Jeff Bayer and I did the first edition of our new Internet show, “Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider,” last Friday on PDX.fm. There were no reports of injuries or damages, and the studio was not on fire when we finished, so we consider it a success. At any rate, we’re doing another one this Friday at 11 a.m. (PDT), and every foreseeable Friday, until someone makes us stop.

There are several ways you can listen to this show!

- You can go to PDX.fm and listen live while it happens. This is the most funnest way, because you can send us instant messages that we might respond to on the air. (Correction: We’ll have that capability soon, maybe next week. We haven’t been entrusted with all the technical applications yet.)

- You can subscribe to the show at iTunes. Here’s a direct link. Or you can just search for “Movie B.S.” at iTunes. Ignore the “explicit” tag. Our show isn’t explicit. Apple requires that tag if you ever say more than the occasional “damn,” and we’re reserving the right to drop an S-word (Jeff said one last week!!) or maybe a B-word. We’re keeping it PG, anyway.

- You can go to our page at PDX.fm and listen to shows once they’re posted there, usually within a couple hours of broadcast.

Thanks to all who listened or downloaded last week! We had fun, and the show is bound to get better as we go. The pilot episode is never as good as the rest of the series, right? Maybe later in the season we’ll replace one of the characters (probably Jeff) with a sassy neighbor, or a talking donkey.

My friend and fellow critic Jeff Bayer and I are thrilled to announce a new Internet-radio program launching tomorrow, April 2: “Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider.” (Do you get it???) For an hour every Friday, starting at 11 a.m. Pacific, we will broadcast live at PDX.fm, talking about movies, films, flicks, and cinema.

We’ll have reviews of the week’s new releases, of course, along with several other scintillating features. I like “Fixer & Defender,” where Jeff explains how a movie could be improved, and I defend it as is. (This will become a problem for me when the movie is, for example, “Leap Year.”) We’ll also rip on the Eric’s Bad Movies selection of the week, and tell you about the weird people we encounter at screenings, and make up new ideas for films off the top of our heads, and fun stuff like that.

You can listen live at PDX.fm at 11 a.m. Pacific every Friday. Each episode will also be available for free download after the fact, like a podcast. Or, to put it another way, we’re doing a weekly podcast that you can subscribe to, and you can also listen live as we record it.

Oh, and while the Internet allows us to swear more than actual radio does, we’re not going to. At least, not a lot. We’ll try to keep it PG at the most, since we know our damn mothers might be listening.

(P.S. Thanks to longtime devoted Eric D. Snider aficionado Jerilyn for designing our logo! You will not be paid.)

Hey, Portlanders! And people near Portland! Do you want to see a documentary about the history of film criticism, followed by a panel discussion featuring several prominent local film critics and also me? And do you also have nothing else to do on Valentine’s Day? Then I have just the thing!

On Sunday, the Portland International Film Festival will screen the film “For the Love of Movies” at 4:45 p.m. in the Whitsell Auditorium at the Portland Art Museum downtown. Immediately afterward, the filmmaker, Gerald Peary, will join me, Shawn Levy, Aaron Mesh, Erik Henriksen, and D.K. Holm for a panel discussion and Q&A about, I dunno, movie reviewing or something. Individual tickets to the screening/panel are $10, and you can buy them at the door. If you come, be sure to say hi afterward. I’ll be the one with the beard. No, three of us have beards. I’ll be the kind of round-shaped one. No, that’s most of us, too. I’ll be the one named Eric D. Snider.

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.

Physically, I haven’t gone anywhere lately. I had to miss my first-ever trip to the Telluride Film Festival because it coincided with my health problems, and then I had to miss the Toronto Film Festival because it coincided with none of the people I write for wanting to cover any expenses. But who needs to travel when there’s the Internet?? I’ve been everywhere on the Internet lately! Here’s a sampling.

NPR! I was on National Public Radio! Weird, right? Back on July 28, I wrote a piece for Cinematical about how the word “retard” had been dubbed out of the movie “Miss March” for its DVD release, even though the rest of the film continued to be intentionally offensive, vulgar, and outlandish. (I was reviewing the DVD for Film.com.) NPR’s Neda Ulaby saw the piece and contacted me for an interview, presumably because when you think of retarded people and political correctness, you think of me, Eric D. Snider.

