Whoever said Marc Anthony looks like this guy is a liar.

Readers have posted some interesting comments on my review of “El Cantante.” Four people (so far) have completely misunderstood my very easy-to-understand review, one just seemed really angry, and another went off the deep end entirely.

“El Cantante” is a biopic about Hector Lavoe, a salsa singer who started in New York in the 1960s, rose to fame in the ’70s, and burned out in the ’80s. What I said about the movie was that it failed to “show us why the performer was so beloved.”

I went on: “To put it bluntly: Why should I care who Hector Lavoe was? ‘El Cantante’ does nothing to answer that question.”

My intention was not to say that Hector Lavoe wasn’t worth knowing. The opposite, actually: He probably has an interesting story, and there were probably some excellent reasons for his popularity. But the film fails to convey any of that.

The first comment came from Eddie, and he wrote very thoughtfully and sincerely.

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Someone named Kellie wrote me an e-mail with no subject line and no indication what, exactly, she was angry about. But her message was clear:

All of your comments are stupid you are an A-HOLE who do you think you are some big time movie director you say one line and make 1 hundred versions of it and call it a review you are an idiot and you should get a job at a donut shop you dumbass loser

The only part I take exception with is the implication that working at a doughnut shop would somehow be demeaning or undignified. On the contrary, what nobler profession is there than a purveyor of delicious doughnuts?!

Our other angry letter comes from a gal named Julia. She was so upset by my nine-year-old “Clash of the Titanic” column (which consists of a shortened, satirical script for the movie “Titanic”) that she didn’t even read the other angry letters already posted in which people said exactly the same things she wanted to say. She posted a comment on the page, and then sent me an e-mail directly:

you are heartless! so many people were killed! i am very into the titnaic, i read books on it. [Titnaic: of or relating to Titna, goddess of voluptuous women.] i loved that movie, and you are a sexist pig to say that women just watch it for Leonardo. [Yes, sweetie, that's very cute.] Yes he is extremely hot, but it is a touching movie and i would watch it even if he were ugly. [I wish there were a way of proving that. I really do.] do you have any idea what that was like for those people? [For who, the actors? Probably kind of hard, but overall a fun experience, I guess.] they were on the ship, the lifeboats were gone and they knew they were going to die. [Oh, THOSE people.] they sat in there and froze to death. and now they are shaking in their graves [shivering?] knowing a freak named Eric is out there making fun of them! how could you think that is funny in the least?! I watch this movie every sunday night and cry every time. and if you don’t, i am quite sure you have no heart you bastard!

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Against all odds, “Transformers” has become the latest touchstone in America’s culture wars. People who love it say the critics are stuffy and out of touch. They are angry about it, in fact. To them, a failure to appreciate “Transformers” bespeaks a greater failure — the failure to relax and have fun. Who would have thought a movie about giant space robots would tap into such deep-seated resentments?

I gave the film a negative (though not scathing) review. So did dozens of other critics. Almost all of us have subsequently been beset with comments such as these:

You losers should stick with watching “The English Patient” and old Daniel Day Lewis movies…

Well it is a summer movie isn’t it? People go to them because they want dessert. They don’t want Citizen Kane. It’s not because moviegoers are dumb or unintelligent (though some are), they’re just in the mood to be entertained.

Those are from my review as it’s posted here on this site. My friends Dawn Taylor and Scott Weinberg have been the targets of similar sentiments. So has nearly everyone else who panned the film.

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[In lieu of the weekly "Snide Remarks" Classic, today we bring you a special anniversary feature. There will be more special features in the weeks to come, leading up to the official "Snide Remarks" 10th anniversary on Sept. 29, which is recognized by most major religions as a high holy day.]

Almost since the beginning, one of the most entertaining parts of “Snide Remarks” has been the angry letters that people sometimes write in response to it.

The perception is that I get these letters frequently. In truth it’s been ages since I got one. Ever since the column became online-only, where it could not assault unsuspecting readers from their morning newspapers, it’s been read pretty much only by people who like it, or who at least know what they’re in for.

