My Cinematical overlords love Halloween, so we’ve been celebrating this month with retrospective reviews, lists, and other features, all related to scary movies.

Naturally, I’m here to tell you about my three contributions: a commemoration of “Twilight Zone: The Movie,” a look back on “Blacula,” and a by-the-numbers guide to the “Friday the 13th” films (total victims, number of shower scenes, etc.).

Visit this link for a list of all of Cinematical’s Halloween 2007 entries. There are some fun reviews and lists there.

I told you last week that I was headed to a press screening of Ridley Scott’s new, final director’s cut of “Blade Runner,” and I said my secret shame was that I’d never seen the film before. I asked what your secret shames are, and you responded!

Now, a lot of people didn’t answer the question. A lot of people instead told us what films they were proud not to have seen, which is sort of the opposite of what I asked, and which is kind of silly anyway, especially if the reason you’re proud of not seeing it is that lots of other people saw it. I mean seriously, what?

But anyway, there were some recurring titles among the films people said they’d never seen but felt like they should have. The “Godfather” trilogy, “Casablanca,” “Citizen Kane,” and “Schindler’s List” were all mentioned by multiple people. I bet if you took a poll of average film-lovers and asked which films they were embarrassed to admit they’d never seen, those would be among the top answers. Really, the only reason you would watch “Citizen Kane” is that you’ve heard it’s the Best Movie Ever Made. And after you watched it, I bet you’d wonder why anyone thinks that.

One commenter referred to “The Princess Bride,” “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and “Three Amigos” as the “Mormon trilogy,” due to their popularity among BYU students. I’ll vouch for “Princess Bride,” which seems particularly beloved by American Mormon families (although I never saw it until I got to BYU). I never noticed any more affection for “Three Amigos” than you see generally, but maybe it’s different at BYU now. Monty Python in general is beloved by all freshmen males at all universities, a phenomenon whose explanation will require a separate discourse.

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“Snide Remarks” is back today with a current-events-themed entry called “A Nobel Gesture.” As always, the audio version is available at the top of the page I just linked to; it’s also here. You can also subscribe to the “Snide Remarks” podcast and get it sent automatically to your iTunes or whatever every week.

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It’s another active week for movies. Between last week’s huge list and today’s, I have been busier than the proverbial one-legged man (pictured) in the proverbial butt-kicking contest (not pictured).

I really liked “30 Days of Night,” the graphic-novel-based thriller about vampires invading an Alaskan town that has a month of darkness — which is a pretty clever idea for a vampire movie, you must admit. Mayhem ensues.

Critics are split on “30 Days of Night,” but we’re almost unanimous on “Gone Baby Gone”: We likey. It’s Ben Affleck’s directorial debut, and if you want proof that most critics are honest, sincere writers, look at how many of them are freely admitting today that they thought this thing would suck and were pleasantly surprised. If we were as cynical as some people think we are, we would refuse to admit it, the way we refuse to admit how much we secretly love Adam Sandler movies.

Anyway, “Gone Baby Gone” is a fantastic mystery/thriller about a kidnapped child and related crimes. It’s based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote “Mystic River.” Got a thing about Boston cops and missing kids, Lehane does.

Next up: “Things We Lost in the Fire,” a respectable drama about loss and grieving and whatnot. It stars Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro, both very good. Maybe Halle won’t have to give back that Oscar after all. (I said MAYBE.)

More grieving and loss in “Reservation Road,” in limited release today, about two families affected by the accidental death of a young boy. The acting is fine (Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Ruffalo star), but it’s centered around coincidences that are implausible and out of place in an intimate drama like this one.

Then there’s “Rendition,” with an all-star cast of Meryl Streep, Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Alan Arkin, and Peter Sarsgaard, all of them coming out very strongly against torture. Yes, they’ve gone out on a limb here. This is my Film.com review this week, so go read it there.

Finally, two films weren’t screened for critics: “The Comebacks,” a spoof of inspiring sports movies, and “Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour,” which purports to be a spooky ghost story for family audiences.

Oh, and allegedly there’s an animated version of “The Ten Commandments,” but I’m not sure I believe it really exists.

Someone posted a comment on my review of TV’s “Aliens in America” that I suppressed because it’s jaw-droppingly bigoted and I didn’t want it posted without being able to respond to it. I guess I could have just deleted it and been done with it, but you know how I like to scrutinize nutcases.

