This is the weekend that Hollywood forgot. Only one new film is opening in wide release today, and it’s a totally off-the-radar thing that wasn’t even screened for critics. It’s called “Awake.” It’s about a guy who becomes alert and aware during surgery. How this gets stretched into a movie, I don’t know.

I have a review of “Margot at the Wedding,” which is playing in limited release.

And that’s it! It’s a slow weekend. Next week we have “Atonement” and “The Golden Compass,” so that should liven things up a bit.

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It’s perfectly OK to be a movie star without being gorgeous! You don’t have to pretend that everyone who’s famous is also good-looking!

Anne Hathaway

Penelope Cruz

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Here at EricDSnider.com, we love it when our readers post comments! The fact that some of the comments our readers post are stupid does not diminish our enthusiasm! If nothing else, it provides us with fodder for this occasional feature:

DUMB COMMENTS POSTED ON ERICDSNIDER.COM

“Step Up”:

hi im sherry sieler from caldeon on i ove tyler gag he is sexey her is a kiss for u tyler gage

[Tyler Gage is the fictional main character's name. Comments like this one are sadly typical in their illiteracy. I've actually started deleting some of them when they appear, just because I'm tired of the collective I.Q. of the site dropping every time there's a movie with a cute boy in it.]

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“Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”:

I HATED IT! IT SUCKED! If People Even READ The Book They Would Agree It Sucked. They Left Out Like 99% Of The Whole Story. I’d Like To See How They Try To Shove Everything They Needed Out Of This Part For The Rest Of The Series Into The Movies They Aren’t Supposed To Be In. Stupid Directors.

[Yeah, that's the problem. The only reason so many people liked the movie version of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" is that no one ever read the obscure book it was based on.

By the way, this person's strange system of Capitalizing Every Single Word was mentioned by another poster, causing this one to explain: "I'm Just Used To Typing Like This." But that begs the question. WHY are you used to typing like that?]

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A sentiment expressed frequently by commenters here at EricDSnider.com is this one: “Why did this movie ‘only’ get an A-? Your review doesn’t mention anything wrong with it!”

Two recent examples. On “The Bourne Ultimatum,” someone writes, “I thought this movie deserved much better [than] a B+.” (Considering the scale only goes up two more notches, to A- and A, I’m not sure that “much” better than B+ was really an option. That’s like saying you wish something cost “much” less than a nickel.) And on “Lars and the Real Girl,” a reader says, “Now, I’ll go back and read your [review], and may learn why you thought the film deserved only an A-.” (”Only” an A-? You people are tough!)

In both of those cases, the reviews are entirely positive. There’s nothing in the text to indicate that I thought the movie was lacking in any way. So why not a perfect score?

As is often the case, Roger Ebert has expressed the answer to this question much better than I would have. In a recent “Answer Man” column, he received this question:

I often find some of my very favorite films are ones you give 3 1/2 star ratings. I’ve never read a review where you explain what costs these movies the last half star…. How do you decide on those?

And Ebert explains it thus:

I wish that I didn’t give star ratings at all and every review had to speak for itself. But 3 1/2 is a very good rating, meaning all a movie lacked was an ineffable tingle at the base of my spine.

Exactly. An A- or B+ movie, if there’s nothing specifically wrong with it, simply lacks a certain something — something you can’t necessarily put into words, but something nonetheless.

I used to be much more liberal with my A’s. If you look in the archives, you’ll find I gave them out more frequently when I first started reviewing (mid-1999), and less often starting in about 2004. It used to be that if I couldn’t think of anything particularly wrong with a film, I gave it an A. Now my attitude is different. It’s not enough that a film doesn’t have anything noticeably wrong with it. It needs to have something strongly right about it, too.

Welcome back! I hope you were able to turn Thanksgiving into a five-day weekend, the way the Pilgrims intended. I don’t know why Thursday was originally chosen for Turkey Day, but it was a genius move. It leads naturally to taking Friday off, too, and heck, you need Wednesday for a travel day, so you’re pretty much down to a two-day work week. If you worked last Wednesday and/or Friday, you’re a chump. Do you hear me? A chump!

Anyway, this week’s “Snide Remarks” is rather embarrassingly entitled “You Panhandle the Truth!” (audio version is there too, and also here), and it’s about donations and charities and things such as. Enjoy, won’t we?

I managed to find a movie theater in Lake Elsinore, Calif., on Wednesday, and it managed to show me two films: the delightful “Enchanted” and the non-delightful “Hitman.”

When I was growing up here, we had no movie theater in town. They built this one in the mid-’90s … and then it promptly went bankrupt when someone built a bigger, better one a few miles down the freeway. So this one was retrofitted with stadium seating and reopened about a year ago — and still no one goes to it. Maybe everyone’s used to the one down the freeway (which is still better)? “Enchanted” is going to be the #1 film of the long weekend, and I was one of around 15 people in the theater. Lake Elsinore is seriously the land that time forgot.

