My fellow Internet users, I am pleased to stand before you this evening to present the annual state of Snide Remarks address, which has never happened before and isn’t even really a “thing.”

It has been 11 months since the new batch of Kickstarter-funded Snide Remarks columns began its run. We have made great strides forward. Of the 50 columns promised, 38 have been delivered, and only five or six were about PETA. Very few of the columns caused the death of anyone directly. One of them described Arianna Huffington as some kind of mythical beast. That was fun. (Here are the archives, in case you missed one.)

I wanted to update you on some of the behind-the-scenes particulars. The idea of crowd-sourcing my freelance employment through Kickstarter was new to me — I think it was fairly new in general — and so there has been some trial and error. Here’s where we stand.

- I promised to deliver 50 columns in one year, starting March 7, 2011, and allowing myself two weeks off. In hindsight, this was hilarious. I burned up my two free weeks almost immediately, then had to throw myself on the mercy of the readers in a blog post aptly entitled “I’m dumb.” The consensus among commenters was that it was OK if it takes more than a year, as long as they get their 50 columns. I appreciate your understanding.

There were stretches in the past when I wrote Snide Remarks every single week for more than a year at a time, and I assumed I could do it again. What I neglected to consider was that pretty much all the circumstances are different now. For example, there was a time when Snide Remarks was available by subscription only, which meant that if I missed a week I would have to credit people’s accounts. The thought of manually adjusting all those accounts one by one was so nightmarish that I never missed a week. Also helping: for a big chunk of that time, I didn’t have much employment other than Snide Remarks.

When I was at the Daily Herald — that was what we called a “newspaper,” in a state known as “Utah” — I had a few impressive streaks of never missing a week. Heck, I was writing Snide Remarks TWICE weekly during some of that! But those columns were also much shorter than we are now accustomed to; it was fairly easy to take nothing more than a germ of an idea and lather it up to column length. I also wrote about a lot of local things. I also frequently had the luxury of being able to spend an entire day writing Snide Remarks without having to write anything else.

None of those things are true anymore. Now I am blessed with enough paid gigs to make a living, and while Snide Remarks is a key component, it’s not the only component. Those other paid gigs, though rewarding and enjoyable, are time-consuming, and everything — including Snide Remarks — is probably harder to write than it looks. (Unless it looks really, really, REALLY hard, in which case it is not as hard as it looks.) I’m writing for a general audience, not the readers of a dumb paper in Utah. And where I had plenty of administrative work to do at the newspaper, giving my fevered brain much-needed breaks, now pretty much everything I do requires some level of creativity. Even if I’m physically capable of standing here for 10 hours a day writing, it turns out I am not mentally capable. This has been a frustrating thing for me to accept.

- So far I’ve published 38 columns, with 12 still to come. I did that math myself, but it checks out. They’re still comin’, don’t worry. Obviously, it’s not going to happen within a year of the start date. That ship sailed long ago, and I was not on it.

- Once these 50 columns have been delivered, I’ll do another Kickstarter campaign to fund another 50. I’m not going to promise to do the next 50 in 52 weeks, though, because I am capable of learning from my mistakes. (This is a recent development.) I have a plan in mind that will work better. I’ll tell you about it when the time comes. The point is, there will be more Snide Remarks after this batch of 50 is done.

- A few words on the sponsored columns. The Kickstarter deal was that if you contributed at least $100, you got to choose the topic for one of the columns and put an ad at the bottom of it. Of the 19 people who did this — heroes, all of them — four chose to just give me the money and not claim their prize. (Or at least they never responded to the multiple emails I sent asking if they wanted to claim their prize.) Several others had an advertisement they wanted to include but left it up to me to choose the topic of the column. In other words, just because a column has a sponsor doesn’t necessarily mean that the sponsor chose the subject matter. Some did, some didn’t. Anyway, seven of the 12 columns yet to be delivered will be of the sponsored variety. So if you’re one of those seven sponsors, don’t worry.

Thank you, one and all, for supporting Snide Remarks. Whether you contributed to the Kickstarter campaign or are “just” a reader, I appreciate your enthusiasm, comments, feedback, and baked goods. I hope your investment, whether of money or of five minutes of your time per week, has been worth it. (Because there are no refunds.) Onward and upward!

P.S. No column this week. Suckers!

So here’s the thing. Remember that one time when I had the Kickstarter campaign for a year of “Snide Remarks,” and the deal was that I’d do 50 columns in 52 weeks — basically every Monday, except that I’d get a couple weeks off? Well, do you know what I didn’t take into account when I made those plans? I didn’t take into account that when I’m at a film festival, I cannot accomplish any work that isn’t immediately related to the coverage of that film festival.

