I was sad to learn on a recent trip to Salt Lake City that my beloved Cafe Pierpont — home of such Mexican entrees as the life-changing flautas — had closed. I guess the building got sold and the new owner is turning it into something else. Something evil, no doubt, since the owner himself is obviously evil. What kind of monster would deprive the world of Cafe Pierpont’s flautas?!

In honor of this tragedy, this week’s “Snide Remarks” Classic is the column I wrote about the restaurant, “Addición: Flautas,” originally published Sept. 20, 2004.

Chicken, cheese, sour cream, flour tortilla, rolled up and deep fried. Mmmm….

“K-Ville” (Mondays, Fox): As bland and generic a cop show as you can imagine. There’s a loose-cannon cop (Anthony Anderson) and his mismatched partner (Cole Hauser), a gruff and blustery but ultimately soft-hearted captain (John Carroll Lynch), and the usual assortment of crimes and schemes which they solve using superhuman leaps in logic and intuition. The only thing noteworthy about it is that it’s set in New Orleans in 2007, with post-Katrina reconstruction still the foremost subject on everyone’s mind. The show’s creators are obviously hoping this will be enough to bring in viewers. But honestly, there’s nothing about the show that you can’t get — and in higher quality — from other cop shows. The series is being filmed in New Orleans, and they’re using local actors and technicians when possible, pumping millions into the economy in the process. So I guess you could watch the show as a service project. Call it a charitable contribution. TiVo verdict: I gave at the office.

(Here’s the list of fall season premiere dates, if you missed it.)

Rob Zombie: “You see, the thing is, I’m oily and untalented.”

Grotesque filmmaker Rob Zombie and black-hearted Batman-villain impersonator Dick Cheney don’t have much in common. One delights in overseeing acts of cruelty and murder inflicted upon innocents; the other only does that in movies. But they’ve both recently made me chuckle and roll my eyes at them when comments they made years ago resurfaced and contradicted their current practices.

We previously talked about Cheney’s 1994 comments, where he said invading Baghdad during the Gulf War would have resulted in a “quagmire,” and that taking Saddam out of power wasn’t worth risking American soldiers’ lives. Plenty of people agree with that and wish he’d maintained that position, obviously.

And now check out what Rob Zombie — director of the recent hit “Halloween” — had to say in 2002 about the trend of remaking old horror films:

I feel it’s the worst thing any filmmaker can do. I actually got a call from my agent and they asked me if I wanted to be involved with the remake of [The Texas Chainsaw Massacre]. I said no [swear word] way! Those movies are perfect — you’re only going to make yourself look like an [swear word] by remaking them.

Continue reading…

LA Weekly’s Nikki Finke writes a blog, Deadline Hollywood Daily, that is renowned in some circles for its catty gossip and bafflingly off-the-mark observations. I’m a little late to the Nikki-bashing party, but I was so struck by her lead sentence in today’s post-Emmys item that I had to share. She writes:

It doesn’t surprise me that last night’s Emmys ratings fell to a record low, since I fell asleep right after Ray Romano’s monologue and missed the broadcast entirely.

What does this mean? Does she think the show’s ratings are based entirely on whether she watched it, and since she fell asleep, well, obviously the ratings would have to be low? Does she think her inability to stay awake past 8:15 on a school night reflects on a general trend of narcolepsy among TV viewers? What? What, I ask you?

OK, OK, the point she’s trying to make is that the show was boring — so boring, it put her to sleep, haw haw! Which would be an excellent derogatory comment to make, if she were a 10th-grade English student talking about “The Grapes of Wrath.” Grown-ups — or professional entertainment writers, at least — should understand the weakness of the “it put me to sleep” argument. Namely: You fall asleep because you’re tired, not because something is boring. Ask a doctor. Or just think about it logically. If your body doesn’t need sleep, you’re not going to doze off, no matter how boring something is. Saying that you fell asleep during something says NOTHING about the quality of the program. You must just as well say “That movie made my feet hurt” or “The Emmys gave me gas.”

Nikki’s point about the Emmys being dull is valid, but she sure expressed it in a dumb way.

“Boo hoo! A guy from the team I hate hates the team I love! Boo hoo hoo!”

Amusing story in the Boston Herald today about 10-year-old Red Sox fan Griffin Whitman, who attended his first Yankees vs. Red Sox game on Friday. Afterward, he managed to snag Yankee outfielder Shelley Duncan for an autograph — and the picture at right shows what Griffin wrote:

“Red Sox Suck! Shelley Duncan.”

The kid soon called the waaaahmbulance, and his mom had this to say: “This is someone who wears the Yankee uniform and is on the payroll and should be setting an example for 10-year-olds.”

