Movie Monday: Green Lantern
Green Lantern’s mighty ring of power can do many wondrous things. But it couldn’t generate much excitement at the ol’ movieplex this weekend. Oh sure, Ryan Reynolds’ alter-ego Hal Jordan flew to the top of the box office, zapping his way to a very green $52.7 million. But considering that Warner Brothers spent an estimated […]
Movie Tuesday: The Hangover Part II
The box office derby sent us Plugged In movie reviewers searching for Alka-Seltzer over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. It kinda made us feel a little headache-y and sick to our stomachs. If you’re looking for the reason for our billious angst, look no further than The Hangover Part II, which lorded over the box […]
Aaarrr! Hornswaggled!
When I was a kid, I thought pirates were pretty nifty. They had eye patches, peg legs, cool parrots (who might also have eye patches and peg legs), cool hats, pieces o’ eight (whatever those are). Then one night (surely without my parents’ knowledge) I was cruising around the television dial and settled on a […]
Movie Monday: Did Pirates Find Treasure?
Shiver me timbers! Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides raked in plenty of booty this weekend, with Capt. Jack Sparrow dragging more than 90 million dubloons out of the North American box office. You’d think that kind of loot would be enough to make any Roger jolly. But even though Pirates hornswaggled the biggest […]
Comfortably One
Time magazine recently published an article (“Bursting the Bubble: Are We Isolated in a World Wide Web of One?”) that discussed how search engines and social networks tailor our searches and pages for us, giving us stuff they think we want. Google and Facebook carefully track how we spend our time online and then, once […]
Movie Monday: Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Thor
Once again, Thor thundered mightily at the box office, bellowing to a $34.5 million weekend to take the title. But Bridesmaids, a gross-out R-rated comedy by and for women, won a nice consolation prize. But not the crown for Miss Congeniality, mind you. Bridesmaids earned $24.4 million this weekend, sidling into second place. That’s about […]
Heroes in Our Midst
We love our heroes. The success of Thor and the bevy of superheroes due to invade both the big and small screen is, I think, an illustration of that. We’re all looking for folks we can look up to, folks we can emulate, folks who put their own lives in danger for the good of […]
Movie Monday: Thor
Well, they had a nice run. They tore past the competition last week like they were so many tardy tortoises. But Vin Diesel and Paul Walker of Fast Five just couldn’t outrace the mighty hammer of Thor. Thor, Marvel’s latest comic book icon to be trotted out to the big screen, thwacked its way to […]
Truth, Justice and, Um, Something Else
On April 28, Superman announced his intention of giving up his U.S. citizenship. “I’m tired of having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy,” the Man of Steel says in the 900th issue of Action Comics. “‘Truth, justice and the American way’—it’s not enough anymore.” It’s a pretty serious step, renouncing one’s citizenship. If […]
Movie Monday: Fast Five
Score one for high-octane entertainment. Fast Five, the latest installment in the Vin Diesel-anchored The Fast and the Furious franchise, screamed past its competitors for a massive $83.6 million weekend take. While the fact that Fast Five won the weekend’s box office crown surprised absolutely no one, its margin of victory was noteworthy: It earned […]