s Bad Movies,” and I’ve used a few of them and plan to use a few more. So I appreciate your help! And now I want more of it!

The column’s archives are here, so you can see what I’ve already covered. Beyond that, I have a few rules for the types of films that are most useful. I reserve the right to break these rules (except #1 and #2) if I want to; they’re more like personal guidelines. For example, despite rule #3, I think there might be some “Batman & Robin” in my future. But if you’re suggesting titles, try to keep them within these parameters.

1. It needs to be bad. And not just bad, but really bad. Mediocre won’t cut it. A film that is merely mediocre is a waste of my time.

2. It must have been released in theaters. No straight-to-video releases or made-for-TV movies.

There was a flurry of wrong guesses last week, but only one commenter got it right: This week’s Bad Movie at Film.com is “Patch Adams,” a wretched, manipulative sham that stands as the supreme example of Movies That Make Us Want to Smack Robin Williams. So nice guessing, whoever it was!

Here is my anecdote concerning “Patch Adams.” In early January of 1999, I went with a friend to a theater in Salt Lake City for a screening of “A Civil Action.” I wasn’t really reviewing movies yet, but I’d gotten an invitation at the newspaper I worked for, so hey, why not. However, we arrived with just moments to spare before showtime, and the theater was already packed, so we couldn’t get in. Not wanting to waste the trip, we decided to see something that was also playing at this theater … and for some reason we chose “Patch Adams.” I don’t vividly recall my reaction, but I know it was not positive. Even with my critical skills still at a rudimentary level I saw through the film’s shameless fraudulence. Watching it again last week, I hated it rather passionately. There were a few times when I was yelling and gesticulating at the TV.

As for next week’s movie, it was going to be “My Giant,” starring Billy Crystal and a very tall man. But I sat down to watch it the other night and was dismayed to learn that it’s actually not all that bad. I’m not saying it’s good, just that it’s not terrible. More like a mediocre but good-natured sitcom. I had to turn it off after a half hour or so because I couldn’t afford to waste my time watching something that wasn’t excruciating. You see what my life has become.

So you get to guess on what the replacement film for next week is. (Don’t worry, I’ve watched it, and it’s appropriately awful.) Your clues are that it was released in the mid ’80s (think ’84-’86); it was rated PG and generally aimed at families; it starred someone who had previously starred in a cult-favorite TV show; and though it was a box office flop, I think many people will recognize the title and basic premise. You might have even seen it on video.

Guess away! And in the meantime, enjoy my assessment of “Patch Adams.”

We’ve used up half of 2008, folks. We’d better start conserving or we’ll run out of 2008 within six months, seven tops.

As of the midpoint, I’ve watched 225 movies so far this year. Holy crap, can that be right? Wow. I guess it is. At that rate, I’ll have 450 by the end of the year. But that rate won’t continue, because the first half of the year was crammed with film festivals (Sundance, SXSW, CineVegas), while the second half will have one at the most. Still, the point is the same: I watch a lot of movies.

Not all of those were for review. Some were just me watchin’ a movie for fun. And two of them were “Anchorman.” (Why have I watched “Anchorman” twice so far this year? I dunno. Long story.) But of those that I have reviewed, here’s what I’ve liked the best. Please note that this list is non-binding, and if some of these don’t wind up on the year-end list, or wind up in a different order, you’re not allowed to yell at me or question my methods for YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME.

Top 10 Movies of 2008 So Far

1. “WALL-E”
2. “American Teen” (in theaters this month)
3. “Son of Rambow”
4. “Young @ Heart”
5. “Cloverfield”
6. “Dear Zachary” (see below)
7. “Snow Angels”
8. “Funny Games”
9. “The Signal”
10. “The Promotion”

Number 6 is a documentary that played at Slamdance and SXSW that I just barely got around to watching. It’s one of the most emotionally wrenching films I’ve ever seen. Last I heard, they’re looking at an August theatrical release for it. I’ll write up a review soon-ish.

Rotten Tomatoes, now celebrating its 10th anniversary, operates on a simple concept. It looks at all* the movie reviews on the Internet, translates each into either “Fresh” or “Rotten” (i.e., positive or negative), then tells you what percentage of critics liked a particular movie. If the percentage is 60 or higher, then the film is considered “Fresh.”

“WALL-E” is the “Freshest” movie of the year so far, with a current Tomatometer score of 96% — that is, 147 out of 153 critics reviewed it favorably. Those other six critics … well, they’re in the distinct minority.