My thoughts:

1. While I don’t follow sports very closely, it is my understanding that the Red Sox do, in fact, suck.

2. The antagonism between the Yankees and the Red Sox has existed for decades. If you show up wearing Red Sox paraphernalia and ask a Yankee for his autograph, you get what you deserve. I mean, what did he expect? “Thanks for supporting a team that hates us! After shouting obscenities at me and my fellow players for nine innings, I’m glad you took the time to request my autograph! Love, Shelley Duncan.”

3. If the kid were a TRUE Red Sox fan, he wouldn’t even WANT a Yankee’s autograph. A true fan would pretend to want it just so he could get close enough to break the Yankee’s kneecap.

4. “Shelley”? Really? Huh.

This week’s “Snide Remarks,” entitled “Uncle Shrek,” has to do with the bathroom but is pleasant to read nonetheless. I think my mom will like it because it mentions her. On the other hand, it mentions her in the context of implying she is senile. It must be such a mixed blessing, being my mom.

Does it seem like we’ve had a lot of bathroom-related columns recently? OK, I guess it was just the one about pee from about six weeks ago. And then I’m thinking about the colonic column, but that was well over a year ago. So never mind. We’ve been having exactly the right number of bathroom-related columns.

Anyhoo, you can listen to me read the column to you with my very own voice through the futuristic SnideCast technology at the top of the page. You can also hear it here, or subscribe to the weekly “Snide Remarks” podcast with this URL.

Sign up for the “In the Dark” e-zine here.
Listen to this week’s podcast version here.
Subscribe to the podcast’s feed here.

Three wide releases this weekend, one better than expected, one worse than expected, and one not screened for critics but featuring dragons as its main characters (!)

The better-than-expected is “Mr. Woodcock,” which — make no mistake — is still not a great movie. But its physical humor is surprisingly well done, and that thing Billy Bob Thornton does where he hates kids and says mean, sarcastic things — well, that’s always funny. Just like “Yakety Sax.”

Not as good as it should have been is the Jodie Foster vigilante drama “The Brave One,” which has some conflicting messages and tries to be both a crowd-pleaser and a cautionary tale. My review of that film is at Film.com.

And the one about dragons is “Dragon Wars,” a Korean-made (but English-speaking and American-cast) fantasy flick about, um, dragon wars. These wars take place in our modern cities, so you can imagine what kind of hassle that is.

Speaking of which, the other night I saw the trailer for Will Smith’s “I Am Legend,” which looks awesome. It begins with scenes of bombs dropping on New York City, destroying the Brooklyn Bridge, among other things. All well and good … except that it happened to be Sept. 11 that we were watching this trailer. But what can you do? If we stop making movies in which terrorists or aliens or dragons destroy our metropolises, then the terrorists, aliens, and dragons have won.

This weekend is so-so, but there are some truly excellent films coming out in the next couple of weeks: “The Kingdom,” “In the Valley of Elah,” and “Eastern Promises.” I look forward to telling you about them when the time comes.

I am posting this YouTube video with the understanding that many people will automatically find it distasteful. It’s an interesting exercise in comedy, however, because it asks this question: Can “Yakety Sax” (the Benny Hill theme music; you’ll recognize it when you hear it) make anything funny? Watch the video and see for yourself.

The reason part of it doesn’t work for me is that many parts of the video are in slow-motion (or at least the events in them happen slowly). For “Yakety Sax” to achieve its full comedic impact, it must be accompanied by sped-up visuals. The parts of the video that are sped-up do indeed make me laugh. But not because I’m heartless or jaded! It’s the music! I’m powerless against the music!

Do you love alarming childbirth stories? I know I do! That’s why I wrote a column about them, called “Caesarean Salad,” which is this week’s “Snide Remarks” Classic selection.

We’re spotlighting a different old favorite each Wednesday in 2007 in honor of the 10th anniversary of “Snide Remarks.” The official date is Sept. 29, which is coming up soon! Do you know what you’re going to buy “Snide Remarks” for its 10th birthday? Start thinkin’!

I am pleased to announce that, as part of my goal to write for every website on the Internet, I’m now on the blogging team at Cinematical!

Cinematical is an excellent source for movie news, with a couple dozen entries a day covering all manner of film-related items. I’m working specifically for the Cinematical Indie sub-section, focusing on independent films. Some of these articles show up on the main Cinematical page, but most stay in the indie section, with the cool kids.

Most of what I write for Cinematical Indie will be news-oriented, though the bloggers are encouraged to put a personal spin on it to liven it up. If you’re not interested in movie news, don’t feel like you’re obligated to read it just because it was written by me, is what I’m saying.

If you do want to keep tabs on me, you can bookmark my blogger page. It lists all the articles I’ve written for Cinematical.

(Likewise, for my stuff at Film.com, bookmark this link.)

For daily updates from the movie world, Cinematical really is a useful site, and I’m not just saying that because I write for them now. There are a lot of good writers there, and they save you the trouble of monitoring lots of different movie sites because they cull from them and report the best stuff anyway.

Hooray for fun new writing gigs! And hooray for having seen the last of stuff like this!