My plan was to have a column written before I left for Tribeca so that I wouldn’t have to work on it while I was in New York. Now, I could make some excuses for why that didn’t happen, but they all boil down to the fact that I just didn’t get it done. I just didn’t. Oh, I tried. I have some great bits assembled. So funny! But nothing resembling a coherent (even for me) “Snide Remarks.”

So I figured I could either publish something that I’m not entirely 100 percent proud of — and let’s pretend that I’ve never, ever done that before, and definitely not during a film festival — or I could own up to my mistake and plead for your mercy and not run a column this week and make it up to you later. I have chosen the latter option.

Technically, I’ve now used up both of my free weeks, and believe me, I feel dumb for using them already, like when people on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” blow through their lifelines before they even get to the $100,000 question. You’ll still get your 50 columns, don’t worry — only 44 more to go! — even if I have to double up one week or something.

So that’s the story. I’m an idiot. Back on track next week, and then forever.

Love,
Eric

OK, so there are three new wide releases this week, and I didn’t see any of them. I am not to blame, however! I am blameless.

Tyler Perry’s “Madea’s Big Happy Family” wasn’t screened for critics at all. I caught it Friday afternoon and reviewed it for Film.com. Eh, it’s all right, whatever. The Disney nature documentary “African Cats” screened in the largest markets but not the mid-sized ones, goodness knows why.

“Water for Elephants” — starring R-Pattz and Reese With her spoon — screened everywhere, but I couldn’t attend the local screening due to the local publicist’s longstanding policy of being insane. I will probably catch it at some point, on account of I liked the book and I like old-timey circuses.

I’m at the Tribeca Film Festival for the week, so follow me on the Twitter for updates and stuff, if you want.

New movie reviews:
“Madea’s Big Happy Family” (C+) [Film.com]

Movie columns:
– Eric’s Bad Movies: “Can’t Stop the Music” (1980), starring the Village People. I know it goes without saying, but wow, is this ever bad. Just embarrassing, baffling, what-were-they-thinking? incompetence. I actually had to turn it off halfway through and finish it the next day because it was becoming unbearable. It’s on Netflix Instant. You should watch the first few minutes of it, just to get the idea. [Film.com]
– What’s the Big Deal?: “Network” (1976). I’d been meaning to do this one for a while, but it took the death of the director, Sidney Lumet, to finally motivate me. I accept full responsibility for Mr. Lumet’s death. [Film.com]
– How “Gulliver’s Travels” could have been fixed. [Film.com]
– Why the “Don’t think about it!” argument is dumb. [Film.com]

My other stuff:
Snide Remarks: “Soccer Punch” — Portland gets a new national pastime.

Miscellaneous merriment:
– The venerable and cuddly online film journalist Drew McWeeny wrote what appears to be the first chapter in a fantastic superhero-oriented story. It’s really a fun read, and he says more is coming soon. [Mulholland Books]
– A very talented fellow named Terje Sorgjerd shot time-lapse photography on the Spanish mountain El Teide. This video compilation is breathtakingly beautiful. [Vimeo]

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.

This used to be the Friday Movie Roundup, a collection of links to my reviews and movie-related features from the previous week. But from now on it’s the Friday Roundup of Links to Many Types of Things (title still in development). It’ll still be the movie stuff, plus links to anything else I happen to have written that week (like “Snide Remarks”), plus links to things that aren’t mine but that I found amusing during the preceding seven days.

So if you don’t check the site hourly, or subscribe to the RSS feeds, or follow me on Twitter, you’ll still be in the loop as long as you remember to look at this blog once a week. If you can’t manage that, just give me your phone number and I’ll call you and tell you when there’s something I think you should read.

New movie reviews:
“Scream 4″ (C)
“Rio” (B)
“The Conspirator” (C)
“American: The Bill Hicks Story” (B)

Movie columns:
– Eric’s Bad Movies: “Johnny Mnemonic” (1995). I was astonished to realize that despite Keanu Reeves’ well-deserved reputation as a terrible actor, I’d never featured one of his movies in this column. Finally rectified that situation with a movie that I can remember watching on VHS in late 1995 at my friend Nick’s house, but of which I had no actual memories. [Film.com]
– What’s the Big Deal?: “Eraserhead” (1977). Goodness knows I don’t like weirdness just for weirdness’ sake, but David Lynch’s debut is mesmerizing. [Film.com]
– Why a New Pee-wee Herman Movie Is a Bad Idea. Come, let us reason together. [Film.com]

