If you follow me or any other movie-oriented people on Twitter, you probably know that the fine movie blog Cinematical was essentially shut down this week, with the last of the editors quitting and nearly all of the writers (including me) being dismissed. This is bad news for the online movie world, and it’s been encouraging to see the many, many R.I.P. tweets going out all week.

I’m lucky in that I have other freelancing teats from which to suckle, most importantly Film.com. Many of the other Cinematical folks were earning more of their livelihoods from Cinematical than I was and are thus further up a creek now than I am. I hope they’re able to find other gigs soon.

I’ll be writing more about what happened, and why, and who deserves the blame (spoiler alert: Arianna Huffington) in the next couple days.

In the meantime, here’s the roundup of this week’s reviews and such:

“Arthur” (review at Film.com): B-

“Your Highness”: D

“Hanna”: B

“Soul Surfer” had a screening, but it was the same time as “Arthur.” It’s about a surfer who gets her arm bitten off by a shark, though, so that’s cool.

At Film.com, I spotlighted 10 summer movies I’m looking forward to that don’t have superheroes in them; “What’s the Big Deal?” addressed “Metropolis”; and “Eric’s Bad Movies” took a can of Raid to “Empire of the Ants.”

And for some reason you can also hear me talk a lot this week, if you want to. I joined Jeremy Kirk and Tim Buel for the “Golden Briefcase” podcast. Then Chase Whale interviewed me for his “Whale of a Writer” series (GET IT?? He’s saying I’m fat). Then, after the Cinematical thing went down, I was invited to join Scott Weinberg and Erik Davis to discuss it on “Reject Radio,” hosted by “Cole Abaius.” Part of that involved participating in a game show, which was very exciting for me. (Listener advisories: there’s some cussin’ in the first one, none in the second one, a tiny bit in the third one.)

Subscribe to “In the Dark,” a weekly e-mail with the latest movie reviews, DVD releases, and other pertinent info.

Listen to “Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider,” a weekly Internet radio show featuring Jeff Bayer and Eric D. Snider, at Cascadia.fm. It’s live at 11 a.m. (Pacific) every Friday, then downloadable as a podcast. Ignore the iTunes “explicit” tag; we always keep it PG.

The organizations that keep me most gainfully employed are Film.com and Cinematical. The editors I work with — Laremy Legel at the former, Erik Davis and Scott Weinberg at the latter — are a writer’s dream: supportive, professional, laid-back, and easily amused. I consider them friends in real life, too, and I always enjoy hanging out with them in person at film festivals. Sometimes they pretend to fight over me, which is nice.

My arrangement at Film.com has me writing four articles a week: “Eric’s Bad Movies,” “What’s the Big Deal?,” a review, and a miscellaneous other movie-related feature. We usually try to make those “other” pieces funny. Below is a list of the ones from 2010 that I like. In every instance, the idea for the column was Laremy’s. This is great, because I’m terrible at coming up with premises, and once someone tells you, “Explaining ‘Machete’ to Aliens Who Have Just Arrived from Outer Space,” half the work is done for you.

My Film.com highlights from 2010
(My author page at Film.com)

2/9: What to Expect from a George Lucas Musical
3/3: Circumstances Under Which I Would Willingly Watch ‘Little Fockers’
3/17: Pitch Meeting: ‘The Bounty Hunter’
4/19: ‘Furry Vengeance’ and ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’: How to Tell the Difference
6/1: Pitch Meeting: ‘Killers’
6/2: Imagining ‘Marmaduke’ As an R-Rated Horror Film
6/21: Pitch Meeting: ‘Grown-Ups’
6/28: Our Idea for a Smurfs vs. Garfield vs. Marmaduke Film
8/4: And Now We Imagine a Meeting Between Nicolas Cage and His Agent

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I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but it’s very 1984 here. In fact, I discussed this very thing in an article for Cinematical, and then recycled some of the jokes for “Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider” today, because I’m hip on recycling, even though it’s only 1984.

First there’s the remake of “The Karate Kid” (review at Film.com), which is actually pretty decent, regardless of how offended the nerds may have been by the very idea of remaking it. Then there’s the big-screen version of “The A-Team” (review at Cinematical), a TV show that hit its peak popularity in 1984. The movie is meh. Needed more fool-pitying, in my opinion.

