Whoever said Marc Anthony looks like this guy is a liar.

Readers have posted some interesting comments on my review of “El Cantante.” Four people (so far) have completely misunderstood my very easy-to-understand review, one just seemed really angry, and another went off the deep end entirely.

“El Cantante” is a biopic about Hector Lavoe, a salsa singer who started in New York in the 1960s, rose to fame in the ’70s, and burned out in the ’80s. What I said about the movie was that it failed to “show us why the performer was so beloved.”

I went on: “To put it bluntly: Why should I care who Hector Lavoe was? ‘El Cantante’ does nothing to answer that question.”

My intention was not to say that Hector Lavoe wasn’t worth knowing. The opposite, actually: He probably has an interesting story, and there were probably some excellent reasons for his popularity. But the film fails to convey any of that.

The first comment came from Eddie, and he wrote very thoughtfully and sincerely.

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This week’s “Snide Remarks” is the latest installment of a regular feature, “Ask Eric Stuff 28.” The SnideCast® technology at the top of the column will allow you to listen to it if you don’t like reading; the podcast does exactly the same thing except on your iPod. Or you can use your eyes to scan the words visually, the way the good Lord intended.

Also, there’s been an update on the situation discussed in last week’s column, about the boys who might do 10 years in jail for smackin’ some girls’ booties. On Friday, the district attorney dropped the sexual abuse charges against the boys, which means the possibility of being registered sex offenders for the rest of their lives is gone. They still face the misdemeanor harassment charges, but at least some progress has been made.

And finally, if you were wondering how bad “Skinwalkers” is, you can read my review of it here. I gather no one was interested in seeing it anyway, though, since it made only [Edit: Final figures are in and are slightly higher than estimated; here are the correct numbers] $753,520 over the weekend. Its per-screen average was $1,011. Figuring each theater showed it five times a day, or 15 times over the weekend, that’s $67.40 per showing. The average ticket price in America is $6.55, so that means an average of 10 people attended each screening. Not very encouraging for the folks behind “Skinwalkers.”

Let us pause to appreciate Michelle Pfeiffer. She did not appear onscreen for five years, from 2002’s “White Oleander” until this summer. And now, suddenly, she is in two of the most genuinely delightful movies of the year — “Hairspray” and “Stardust,” which opens today.

“Stardust” is a lot of fun all the way through, and Pfeiffer — as a witch who we see in various stages of ugliness — is fantastic. Her role in “Hairspray” is small and tasty; in “Stardust,” it’s bigger and even tastier. Also, not for nothin’, but she’s 49 years old and looks gorgeous. Hooray for Michelle Pfeiffer!

Boo, meanwhile, for Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan in “Rush Hour 3″! Tucker has literally not done a single thing since “Rush Hour 2,” a full six years ago. What drew him out of seclusion? A great script? Of course not. It was his $20 million paycheck and a deal promising him 20 percent of the movie’s profits. There might be someone, somewhere in the world who does a job worthy of $20 million, but I’m pretty sure a guy recycling Eddie Murphy’s “Beverly Hills Cop” shtick isn’t him.

Jackie Chan, for his part, continues to not speak English very well.

“Daddy Day Camp” opened Wednesday and I don’t wish to discuss it.

Finally, “Skinwalkers” opens today after having its release date pushed back a couple times, and after not being screened for critics. It’s about werewolves. How many red flags do you need? If only they’d used Michelle Pfeiffer! We’ll have a review later.

All of this and more is in “In the Dark,” the weekly e-mail that I send out to nice folks such as yourselves. It’s also in the “In the Dark” podcast, which you can listen to here or subscribe to here.

(For background on this feature, read the opening paragraphs of the previous entry. But here’s the gist: I registered a fake e-mail address for actress/singer Raven-Symone and announced it here, with the disclaimer that it wasn’t real, figuring dumb people would ignore that part and write to it anyway. And I was right.)

This might be our last edition for a while. You’ll notice by the dates on the e-mails that we’ve FINALLY caught up with the backlog we had, and the e-mails don’t come in as frequently as they did when the address was first leaked. So enjoy this one, and hopefully we’ll have enough for another edition in a couple months!

CHILDREN’S LETTERS TO RAVEN-SYMONE

May 27, 2007:
Y r liein to people and sayin ur rave and answerin the questions?

* * * * *

May 28, 2007:
hey raven i am from australia and iam your biggest fan and i love you and i got you msn and our time is diffrent to you so some time we should try to speak to
eachother.

["Our concept of 'time' is entirely different here in Australia. The clocks move backwards, and if something starts at 2:00, that means it actually happened yesterday."]

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I’ve been enjoying the “Firefly” screenings at Portland’s Mission Theater these last few Tuesdays. It turns out I’d only seen five episodes of the series, so most of it is brand-new to me.

I’m not generally a sci-fi sort of person, and I admit some of the people at these screenings are far geekier than I tend to associate with. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) But it’s been interesting to discover that “Firefly,” while surrounded by sci-fi trappings (outer space, the future, etc.), is not always strictly a “sci-fi” show. Many of the stories could just as easily be used in a straightforward action series like “The A-Team” or “MacGyver” or whatever.

