The man and knife in question.

The Derby Telegraph in Derbyshire, England, reports that a man got a 7-inch knife past the security checkpoint at Birmingham Airport, while his daughter’s soda was confiscated.

The man, Nick White, says he’s a construction worker and he forgot he had the knife in his pocket when he and his 13-year-old daughter went to the airport. He realized it was with him when he approached the security checkpoint and, not knowing what else to do (he didn’t want to just throw it away), put it through the scanner along with the other stuff from his pockets. And no one said anything.

His daughter, meanwhile, had her soda taken away due to the ban on liquids on airplanes.

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Mark Harris is by far the best of Entertainment Weekly’s three rotating back-page columnists. (Dalton Ross is too hipster-ironic-snarky, and why should I care what Stephen King has to say about anything other than books?) His entry in the June 1 issue is a prime example of his insight and intelligence. I nodded in agreement through the entire piece, and I’m not much of a nodder.

Entitled “Power to the People,” the column addresses this common Hollywood lie: “We’re just giving the people what they want.”

It’s the defiant lie told by those who want to pretend that their failures of ambition are your fault -— that because “the people” eat what they’re fed, they must like it. The moneymen behind Spiders of the Shrekibbean brag about meaningless numbers (Spider-Man 3 had the biggest opening weekend of all time!) and shrink from meaningful ones, like the fact that Spider-Man 3 cost more and will likely gross less than the first two.

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As foretold last week, there is no new “Snide Remarks” column today. You can well imagine my sadness over this fact. I’m on the road, on a bit of a “vacation,” you might say, except that I’m still doing some work. Just not “Snide Remarks.” So very sorry.

There probably won’t be one next Monday, either, but you never know. As I’m lazing about my parents’ house later this week, the mood might strike me and I might dash off an exceptionally witty bit of commentary. On the other hand, next Monday is Memorial Day, so not publishing anything would be a perfectly justifiable action on my part. It is all part of the mystery of being me!

I’ll still have some blog entries this week, more or less one per day as usual, so don’t forget about me entirely.

Finally, did you know that one (1) spider monkey weighs the same as 9.41 placentas? Or that it would take 720 giraffes’ necks to equal the Golden Gate Bridge? It’s true! These and many other important facts can be found at Weird Converter. Go amuse yourself there for a while.

While you weren’t looking, my brother and webmaster Jeff, acting more in his capacity as webmaster than brother, added a new little feature to the site. It pertains to links. Let’s say I was linking to XKCD, a very entertaining web comic that often deals with math and science and other matters of geekery. See that little icon next to “XKCD” in that link? That means that if you hover your mouse over the link, a small window will pop up showing you what the linked page looks like. Move your mouse away and it disappears. Fun!

What purpose does this serve? Almost none! But it’s nifty, so there it is. It’s only for links that take you away from EricDSnider.com, since we figured you don’t need previews of what other pages on this site look like. (They’ll look like the page you’re already on, only with different text. Duh.) And if everyone hates it, maybe we’ll take it away again. But everyone won’t hate it! It’s nifty!

Actually, it is useful when I’m linking to a few specific sites. If it’s an Amazon link, like this one, instead of showing you a picture of that Amazon page, it presents you with a text description of the item being linked. (Harry Potter 7, in this case.) It does the same for Wikipedia links, IMDb links, and probably some others.

Anyway, there it is, in case you hadn’t noticed it. Enjoy your mouse-hovering!

EDITED TO ADD: For those who do hate it, you can disable it simply by mousing over one of the links and clicking “Disable” in the upper right corner of the pop-up box. As long as you have cookies activated, it will remember to disable the feature whenever you visit the site.

For you Eager Eddies and Impatient Imogenes out there, here is my review of “Spider-Man 3,” which officially opens tomorrow but which has 10 p.m. and/or midnight screenings tonight in lots of places. With the previous two films in this series, I liked them more the more I thought about them. This installment produces the opposite reaction: The more I ponder it, the more disappointed I am.

To brighten your spirits, though, here is footage of Miss Kentucky displaying her awesome dance/seizure talents at the 1993 Miss America Pageant.

I’m having a hard time explaining the appeal of I Can Has Cheezburger, a Web site devoted to cute pictures of animals (mostly cats) that have been humorously captioned. I mean, it’s obvious why cute pictures and humorous captions would be appealing; what’s hard to explain is why it’s so appealing that I squeal with glee each time a new one is posted.

It started in January with the picture shown at right. The caption became the name of the site, and now dozens and dozens of similar pictures have been posted. Some are funnier than others, and many recent ones are responses to previous ones. For that reason, I recommend browsing to the last page of the site and working your way forward.

The basic idea, I guess, is that

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With all of pop-culture-savvy Mormondom (that’s about 50 people) abuzz over news of filmmaker Richard Dutcher’s announcement that he has left both the Mormon cinema movement and the Mormon church, it was only a matter of time before the man himself stepped forward to offer some clarifications. And now he has done so, not by writing another commentary in the Daily Herald, but by posting a comment on a blog. (See, mainstream media? Blogs ARE important!)