And so I got to thinking: When have I been in the distinct minority? What is the “Freshest” movie that I’ve ever given a “Rotten” rating to?

Each individual critic’s page at Rotten Tomatoes (here’s mine) actually lets you sort his or her reviews by Tomatometer, making it easy to check: It was “The Pianist,” which has a 95% Tomatometer score. I gave it a C+, which is just barely on the “Rotten” side, but “Rotten” nonetheless. I’m one of only eight critics (out of 165) to review it negatively.

The Friday movie roundup — on a Tuesday?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!? It’s crazy, I know, but Tuesday is when they’re releasing “Hancock,” the big Fourth of July blockbuster. Well, Wednesday, officially, except that nearly every theater that’s showing it has “sneak previews” starting tonight at 7. So it’s really opening today. The July 4 movie opens July 2, except really July 1. Makes perfect sense.

Anyway, “Hancock” is fine.

The movie that’s really good is “The Promotion,” which has been kicking around in limited release for a few weeks and opens this Friday in Salt Lake City (which I mention because I know a lot of you live in that area). It was the Cinematical gang’s favorite film at South By Southwest back in March, and it’s a shame it’s not getting more attention now that it’s in theaters. Go see it. It’s funny.

UPDATE: I’ve just received word that “The Promotion” has been bumped back to July 11 in SLC. So wait until July 11, and then go see it.

Also in limited release this week are two Sundance favorites: “The Wackness,” which made me say “meh,” and “Baghead” (review at Cinematical), which made me say “ha ha” and “me likey.”

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(This post contains minor “WALL-E” spoilers.)

Many of you saw “WALL-E” over the weekend, and no doubt some of you noticed biblical themes in it. You can’t name a main character “Eve” without invoking the Garden of Eden, of course; nobody could miss that. But what about all the humans living on a ship and waiting for an envoy to return with a plant as proof that it was safe to go home? Did that remind anyone of Noah’s Ark and the dove?

In my review, I mentioned that there were biblical allusions along with the cinematic references like “2001: A Space Odyssey” and Buster Keaton. (I didn’t mention it, but writer/director Andrew Stanton is a Christian, and he discusses how that influences his work in this interview.) My review prompted a Methodist minister to write to me:

I have read 7 reviews so far all by the “top” critics, and while they are all excellent writers, they all, until you, have missed the biblical narratives so skillfully woven into the story. Thanks for having the guts to mention it.

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I’m back from my travels, and “Snide Remarks” is back with me. (I took it along as a sidekick.) This week’s edition, “A Good Sense of Rumor,” pertains to celebrities, and in particular the mocking of them.

Speaking of celebs, you might be interested in this post I wrote for Cinematical during the CineVegas Film Festival, in which Britney Spears and I attended the same party. OMG is right!

This week’s “Snide Remarks,” including the audio version, is here.
The audio version (i.e., the podcast) is also here.
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Whoa! Technical difficulties last night at EricDSnider.com headquarters. The server went down at the worst possible time — Thursday night when I’m posting reviews and sending out “In the Dark” — and prevented me from getting a lot of things done. But here we are now! We are OK. We have each other, and that’s the important thing.

Unsurprisingly, Pixar has knocked another one out of the park with “WALL-E,” an animated sci-fi love story that raises the bar yet again in terms of technical excellence and storytelling technique. I dare say it’s brilliant, easily the best movie I’ve seen so far this year. My review is at Film.com.

Then there’s “Wanted,” starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy as assassins. My review of this will be posted shortly is at Cinematical.

In limited release: “Stuck,” a horror-comedy about a woman who hits a homeless man with her car, then drives home with him still alive and embedded in the windshield; and “Expired,” an abrasive comedy from Sundance 2007 about two parking-enforcement officers in love.

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Well, I guess this was inevitable. Today’s edition of “Eric’s Bad Movies” at Film.com features “Kazaam,” a movie that for some reason Shaquille O’Neal is the star of. I know! It doesn’t make sense to me, either.

I think next week’s movie, if you’re in a guessing mood, will be one that many people liked — it grossed over $200 million worldwide when it was released in the 1990s — but is terrible nonetheless.

