The only wide release this weekend is “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,” which I have reviewed at Film.com. I have also written at Cinematical about how the PG rating for “Prince Caspian” is astoundingly wrong. The level and frequency of violence is definitely PG-13-worthy.
In limited release, I can recommend “My Blueberry Nights” (the English-language debut of director Wong Kar Wai) and “Then She Found Me” (the directorial debut of Helen Hunt).
I saw “Blueberry” when I was in New York City! It cost $11.75!
Finally, I remind you of the existence of “Son of Rambow,” a delightfully joyous comedy, in limited release, that is just about my favorite movie of the year so far. It got mentioned in the podcast a couple weeks ago but not the e-mail version of “In the Dark,” so here it is again. Sign up for the “In the Dark” e-zine here.
Listen to this week’s podcast version here.
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Do you enjoy listening to movie geeks talk about movies and TV and video games and movies? Me too! And the nice folks at Always Watching were kind enough to invite me on as a guest geek for this week’s podcast (which is entitled The Watchers). You can view a rundown of what we discuss, and also listen to the podcast itself, and also subscribe to the podcast, here. (A mild warning: I think there’s some naughty language at one point, though I don’t remember when or how much.)
We recorded it Tuesday night, at which time it also was being streamed live for whoever happened to be listening. The regular crew is David Chen (who’s a big fan of mine, inexplicably), Devindra Hardawar, and Adam Quigley; guests were me, Myles McNutt of Cultural Learnings, and Alex Billington of First Showing. A good time was had by all. I think they talked more than I did, though, because I’m nervous around strangers, especially when I can only hear the strangers and not see them.
It was inevitable that I would do a Chuck Norris film at some point in the “Eric’s Bad Movies” series, and today is the day! I made perhaps the obvious choice, “The Delta Force,” about terrorists and Jews and motorcycles. The sequel is almost certainly worse, but I figured this one was bad enough. Please to be enjoying my analysis, over at Film.com.
“Children of the Quorum”
“Friday the 31st” (aka “Home Teaching Day”)
“Pet Seminary”
“Enrichment Night of the Living Dead”
“I Know What You Did Last Summer, and I’m Telling Your Bishop”
“The (CTR) Ring”
“Rosemary’s Baby, Which is Her Fourth, and She’s Only 23″
“The Hills Have Tithes”
“Heyday,” by Kurt Andersen, is by far the best book I’ve read this year. Set in 1848, and enlivened by fascinating, carefully researched period details, it’s a love letter to America’s spirit of adventure and discovery. A young Englishman comes to New York to see what the Yanks are all about, falls for a local girl, befriends her brother and their cynical journalist pal, and the four wind up traveling all the way to California in search of excitement (and gold). The book brims with all manner of villains and colorful characters, and the story is just plain fun, with plenty of humor, excitement, and romance.
Most appealing to me, however, is the way Andersen completely immerses the reader in the world of 1848. He only uses vocabulary that would have been common then, with characters remarking on new words or usages (”OK” was just coming into vogue at the time). America-inspired democracy is starting to spring up around Europe, and America itself is in the midst of a remarkable era of progress and change. It’s easy to see parallels to modern life, particularly of the “the more things change, the more they stay the same” variety. Someone sends a telegraph, receives a reply almost instantly, sends his own response back, and marvels at how he’s able to have an actual conversation with someone hundreds of miles away — which is exactly what modern instant messaging is. Andersen lets us notice these little parallels without commenting on them.
As a fan of history, I’m also amazed and delighted by how much detail Andersen includes. Sometimes it’s not relevant to the story, but it’s always interesting nonetheless. (Did you know that in New York City, May 1 was a semi-official “moving day”? That’s when leases would run out, resulting in thousands of people changes residences all on the same morning. Thanks, “Heyday”!) He covers every elements of life — religion, politics, courtship, entertainment, etc. — to create a very vivid sense of what it was like to be American in 1848. And it’s in the service of an enjoyable, intelligent story with memorable characters. It’s just out in paperback, and I heartily recommend it.
I’ve occasionally mentioned my friend Dawn Taylor, a fellow Portland film critic and one of my best pals here in the Northwest. Before she became a writer, she was a pastry chef, and she retains those skills to this day. She has made me birthday cakes the last two years that were the most delicious things I have ever put in my mouth.
So it is with great delight that I tell you she is starting a homemade-candy business called Polidori Chocolates, and that she’s offering some early sales before the official launch. She has the details on her personal blog. The main offering is a box of eight truffles, seven of them correlating to the Seven Deadly Sins, and then an extra one just for fun, I guess. She also does hand-crafted chocolate-covered marshmallows — she makes marshmallows! I didn’t even know you could do that!