The site is By Common Consent, and it’s a smart, Mormon-faithful group of thoughtful writers. One of them, Taryn Nelson-Seawright, wrote a stirring essay about Dutcher’s work, prompting a lively Dutchergate discussion. Then Dutcher himself piped up. His comment is #77, and this link should take you directly to it.

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Kieth Merrill: You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.

Richard Dutcher’s commentary in last Thursday’s edition of the (Provo, Utah) Daily Herald sent shockwaves throughout the Mormon blogging community. (Of course there’s a Mormon blogging community. There’s a blogging community for everything.) I recommend reading it in its entirety, but here are some key excerpts:

The church would never allow shoddy, inexperienced architects and builders to create one of its temples. In its sacred commitment to excellence, the church searches for and employs those with the necessary talents, non-Mormons and Mormons alike. Some day, church leaders also will understand the power and potential of film. The cinema of a movement as great as Mormonism must be directed by great artists, not by inexperienced committees. Imagine the potential of images to convey the deepest, most sacred doctrines of Mormonism.

Look at the movies that play on the screen of the theater in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. These films are the introduction of Mormonism to hundreds of thousands of people from across the globe. Shouldn’t these be the most powerful films on the face of the earth? For whatever reason — nepotism, ignorance … who knows? — this opportunity is squandered. Why not share with visitors the beauty and power of Mormonism, rather than treating them to polite, remedial and not-so-factual recitations of Mormon History and scripture? Viewers should leave those films weak in the knees, their minds reeling, their spirits soaring. Film has the power to do that.

He also said he is no longer a practicing Mormon (a big shock to most readers), but he loves the church and its doctrines and has simply gone a different direction, spiritually.

On Saturday, the Herald ran a viewpoint by Chris Heimerdinger, a popular LDS novelist whose book “Passage to Zarahemla” is being made into a film to be released this summer. Heimerdinger’s comments don’t really interest me, so I’m not going to talk about them.

The real juicy response to Dutcher’s article was published right next to Heimerdinger’s, both covered by one central headline: “Answering Dutcher.” This one was by Kieth Merrill (misspelling of “Keith” is correct), who won a Best Documentary Feature Oscar in 1973 for “The Great American Cowboy.” He was a little annoyed by Dutcher’s dismissal of the films that play at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. These movies, first “Legacy” and most recently “The Testaments,” are hour-long motion pictures that depict stories, dramatized but fact-based, pertaining to Mormonism. Dutcher described them as “polite, remedial and not-so-factual recitations of Mormon History and scripture.” This offended Merrill because, um, he wrote and directed them.

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Richard Dutcher in his upcoming film “Falling.”

Richard Dutcher, whose 2000 film “God’s Army” launched a new wave of Mormon-themed theatrical features, announced two things last week: that he’s leaving Mormon cinema, and that he’s leaving the Mormon church.

This is big news to followers of LDS cinema, and small news to people who didn’t realize there was such a thing as LDS cinema. But in Utah there has been no bigger film-related story in this decade than Mormon cinema — films made by, for, and about Mormons.

“God’s Army,” released March 10, 2000, was the first. Its $2.1 million gross showed Utah filmmakers that a movie with a niche audience (Mormons comprise only about 2 percent of the U.S. population) could be successful, provided they kept costs low and turned out a good product. Dutcher himself made the movement’s second entry, “Brigham City” (2001). By the end of 2003, 10 more non-Dutcher LDS films had been released, some good, some bad, some profitable, some not. As of this writing, another dozen or so entries have been filed, including Dutcher’s third film, “States of Grace” (2005), which is far and away the best of the lot and one of the best films of any kind of that year.

Most of these played only in Utah theaters. A few did well enough to move into other locations, mostly in the western U.S., where the highest concentration of Mormon audiences is. None ever managed to be the illusory “crossover success” that many directors were hoping for; in general, non-Mormons have shown no interest in watching movies they perceived as being for Mormons only.

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Scott “The Angry Jew” Weinberg

My friend and colleague Scott Weinberg has a new blog called Adventures in Moviewatching that’s pretty good, as is everything he writes. Weinberg is an avid movie-watcher, an enthusiastic horror buff, and an often-enraged critic (his nom du net is “The Angry Jew”), and his observations are always worth checking out. As far as I can tell, and considering how many different places he writes for, the guy must never sleep. Someday that will catch up with him and he will die, but in the meantime, enjoy his comical semitic ramblings, and avoid making fun of the Philadelphia Eagles in his presence!

Curt “The Placated Mormon” Doussett

In other friends-of-Eric news, Curt Doussett — Utah ComedySportz co-owner, TV and theater actor, all-around good guy — is the star of the new Discovery Channel series “Hazard Pay,” which premiered last Wednesday. The series follows Curt around as he tries various dangerous occupations (repo man, skyscraper window-washer, etc.) for a day to see what they’re like. It’s a fascinating program, and Curt makes for a funny, personable host. It airs Wednesdays on Discovery at 8 p.m. ET/PT; double-check with your cable or satellite system to find it.