My other stuff:
Snide Remarks: “Leaving in a Huff” — AOL’s new friend kills Cinematical

Miscellaneous merriment:
– Someone on Twitter called this “the ‘Troll 2′ of websites.” [Yvette's Bridal Formal]
– One of my all-time favorite stupid lines of dialogue is in “The Fast and the Furious.” It involves the term “sandwich crazy.” [YouTube]
– An image-based name-the-movie game called Clockbusters. The only one I couldn’t get was the one with the old man napping, the motorcycle, and the boy in the bow tie. [Veer]
– From “Saturday Night Live,” Kristen Wiig as a Southwest Airlines flight attendant. Great example of how so-so writing can be made hilarious by sterling delivery. [Hulu]
– Stephen Colbert can’t keep a straight face talking about pap smears at Walgreens. [Colbert Nation]
– How to fold a bandanna. Trust me, even if you don’t need to know how to fold a bandanna, you need to see this video. [YouTube]

In a perfect world, I would be writing “Snide Remarks” every week, and you would be reading it, and all would be edified. Our world is imperfect — but together we can take a step toward remedying that!

I’m excited to officially announce a Kickstarter campaign for A Year of Snide Remarks. It launched just before Christmas, but I wanted to wait until after the holidays to start the big push. THIS IS NOW THE BIG PUSH.

Here are the basics. I love writing “Snide Remarks” but can’t justify the time and energy it requires if it’s not producing income, because I’m a freelance writer and not independently wealthy. And since no reputable publication will pay me to write “Snide Remarks,” I now come to YOU, the readers, to be my employers.

For $5,000, I will write “Snide Remarks” every week for a year. (Well, 50 columns. I get two weeks off.) It’s unseemly to discuss financial matters in such a public fashion, but there it is. That’s my price. Five grand for 50 columns. Now you people, you pitch in, pass the virtual hat around, and collect $5,000.

Kickstarter works on an all-or-nothing basis. We have until Feb. 1 to raise $5,000 in pledges. If that money is raised by Feb. 1, then I’ll write “Snide Remarks” every week for a year, starting March 7. If we don’t get $5,000 in pledges by Feb. 1, nobody pays anything, no columns are written, and everyone is sad.

Continue reading…

I don’t write “Snide Remarks” columns regularly anymore, but I was pleased to do so on the occasion of the new “Twilight” movie, “Eclipse,” being released. I was especially pleased because it’s being published at Cinematical, which pays me money, rather than just at EricDSnider.com, which does not.

In other catching-up news: Last week’s movie reviews are “Eclipse” (at Cinematical), “The Last Airbender” (at Film.com) and “Micmacs” (at Film.com).

“Eric’s Bad Movies” at Film.com was about “Sleepwalkers,” a Stephen King misfire from 1992 involving cats, incest, and brief glimpses of Ron Perlman. “What’s the Big Deal?” addressed “Raging Bull,” the fine Martin Scorsese picture from 1980.

I also proposed an idea for a Smurfs-Garfield-Marmaduke crossover film.

“Eric’s Bad Movies” and “What’s the Big Deal?” won’t appear this week because I’m taking a brief vacation. Where will I be, you ask? Not that it’s any of your business, but Utah! And tomorrow, July 6, I’m having a tweet-up in Provo, and everyone is invited: friends, acquaintances, strangers, stalkers, readers, people who follow me on Twitter, people who follow me in real life, everyone! I hope to see you there! Yes, YOU, specifically!

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.

First, due to popular demand — and due to “New Moon” being really, really easy to make fun of — this week’s Snide Remarks is my rejected “New Moon” screenplay. These things practically write themselves.

At Film.com, the new What’s the Big Deal? column is taking the week off due to the holiday, but Eric’s Bad Movies is here, and in fact has been posted early! It’s a Thanksgiving miracle! The subject is “On Deadly Ground,” starring (and directed by!) Steven Seagal. Can you believe I’ve been doing this for more than a year and a half and this is the first Seagal movie I’ve done? I’ve done a few Van Dammes, though, and they’re pretty much the same.

Finally, allow me to reprint a post from this time last year:

With the Unspecified Holiday Season having descended upon us, you have perhaps wondered, “How can my gift shopping benefit Eric D. Snider?” And the answer lies in the Amazon affiliate program, of which I am a member.

It’s simple. Every time you plan to buy something on Amazon.com, come here to EricDSnider.com first. Under the “Buy Stuff” tab at the top of the page is an option to “Shop on Amazon.com.” Click that, and it takes you to Amazon’s home page, just like normal — except that now there is code embedded in it that will result in a small commission for me on everything you buy in that session.

