Steve Jobs: Entertainment Star
Steve Jobs, the computer visionary who helped create Apple, then was fired from Apple, then came back to Apple to take the business to unprecedented heights, is stepping down from his post as the company’s CEO. Speculation is that Jobs’ health forced his hand: He’s suffered from a form of pancreatic cancer for seven years. […]
Movie Monday: The Help
The calendar may say we have a month of the season left to enjoy. But as far as Hollywood is concerned, summer’s over. Audiences have quaffed the big blockbusters like so much iced tea and studios are pushing their bargain-basement remainders to the theaters—leaving room for some quiet holdovers to make a mark. Case in […]
The Stitchuation
So, would this count as a non-endorsement deal? Abercrombie & Fitch, the youth clothing marketeer, has apparently offered Mike “The Situation” Sorriento of MTV’s Jersey Shore a boatload of cash. And all The Situation (or any other Shore cast member) has to do is stop wearing A&F clothes. “We are deeply concerned that Mr. Sorriento’s […]
Movie Monday: Those Apes Need No Help
You can’t keep a good ape down. That’s what movie prognosticators learned this weekend as Rise of the Planet of the Apes repeated as box office champ. The simian thriller peeled $27.5 million—50% less than last week, but still enough to best the rest, thanks to a bunch of underperforming entrants. Not that we can […]
Shelved
Don’t look now, but Apple—the quirky computer company of the 1980s, the one that always played nebbish outsider to Microsoft’s football jock in the 1990s—is now the most valuable company in the United States. As of Wednesday’s stock market close, Apple is worth an estimated $337 billion—surpassing old champ Exxon by a mere $6,000,000,000, give […]
Movie Monday: Going Ape for the Apes
We know that entertainment can impact the way we think or feel about certain things. Movies can make us happy or sad or encourage us to buy lots and lots of action figures. Sometimes they can even affect how we look at and deal with the world around us. So with all that in mind, […]
Don’t Take Media Influence for Granite
I never really wanted granite countertops before television. I was just dandy with our tile countertops. Have been for years. They support pots and pans. They repel spilled apricot juice. They don’t crack under heat. I mean, what else do we really require of our countertops, functionally speaking? I never really thought of counters as […]
Movie Monday: Cowboys & Smurfs
You’d think the shootout would’ve been a forgone conclusion. Cowboys & Aliens had all the star power, all the firepower and some serious buzz. It had James Bond, Indiana Jones and a load of nasty aliens. Who would’ve thought it could’ve been challenged by a bunch of modified cartoon characters just three apples high? When […]
Oh, Cry Me a Movie
What’s the saddest movie ever? Bambi? Old Yeller? Transformers: Dark of the Moon? Pish. Don’t make the science guy over there in the corner laugh. Oh, sure, those movies might be sad. They might even make some folks shed a tear or two. But if you want to see something that’ll reliably make you bawl […]
Movie Monday: Captain America Takes Down Harry
Harry Potter? Soooo last week. There’s a new hero in theaters now: Or, should I say, a new superhero. Captain America augmented his red, white and blue color scheme this weekend with a whole lotta green—$65.8 million, to be exact. That officially makes Cap the biggest superhero star of the summer (on opening weekend, at […]