I’m not a sociologist or historian, and the only subject I know anything about is movies, so take this with a grain of salt. But it seems to me that this blog, Seriously So Blessed, is hilarious. It’s a near-perfect satire of a certain subculture of Mormon life in the Provo/SLC area: the 20-year-old life-long-Provo girls who marry newly returned missionaries and write blogs about their fabulous lives. If you’ve never been a Mormon living in Provo you might not fully appreciate the nuances of the character, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it’s funny.

Note: The blog has an irritating music player that begins playing irritating music the moment the page loads. So be ready for that. It’s irritating.

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.

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.

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.]

* * * * *

“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”!]

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.

Hey! Do you know what Twitter is? Me either! But I have an account there! You can follow me! My name is EricDSnider! Who knows, maybe sometimes I will think of a funny joke or an insight to share, and it will be one that can be explained in 140 characters or less, and I will send it out as a Twitter update! You’ll certainly want to be among my Twitter followers should that ever occur! I am 100 years old and I do not like or understand Internet fads!

If I’ve watched “The Adventures of Pluto Nash” starring former funnyman Eddie Murphy, then you know it must be Thursday, and this must be another one of “Eric’s Bad Movies” at Film.com.

Technically, I should have reviewed this movie when it came out. It was 2002, and I was doing the full-time critic thing. I don’t remember the specifics, but I know it wasn’t screened for critics (which in those days was much rarer), and for whatever reason I couldn’t prevail upon myself to go see it during the one week that it survived in theaters. (Next week’s Bad Movie is also a high-profile flop from the 2000s that I should have reviewed when it opened. Any guesses what it might be???)

The column features a throwaway reference to Jeremy Piven’s ridiculous hairpieces. I made a similar joke about Nicolas Cage’s hair in this week’s “Snide Remarks.” Is this a coincidence? Part of an ongoing campaign against bad toupees? Who can say, really?

My review of “Sex and the City” is among those that come up when you Google the film’s title and click the “reviews” link, so it’s been read by a lot of people who had not been to my website before. Some of these visitors have posted comments along these lines:

why bother to write a nasty review if you never truly watched the show or have decided to hate the movie from the get go?

If you don’t like this type of story- don’t go see it.

I don’t think you should have seen the movie if you never watched the show.

I wonder why you went to see it so quickly if you were not a fan.

Yes it is your job as a movie critic, but why would you even bother writing up a movie review for a movie you know you wouldnt be intersted in and wouldnt understand, it just makes it confusing for the fans who want to see it.

Many regular visitors smile at these comments from people who don’t seem to understand that I’m a film critic, and that film critics see pretty much ALL the movies. And granted, the last comment I cited is a little stupid, as the commenter doesn’t grasp the part of the definition of “job” that includes “getting paid,” which would answer her question of why I wrote the review. (I’m also not sure how a negative review is “confusing” to fans, especially if those fans have already decided they want to see the movie.)

But maybe these comments aren’t so dumb after all. It’s not like the banner at the top of the page says “Eric D. Snider: Professional Film Critic.” (Maybe it should.) To an impartial observer stumbling across the site, it could just be some guy’s blog where he talks about movies. In that case, it’s perfectly reasonable to wonder why he went to see the movie when he didn’t have any interest in it.

And then it hits me: The days of “movie critics” being an entirely separate and distinct group from “regular joes talkin’ about movies” are quickly waning. The Internet has made it so that anyone with a computer can declare himself a “movie critic” — and the fact is, a lot of these self-declared critics are every bit as good as the ones who write for newspapers and magazines. A lot of them are embarrassingly amateurish and detrimental to film criticism as a whole, too. But they’re still part of the group.

Nassau County in New York has recently stepped up its efforts to deter drunken driving by providing news media with the names, hometowns, and mugshots of its DWI arrestees. The idea is that if drunk people know getting arrested means they’ll be in the paper on Monday, then maybe that — if nothing else — will discourage them from getting behind the wheel.

The project is controversial, but that’s not what I wanted to tell you about. What I wanted to tell you about is one of the people they arrested over Memorial Day Weekend, a 17-year-old girl named [redacted because of her age, but it’s in the Gothamist article]. According to Newsday (via Gothamist), her blood-alcohol level was 0.15 percent, almost twice the legal limit of 0.08. (Actually, since she’s underage, her legal limit is 0.00.) But she swears she wasn’t drinking. Her explanation? “I didn’t drink! I was kissing a boy who was drunk!”

