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!

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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!

Look, I could sit here and make excuses for not having a new “Snide Remarks” this week. But I respect you more than that! (As far as you know, anyway.)

Actually, I had two different columns on the ol’ word-processing assembly line at various times and was never able to massage either of them into a presentable condition. I’m all about quality, you know. So they will have to wait until next week.

As a minor consolation prize, please accept this list of four recent Film.com articles that you might find enjoyable:

Some Ideas for the New Hannah Montana Movie – They’re making one, you know. Not a concert film, but an actual movie. *shudder*

Three People Crazier Than Mike Tyson Who Need a Documentary – To experience the article the way I originally wrote it, change the very last word of the second paragraph from “murdered” to “raped.” See? Much more awful my way.

Hey, Internet! Stop Running Movie Photos That Don’t Show Anything! – Self-explanatory.

A Careful Analysis of Will Smith’s July Superpowers – He’s invincible!

And hey, did you see this video of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly spoiling the ending of “The Dark Knight”? It’s funny, and they’re only kidding about the spoiling. (Contains PG language.)

You think “Dark Knight” fans are bad? You should have seen the fervor when Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” was released! That’s the shaky premise of this week’s “Snide Remarks” column, entitled “The Fanboys Respond to ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ 1595.” Enjoy and forsooth and stuff. Oh, and there’s not a podcast version because much of the effect is lost when it’s spoken rather than written.

For the holiday, in place of a regular-size “Snide Remarks” (or, more likely, in place of no “Snide Remarks” at all), we have a miniature one, entitled “The Signs of New York.” There’s no audio version because it’s really short and mostly pictures.

Happy Memorial Day!

(A message from Hillary Clinton.)

My fellow Americans, thank you for letting me take a few moments of your time to address the current situation.

There are some who would look at the comments posted about this week’s “Snide Remarks,” entitled “An Exclusive Interview with Indiana Jones,” and conclude that it’s unpopular. They would take all those negative comments to mean that a lot of regular readers simply did not enjoy this week’s installment.

I know that’s the conclusion the news media wants you to reach. They’ve been hammering it home over and over again. “Eric, forget it!” they say. “This column failed. You gave it a try, it didn’t work, and now it’s time to move on. You lost this one.”

Well, I say that’s a little premature. I don’t know about you, but where I’m from, we wait until ALL the votes have been cast before we reach a conclusion. I’d say Eric still has a very real chance of winning this one and declaring the Indiana Jones edition of “Snide Remarks” a success!

Has every “Snide Remarks” reader sounded off yet? No they have not. At the moment, only 34 comments have been submitted, and a full FIVE of those have been positive! How many regular “Snide Remarks” readers have not voted yet? Hundreds! Thousands, even! Who’s to say the vast majority of those won’t turn out in favor of the column? We don’t know until all the votes have been cast.

There were also some spam comments that showed up in the spam filter that Eric’s opponents are insisting should not be counted in his favor for the simple fact that they are spam and don’t have anything to do with the column. I say that’s undemocratic. Let ALL the votes be counted! The news media has already crowned the detractors as the victors here, so I know they don’t want the truth to come out. They’re afraid that if we count those spam votes, we’ll see what I already know: that most people LOVED the column and Eric has scored another success.

And consider this: Where people have liked the column, they have really, REALLY liked it. The victories, where they have occurred, have been by a substantial margin. That may be an important factor in the general election, when this column will go up against one of Dave Barry’s.

Frankly, I’m also disturbed by the sexist tone that a lot of the comments have taken. “Kinda lame.” “Not my thing.” “I didn’t laugh once.” Is nobody else appalled by this? Where’s the outrage here? If Eric were a woman and people had said these things, the news media would be hysterical with rage! As it is, since he’s a man, people can just say these hurtful things and nobody bats an eye. I thought we’d gotten past this kind of sexism in America, but I see it’s still alive and well.

In conclusion, let me summarize: Eric’s Indiana Jones edition of “Snide Remarks” is overwhelmingly popular and most people have loved it. In fact, it is the MOST POPULAR “SNIDE REMARKS” COLUMN EVER PUBLISHED! Thank you and goodnight!

I’m not gonna lie to you: Mississippi was a blast. I LOVED the Oxford Film Festival and the town of Oxford itself. I had a great time. I will tell you all about it in this week’s “Snide Remarks”…

… which is aaaalmost done but not quite. The sudden Mississippi trip threw my schedule (such as it was) out of whack, so now I have to whack it back in, or however that figure of speech works out. Stay tuned.