I also got around to reviewing “Killers” (at Film.com), from last week, and wrote a thing for Cinematical about “Splice” and the nature of spoilers. (No spoilers in the article, of course.)

Columns! “Eric’s Bad Movies” at Film.com addressed “Virus,” a sci-fi horror thing from 1999. “What’s the Big Deal?” at Film.com has “Breathless,” the fancy-pants French movie from 1960. And “Cinemaligion” at Cinematical has Kevin Smith’s “Dogma,” from 1999. Hmm. I guess it’s very 1999 up in here, too.

Subscribe to “In the Dark,” a weekly e-mail with the latest movie reviews, DVD releases, and other pertinent info.

Listen to “Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider,” a weekly Internet radio show featuring Jeff Bayer and Eric D. Snider, at PDX.fm. It’s live at 11 a.m. (Pacific) every Friday, then downloadable as a podcast.

So there’s “Sex and the City 2″ (review at Cinematical). That happened. It’s 2 1/2 hours long, which is just uncalled for, and even shallower and more superficial than before.

In slightly better news, “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” (review at Film.com) is a modestly entertaining adventure movie, along the lines of “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “The Mummy,” though not as good. It’s a C+ movie: don’t see it on purpose, but don’t actively avoid it either.

In “Eric’s Bad Movies” at Film.com, I covered “Exorcist II: The Heretic,” notorious for being one of the worst sequels to a good movie in all of Christendom. Some friends of mine that I hadn’t seen in a while said they wanted to hang out and watch a Bad Movie with me, so I obliged with this. I don’t know why they wanted to do that, but I bet they won’t make the same mistake again. One of them took the easy way out by falling asleep, like a coward.

Speaking of devil women, I addressed “All About Eve” in “What’s the Big Deal?” at Film.com, a really funny and sharp comedy from 1950. Bette Davis, whose face always looked like it was melting, is fantasgreat.

At Cinematical, my “Cinemaligion” column is about “Contact,” from 1997. This installment is a little looser than some of the previous ones. It might even have funny parts, kind of, under certain loose definitions of “funny.”

Also at Cinematical this week, I talked about why “MacGruber” tanked at the box office.

And at Film.com, I suggested four product ideas better than the Bella Swan “Twilight” engagement ring, which is a real thing that you can buy. I actually suggested five products, but one was deemed a little too harsh for Film.com. EricDSnider.com isn’t nearly as discerning, though, so here it is:

Baby Sucks-a-Lot, the Vampire Doll. Given the current limitations of biology, it is unlikely that you will ever be impregnated with a vampiric fetus and enjoy the experience of carrying it to term, letting it chew its way out of you, and so forth. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a vampire baby, at least for pretendsies! Baby Sucks-a-Lot looks like a regular baby doll, except with fangs and sparkly vampire skin. Attach the fangs to the Baby Sucks-a-Lot Blood Bottle (sold separately) and watch her drink the precious fluid down, down, down! All babies slowly leech the life out of their parents, but Baby Sucks-a-Lot does it like a real vampire would: adorably! (Warning: Do not breastfeed Baby Sucks-a-Lot.)

What?

Subscribe to “In the Dark,” a weekly e-mail with the latest movie reviews, DVD releases, and other pertinent info.

Listen to “Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider,” a weekly Internet radio show featuring Jeff Bayer and Eric D. Snider, at PDX.fm. It’s live at 11 a.m. (Pacific) every Friday, then downloadable as a podcast.

The surprising thing about “MacGruber” (review at Cinematical) is that despite being based on a “Saturday Night Live” sketch, it’s not terrible. I know! Believe me, we were as astonished as you are, when we saw it at South By Southwest in March. The general consensus was that wow, this is actually pretty funny.

The less surprising thing about “Shrek Forever After” (review at Film.com) is that, eh, it’s all right. Not bad, not great. If it were an episode of a “Shrek” TV show, it would be fine. Doesn’t seem worthy of the big screen, though, unless you’re seeing it for free, maybe.

In limited release is “The Square,” a fiendishly bleak and gripping thriller from Australia about plans gone awry. You know the type: a couple ordinary people plan a crime of some kind, things go wrong, then more things go wrong when they try to fix the first things that went wrong, and then things go even more wrong, etc. It’s playing now in Portland and in Salt Lake City, to name two places where I know a lot of you people live.

