While winning four Grammys on Sunday night may indeed have been the biggest accomplishment of young Taylor Swift's life, it didn't come without a price. Thanks to her tone-deaf caterwauling during a duet with Stevie Nicks and the disingenuous manner in which she delivered her acceptance speeches, the Taylor Swift backlash has been raging for the better part of the last three days. Strangely (and somewhat tellingly), no one in her camp exactly rushed to her defense. Until now!

When we wrote about the brewing Category 4 Ben Lyons Hate Storm last week, Vulture took a mildly ambivalent stance on the self-proclaimed "movie dude." While a nation of highbrow critics are calling for his head on a platter (their bloodlust is so strong that they're not even demanding said platter be cast from silver), we kind of took the stance that Lyons isn't worth demonizing because he's pretty genial and, ultimately, not that influential. However, we just stumbled across a shoddily composed essay over at the Huffington Post titled "In Defense of Ben Lyons" that has us reconsidering our stance. Penned by a blogger named Cenk Uygur, the piece's crucial thesis statement reads as follows:

Here is my simple message to all the haters — get off Ben Lyons' ass.

While we here at Vulture have poked some good-natured fun at Paul Dergarabedian over the years for being a bit, oh, say, quote-whorish, yesterday's Los Angeles Times ran a blistering feature on self-proclaimed "movie dude" Ben Lyons that was tantamount to a hit piece. Over the course of some 1,800 words (!), reporter Chris Lee chronicled the Ben Lyons Hate Storm that has been picking up steam ever since he and Ben Mankiewicz were named as Richard Roeper's successors on the once-beloved At the Movies syndicated show. Lee goes to great lengths to speak to sources that were willing to go on the record to bash Lyons, quotes that run the gamut from "he has no taste" (Erik Childress, V.P. of Chicago Film Critics Association) to "he crystallizes everything that's wrong with American pop culture right now" (Scott Johnson, editor of StopBenLyons.com). Perhaps fueled by the unbridled scorn that the highbrow film-critic establishment shows the decidedly populist Lyons, Lee also found himself unable to resist the temptation to editorialize his own thoughts:

With his meat-and-potatoes good looks, frat-boy bonhomie and straight-down-the-pike delivery — more reminiscent of a SportsCenter commentator than an erudite cultural arbiter — Lyons is certainly not your father's movie reviewer.

On a day when a fake Thundercats trailer is being warmly accepted by seemingly all of the Internet, the suits over at Paramount have a considerable problem on their hands with a very real trailer for a very expensive nostalgia trip. And just like most problems these days, it all began with a meddling blogger. You see, a few weeks back, a blogger over at Nuke the Fridge happened to see a "test screening" for the first teaser trailer for Paramount's big summer tent pole, G.I. Joe (yes, you read that right, studios most definitely conduct focus groups to see how their trailers are going to play). And like any other enterprising blogger, he posted the largely negative review of the teaser — including specific details and shots — on his site. As you might expect, that's when the legal eagles at Paramount issued Nuke the Fridge with a cease-and-desist.

In an effort to fend off some of the bad vibes surrounding the Twilight franchise in the wake of director Catherine Hardwicke's abrupt dismissal from the film, both series creator Stephenie Meyer and New Moon director Chris Weitz launched a coordinated PR offensive over the weekend. Sensing the potential for a fan revolt when a man was hired to helm the sequel to the incredibly girlie Twilight, Meyer broke her silence on the subject on her official site. "I've had the chance to talk to Chris [Weitz]," she wrote, "and I can tell you that he is excited by the story and eager to keep the movie as close to the book as possible. He is also very aware of you, the fans, and wants to keep you all extremely happy. (Torches and pitchforks are not going to be necessary.)" Phew, glad she cleared that one up! But aside from the back-patting portions of her statement, Meyer also offered a sense of some of the turmoil behind the scenes over the last few weeks by writing, "I'm going to miss [Hardwicke], not just as a brilliant director, but also as a friend." Wait, does this mean that Meyer and Hardwicke aren't even friends anymore? Or are we just reading too much between the lines? Either way, we're going to keep pulling the sweater and eventually the whole thing will unravel.