But back in the old days, when it was in The Daily Universe, the student paper at BYU, angry letters were commonplace. In fact, of the 64 columns I wrote for the Universe (1997-1999), 22 of them got angry letters. That’s 34 percent! BYU is a hotbed of righteous indignation, and probably always has been.

I wrote 305 columns for the Daily Herald (1999-2003), of which 57 inspired angry letters. That’s only 19 percent, although it’s worth noting that the Herald’s website allowed people to post anonymous comments during much of that time, and nearly every column got at least one negative comment. In fact, there were some people who hated “Snide Remarks” so much, they read it every single time it was published, just so they could comment on how much they hated it. I AM NOT MAKING THAT UP.

(I only wish that, when the Herald administrators redesigned the website a couple years ago, they had not deleted all the old threads of anonymous comments. Many of them were classic.)

In all, 81 columns have elicited angry letters. Here I have chosen my favorite eight. I hope you find them as entertaining as I do.

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My reviews are posted over at DVD Talk these days, and my take on “Spider-Man 3″ elicited this strange response. I’m classifying it as an “Angry Letter” not because it’s particularly angry, but because it’s nearly incoherent, which is an attribute I associate with angry letters.

I read your review of ‘Spider-Man 3′ and can similarly recognize that you were not even a Marvel comic casual observer. Anytime a filmmaker steps outside the boundaries of what an epic was created to be does it become disheartened by it’s viewers. Spider Man III was believable and greatly followed the traditions of its creator. If it fails at the Box Office could only your tapestry of a double-minded review have merit or recommendation.

OK, then. Following is a list of words that, judging by their

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With the advent of comment-posting technology, people don’t send me angry e-mails as often as they used to. Now they can just batter their flippers against the keyboard and post their ignorance directly to the site for all the world to see!

Luckily, a few old-fashioned souls still appreciate the warmth of a personal, private e-mail. For example, here is this one, from someone who hated the “Eragon” movie and for some reason thought I was the director of it:

Your a panzey!!!!!!!YOUR THE WORST DIRECTOR EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I never thought a person can skrew up a movie that bad.

Why would someone read my very negative review of “Eragon” and conclude that I, Eric D. Snider, was also the director of “Eragon”? I mean, because he or she is stupid, obviously, but there must be more to it than that.

This next e-mail actually was intended for me personally. It comes from someone named Seth, at e-mail address godowar@aol.com. I’m including his address because when I responded to his concerns, he never replied, and I thought maybe we’d have better luck if some of you e-mailed him.

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The Daily Universe, student newspaper at good ol’ Brigham Young University, ran a letter to the editor on Feb. 9 that read as follows:

Bad moon pricing

Recently, there was an article about a man selling an acre on the moon for $20. I must say, I am opposed to buying a plot of land on the moon for such a price. Don’t get me wrong, I love the moon, but I just don’t think $20 for land is viable for a college student these days. The main reason: opportunity cost.

With $20, you could supply yourself with food for an entire week, unless you’re a freshman with dining plus, in which case it is only two days. You may say, “but the moon is made out of cheese, and that’s way more food.”

However, I’ve learned through some secret sources, that it is primarily made out of oxygen, silicon and iron, which have nothing to do with cheese.

With $20, you can support a homeless child for months. As advertised on TV, it costs only 39 cents per day to help Pablo have shoes on his feet and corn in his mouth. You could help him for 51 days.

Finally with $20, you can find out whether someone likes you. Simply hand them $20 and ask “Do you like me?” If they say yes, you win. If they say no, you’ll actually save money by avoiding the costs of taking them out on dates. Combine that with all the time you’ll save, and you’ll notice $20 is too much to give up.

Jon Harmon
Portland, Ore.

A few readers brought this letter to my attention because of the remarkable similarity between the final paragraph and the closing paragraphs of this old “Snide Remarks” column.