It’s not a huge amount of money, but it helps cover the web-hosting fees, and it pays the salaries of the Laotian children who work in my sweatshop. It also helps me justify the time spent writing the columns and reviews that nobody’s paying me for, beyond the fact that I like typing and my chair is comfortable.

And hey, you’re shopping at Amazon anyway, so why not? It doesn’t affect anything at all in your shopping experience. It only produces a warm glow in your heart. And that’s really what this season is all about: redirecting incremental portions of holiday-based capitalism to me, Eric D. Snider.

P.S. If you want to bookmark the Eric-encoded Amazon link so you don’t have to come here first every time, this is the URL to bookmark: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2F&tag=thelandoferic&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325

P.P.S. It only works for Amazon.com, not Amazon.ca or Amazon.co.uk or any of the other crazy foreign Amazons. If you shop with one of those non-American Amazons, I don’t want your filthy money.

I started writing my weekly column “Snide Remarks” for my college paper way back in 1997, took it with me to the small daily paper I worked for after I graduated, and subsequently made it an online-only feature after that paper fired me. There have been a few gaps and hiatuses here and there, but basically the column has run nearly every week for 11 1/2 years.

In recent months, however, you may have noticed a decline in regularity. New columns have appeared on only 36 of the last 52 Mondays. It’s become like a TV show: a few weeks of new episodes, then a week or two off, then back again for a few weeks, and so forth. The difference is that writing the column was once part of my salary (at the newspapers, and subsequently when we charged a subscription fee to read it here), which meant I was motivated to write it AND had time allotted in which to do so. Now that’s no longer the case, and I have to focus my word-piling energies toward the things that pay the bills. My extravagant lifestyle of Hot Pockets and library books doesn’t come free!

But then I start to feel guilty. I know there are many of you who look forward to reading “Snide Remarks” every Monday, and you have no idea how grateful I am for that. Some of you have been around since the beginning, which is weird, because you’d think you’d have grown out of me by now. And I feel bad having to so frequently say, “Sorry, no column this week.” But I would also feel bad crankin’ out something mediocre just to avoid missing a week.

So we come to this:

As of now, “Snide Remarks” is no longer a weekly column.

It is now a quasi-weekly column. (That’s the best term I can think of. “Occasional” sounds too infrequent.)

When it runs, it will run on Mondays, as usual, and my goal is still to write it every week — the only difference is that you shouldn’t EXPECT it every week.

All that’s required here is an adjustment of perspective. Don’t be disappointed when it doesn’t appear; instead, be delighted when it does.

To be notified when a new “Snide Remarks” is published, you can use the RSS feed or, if you don’t know what “RSS feed” means, you can just get on the e-mailing list. Or you can visit the site every day anyway to read the blog and the movie reviews and stuff.

I appreciate your readership, and I hope you understand my position here. As a special gift to you, here is a picture of me at 17, taken from a video one of my high school classmates posted on Facebook.

So I wrote that parody of “Twilight” a couple weeks ago, and some of the comments people have posted have demonstrated something I should have thought of beforehand: If you write about a subject that interests teenage girls, a lot of teenage girls will respond, and a lot of teenage girls aren’t very smart!

In particular, there seems to be a lot of confusion over a very non-confusing sentence in the parody’s preface. I wrote:

["Twilight"] has been enjoyed by millions of readers, and hailed as the best book they’ve ever read by people who don’t read a lot of books.

Note that I didn’t say the only people who enjoy the book are those who don’t read much. I said the only people who say it’s the best book they’ve ever read don’t read much. Enjoying the book: fine. Believing it to be the best book you’ve ever read: you don’t read enough.

But apparently some of my readers don’t read enough, because their reading comprehension skills are questionable.

For example, comment #79:

Continue reading…

This week’s “Snide Remarks” is my rejected “Twilight” screenplay. I was very sad when the studio making the film turned it down. I mean, I tried to stay faithful to the book as much as I could. Tell me what you think. (There’s no audio version this week, but you can subscribe to it [i.e., the podcast] with this URL.)

Also in Monday news: This week’s edition of Eric’s Time Capsule at Film.com features the movie “Planes, Trains & Automobiles,” released 21 years ago this week. Buy a new set of shower-curtain rings to celebrate!

In the meantime, I am on the road! Today I’m driving to Utah for a week of giving thanks with family and friends. And really, there’s nothing like spending five days in Utah to remind you of your blessings, such as not living in Utah anymore. But I kid the Beehive State!