Eric D. Snider

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Archive for July 30th, 2007

Pun’s labyrinth

Monday, July 30th, 2007

Part of the fun of making blanket statements is trying to see if you can come up with exceptions to them. For example, in my review of “Who’s Your Caddy?,” I claimed that no movie with a pun title has ever been any good. This prompted someone to comment that “Shaun of the Dead” has a pun title and is, in fact, an excellent movie.

Indeed! That is an exception to the rule. The ONLY exception!

Let me clarify what kind of pun I’m talking about, though. I mean the kind represented by “Who’s Your Caddy?,” which is a play on the expression “Who’s your daddy?” Consider also: “Delta Farce,” “Maid in Manhattan,” “Down and Derby,” “Happily N’Ever After,” and “Deliver Us from Eva,” all of which hope to earn smiles by being slight variations on familiar phrases.

I don’t mean titles where the words have multiple applicable meanings. Someone pointed out the TV show “Arrested Development.”

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Some site upgrades

Monday, July 30th, 2007

I have a couple of things to mention that are unrelated but that both fall under the category of Making the Site Better.

First, I’ve gotten better at recording the podcasts for “In the Dark” and “Snide Remarks.” Maybe you listened when I first launched them back in December, thought, “Good heavens, was he recording this on an airplane runway?,” and never listened again. I would not blame you.

But as I’ve gotten more practice with them, I’ve found new ways to improve the sound quality. Specifically, I stopped using the lousy microphone I had lying around and started using my iMac’s built-in mic instead. It’s actually better than the one I paid money for, especially when I choose the “use ambient noise reduction” setting. There is a noticeable improvement in quality between the podcasts now and the podcasts a couple months ago. So you might give ‘em another try.

Second, you might have noticed that we’ve added some Google ads on most of the site’s pages (although not here on the blog, yet). This isn’t Making the Site Better so much as it’s Making the Site More Profitable.

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Monday morsels: new ‘Snide Remarks,’ new reviews of bad movies

Monday, July 30th, 2007
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As July slips out of our fingers and a huge, sweaty batch of August prepares to plop down on our heads, let us take solace where we can. In a new “Snide Remarks,” for example, entitled “Inexcusabull Behavior”! It is about the Running of the Bulls, and Michael Vick, and assorted other stupid things.

As always, you can listen to my dramatic reading of the column on the page itself with the SnideCast©, or through what’s technically called a “podcast” here. The “Snide Remarks” podcast feed is here.

Also! It was a big weekend at the movies for me. Friday was an extremely French day, as I saw “Paris, je t’aime” and “La Vie en Rose” back to back at Portland’s indispensable arthouse multiplex, Regal Fox Tower. (Reviews to come; they’re both good.)

Then, on Saturday, I endured the following triple feature: “Bratz,” “I Know Who Killed Me,” and “Who’s Your Caddy?” I’m not allowed to review “Bratz” until it comes out next Friday, so let’s just leave it at that. The reviews for the other two are available, though, and they ain’t pretty.

More blogginess later today, so don’t stray far from your computer. Seriously, no more than five or six feet.


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