Two days later, I went to the NPR affiliate station in Portland (Oregon Public Broadcasting) and talked to Neda, who was safely located in Washington D.C. I gather that at this point she wasn’t sure what direction the story would take, or what the overall story even was — it wasn’t JUST going to be about this particular DVD being edited — so she talked to me about a variety of things, covering all the bases. That’s what good reporters do. And it’s why, despite talking to me for 15 minutes or so, only a brief snippet of the conversation actually made it into the story.

Continue reading…

Whew! Such a day it’s been! But enough about my personal life. Here’s a new edition of “Snide Remarks,” entitled “How Sweat It Is,” about my perspiration habits.

Over at Film.com, “Mystery Men” is the subject of Eric’s Ten-Year Itch. I also have a review of Hollywood’s Shameful Secret® “The Collector” there. And at Cinematical, here’s my review of “Aliens in the Attic,” plus an item about the word “retard” being removed from the DVD version of “Miss March,” plus an item defending Netflix’s honor against a cranky old man who writes for Time magazine.

By the way, the “retard” item led, rather improbably, to my being interviewed by NPR’s Neda Ulabi. Her story will air sometime this week. I will say something about it on Twitter (which means it will show up in the right-hand column here) once I find out when.

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.

Back in the days of the Garrens Comedy Troupe at BYU, I wrote a song in which I sang the names of all of the LDS Church’s current general authorities, all 100 or so of them. ‘Twas a big hit, back in the day. (The first performance of it was in early 1996.) But as Mormons are well aware, twice a year, at general conference, there are usually a few G.A.’s released and new ones called to replace them. So the song was always being updated.

The last update was for my second CD, in 2005. I’ve had no incentive to update “The General Authorities Song” since then because I haven’t been performing at all, much less for a mostly Mormon audience. But then I got word from some friends of mine that their children had been listening to the most recent recording, and were delighted by it, and have even memorized a lot of it (which, believe me, is no picnic). And they were greatly desirous that I should update it, particularly since several of the important names in the song have, um, died since the last revision.

So … I did it. Here’s the new version, accurate as of the most recent changes at the April 2009 General Conference. I slapped together a recording to send to my friends and their children, and you can listen to it too. Non-Mormons probably won’t recognize any of the names (well, except for Gary Coleman and Anthony Perkins, since those are also the names of famous actors), but even Mormons wouldn’t recognize a lot of them. Many of the men were called recently and haven’t done anything yet to gain notoriety in the LDS world. So I guess to the extent that the song is fun, it is fun because, well, there are a lot of names, and I sing them really fast. I guess.

Happy April 20 to you! For some of you, 4/20 means celebrating marijuana. For others, it means celebrating Hitler’s birthday. For still others, it means celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Columbine shootings. Whatever your celebration of choice, I hope you are able to spend it with friends and loved ones, stoned.

Speaking of Columbine, one of the movies that got blamed for it was “The Basketball Diaries” — which, coincidentally was released April 21, 1995, and is the subject of this week’s edition of Eric’s Time Capsule at Film.com.

Last week’s Time Capsule was “James and the Giant Peach.” You may recall that this film was blamed when a disturbed youth hijacked a giant peach and rolled over his aunts with it.

Filling in for the ailing Mike Russell, I appeared on KUFO’s Cort & Fatboy program Friday to discuss “State of Play” and “Crank: High Voltage.” You can hear it in the C&F podcast, available here. I show up about two-thirds of the way in. (If you download it, I’m at 38:45.)

My late reviews of “Crank: High Voltage” and “17 Again” are also online, for your approval.

Elsewhere, Eugene Novikov summarizes the weekend box office in the style of H.P. Lovecraft.

Here’s FX’s safe-for-TV edit of Samuel L. Jackson’s famous line from “Snakes on a Plane.”

At Post Modern Barney, there is a list of uncomfortable plot summaries (some of them involving adult language). For example, “The Empire Strikes Back”: Boy is abused by midget, kisses sister, attempts patricide.

Finally, my 2-year-old nephew Logan says: “Wait, what?”

