My laptop has stopped accessing the Internet, whether by Airport or by a hardline ethernet connection. It was working fine this afternoon when I plugged my friend’s DSL modem into it, then wouldn’t work at the CineVegas press office, and still won’t work back at my friend’s house tonight. I’m not accustomed to having this kind of major problem with my Macs, so I’m not sure what to do about it.

The reason this affects you is that all my Friday materials — reviews, “In the Dark” etc. — are on that laptop, with no convenient way to post them to the Internet. The fastest method would be to burn the files to a disc and transfer them to my friend’s iMac (which I’m using to post this), then post them from there. But it’s very late at night and I’ve already spent an hour trying to fix my connection problems. Maybe I’ll try the disc-burning tomorrow. 

It’s kind of a serious problem, since I’m supposed to be covering CineVegas for Cinematical, and now I don’t have any way to do that. So hopefully I can figure out why my computer has suddenly stopped accessing the Internet. In the meantime, everything is on hold.

Whoever guessed “Glitter” last week, you win a gold star! That is the subject of this week’s edition of “Eric’s Bad Movies” at Film.com. I had actually watched it once before, back in about 2002, when some friends and I threw a white-trash party, dressed accordingly, and partook of Mariah Carey’s tour de force. Strangely, when I re-watched it last week, I discovered that I didn’t remember a single detail. I take that as a good sign.

Do you like the guessing game? Well, next week’s Bad Movie is from the second half of the ’90s, and it stars one of those people where you go, “I can’t believe there was ever a time when America thought this man was funny.”

One of the reasons I used to admire Defamer.com was that you had to basically audition to be allowed to post comments. If you weren’t sufficiently literate, witty, and intelligent, they wouldn’t let you post. (They seem to have eased up the restrictions in recent months.) If I weren’t eager to increase traffic to my site — which is the one and only reason that any website allows comments — I’d implement such a system myself.

But in the meantime, here are some of the dumb things that dumb people have said in recent weeks.

(P.S. Most of you post comments that are smart and useful and contribute to the discussion! Really! Keep doing it! And especially, keep coming back to see if anyone has responded to you! That’s the important part!)

DUMB COMMENTS POSTED AT ERICDSNIDER.COM

“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”:

Hey Ericdsnider,

i want you to go into a office and say something about God you will soon see that almost everyone will stop talking to you. but if you talk about Darwinism they start asking questions. Ok Ericdsnider i want you to get out a $1 bill there something wrote there. Something that deals with…..GOD not Darwin. Maybe Everyone needs to remember what our fore-fathers based America on.

[The problem with Creationism isn't that certain elements of it are incompatible with science. It's that so many of its followers are semi-literate idiots.]

* * * * *

“Iron Man”:

“IRON MAN WAS A BLAST!” You people on this site are “PICKY PICKY PICKY.”

I’m glad this wasn’t a la “CUTESY SPIDERMAN MOVIE.” Finally Hollywood comes out with a movie for everyone. Iron Man is funny, serious, has great special effects,

a great soundtrack and terrific acting by Robert Downey Jr. “WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?” [He has a point there. Once you have a great central performance and a great soundtrack, the other elements -- like plot, direction, supporting performances, screenplay, sets, costumes, makeup, lighting, editing, and cinematography -- really don't matter.] Hollywood came through this time people. You can really tell they tried to please all ages. I can no way complain. Iron Man was pure entertainment and “THIS TIME” I give Hollywood credit for their effort and Eric you should have too with a “A” review rating. “Shame on you!”

[Sometimes I put "quotation marks" around things because I think "quotation marks" are used for "emphasis." And "shame on you," movie critic, for failing to hold the same "opinion" that I "hold"!]

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Just drove from Portland down to my brother’s house in Stepford, Utah (which the signs call Eagle Mountain, but they’re not fooling anyone). He just mentioned how annoying it is when writers leave “I” off the front of their sentences. Thought I’d try it. Am annoyed by it too. Anyway, the point is, I’m tired from all that driving, so this entry will be purely functional.

This week’s “Snide Remarks” is entitled “Art Depreciation.” There will be no column the next two Mondays because I’m travelin’. A few days in Utah, then down to the CineVegas Film Festival, then down to California to give my parents a thrill. Everything else should be business as usual, just no “Snide Remarks.” So enjoy this one, and savor it for the next couple weeks.

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

First Texas, now the Zohan — I can’t mess with anything anymore! “Zohan,” an overlong mixed bag, is the subject of my review at Film.com this week.

Then there’s “Kung Fu Panda,” which is pretty funny and very well animated. Not just one of the cheapo throwaways.

Also new: “The Strangers” (scary), “The Fall” (trippy), “Sangre de Mi Sangre” (dreary), and “Savage Grace” (tawdry). (In secret code, I have named four of the Spice Girls.

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.

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!

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?

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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Nassau County in New York has recently stepped up its efforts to deter drunken driving by providing news media with the names, hometowns, and mugshots of its DWI arrestees. The idea is that if drunk people know getting arrested means they’ll be in the paper on Monday, then maybe that — if nothing else — will discourage them from getting behind the wheel.

The project is controversial, but that’s not what I wanted to tell you about. What I wanted to tell you about is one of the people they arrested over Memorial Day Weekend, a 17-year-old girl named Gianna Vigliotti. According to Newsday (via Gothamist), Gianna’s blood-alcohol level was 0.15 percent, almost twice the legal limit of 0.08. (Actually, since she’s underage, her legal limit is 0.00.) But she swears she wasn’t drinking. Her explanation? “I didn’t drink! I was kissing a boy who was drunk!”

Mmhmm. Are you really gonna try to sell that one to a judge? Teenagers are hilarious. Did you ever make up an extraordinary lie to avoid trouble, and then stick to it no matter what? I know I did.

So that’s funny already, and then there’s this quote from her family’s lawyer: “To now have (the arrest) publicized is not only embarrassing, but demeaning as well.”

Really, egghead? It’s embarrassing? Yeah: that’s kind of the point. “Your Honor, this highly publicized effort to embarrass drunken drivers has resulted in my client, a drunken driver, being embarrassed!”

(Also: “Embarrassing” and “demeaning” are almost synonymous anyway, but we’ll let that pass.)

(Also: Maybe Nassau County shouldn’t mess with this girl. With a name like Gianna Vigliotti, she is almost certainly the daughter of someone with Mob ties.)

You know how sometimes when you’re bored you’ll find a photo of a man holding a baby and use Photoshop to put the man’s head on the baby’s body and the baby’s head on the man’s body? Or how sometimes you’ll do the same thing with a picture of a lady and a cat? I think we’ve all been there. And in that gray area between “funny” and “creepy” lie these sites: Man Babies and Cat Ladies. Enjoy and/or get the heebie-jeebies!