Mmhmm. Are you really gonna try to sell that one to a judge? Teenagers are hilarious. Did you ever make up an extraordinary lie to avoid trouble, and then stick to it no matter what? I know I did.

So that’s funny already, and then there’s this quote from her family’s lawyer: “To now have (the arrest) publicized is not only embarrassing, but demeaning as well.”

Really, egghead? It’s embarrassing? Yeah: that’s kind of the point. “Your Honor, this highly publicized effort to embarrass drunken drivers has resulted in my client, a drunken driver, being embarrassed!”

(Also: “Embarrassing” and “demeaning” are almost synonymous anyway, but we’ll let that pass.)

(Also: Maybe Nassau County shouldn’t mess with this girl. With a name like [redacted], she is almost certainly the daughter of someone with Mob ties.)

You know how sometimes when you’re bored you’ll find a photo of a man holding a baby and use Photoshop to put the man’s head on the baby’s body and the baby’s head on the man’s body? Or how sometimes you’ll do the same thing with a picture of a lady and a cat? I think we’ve all been there. And in that gray area between “funny” and “creepy” lie these sites: Man Babies and Cat Ladies. Enjoy and/or get the heebie-jeebies!

Hoo boy, if you read this week’s “Snide Remarks,” entitled “YM I So Tired?,” you’re definitely gonna wind up with a song stuck in your head. Just so you know.

Also of note: I saw “The Strangers” over the weekend, and it’s actually pretty scary. Weird, huh?

Also of note, too: Are you my Fat Brother Jeff? If so, then happy birthday! In fact, let’s all wish Jeff a happy birthday! He handles the technical side of this website, and he does it for almost no money. Of course, I handle the creative side of this website, and I do that for almost no money, too. But it’s not my birthday, so who cares? Happy birthday, JJ!

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.

Two major releases this weekend, and the studios stubbornly screened them at the same time on the same night. Thanks, movie people. I reluctantly chose “Sex and the City” because it’s the higher-profile of the two, and also because I knew that if I didn’t see it for free at the press screening, I would never be able to motivate myself to see it after it opened.

I have already written about the travails of the screening. The movie itself is mediocre, though I say that as someone who never watched the TV show. I assume fans of the show will like the movie, assuming they like the idea of watching five episodes back to back. (Oh yeah: It’s 2 1/2 hours long.)

The other new wide release is “The Strangers,” a horror film that piques my interest because they don’t screen horror films for critics much anymore. Maybe it’s actually good? Or maybe screening it was a diversionary tactic to make us think it’s good? I’ll find out when I catch up with it this weekend.

There are three excellent films in limited release that you should seek out with all due speed. One is “Young @ Heart,” a terrific documentary about a chorus of senior citizens who sing rock ‘n’ roll songs. It’s as sweet and uplifting a doc as I’ve seen in a long time.

The other two are “The Visitor,” about a lonely man who becomes friends with some illegal immigrants in New York, and “Priceless,” a light French farce starring Audrey Tautou (aka Amelie).

They’re predicting big box office for “Sex and the City,” but is anyone other than fans of the show going to watch it? Are there enough fans to make it a giant hit? We’ll see, but color me skeptical.

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.

As promised, this week’s edition of “Eric’s Bad Movies” at Film.com is “Speed 2: Cruise Control,” the strangely Keanu-free sequel to the 1994 blockbuster. Despite its title, it contains very little speed and no control. There is a cruise, though, and probably a 2 somewhere. Enjoy.

This has racked up a few million hits since being posted on Friday, so maybe you’ve already seen it. But if you haven’t, and if you’ve spent any time at all over the last few years looking at the various famous YouTube videos, you should take a look.

It’s the video for Weezer’s new single “Pork and Beans” (album hits stores next week), and it features cameos by an impressive number of YouTube celebrities: the “leave Britney alone” guy, the fat kid who lip-syncs the Romanian pop tune, the “Chocolate Rain” guy, Miss Teen South Carolina (“Some U.S. Americans don’t have maps”), and on and on. (There are several I’m not familiar with.) They’re the real folks, not impersonators, and they really interact with Weezer and with each other specially for this video. It’s cute, and it’s a terrific song about individuality from the always-terrific Weezer to boot.

For the holiday, in place of a regular-size “Snide Remarks” (or, more likely, in place of no “Snide Remarks” at all), we have a miniature one, entitled “The Signs of New York.” There’s no audio version because it’s really short and mostly pictures.

Happy Memorial Day!