Also in limited release: “The Human Centipede.” To me this title sounds like a jolly children’s book, but it is not. It’s an already-legendary “midnight” movie about a mad scientist who wants to sew three people together into a, um, human centipede. It’s pretty gross, although not nearly as gross as it could have been, given the circumstances.

Other movie things I wrote this week:

Eric’s Bad Movies at Film.com has “Rambo III,” in conjunction with “MacGruber,” which is sort of a parody of movies like “Rambo III.” “Rambo III” is big, loud, and stupid, and I stand by that. Also, I’m more pleased with the outcome of this edition of Eric’s Bad Movies than I have been in a few weeks. Sometimes you nail it, sometimes you don’t, you know?

Speaking of hilarious comedy jokes, I wrote a piece for Cinematical about why it’s a mistake to cut Megan Fox from “Transformers 3.” Be sure to read the comments people have left…

Then there was the “Hurt Locker” producer who managed to win a debate be on the right side of a debate while still being a jerk.

Were you wondering whose fault it is that “Robin Hood” turned out lousy? Turns out we’ve identified the culprits.

And What’s the Big Deal? at Film.com addresses “Chinatown,” a fantastic movie from  1974, a year that also brought us “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein,” “The Godfather Part II,” “The Conversation,” and the birth of Eric D. Snider.

Two things you should subscribe to: “In the Dark,” my weekly e-mail collection of the latest reviews, DVD releases, and merriment; and “Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider,” the weekly Internet-radio program in which Jeff Bayer and I talk about movies. You can also listen to that show live at 11 a.m. (PDT) every Friday. There’s no way to listen to “In the Dark” live, however, as it is an e-mail, not an audio program.

This week’s new films, plus Eric’s Bad Movies, What’s the Big Deal?, Cinemaligion, Tribeca, and more, all crammed into one tender, juicy blog post.

The remake of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” is fairly bad, mostly in the ways you’d expect: not scary, not funny, not original, not interesting. Its one saving grace is that I missed the screening and had to see it at the first public showing, last night at midnight, and a couple friends went with me, and we sat away from the (very sparse) audience in case we needed to whisper sarcastic things to each other about the movie, and it turns out we did indeed need to do this. Travis noted afterward that the cast consists entirely of people who are “discount beautiful” — almost good-looking, like movie stars, but not quite. BURN. Anyway, if you must see this movie, see it last night at midnight with me and Travis and Martha.

Also opening is “Furry Vengeance,” a family comedy about Brendan Fraser being punched in the nuts by animals. Missed this screening, too, for the same reason as the other one, which reason I haven’t told you yet. And there was no midnight premiere, alas.

In limited release, you’ll find the amusing and sophisticated “Please Give” (review at Cinematical) starring Catherine Keener.

The reason I missed stuff is that I was in New York for a few days for the Tribeca Film Festival. New York is always a blast, of course, but the festival itself doesn’t have much of a personality, and I didn’t see anything that totally blew me away. I didn’t have time (or money) to catch any Broadway shows, either, so it was kind of a strange NYC visit. But Scott Weinberg was there for a couple days, and you can never fail to have a good time when Weinberg’s around, as required by law.

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Bad news, everybody! Both of the new releases this weekend are bad. “The Losers,” which wants very much to be “The A-Team,” is the kind of bad that’s bearable. But “The Back-Up Plan,” starring Jennifer Lopez as a woman who gets artificially inseminated and THEN meets the man of her dreams, is the intolerable kind of bad. I will not tolerate it.

Oh, and there’s “Oceans,” a nature documentary, but it didn’t screen for critics in Portland, so it’s dead to me.

“Best Worst Movie,” a very fun documentary about terrible cult favorite “Troll 2,” opens today at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin. It’ll hit New York and L.A. in a couple weeks and spread out from there. I’ll remind you about it later, but any Austinites within the sound of my e-voice should check it out immediately.

What was I up to over at Film.com this week? Golly, there was What’s the Big Deal?, focused on “La Dolce Vita,” a film I like very much. Then there was Eric’s Bad Movies, featuring “American Ninja,” about a ninja who is — wait for it — American. I also wrote a piece explaining the differences between the upcoming “Furry Vengeance” and the upcoming “Nightmare on Elm Street” remake.

