Three new wide releases this week, and I can recommend all of them, albeit some more heartily than others.

“The Lookout,” which you may recall played at South by Southwest a couple weeks ago, is an outstanding drama with some thriller elements about a young man with memory problems who gets drawn into a bank robbery. It’s a film that might easily go unnoticed, especially with two very big movies opening simultaneously, so I wanted to mention it first.

“Meet the Robinsons” is the latest from the Disney animation crew, and while it gets off to a slow start, it’s very funny once it kicks into high gear. Some theaters are showing it in 3-D, which is how I saw it, and it’s a visual treat, too.

Showing before “Meet the Robinsons” is a 1953 Donald Duck cartoon called “Working for Peanuts,” also in 3-D. It’s not particularly good, but it’s always nice to see Donald and the chipmunks on the big screen.

Finally, “Blades of Glory” would be better without Jon Heder, but Will Ferrell saves the day. This was the movie I saw when I was in Austin that I wasn’t allowed to tell you about. Technically, press weren’t invited to that screening, so we didn’t want to say anything about it until the film opened. And of course since it’s a Paramount release, I wasn’t invited to the Portland press screenings.

Today’s “In the Dark” podcast can be heard here. If you have not already subscribed to the e-mail version of “In the Dark,” you can do so (and see what a typical issue looks like) here. If you would like to see a bunny with a pancake on its head, look here.

I bid you good day!

This week’s “Snide Remarks” Classic is one of my favorites: “The Tragedy of Village Inn,” #112, published June 16, 2000, in the Daily Herald. It received some choice angry letters, too, so be sure to check those out.

For those of you just joining us, 2007 marks the 10th anniversary of “Snide Remarks,” so we’re marking the occasion by spotlighting a different good-but-often-overlooked column each Wednesday. See the “Snide Remarks 10th Anniversary” category in the right-hand column of this page for past entries.

With the advent of comment-posting technology, people don’t send me angry e-mails as often as they used to. Now they can just batter their flippers against the keyboard and post their ignorance directly to the site for all the world to see!

Luckily, a few old-fashioned souls still appreciate the warmth of a personal, private e-mail. For example, here is this one, from someone who hated the “Eragon” movie and for some reason thought I was the director of it:

Your a panzey!!!!!!!YOUR THE WORST DIRECTOR EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I never thought a person can skrew up a movie that bad.

Why would someone read my very negative review of “Eragon” and conclude that I, Eric D. Snider, was also the director of “Eragon”? I mean, because he or she is stupid, obviously, but there must be more to it than that.

This next e-mail actually was intended for me personally. It comes from someone named Seth, at e-mail address godowar@aol.com. I’m including his address because when I responded to his concerns, he never replied, and I thought maybe we’d have better luck if some of you e-mailed him.

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Here’s the podcast for this week’s “Snide Remarks,” right here. This column particularly lends itself to podcasting, since it’s in the form of a public speech. Note the use of music to produce more immature giggles, and note that my recording facilities still blow.

Oh, and while I have your attention, and speaking of mental handicaps, go to this Wikipedia page about Asperger syndrome (a form of autism) and read the 17 characteristics of the condition. Then notice how many of them describe Chloe on “24.” At last, the mystery is solved!

Whichever one of you jokers ordered a Monday, here it is. The rest of us were enjoying Sunday just fine, thank you.

The new “Snide Remarks” is posted here. It will not be brief, and you will not enjoy it. The podcast version is forthcoming; I’m hoping the scratchy throat I have will clear up.

Meanwhile, as promised, I have reviews of the five movies that opened Friday that I didn’t already have reviews of. They are:

“The Last Mimzy” (YAY!)

“The Hills Have Eyes II” (BOO!)

“TMNT” (MEH!)

Pride” (DOUBLE MEH!)

“Shooter” (YAY, SORT OF!)

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Several people posted questions in the comments on my South by Southwest diaries last week, so I thought I’d answer them here. I don’t usually answer questions posted in the comments, because then I get involved in conversations and spend 10 hours a day on my own site. If you have a question you actually want an answer to, it’s always best to just e-mail me.

But since some of these may be of general interest, here they are, all in one stack.

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As someone who likes being on top of things and having work done on time and converting the chaos around me into neat, manageable boxes, I am very frustrated at how things developed this week. There are SIX new films opening in wide release today — the usual number is about three — and I only have a review of one of them.

But it’s not entirely my fault! “The Hills Have Eyes II” didn’t screen for critics, no doubt due to it being sucky. “Shooter” screened, but while I was out of town (and the same night as “Premonition,” so even if I’d been here, I couldn’t have seen them both). “TMNT” and “The Last Mimzy” both screened last weekend, when I was still traveling. And I don’t know what happened with “Pride.” Sort of fell through the cracks. That happens when there are six G.D. movies opening at the same time.

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It’s only been a few years since I discovered I love American history, and one of the more interesting books I’ve read on the topic is “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” by James W. Loewen.

Now, I don’t like the title. The title is a turn-off. It makes you think this is going to be one of those liberal-guilt history-revisionist things, where all of a sudden the Civil War was fought over things other than slavery, and where every hero in American history was actually a bad guy.

What the book actually is, is an indictment of high school history textbooks. Loewen scrutinized a dozen of the most widely used ones and found they all have some things in common: They’re boring, they whitewash everything, and they get a lot of things wrong. The result is that most American students cite history as one of their least favorite subjects, and much of what the average American citizen “knows” about our country’s past isn’t true (or is true but is only the tip of the iceberg).

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Your reviews of last Friday’s new releases are finally up: “Premonition,” “Dead Silence,” and “I Think I Love My Wife.” Surprisingly, “Dead Silence” is the best of them. It wasn’t screened for critics, and certainly many of the late reviews have not been kind. But I think if you take it for what it is — an old-fashioned goofy ghost story — you’ll find it more than a little creepy and a fair amount of fun to watch.

“Dead Silence” and “Premonition” are both thrillers of sorts, and I compare them both to “The Twilight Zone” in my reviews — favorably in one case, unfavorably in the other. “Dead Silence” uses a specific “Twilight Zone” device (remember the episode called “The Dummy”? CREEPY!) and expands on it. “Premonition,” meanwhile, uses a “TZ”-style plot and simply drags it out for 90 minutes.

(Both films also feature actress Amber Valletta in supporting roles. Weird coincidence for Ms. Valletta!)

I saw all three films in a mini-marathon on Monday at the Edwards Greenway 24 in Houston. I was in town visiting friends for a few days after SXSW, and I had figured I wouldn’t see the movies until I got back to Portland, but then my host had to work for several hours on Monday and I had to kill time anyway. And what better way to occupy oneself for seven hours than by paying for one movie and watching three?

It’s still 2007, which means it’s still the 10th anniversary of “Snide Remarks,” which means we’re still celebrating by featuring forgotten gems from the dusty archives every Wednesday.

This week’s “Snide Remarks” Classic is #101, “Resistance Is Futile,” published in the Daily Herald on March 31, 2000. It deals with people who resist new technology just because it’s new; specifically, it mocks those people.

In other news, I’m home from my travels and will have more updates forthwith.