The TV show, you’ll recall, is a sitcom in which a Muslim Pakistani boy comes to live with a nerdy American high school kid and his family. The pilot episode was hilarious, episode 2 was somewhat disappointing, and episode 3 was back on track. It was episode 3, called “Rocket Club,” that prompted someone to post this:

first we never had to worry about presenting muslims on t.v. until after 911. who give a hoot. now that they are climbing out of the proverbial closets, it is time for american to wake up. while not all muslims are terrorists, all terrorist are muslims. (don’t go there about tim mcveigh). tonight’s episode on the rocket fiasco and the cops taking the computer, then the families computer, and the commentator saying something about our “rights” being taken away, then to the effect of all the “wrongs in america”…why do you think these liberal hollywood writers i.e. backed by the left wing democratic agenda, try to make the U.S. bad and the muslims good? pull your head out the ground while you are watching “pushing daisies” and start paying attention to what the real agenda is. watching people kiss people through body bags is “imagination”? this show the true genius of the American public. if you don’t get it by now, read Laura Ingraham’s book. or do you do that anymore. learn something for the country’s sake!

First, let’s talk about what happened in this episode. The boy, Raja, buys a bunch of supplies at the hardware store to build a model rocket. But to the skittish store manager, he looks like a possible terrorist buying bomb-making materials. The cops come to talk to Raja and his host family and demand access to Raja’s computer so they can see what websites he’s been going to.

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Last year, I wrote a “Snide Remarks” column about a Portland woman who had bought an ad in the ballot information booklet urging people to vote against the library levy — which is to say, she was in favor of closing down the county libraries.

A long-time devoted reader named Nathan has sent me the voter information booklet for Tucson’s upcoming ballot that has a woman who is even crazier. Proposition 200 has to do with water use. If passed, it would repeal the “residential environmental services fee.” I don’t know what it all means, and it doesn’t matter. The point is, here is what a woman named Raquel Baranow paid $500 to say about Proposition 200:

(Source: PDF file, page 15.)

Well said, crazy Bible-thumping, pot-growing Arizona woman!

It may surprise you to learn that I’ve only ever received one Cease & Desist letter, and it was from Gary Larson! It pertained to “Jihad to Be You,” published Feb. 20, 2006, which is this week’s “Snide Remarks” Classic.The subject matter was the then-hot issue of cartoonists drawing pictures of Mohammed and thus incurring the wrath of certain Muslims. How Gary Larson and “The Far Side” fits in, well, you’ll have to read the column and the post-column discussion.

Also: This column caused my friend Michael to leave me a voice mail in which he pretended to be a Muslim (complete with unconvincing Middle Eastern accent!) who was offended by what I had written. Not much of what Michael does is funny, so I like to give him credit when he succeeds.

Warner Bros. is releasing a new, digitally remastered director’s cut of “Blade Runner.” There was a version some years ago called a “director’s cut,” but the director, Ridley Scott, actually had nothing to do with it and publicly disowned it. This time, it’s really Scott’s version, and he’s really happy with it.

I’m attending a press screening of this new version later today, and it brought to mind my secret shame: I have never seen “Blade Runner.” Not the original theatrical version, not the notorious “director’s cut,” nothing. In fact, in my mind, I often get it confused with David Lynch’s “Dune” (which I have also never seen), simply because they’re both futuristic films released in the first half of the ’80s of which there have been multiple versions.

That’s my secret shame, never having seen “Blade Runner” or “Dune.” What movies have you never seen that you feel like you “ought” to have? Go ahead and share. This is a safe place.

As further compensation for my failure to produce a “Snide Remarks” column this week, check out today’s entry at Film.com, “Hollywood Is Terrible with History.” It contains gems such as this:

If you watch closely in the famous chariot-race scene in Ben-Hur, you can clearly see that one of the “chariots” is actually a Volkswagen Beetle.

The only thing keeping it from being a “Snide Remarks” column is that it doesn’t say “Snide Remarks” at the top of it.

(For complete background on this feature, read the introduction here. 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.)

It would appear that Raven-Symone’s fans are getting stupider. I know! I wouldn’t have thought it was possible either, but here we are. As has become my custom, I have put my favorite passages in bold type.

CHILDREN’S LETTERS TO RAVEN-SYMONE

Aug. 10, 2007:
hi raven im shakira 4rm texas i love you so much i feel like i can talk to u i like in a person. Also ppl have said u were having a baby is that true. luv shkira

[Does "4rm" mean "from"? It should mean "forearm." "I'm Shakira, forearm Texas." I don't know what that would mean, though.]

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