(A message from Hillary Clinton.)

My fellow Americans, thank you for letting me take a few moments of your time to address the current situation.

There are some who would look at the comments posted about this week’s “Snide Remarks,” entitled “An Exclusive Interview with Indiana Jones,” and conclude that it’s unpopular. They would take all those negative comments to mean that a lot of regular readers simply did not enjoy this week’s installment.

I know that’s the conclusion the news media wants you to reach. They’ve been hammering it home over and over again. “Eric, forget it!” they say. “This column failed. You gave it a try, it didn’t work, and now it’s time to move on. You lost this one.”

Well, I say that’s a little premature. I don’t know about you, but where I’m from, we wait until ALL the votes have been cast before we reach a conclusion. I’d say Eric still has a very real chance of winning this one and declaring the Indiana Jones edition of “Snide Remarks” a success!

Has every “Snide Remarks” reader sounded off yet? No they have not. At the moment, only 34 comments have been submitted, and a full FIVE of those have been positive! How many regular “Snide Remarks” readers have not voted yet? Hundreds! Thousands, even! Who’s to say the vast majority of those won’t turn out in favor of the column? We don’t know until all the votes have been cast.

There were also some spam comments that showed up in the spam filter that Eric’s opponents are insisting should not be counted in his favor for the simple fact that they are spam and don’t have anything to do with the column. I say that’s undemocratic. Let ALL the votes be counted! The news media has already crowned the detractors as the victors here, so I know they don’t want the truth to come out. They’re afraid that if we count those spam votes, we’ll see what I already know: that most people LOVED the column and Eric has scored another success.

And consider this: Where people have liked the column, they have really, REALLY liked it. The victories, where they have occurred, have been by a substantial margin. That may be an important factor in the general election, when this column will go up against one of Dave Barry’s.

Frankly, I’m also disturbed by the sexist tone that a lot of the comments have taken. “Kinda lame.” “Not my thing.” “I didn’t laugh once.” Is nobody else appalled by this? Where’s the outrage here? If Eric were a woman and people had said these things, the news media would be hysterical with rage! As it is, since he’s a man, people can just say these hurtful things and nobody bats an eye. I thought we’d gotten past this kind of sexism in America, but I see it’s still alive and well.

In conclusion, let me summarize: Eric’s Indiana Jones edition of “Snide Remarks” is overwhelmingly popular and most people have loved it. In fact, it is the MOST POPULAR “SNIDE REMARKS” COLUMN EVER PUBLISHED! Thank you and goodnight!

Here are some articles I’ve written for Film.com that might interest or amuse you, all posted since the last time I did one of these roundups. Which was a while ago, so some of these are kinda old now. But still.

‘Untraceable’s’ European Facebook Campaign Was Tacky, Just Like the Movie – Remember the movie “Untraceable”? No? That’s OK.

Differences Between the ‘Prom Night’ Trailer and My Actual Prom Night – I loved this idea when my Film.com overlord pitched it to me, and I had fun writing it.

‘Fanboys’: When Directors Strike Back – All the background you need on this silly news item is in the story.

Good News! The New Indiana Jones Will NOT Be Non-Stop CGI – This development occurs over George Lucas’ dead body, one assumes.

Hey ‘Dark Knight’: Test Audiences Are Dumb, Don’t Listen to Them – In response to a rumor that certain elements of the new Batman film would be excised to appease certain stupid audience members who were too emotional over the months-ago death of an actor they never met whose demise affected them in no way whatsoever.

Are You Excited About ‘Speed Racer’? – Well, we know the answer now. Turns out my prophecies herein were correct.

Cell Phones Movies?? Nooooooooooooo! – In response to a news item about a Nokia-sponsored “filmmaking” contest.

Animals That Need to Have Horror Movies Made About Them – Self-explanatory.

If Teen Girls Have Anything to Say About It, ‘Twilight’ Will Soon Take Over the World – OMG LOL.

This week’s “Snide Remarks” is a first: It’s an all-audio edition! It’s an interview with Indiana Jones, in conjunction with his new film that comes out on Thursday. I hope you appreciate what a coup it was getting him!

This week’s “Snide Remarks” is here.
The audio version (i.e., the podcast) is also here.
Subscribe to the podcast’s feed with this URL.

The only wide release this weekend is “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,” which I have reviewed at Film.com. I have also written at Cinematical about how the PG rating for “Prince Caspian” is astoundingly wrong. The level and frequency of violence is definitely PG-13-worthy.

In limited release, I can recommend “My Blueberry Nights” (the English-language debut of director Wong Kar Wai) and “Then She Found Me” (the directorial debut of Helen Hunt).

I saw “Blueberry” when I was in New York City! It cost $11.75!

Finally, I remind you of the existence of “Son of Rambow,” a delightfully joyous comedy, in limited release, that is just about my favorite movie of the year so far. It got mentioned in the podcast a couple weeks ago but not the e-mail version of “In the Dark,” so here it is again.
Sign up for the “In the Dark” e-zine here.
Listen to this week’s podcast version here.
Subscribe to the podcast’s feed with this URL.