Obviously Jon Harmon was familiar with the column and appropriated it for use in his I’m-trying-to-be-funny letter. I was flattered, bemused, and a little annoyed, but not much. And before I could decide what kind of response, if any, I should give, someone else wrote to The Daily Universe complaining about Jon’s letter, only for different reasons. It was published on Feb. 12:

Narrow-minded moon

In the recent letter, “Bad moon pricing,” (Feb. 9) the author steps outside the bounds of humor and into the realm of offensiveness. He turned the ads that run on TV asking for our help in fighting poverty by providing needy people with the basic necessities of life into a joke by stereotypically giving the name Pablo to all who suffer in such a way and minimizing the relief such organizations bring. In an effort to be comical, he has offended countless readers who don’t think it’s funny to make fun of the terrible living conditions of some of our less fortunate brothers and sisters.

It’s just inherently wrong to take the pleas for help that bring sorrow to our hearts and turn them into a quick laugh. Stereotyping is one of the great ills that plague our society, and it shames me to see that it is still very much alive.

What is one to think after seeing such an outrageous letter in the readers’ forum? I might begin to wonder if BYU really is the kind of place where I would want my children to study, after seeing the way that some people make such discriminating jokes at the expense of others’ suffering. As we “Enter to Learn” I certainly hope this mentality does not reflect the manner in which we will “Go Forth to Serve.” The author owes us all an apology, and I’ll be waiting for it.

Hyrum Hemingway
Menomonie, Wis.

Now, I didn’t think Jon Harmon’s letter was funny, either (though not for lack of good material to steal from!), but Hyrum Hemingway’s response was so … well, typical. Read any day’s letters in The Daily Universe and you’ll see at least one like that.

So at last I wrote a response and submitted it as a letter to the editor. Alas, several issues of the paper have been published since then, and my letter has not seen the light of day, so I am forced to conclude they won’t be printing it. So here it is for you:

Two recent letters in The Daily Universe caused me great alarm. First, “Narrow-minded moon” (Feb. 12) criticized a previous letter-writer (”Bad moon pricing,” Feb. 9) for making light of a serious situation: He had joked about the TV ads in which viewers are encouraged to donate money to help starving children.

Now, the writer of “Narrow-minded moon” makes a good point, and he doesn’t seem at all sanctimonious or humorless, nor does he make me roll my eyes. But he missed the REALLY offensive thing about the “Bad moon pricing” letter: The part about giving a potential date $20 to find out in advance whether she likes you was blatantly ripped off from an old “Snide Remarks” column published ON THESE VERY PAGES in November 1997!

What’s that, writer of “Bad moon pricing”? You figured there was no one left at BYU who remembered “Snide Remarks,” or who bought the “Snide Remarks” book in which that column was reprinted, or who had browsed at www.ericdsnider.com/snide/how-to-do-stuff-better and read that column? Figure again, my friend! You’re busted. I might begin to wonder if BYU really is the kind of place where I would want my children to study, after seeing the way that some people at BYU steal other people’s jokes. For shame, sir. FOR SHAME.

Eric D. Snider
Portland, Ore.

The fact that Jon Harmon is from Portland and I now live in Portland is probably a coincidence. Jon Harmon, are you reading this? (I assume Hyrum Hemingway isn’t.)

I received an e-mail with the subject line “[biblical word for 'donkey'] faces.” Naturally, I was intrigued. There was no name, and the return address bounced when I tried to reply, giving further evidence that people who write e-mails like this are cowards.

Anyway, here is what it said:

val kilmeris the best freakin actor and who are you to judge when you don’t even act yourself biotch

Of course, if being an actor oneself is a prerequisite for judging acting talent, then this person shouldn’t be judging Kilmer, either. (Saying someone is good is judging, too.) But why introduce logic into a matter such as this?(By the way, I have no idea which review, if any, this person was responding to. I can’t recall dissing Val Kilmer too harshly, but maybe I did.)

