I’m back from my travels, and “Snide Remarks” is back with me. (I took it along as a sidekick.) This week’s edition, “A Good Sense of Rumor,” pertains to celebrities, and in particular the mocking of them.

Speaking of celebs, you might be interested in this post I wrote for Cinematical during the CineVegas Film Festival, in which Britney Spears and I attended the same party. OMG is right!

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.

A couple of my Cinematical pals posted articles this week that made me laugh. They might make you laugh, too, if you are a fairly hardcore movie buff.

First is Scott Weinberg’s response to the news that Hasbro and Universal are teaming up to make movies based on board games (including Candy Land). Weinberg (whose dental agony facilitated my recent trip to Mississippi, you may recall) provides seven other possible game-to-movie adaptations, including who would direct them. It’s the latter element that is most clever, in my opinion.

Then we have James Rocchi, the world’s politest Canadian, offering his Oscar predictions based on what he thinks Ernest Borgnine will vote for. Why Borgnine? Because Rocchi figures most of the Academy is like him: old, white, liberal, rich, and male. So when in doubt, ask yourself: What would Ernest Borgnine do? Rocchi writes in Borgnine’s voice, too, which makes it extra-funny.

A roundup of what I’ve written at Film.com since the last time I did one of these updates. If you want to keep track of me over there, you can bookmark this page. Or you can just wait until I summarize everything in one of these blog entries.

Five Film-Related Things I’m Thankful For | Just in time for Thanksgiving!

20th Century Fox Hates the Internet | I think they’re assuming this whole “Internet” thing won’t catch on.

Money: Or, Why You Can’t Blame Jason Lee for Making The Chipmunks | You’d do it, too, for that kind of money.

Films I’d Hate to Market: The Kite Runner and Persepolis | “The rape scene isn’t too graphic!”

Will Newspaper Film Critics Become Extinct? | Not to toot my own horn, but the Alabama joke is one of my all-time favorites.

Thoughts on a Keira-Free Pirates of the Caribbean 4 | Will people watch another “Pirates” movie without Keira Knightley? Um, yeah.

Quantity and Quality: The Top 5 Performers of the Year | Giving one great performance in a year is noteworthy. Giving two (or three!) deserves serious praise.

And here’s one from Cinematical, where most of what I write is more newsy than funny, so I don’t always tell you about it. But for the 12 Days of Cinematicalmas, I did a Retro Cinema piece on “Gremlins.” Enjoy!

My Cinematical overlords love Halloween, so we’ve been celebrating this month with retrospective reviews, lists, and other features, all related to scary movies.

Naturally, I’m here to tell you about my three contributions: a commemoration of “Twilight Zone: The Movie,” a look back on “Blacula,” and a by-the-numbers guide to the “Friday the 13th” films (total victims, number of shower scenes, etc.).

Visit this link for a list of all of Cinematical’s Halloween 2007 entries. There are some fun reviews and lists there.

Since you can’t be expected to keep up everything I write — heck, even I don’t always read what the Laotian kids in my sweatshop crank out before I put my name on it and send it to the editors — I thought I’d list some of the more noteworthy entries from recent weeks at Film.com and Cinematical.

- “Predictions for Tyler Perry’s Next Five Movies”: This one might not do much for you if you’re not the least bit familiar with his films (”Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” etc.).

- “An Open Letter to Eugene Levy”: It’s an intervention, really.

- “Science Helps Us Predict When Acting Careers Will End”: A story detailing the mathematical formula used to predict when certain untalented and/or unnecessary celebrities will finally stop getting work. It comes complete with an editor’s note reminding the reader that, ha ha, we’re just kidding! This was deemed necessary in light of Keira Knightley’s tendency to sue people who point out the very obvious fact that she has anorexia.

Continue reading…

I am pleased to announce that, as part of my goal to write for every website on the Internet, I’m now on the blogging team at Cinematical!

Cinematical is an excellent source for movie news, with a couple dozen entries a day covering all manner of film-related items. I’m working specifically for the Cinematical Indie sub-section, focusing on independent films. Some of these articles show up on the main Cinematical page, but most stay in the indie section, with the cool kids.

Most of what I write for Cinematical Indie will be news-oriented, though the bloggers are encouraged to put a personal spin on it to liven it up. If you’re not interested in movie news, don’t feel like you’re obligated to read it just because it was written by me, is what I’m saying.

If you do want to keep tabs on me, you can bookmark my blogger page. It lists all the articles I’ve written for Cinematical.

(Likewise, for my stuff at Film.com, bookmark this link.)

For daily updates from the movie world, Cinematical really is a useful site, and I’m not just saying that because I write for them now. There are a lot of good writers there, and they save you the trouble of monitoring lots of different movie sites because they cull from them and report the best stuff anyway.

Hooray for fun new writing gigs! And hooray for having seen the last of stuff like this!