For that matter, the show is set on the frontiers of space 500 years hence, and a lot of the frontier resembles the American Old West. Because of that, a lot of what goes on could happen in a Western series, too. Replace “going to visit this planet” with “going to visit this town,” and everything else is the same.

The point is, if you’re generally averse to science-fiction, you might like “Firefly” anyway. Did I mention it’s also very, very funny, often exciting, and full of lively, interesting characters? Well it is!

The free screenings at the Mission have been very well attended, so much so that people are lining up outside an hour early in order to get a seat. And some people have gone even further:

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This week’s “Snide Remarks” Classic column is #355, “Mister Wind,” in which a trip to the mall results in a stroll down memory lane. It was originally published on April 20, 2003. April 20 is also Hitler’s birthday, but that’s not really relevant here.

And to the person who posted this comment last week — “What I’m most interested in is the columns that will never be ‘Snide Remarks’ classics. Any chance you’ll let us know which those are?” — first of all, no one likes a smart-aleck, and second of all, yes! I’m preparing a feature to be posted very soon that will count down what I consider to be the 10 worst “Snide Remarks” columns ever. So that should be a great deal of fun. (We’ll balance it out with a list of the 10 best ones, too.)

Entertainment Weekly’s Chris Nashawaty has a great interview with Matt Damon in the current issue. Damon comes off the way he always has: likable, funny, and level-headed.

In particular, I love what he says about deleted scenes on DVDs. He’s talking about the stuff they cut out of “The Bourne Ultimatum” specifically, but it applies to most movies’ deleted scenes:

Will we get to see them on the DVD?

Never. To me, that’s like walking into a room holding a pile of s— and saying “Look what I almost stepped in!”

That’s a perfect analogy. You had to good sense not to make the mistake — and then you negated that good sense by showing it to everyone anyway.

There are exceptions, of course. In general, a comedy that was made with a lot of improvisation is bound to have plenty of great stuff that had to be cut purely for time and story concerns. Hence, the “Waiting for Guffman” deleted scenes are brilliant; the Will Ferrell comedies tend to have a lot of good leftovers; I anticipate plenty of “Knocked Up” bonuses.

Do you have any favorite deleted scenes that you’ve discovered on DVD? Or do you feel like in most cases, the filmmakers should probably leave that pile of s— outside and be glad they were smart enough not to step in it?

An update on the situation with the movies that have pun titles: After I mentioned it last week (prompted by “Who’s Your Caddy?”), several readers pointed out some films that use this sort of wordplay. Here’s what they came up with:

“Octopussy”
“The Aristocats”
“The Nightmare Before Christmas”
“Dead & Breakfast”
“Lucky Number Slevin”
“My, Myself, & Irene”
“Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous”
“The Work and the Story” (referencing “The Work and the Glory,” a series of Mormon historical-fiction novels)
“The Beautician and the Beast”
“Adam & Steve”
“Juwanna Mann”
“The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas”
“Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde”

On my own I remembered “Blacula” (the black version of “Dracula”) and “Shanghai Noon” (variation of “High Noon”).

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This week’s “Snide Remarks,” entitled “Spanks for the Memories,” is a multimedia affair! Words, pictures, a footnote with a sound file attached — it’s all in the service of telling you about some boys who went to jail for smacking a girl on the butt. I am tireless in my efforts to bring you these important news stories.

Futuristic SnideCast® technology allows you to listen to my recording of it right there on the page, or you can listen to it here, or you can subscribe to the podcast here. My apologies for my voice, which is slightly scratchy today due to all the yelling I did Saturday night due to being at a place where it was really loud and you had to yell to be heard. OK, OK, I was at a bullfight. Don’t be judgin’ me!

Sure, there are five new wide or semi-wide releases this weekend, but don’t feel overwhelmed! Only two are worth seeing. You can ignore the others completely. Thank goodness!

The good ones are “The Bourne Ultimatum,” which is every bit as good as its 2004 predecessor (I note that most of my review of that movie applies to the new one, too); and “Hot Rod,” a very odd and baffling comedy that will either make you laugh a lot or else have absolutely no effect on you whatsoever.

Then there’s “El Cantante,” a biopic about salsa singer Hector Lavoe, whom I’d never heard of and who, if this film is to be believed, must have been a selfish, sallow-faced, uninteresting lout; “Underdog,” the live-action version of the old cartoon, which is approximately as bad as you’d expect it to be; and “Bratz,” based on the line of slutty dolls for young girls, which is even worse than you’d expect it to be, if such a thing is possible.

Worth noting: “Bratz” and “Transformers”: both live-action movies based on dolls; both featuring Jon Voight in supporting roles. Yes, the same Jon Voight who’s won a Best Actor Oscar and been nominated for three others. That Jon Voight.

Dawn and I were discussing this the other night. Why would Jon Voight agree to appear in these silly movies that are based on toys?

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