Movie Monday: The Hobbit Remains Unbroken
Despite a challenge from two formidable newcomers, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies once again stood at the summit of the box office’s lonely mountain, presumably hurling taunts down at the movies below. The third Hobbit movie pillaged moviegoers for an estimated $41.4 million in the days following Christmas, bringing its estimated total take to a very […]
Television Tops 2014: Paul Asay’s Year-End Picks
Television just keeps getting better and better. It also gets worse and worse. It’s the frustrating paradox of reviewing television. While TV-based stories have gotten more nuanced and complex, they’ve also become more needlessly foul and salacious—and sometimes it seems like Emmy awards often go hand in hand with withering content. Which leaves discerning viewers […]
Movie Monday: The Battle of the Five Armies
What was the secret to having a successful movie this past weekend? Colons. Four of the week’s Top Five box-office finishers sported that oft-overlooked double-decker period in its titles. Leading the charge, naturally, was a bevy of punctuation-loving dwarves in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. (Even the picture seems to pay homage: […]
Why I Like ‘The Interview’
We talk a lot at Plugged In about how influential movies can be in our lives. But rarely do we see one cause an international incident. The Interview was supposed to be a silly, throwaway R-rated comedy—counter programming to the slew of high-prestige Oscar hopefuls trundling out this month. I mean, the flick stars Seth Rogen […]
Movie Monday: Exodus Gods and Kings
Well, Exodus: Gods and Kings didn’t exactly part the waters. But during a slow December weekend, Ridley Scott’s biblical epic still showed enough Old Testament oomph to reach the top of the box office mountain, chiseling out a less-than-commanding $24.5 million (estimated, of course). How does Exodus stack up with other would-be biblical blockbusters? Well, it […]
Movie Monday: Mockingjay Repeats … Again
If you’ve seen The Hunger Games movies, you know that the mockingjay is known for its ability to imitate: Whistle a few bars and the mockingjays will sing it back to you, note for note. So perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us that the mockingjay’s namesake movie has shown a talent for repetition, too. The Hunger Games: […]
Wishful TV Thinking
Primetime television has never been a hoppin’ forum for realism. Trust me on this: I grew up watching Fantasy Island. And while our television sets have since eschewed tropical-based dream fulfilment via a white-suited Ricardo Montalban, we still like to get away from it all via the tube. Our culture’s most popular, buzzy shows are […]
Movie Monday: Mockingjay Flies Higher than Penguins
In this battle of the birds, the penguins never really had a chance. They’re flightless, for one thing. And while the titular stars of the Penguins of Madagascar may scheme a bit better than your common flightless foul (emus hardly ever hatch such outlandish plots), that’s hardly enough to bring down the graceful and imitative […]
The Little Mermaid Turns 25 (Which Is a Few Years Younger Than the Garden of Eden)
The Little Mermaid opened nationally in theaters 25 years ago Monday (Nov. 17). It proved to be a pretty significant day in the annals of animated filmdom, marking not just the beginning of Disney’s fabled renaissance (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King followed hot on the Mermaid’s scaly heels) but also an […]
Bill Cosby: Actions and Accusations
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to watch The Cosby Show in the same way again. I loved that show. Was a fan of it ever since I was a little kid. For a lot of us growing up in the 1980s, Bill Cosby, who played the funny, wise, patriarch of the Huxtable family, […]