Next, if you’ve sent me an e-mail, you’ve seen the warning, in red letters, indicating that I don’t have contact info for any famous people, and that if you ask for such information anyway, I will write back to tell you how stupid you are. Amazingly, despite this warning, in red letters above the e-mail form, I still sometimes get e-mails from idiots who noticed a celebrity’s name on my Web site and concluded that I must therefore know that celebrity personally. And when I do, true to my word, I write back to tell that person how stupid he or she is.

For example, I got this e-mail the other day:

I am currently an Associate Publisher at the Forest Hills Celebrity Magazine. It is a very popular magazine about Queens lifestyle ( New York), a nice fine four color magazine. At any rate I am dying to contact Jon for an inetrview to appear in my magazine. I went to school with him at Queens College and hung out with him at CUPB, a social club. I beleive this would be so fitting because it is a local community publication, it will also help him promote his new movie… Cover story material I am sensing… any help would be appreciated.
Thank you,
Marty.

The “From” field in the e-mail said Martha Tucker. I responded to Martha with the form letter I have prepared:

[This is a form letter.]

Best wishes,
Eric D. Snider

Martha responded, only now her e-mail “From” name was Marty Sunflower. She said this:

Dear whoever you are, ["Whoever you are"? I signed my name to my e-mail, the "From" line says "Eric D. Snider," and the site she wrote to me from was called EricDSnider.com. And she's not sure who I am? This, from the woman who used two names in as many e-mails.]
I must say that you are the stupid one. In my years of researching information, I have never met anyone as arrogant as yourself figures, this is the trash that Myspace is composed of… [What MySpace has to do with anything, I have no idea.] Pity and to think there was hope for the journalistic wannabes…
Thanks for you time and for nothing. a simple I am sorry I cannot help you would have sufficed but know you reduced your self to name calling what are you twelve???? Would that have been to much and to think that you actually made this a form letter?????/ again a very sad representation of journalism.
Marty

Funny, the phrases “stupid,” “journalistic wannabes,” “what are you twelve,” and “very sad representation of journalism” all occurred to me while reading her letter, too….

Finally, my review of Eddie Murphy’s “Norbit” prompted this scathing reply:

I read your review of ‘Norbit’ and terribly disagree. [True to his word, he does disagree in a terrible fashion. Keep reading!] it is on of the main reason’s i don’t trust white movie critics reviews when it come to black films. norbit is the story of relationship, and if you have been anywhere close to this type of personality in one you can identify. with white critics you jugde your expectattion of the character instead of the overall movie itself. you will call a great movie lame and a lame movie great based on how you see it. [Well, yeah. Judging a movie based on how you see it is sort of what film criticism is. That's sort of the definition.] but being number on in the box office speaks for itself. i bet you’ll love ghost rider, or hanabal lechter. movies that i would never pay to go see. [Too bad, because "Ghost Rider" is apparently a great movie, judging by the fact that it's No. 1 at the box office.] i am a pretty good critic when it comes down to movies. and i don’t let my color get in the way of deciding what to see or not see. i also won’t let a actors personal life fuel my judgement of him on the screen. a good actor is a good actor, and the list of movies that you can questionable in eddie’s career some of which i actually enjoyed are not all flops. they may not have sold out box offices but check out the rental store and cable showing see how much money he’s mad from that. and i noticed that you didn’t mention shreck 1,2, or upcoming 3. [Actually, I did mention them, when I said that Murphy's movies "apart from the mostly harmless family flicks" tend to be bad.] i guess you didn’t want to insult mike myere hey?

Most of the outrageously poor logic in this letter should be apparent, but I want to point out something special. He makes the classic argument that being No. 1 at the box office means a movie is great, and then also says that just because a movie flops at the box office, that doesn’t mean it’s bad. He’s right about the last part, of course, but you can’t have it both ways. If being No. 1 is PROOF — irrefutable, case-closed PROOF — that a movie is good, then being No. 100 would have to be proof that a movie is bad.

