Oscar Nominees: Hope, Against All Odds
“Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer,” Paul wrote in Romans 12:12. Maybe a few characters from this year’s crop of Best Picture Oscar nominees are familiar with that verse: Perhaps Solomon Northup from 12 Years a Slave, or Philomena from the film of the same name. Many others are probably […]
Movie Monday: The LEGO Movie Bricks Out Competition
February is generally thought of as a cinematic wasteland—a month when studios dump their creative dregs on desperate audiences. But The LEGO Movie is proving that any bleak landscape can be gussied up with a lot of colorful, plastic bricks. Yes, everything is still awesome in the world of LEGOs. Piling on its week-one win, […]
Shirley Temple: The Child Star Who Grew Up
Shortly after I read Bob Hoose’s blog on the troubled post-pubescence of Justin Bieber, I learned that Shirley Temple Black—the first and perhaps greatest of Hollywood’s child celebrities—died at the age of 85. For those of us who’ve tracked the often sadly predictable career trajectory of many a child/teen star, it’s interesting to take a […]
Movie Monday: The Lego Movie
Sure, it’s only been out for one weekend. But it’s still not too early to call The LEGO Movie a real blockbuster. One hundred minutes of paradoxically anti-materialistic product placement—and a strangely delightful film in spite of it—pieced together a fantastic, $69.1 million opening weekend (estimated) to build a colorful brick tower atop the box […]
Unfinished
Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died Feb. 2, found in his New York apartment with, we’re told, a heroin syringe sticking out of his arm. He was 46 years old—just two years older than me. Much has been said already of how he died. But I seem to be thinking more about when—not when as in […]
Movie Monday: Is It Awkward That Ride Along Wins Again?
Even though the nation’s collective attention was turned toward a certain football game in New Jersey, most movie theaters across the country were still open for business. And perhaps they had the right idea: A movie—almost any movie—might’ve been preferable for Denver Broncos fans (like me) to watching their boys in orange-and-blue get drubbed. So […]
No Oscar For You! Nomination Taken Back for ‘Alone Yet Not Alone’
The song “Alone Yet Not Alone,” from the Christian movie of the same name, made headlines when it snagged a surprise Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. Now that its nom’s been revoked, it’s making headlines again. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rescinded its nomination because of what the Academy characterized as […]
Movie Monday: Ride Along Again
If you release a movie in a forest of theaters and no one goes to see it, does it make a sound? Not at the box office, apparently. While two new movies—I, Frankenstein and Gimme Shelter—made their way to the Cineplex this past weekend, movie audiences yawned a collective yawn and left the box office’s […]
Movie Monday: Ride Along
Ubiquity, thy name is Kevin Hart. It’s nearly impossible to escape the comedian/actor’s influence these days. He was in three movies in 2013, including his stand-up flick Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain. He’s scheduled to appear in four more in 2014—beginning with the buddy-cop flick Ride Along. I’m assuming it’ll be just a matter of […]
Movie Monday: Lone Survivor
It’s lonely at the top, they say. So it’s sorta fitting that Lone Survivor, a bloody and harrowing depiction of the horrors and heroism of war, would stand atop the box office ratings. Lone Survivor, technically in its third weekend of release, rolled from two theaters to nearly 3,000 and earned an estimated $38.5 million […]