The Seven Deadly Sins (Plus One) collection costs $15. Dawn gave me a sampler box today, and I can personally attest to their extraordinary taste and quality. She has mouth-watering descriptions of them on her blog. A couple of them, I wasn’t sure about. Like the Envy truffle (pictured above): key-lime flavored white chocolate ganache truffle, enhanced with the hot, sweet chewiness of candied ginger.” Lime? Ginger? White chocolate? Hmm. Then I tasted it and repented of my skepticism. It’s my personal favorite of the eight. It made my mouth dance and sing.
These are luxury items, obviously. Fifteen bucks plus shipping for eight chocolates is more than, say, a bag of Hershey’s Kisses would cost. But I can tell you it’s worth it. If you like fancy chocolates and can appreciate the homemade, hand-crafted quality, you simply must take advantage of this offer. Your taste buds will thank you for it!
Did you know I wrote and recorded a bunch of comedy songs? Well I did! And they were on two CDs for a while, until I sold all of them (and printed some more … and then sold all of those), and then they became, officially, “out of print.” But now they have returned in digital form, thanks to an online outfit called Snocap.
It works essentially like iTunes: You can download an entire album for $9.99, or individual tracks for 99 cents. You can hear a 30-second sample for free. (For some reason it’s the first 30 seconds of each track on one album, but a random from-the-middle 30-second chunk for the songs on the other album.) Click the + sign next to the album titles to reveal the full track list, and pick ‘n’ choose whatever you want. I’ve noted the songs that deal with Utah and/or Mormon culture specifically, in case you want to only choose (or only avoid) those.
Liner notes for the songs can be found here for “Will Make Jokes for Food” (2003) and here for “Monkeys and Pirates Are Funny” (2006).
I’m going to try to the get the old Garrens Comedy Troupe CDs on here, too, once I’ve cleared it with the various other people involved. Figuring out who gets what percentage of the 99 cents per track is going to be a b-word. Maybe I just won’t tell some of the performers what I’m doing and keep the dozens of dollars I get all for myself.
Let me know if there are any bugs in the system. Snocap seems to have a pretty good set-up, but it’s all new to me, so I don’t know what problems there might be.
(My Snocap store should appear in the space below. If it doesn’t, try reloading the page. You might have to wait several seconds for the store to load.)
My trip to New York was fun, thank you very much for asking! I’m back now, and “Snide Remarks” is back, though it has nothing to do with New York. (That will come later, surely.) Today’s edition is entitled “Brovaries, Duderus, Sirvix, Vaguyna, and Fellow-pian Tubes: A Guide to Male Pregnancy,” and it’s about that “man” who’s pregnant. He was on Oprah and everything.
A friend of mine said he wanted to subscribe to the “Snide Remarks” podcast but didn’t know how to do it with iTunes. I realized I didn’t know either, since I, um, don’t subscribe to any podcasts. (Just not my thing.) So here’s how you do it, in case anyone else didn’t know: In iTunes, one of the drop-down menus is “Advanced,” and under that is an option that says “Subscribe to Podcast.” Select that, then paste in the URL for the podcast’s feed — which for “Snide Remarks” is http://www.ericdsnider.com/blog/?feed=rss2&cat=25. (There’s always a link to it at the end of these “Snide Remarks” blog entries, too.) And there you go.
Some of you are rolling your eyes, but I guarantee my friend was not the only regular reader of this site who didn’t know how to do it. And yeah, five seconds of searching in iTunes’ “Help” menu would reveal the answer, but I’ve found that a lot of people would rather go without whatever it is they’re trying to do than spend five seconds figuring out how to do it.
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.
I was browsing through the list of incoming links to this site and spotted one at CougarBoard.com, a discussion site for fans of BYU sports. Here is a screen grab of what the person wrote:
What? Not the “lightly liberal but still funny” part (though I am amused by the implication that usually liberals aren’t funny). I mean the subject line: “Anybody Recall Eric D Snyder’s ‘Snyde Remarks’?” Really? Snyder and Snyde Remarks? You’d expect the link to read http://www.ericdsnyder.com, but somehow he got that right.
I watched them both Thursday night — “Vegas” at 7 p.m., “Speed” at midnight — and now I am tired. “Speed Racer” screened earlier in the week, when I was in New York, and maybe you’re thinking, “Couldn’t Eric have found out where the NYC press screening was and seen it there?” And I thought the same thing. But as it turns out, getting your local publicists to find out information from their NYC counterparts is difficult, especially when your local publicists don’t even try. (At least, you assume they didn’t even try, since they ignored your follow-up e-mails.) But again, I’m tired now. Goodnight!
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“Heyday,”
I’ve occasionally mentioned my friend Dawn Taylor, a fellow Portland film critic and one of my best pals here in the Northwest. Before she became a writer, she was a pastry chef, and she retains those skills to this day. She has made me birthday cakes the last two years that were the most delicious things I have ever put in my mouth.