Do you remember how last year around this time I took a last-minute trip to Oxford, Miss., to appear on a panel at the Oxford Film Festival, filling in for my friend Weinberg, who’d had a dental emergency? No? Well, you can read about it here.

The point is, I had a great time, and they’ve invited me back for the 6th Annual Oxford Film Festival this weekend. I’m on the jury that will award prizes to the short films playing in the festival, and I’ll be on a panel discussion on Friday. The panel is free and open to the public, so if you’re near Oxford, why not swing by? I mean, honestly, what’s stopping you?

The topic is “What Is the Role of a Film Critic?” and the official description is: “Are critics meant to serve as mediators between a film and its audience only before they purchase a ticket, or do they instead help to shape the way we think about movies in general?” Good question! I guess that’s what we’ll be talking about. Kim Voynar of Movie City News will be the moderator; Weinberg (barring any further dental mishaps) and I will be panelists, along with Jeff Wells, James Rocchi, and a few others; and I assume there will be a Q-and-A at the end.

It’s at 10:30 a.m. this Friday, Feb. 6. at the Overby Center on the Ole Miss campus in Oxford. If you attend, be sure to come up and say hi to me afterward, if only to prove that there are people in Mississippi who know who I am.

On Aug. 16, 2008, Christian and Stephanie Nielson, young parents of four children, were in a small-plane crash in Arizona. Their flight instructor, Doug Kinneard, was killed, and the Nielsons sustained near-fatal injuries. Christian suffered burns on more than 30% of his body; Stephanie, 80%. They remained unconscious and in critical condition for weeks.

The reason this incident came to my attention is that Stephanie is the sister of Chris Clark, and Chris and his wife Lisa are two of my best friends. I’ve mentioned them in “Snide Remarks” many times, usually under their pseudonyms Monty and Claire. Their children include Miles and Owen, the latter of whom once had bees in his head and the bees were crazy. I love the Clarks dearly, and that includes their extended family, most of whom I’ve met and laughed with several times.

Anyway, Christian and Stephanie are doing miraculously well. They’ve been transferred up to Utah, where most of their family lives, and Stephanie’s siblings are helping with the kids. But there is still a long road of recovery ahead of them, and that road is paved with obscene hospital bills and other medical costs.

Before the accident, Stephanie wrote a blog called the NieNie Dialogues (get it, StephaNIE NIElson?) that was popular among her fellow young moms. The blogging community has rallied together to support her and Christian, organizing auctions and other fundraisers and setting up a recovery fund, and now those efforts have led to a book — a book that includes a brand-new, previously unpublished “Snide Remarks” column by me, Eric D. Snider.

The book, entitled “Something Cleverish,” was the brainchild of Sue at Navel Gazing at Its Finest. The idea is that since Stephanie was a popular blogger, a few dozen of her fellow bloggers would contribute humorous essays to create a funny, lighthearted book that people will enjoy reading, with all proceeds going directly to the recovery fund. There are 43 writers in the book, of which Chris Clark and I are the lone males. I don’t know if you’d know any of the other writers, but the list of them (with links to their blogs) is here. The essays they contributed to the book aren’t about Stephanie; they’re merely in her honor.

My article is called “In Which It Is Hard to Throw Away a Desk.” It’s a fairly typical “Snide Remarks” column in that it relates an incident from my personal life that makes me look foolish and shortsighted. I believe you will enjoy it.

And the only way for you to read it is to buy this book.

Yes, I’m blackmailing you.

The book costs $19.60. It’s published on demand by Lulu, which takes $8 for itself to cover printing costs. You can also buy a digital copy, which you can download immediately in PDF form, and Lulu doesn’t take anything — the entire $19.60 goes to the recovery fund. Either way, you’re supporting a worthy cause, and you get a book full of amusing prose to boot, including a “Snide Remarks” column that you can’t read anywhere else.

If you prefer to just donate a pile of cash to the recovery fund, details on how to do so — via PayPal, check, or bank transfer — are here.

I can tell you that the family is extremely grateful for all the support they’ve received so far. More fundraisers are on their way, including one next week in Provo. I hope you will buy the book, perhaps multiple copies, or contribute to the recovery fund in some other way. In the meantime, thank God for your blessings, and go hug your kids why don’t you?