Also, I should point out that “Norbit” is not a “black film.” Most of its characters are black, but the film has nothing to do with race. Race is never mentioned. There is nothing about the characters that would only apply to black people. They could just as easily have been white, with maybe Ben Stiller playing the two leads. (Wow, imagine how bad THAT would have been.)

With commenting enabled on the movie reviews, people are able to post their angry diatribes directly, without having to send them to me. But a few hardy souls still spew their vitriol the old-fashioned way, via e-mail. I present two for your reading pleasure.

First, from someone named “yasemin,” whose attack-the-critic defense of the film “The Holiday” reminds me of the things people (read: teenage girls) said in defense of a certain other Kate Winslet film, back in the day:

Way too long and a little too cutesy…What did you mean with that…And you say :If it didn’t feel so long??? What a feeling haa…you know what…. I would prefer it longer…I really didn’t like your comment. Maybe you are in love with someone that doesn’t love you, so you couldn’t stand it… If you felt like you were stuck there watching that LONG movie, DON’T WATCH IT THEN….Oh yeah but you have to write your critics…you have to watch it…I am really sorry for you…poor you…watching that long movie, you had a hard time…maybe you are not as handsome as Jude Law maybe that’s why it was irresistible…. For the cutesy, people need cute films, at least for some minutes it makes you feel life is so beautiful and could be better anytime…but you are so hopeless that you don’ wanna believe this…”THE HOLIDAY” was smashing, and it puts a smile in your heart….What’s wrong with that…

So Yasemin is really smart and articulate and everything, and she knows the proper definitions of words like “irresistible.” She is joined by a fellow member of the literati, Jessica:

I think you should leave Larry the Cable guy alone. Is it so wrong to try to make people laugh? He is very amusing, and not just because of the “butt” jokes, but because he makes people stop being so up-tight about themselves and everyone else. He is just a funny man who spreads the funny out all over the world. And I don’t think that you need to discourage him for doing so. It is indeed true that some of his punch lines are a bit grody, but that is what makes them funny. The fact that he can take everyday abnormality’s and turn them into hysterical displays of humor should be rewarded, and not patronized. Maybe you should think about that before you keep discouraging movies.

I guess I knew Larry the Cable Guy’s horrendous movie must have fans, but I have to say, I’m surprised that one of them is a woman. Maybe Jessica is Mrs. The Cable Guy.

As we skip merrily toward Christmas, here is an angry letter to bring warmth to your heart. It relates to my review of the movie “Eragon,” and I heartily recommend that you first read the review and the comments that have been posted after it. Some of them are as good as any ol’ angry letter, especially the guy who defended home-schoolers as being normal yet misspelled every other word in his post and got angry at public schools for teaching evolution.

Anyway, here is the e-mail I received from one Andrew:

Hey Snider, maybe you should read the book before you bash the author.(Concerning Eragon) The movie sucked [swear word] and thats all there is to it. You could tell the books were written by an adolescent, but they were not that bad.

Merry Christmas

I replied: “Agreed that the movie sucked. But unless the book had a completely different story and characters, it must bear at least partial responsibility for the movie’s suckiness, mustn’t it?”

And Andrew said:

Well the book had an almost completely different story line, and the only thing that was the same is the characters. The books were not the best but the movie made Paolini look
absolutely horrible. He deserves more credit thsn that.
Where were you at when you were 15.

Where was I (at) when I was 15? Same place as Paolini: writing really bad literature.

Oh, and I should clarify something else. I made a crack in the “Eragon” review about home-schooled kids, and some people posted comments criticizing me for that, while others came to my defense. I surely appreciate folks sticking up for me, but let me just say for the record: I do think home-schooled kids tend to be social misfits and weirdos who don’t know how to relate to regular people, and many of them have been indoctrinated with whatever peculiar beliefs their teacher-parents chose to emphasize, at the expense of the child’s well-roundedness and social well-being. There are exceptions, of course — and my experience is that every home-schooled person I’ve encountered, while acknowledging the tendency, believes he or she is just such an exception. So stuff that in your stocking!