Do you enjoy listening to movie geeks talk about movies and TV and video games and movies? Me too! And the nice folks at Always Watching were kind enough to invite me on as a guest geek for this week’s podcast (which is entitled The Watchers). You can view a rundown of what we discuss, and also listen to the podcast itself, and also subscribe to the podcast, here. (A mild warning: I think there’s some naughty language at one point, though I don’t remember when or how much.)

We recorded it Tuesday night, at which time it also was being streamed live for whoever happened to be listening. The regular crew is David Chen (who’s a big fan of mine, inexplicably), Devindra Hardawar, and Adam Quigley; guests were me, Myles McNutt of Cultural Learnings, and Alex Billington of First Showing. A good time was had by all. I think they talked more than I did, though, because I’m nervous around strangers, especially when I can only hear the strangers and not see them.

It was inevitable that I would do a Chuck Norris film at some point in the “Eric’s Bad Movies” series, and today is the day! I made perhaps the obvious choice, “The Delta Force,” about terrorists and Jews and motorcycles. The sequel is almost certainly worse, but I figured this one was bad enough. Please to be enjoying my analysis, over at Film.com.

Mormon Horror Movies

“Children of the Quorum”
“Friday the 31st” (aka “Home Teaching Day”)
“Pet Seminary”
“Enrichment Night of the Living Dead”
“I Know What You Did Last Summer, and I’m Telling Your Bishop”
“The (CTR) Ring”
“Rosemary’s Baby, Which is Her Fourth, and She’s Only 23″
“The Hills Have Tithes”

This is my first Twitter update! Want to know what I’m doing right now? I’m, um, updating Twitter. Is that how this works? Seems weird.

“Heyday,” by Kurt Andersen, is by far the best book I’ve read this year. Set in 1848, and enlivened by fascinating, carefully researched period details, it’s a love letter to America’s spirit of adventure and discovery. A young Englishman comes to New York to see what the Yanks are all about, falls for a local girl, befriends her brother and their cynical journalist pal, and the four wind up traveling all the way to California in search of excitement (and gold). The book brims with all manner of villains and colorful characters, and the story is just plain fun, with plenty of humor, excitement, and romance.

Most appealing to me, however, is the way Andersen completely immerses the reader in the world of 1848. He only uses vocabulary that would have been common then, with characters remarking on new words or usages (“OK” was just coming into vogue at the time). America-inspired democracy is starting to spring up around Europe, and America itself is in the midst of a remarkable era of progress and change. It’s easy to see parallels to modern life, particularly of the “the more things change, the more they stay the same” variety. Someone sends a telegraph, receives a reply almost instantly, sends his own response back, and marvels at how he’s able to have an actual conversation with someone hundreds of miles away — which is exactly what modern instant messaging is. Andersen lets us notice these little parallels without commenting on them.

As a fan of history, I’m also amazed and delighted by how much detail Andersen includes. Sometimes it’s not relevant to the story, but it’s always interesting nonetheless. (Did you know that in New York City, May 1 was a semi-official “moving day”? That’s when leases would run out, resulting in thousands of people changes residences all on the same morning. Thanks, “Heyday”!) He covers every elements of life — religion, politics, courtship, entertainment, etc. — to create a very vivid sense of what it was like to be American in 1848. And it’s in the service of an enjoyable, intelligent story with memorable characters. It’s just out in paperback, and I heartily recommend it.

I’ve occasionally mentioned my friend Dawn Taylor, a fellow Portland film critic and one of my best pals here in the Northwest. Before she became a writer, she was a pastry chef, and she retains those skills to this day. She has made me birthday cakes the last two years that were the most delicious things I have ever put in my mouth.

So it is with great delight that I tell you she is starting a homemade-candy business called Polidori Chocolates, and that she’s offering some early sales before the official launch. She has the details on her personal blog. The main offering is a box of eight truffles, seven of them correlating to the Seven Deadly Sins, and then an extra one just for fun, I guess. She also does hand-crafted chocolate-covered marshmallows — she makes marshmallows! I didn’t even know you could do that!

The Seven Deadly Sins (Plus One) collection costs $15. Dawn gave me a sampler box today, and I can personally attest to their extraordinary taste and quality. She has mouth-watering descriptions of them on her blog. A couple of them, I wasn’t sure about. Like the Envy truffle (pictured above): key-lime flavored white chocolate ganache truffle, enhanced with the hot, sweet chewiness of candied ginger.” Lime? Ginger? White chocolate? Hmm. Then I tasted it and repented of my skepticism. It’s my personal favorite of the eight. It made my mouth dance and sing.

These are luxury items, obviously. Fifteen bucks plus shipping for eight chocolates is more than, say, a bag of Hershey’s Kisses would cost. But I can tell you it’s worth it. If you like fancy chocolates and can appreciate the homemade, hand-crafted quality, you simply must take advantage of this offer. Your taste buds will thank you for it!