Star Trek, Paramount's paranoia and early word from other critics

Paramount's publicity folks are being pretty jerky to Chicago critics, not showing us Star Trek until Monday even though it was screened last night for critics in other cities (and was in fact screened by Ain't It Cool News in Chicago—but with security present to make sure no film critics other than AICN host Capone were present). And they've thrown in a "no blogging" line to their invitation, warning critics that we'll be banned from future screenings if we even blog about the film before opening day (as opposed to posting full reviews early, which is always a no-no). That means that Paramount should immediately ban from all future screenings the following: Variety's Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter's Ray Bennett, Harry Knowles of AICN and Drew McWeeny of AICN and hitfix.com, since they have all, as those links show, posted not just blogs but reviews online. But you and I both know they won't ban any of them. AICN connects the studios to the fanboy network, which they need, and Variety and The Hollywood Reporter are industry papers, so the studio can't afford to piss them off.

What's Paramount's fricking problem? The reviews are uniformly positive, so I just can't figure why they are behaving as though the Internet, and Chicago critics, are the enemy. I haven't seen the film, and I'm not attending the screening Monday (I've got other plans), but for all you lovely Paramount employees who troll the Internet hunting down rogue critics violating embargo, note that I am not posting a review or comments based on a screening. I'm posting links. That's the way the world works in the age of the Internet.