Eric D. Snider

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Archive for June 5th, 2008

I don’t know what Twitter is, but I have it

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

Hey! Do you know what Twitter is? Me either! But I have an account there! You can follow me! My name is EricDSnider! Who knows, maybe sometimes I will think of a funny joke or an insight to share, and it will be one that can be explained in 140 characters or less, and I will send it out as a Twitter update! You’ll certainly want to be among my Twitter followers should that ever occur! I am 100 years old and I do not like or understand Internet fads!

Eric’s Bad Movies: The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

If I’ve watched “The Adventures of Pluto Nash” starring former funnyman Eddie Murphy, then you know it must be Thursday, and this must be another one of “Eric’s Bad Movies” at Film.com.

Technically, I should have reviewed this movie when it came out. It was 2002, and I was doing the full-time critic thing. I don’t remember the specifics, but I know it wasn’t screened for critics (which in those days was much rarer), and for whatever reason I couldn’t prevail upon myself to go see it during the one week that it survived in theaters. (Next week’s Bad Movie is also a high-profile flop from the 2000s that I should have reviewed when it opened. Any guesses what it might be???)

The column features a throwaway reference to Jeremy Piven’s ridiculous hairpieces. I made a similar joke about Nicolas Cage’s hair in this week’s “Snide Remarks.” Is this a coincidence? Part of an ongoing campaign against bad toupees? Who can say, really?

‘SATC’ commenters: Maybe not as dumb as they seem

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

My review of “Sex and the City” is among those that come up when you Google the film’s title and click the “reviews” link, so it’s been read by a lot of people who had not been to my website before. Some of these visitors have posted comments along these lines:

why bother to write a nasty review if you never truly watched the show or have decided to hate the movie from the get go?

If you don’t like this type of story- don’t go see it.

I don’t think you should have seen the movie if you never watched the show.

I wonder why you went to see it so quickly if you were not a fan.

Yes it is your job as a movie critic, but why would you even bother writing up a movie review for a movie you know you wouldnt be intersted in and wouldnt understand, it just makes it confusing for the fans who want to see it.

Many regular visitors smile at these comments from people who don’t seem to understand that I’m a film critic, and that film critics see pretty much ALL the movies. And granted, the last comment I cited is a little stupid, as the commenter doesn’t grasp the part of the definition of “job” that includes “getting paid,” which would answer her question of why I wrote the review. (I’m also not sure how a negative review is “confusing” to fans, especially if those fans have already decided they want to see the movie.)

But maybe these comments aren’t so dumb after all. It’s not like the banner at the top of the page says “Eric D. Snider: Professional Film Critic.” (Maybe it should.) To an impartial observer stumbling across the site, it could just be some guy’s blog where he talks about movies. In that case, it’s perfectly reasonable to wonder why he went to see the movie when he didn’t have any interest in it.

And then it hits me: The days of “movie critics” being an entirely separate and distinct group from “regular joes talkin’ about movies” are quickly waning. The Internet has made it so that anyone with a computer can declare himself a “movie critic” — and the fact is, a lot of these self-declared critics are every bit as good as the ones who write for newspapers and magazines. A lot of them are embarrassingly amateurish and detrimental to film criticism as a whole, too. But they’re still part of the group.

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