Elizabeth Taylor: 1932-2011
Last night, my wife, daughter and I started watching Cleopatra, the lavish 1963 epic starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison. It was our curious little way to mark the passing of the film’s unforgettable star: Taylor died March 23 at the age of 79. Cleopatra was a colossal success or fabulous flop, depending […]
How We Shall Miss Thee, Skins. Not!
See ya, Skins. It’s been, um, interesting. On March 21, MTV bid farewell to this British import (at least for the season, and likely forever), bringing to a close one of the strangest, wackiest television sagas this side of V. And we’re just talking about what took place offscreen. Onscreen, the show was bad enough. […]
Movie Monday: Limitless
It was a mind-blowing weekend for the film Limitless, which edged past modest predictions to pocket $19 million and become the most-watched movie of the weekend. The rest of the box office, though, was a bit limited. Holdovers Rango and Battle Los Angeles finished second and third, logging in at an estimated$15.3 and $14.6 million […]
There’s a Lot of Junk on Television … Literally
So, the other night, my 17-year-old daughter and I were channel surfing, looking for a “documentary” to laugh at (like Extraterrestrial Major Leaguers: The Real Story of the 1927 Yankees), when we landed on Auction Kings, a program on the Discovery Channel that basically films the inner workings of an auction house. My first thought: […]
Movie Monday: Battle Los Angeles
City of Angels? More like City of Extraterrestrials. Late last year, a horde of space-surfing aliens swooped into Los Angeles and showed us humans what’s what in the film Skyline. It made a meager $21 million in North America. Well, second time’s a charm, right? This weekend, aliens invaded L.A. again—specifically, the charming community of […]
Look Out, Ken. There’s a New Doll in Town
You know you’re a big deal when you get your own action figure. By that measure, Mark Zuckerberg has finally made it. Forget the fact that he invented Facebook. Forget that he could now buy much of Central Europe and still have money to purchase a Caribbean island or two. Now that M.I.C. Gadget has […]
Movie Monday: Rango
The box office was cold this weekend … or, at the very least, cold blooded. Rango, starring a talented-but-scaly chameleon with the voice of Johnny Depp, crawled away with the weekend’s honors, thumping the cash register for $38 million. It was a nice little payday for film’s favorite member of the Chamaeleonidae family—but far less […]
Jane Russell: 1921-2011
Actress Jane Russell died Feb. 28 at the age of 89. She was a sultry sex symbol in the 1940s and ’50s, steaming up the screen in 1943’s The Outlaw and holding her own against Marilyn Monroe in 1953’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (pictured). She also was one of the entertainment industry’s most prominent Christians. Plugged […]
Smart Phone, Dumb User
I just finished reading Adam Holz’s “Why I’m Not Getting an iPhone” story. Pretty interesting stuff. He says that, for him at least, having access to the whole World Wide Web via smartphone would be a bad, bad thing. The more time he spends online, the less time he has to spend with his friends […]
Movie Monday: Gnomeo and Oscar
Gnomeo & Juliet, as sweet as these G-rated animated gnomes might be, will probably never waddle to an Academy Award ceremony. So, while the big boys were over at the Kodak Theatre last night tossing each other golden statuettes, these lawn ornaments were hauling in their own honors: Namely, a first-place finish at the box […]