There are five wide releases hitting theaters today, plus “No Country for Old Men” expanding to 800+ screens, plus “I’m Not There” opening on 130 screens. That makes it one of the most crowded Thanksgiving weekends ever, at least in terms of movies. I guess if you don’t go to the movies, your Thanksgiving won’t be affected at all.

I’ve got reviews of “The Mist” (scary-fun monster movie!), “I’m Not There” (artsy-crazy Bob Dylan biopic!), and “August Rush” (dumb!). The latter is this week’s Film.com review, but ‘cept it’s not showing up there yet, so I don’t know what the deal is. Perhaps the virulent stream of profanity I used to describe Robin Williams’ soul patch got caught up in copy editing. (UPDATE: All is well! Here is the “August Rush” review.)

Unfortunately, I don’t have a review of the week’s biggest film, Disney’s “Enchanted,” because the screening conflicted with something that had to take priority. I also don’t have one for “Hitman,” because Twentieth Century Fox didn’t screen it until last night (never a good sign), and I’m in SoCal visiting the family and not in Portland going to screenings. (Was there a screening in SoCal that I could have gone to? Meh, probably.)

I plan to see “Enchanted” and “Hitman” today and get reviews posted ASAP. And as soon as I do, this week’s edition of “In the Dark” will be e-mailed out. No podcast this week. No podcast, only turkey.

P.S. I forgot to mention “This Christmas,” which is about a black family’s first holiday together in four years. It wasn’t screened for critics at all. That’s probably why I forgot to mention it.

We’re about to run headlong into Thanksgiving, and you know what happens after that: 33 days of relentless Christmas shopping!

Many of us do a lot of our buying through Amazon.com, and there’s a simple way you can do that and support EricDSnider.com at the same time. Every time you click an Amazon link from here and subsequently buy something — even if it’s not the item you originally clicked on — I get a small commission. These small commissions help do things like pay our hosting costs, feed the Laotian kids who work in my sweatshop, etc.

So when you feel an Amazon mood settling upon you, simply come to EricDSnider.com first, go up to the “Buy Stuff” tab at the top of the page, and click the “Shop on Amazon.com” link. That takes you to the regular Amazon front page, and any shopping you do will count as a referral from me. In the process, you win my undying gratitude. What more could you want?

(You can also save the Amazon link as a bookmark in your browser. However, you have to make sure your browser has saved the entire coded URL –

http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2F&tag=thelandoferic&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325

– and not just a basic http://www.amazon.com.)

Some of my recent articles at Film.com that may or may not amuse you, listed in chronological order:

The Five Worst Ideas of the Fall Movie Season | This was on Oct. 2. I’ve now seen three of the five, and it turns out my skepticism was valid.

What Not to Do at the Movies | Self-explanatory.

Enough ‘Cloverfield’ Already! | J.J. Abrams makes me weary.

Using Oscar’s Unwritten Rules to Predict the Winners | Make pretty actresses look ugly, play a retarded person, etc.

Ten 2008 Films That I Would See Right Now If I Had a Time Machine | Hey, scientists? Where are we on that time machine technology?

Seven People Not Being Considered for Justice League Roles | The idea was that there had been so much fruitless speculation and rumormongering on the Internet that we wanted to list people who most definitely were NOT being considered. It’s a very silly piece.

The Top 5 Directors of the ’00s | No snark here. These five (well, seven, technically) are geniuses.

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If you live in Utah, you might be aware that KJZZ-TV shows the lousy Mormon comedy “The Singles Ward” now and then. But this Thanksgiving, the broadcast will be different. This time, the movie will be funny!

That’s because Daryn Tufts, Randy Tayler, and Trenton James will be providing snarky commentary on it, in the manner of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” They’re calling it “Talkies.” It will be like watching a bad movie with three of your funniest friends. Or three of my funniest friends, anyway.

But the reason I’m telling you about it isn’t just that the guys are friends of mine, but that some of the snide remarks© they’ll be making were written by me, Eric D. Snider. Yes, though the performance is carefully crafted to look like they’re ad-libbing their responses to the movie, they are in fact scripted. (Such was the case with “Mystery Science Theater,” too.) Daryn asked if I wanted to write some jokes, and I was glad to do it, though it did mean having to watch “The Singles Ward” again.

(Added dimension that the “MST” gang never had to deal with: Daryn is actually in “The Singles Ward.” He’ll be mocking his own performance.)

So if you find yourself in Utah on Thanksgiving, turn your TV dial to KJZZ at 3 p.m. to record this one-time-only broadcast of “Talkies” featuring “The Singles Ward.” If the audience response is favorable, Daryn and the gang may have a chance to give other films in KJZZ’s library the “Talkies” treatment.

After the jump are some YouTube clips of the show. Daryn warns that the picture and sound are rough in these clips, but they’ll be smooth and delightful in the actual broadcast.

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