Last Friday, I debuted a new column at Cinematical about religion in film. It’s called Cinemaligion! I love that title because it’s terrible but memorable. Cinemaligion! You should say it out loud. Anyway, the first Cinemaligion column is about “Footloose.” The feature will run every two weeks.

Thanks to everyone who’s been listening to “Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider” at PDX.fm! Remember, you can listen live at 11 a.m. (Pacific) every Friday at PDX.fm, or get the recording a couple hours later at the website or from iTunes. (Once again, ignore the “explicit” tag. We keep it PG.) Jeff is out of town this week, so I have a guest sidekick, Portland filmmaker and personal acquaintance Andy Blubaugh. Listen to us, won’t you? WON’T YOU? WHY WON’T YOU??

Subscribe to Eric D. Snider’s “In the Dark,” a weekly e-mail bringing you the latest movie reviews, DVD releases, and other pertinent info, here.

Ugh, that sounds so undignified, the dumpage of many links. Movie reviewing is not a pretty business!

The Sundance Film Festival ran from Jan. 21-31; here, merely eight days later, is a summary of all the Sundance-related content I produced, gathered into one handy location.

My daily diary entries are gathered into one feature article here: Eric D. Snider’s 2010 Sundance Film Festival Diary

Here are my reviews, all currently hosted either at Film.com or Cinematical:

Blue Valentine B
Buried B
Cyrus A-
Enter the Void B+
Four Lions A-
The Freebie B+
Frozen B-
Please Give B
The Runaways C
Splice B+

Here’s a wrap-up piece I wrote for Cinematical: 10 Sundance Films to Watch For

For some reason, a reporter from Salt Lake City’s Deseret News wrote a profile piece about me that ran during the festival: Former BYU humorist returns as a Sundance film critic

David Chen of Slashfilm is a prolific and highly skilled podcaster, to the extent that he can sometimes record a couple episodes while you thought he was just having lunch. I appeared in three of his on-the-fly reports at Sundance:

We meet for the first time (note the scholarly photo).
We talk about the Sundance films I didn’t like.
We talk about public screenings vs. press screenings.

Finally, if you click the “Sundance Film Festival” link under the “Movie Reviews” tab at the top of EricDSnider.com, you’ll see where additional reviews will appear as they are produced.

Here is what’s happening at Eric D. Snider Enterprises these days!

As you may recall, I’m on the Governing Committee of the Online Film Critics Society, and we’re trying to increase the group’s relevance in the lives of people who aren’t film critics. To that end, we have a blog in which items of interest to movie lovers everywhere are recapped, and a Twitter feed that will link to some of the same things. May I humbly insist that you follow @OFCS on Twitter and also politely demand that you bookmark our blog, or subscribe to its RSS feed, or whatever it is you kids do with your websites nowadays? Thank you very much indeed.

While you’re at the Twitter, remember that I can be found @EricDSnider thereat.

My good friend Dawn Taylor (@DawnTaylor666) recently launched a new weekly podcast, called Ham-Fisted Radio, in which all manner of topics are addressed, but mostly movies. She has a guest each week; so far, of the nine episodes she’s done, I’ve been the guest on five of them. I’m practically a co-host!

If you want to hear me and Dawn talk about stuff — and why wouldn’t you? — all the podcasts are archived at her site, where you’ll also find a link to where you can subscribe at iTunes. The podcasts have the “Explicit” tag on them, but that’s really just a precaution, in case somebody uses a salty word or two. The episodes I’ve been on have stayed at the PG-13 level. And in the most recent one, we performed a scene from “The Golden Girls” in which I played both Blanche and Sophia.

Alert readers may have noticed that it is January, and that January is when the Sundance Film Festival is, and that I usually go to the Sundance Film Festival. Sure enough, it starts Thursday night and runs through next week, and I will be there again, for the 11th year, writing reviews and commentary for Film.com and Cinematical.

Ever since 2003, I’ve also written a daily Sundance diary for your amusement (or, if you were not visiting my site in 2003, for the amusement of those who were). It is my intention, as of this moment, to continue the tradition. However, you should be aware that Sundance is exhausting enough by itself, and that writing a daily diary only increases the exhaustion factor, and that I have recently been trying to divest myself of things that add undue mental stress. It might turn out that the daily diary is one of those things, in which case I reserve the right to not do it. Either way, I’ll keep you apprised here at the blog.