Movie Monday: The Town and Easy A
After a couple of zombie-like weekends at the box office, a trio of new movies brought some life back to the cineplex. Ben Affleck’s crime drama The Town nabbed box office honors this week, stealing $23.8 million. Easy A had to be content with a solid B, scoring $18.2 million, while M Night Shyamalan’s Devil […]
Making Tables
We can’t all be at our best all the time. I wish we could. But sometimes, we drag a little, let our focus sag a little, and we forget for a moment that everything we do in our lives is, in a way, a reflection of and an offering to God. I was dragging a […]
Movie Monday: Resident Evil: Afterlife
All was deathly quiet at the cineplex. Wind whistled through the box office. Tumbleweeds slowly trundled through the concession stand, branches sweeping up long-forgotten puddles of faux butter as they rolled toward the exits. And then, from underneath the theater’s matted carpet, something claws its way upward, moaning piteously as it makes its way from […]
The Smarmy Charm of Disney
I’ve found myself on Disney duty lately here at Plugged In. I’ve been buried underneath what seems like a mountain of inoffensive pop tunes, happy endings and Jonas Brothers. My work computer has played so much Disney lately that it now assumes I’m a 12-year-old girl. In reality, I’m a 41-year-old man who likes films […]
Movie Tuesday: The American
Wow. You know the summer movie season’s really over—and I mean really over—when the top grossing film snags a measily $16.4 million over the weekend, even with an extra day to work with. Sure, most of America had Labor Day off, but they sure weren’t spending it in the theaters. George Clooney’s artsy, slow-moving thriller […]
A Curse by Any Other Name …
Plugged In recorded its weekly podcast yesterday (you can download it here), and I had the honor of sitting in on a fascinating conversation centered on profanity. No, no. They weren’t using profanity. Host Bob Smithouser and guest Alex McFarland were discussing profanity, and how using it has become so normative in today’s society—even among […]
Movie Monday: Taking the Last Exorcism
Box office boasting rights were too close to call Monday morning, what with two new PG-13 films, The Last Exorcism and Takers, separated by a mere $300,000. That’s less than the cast of Jersey Shore spends on tanners. According to boxofficemojo.com’s early estimates, The Last Exorcism wound up on top, scaring up $21.3 million. The […]
No Review? Horrors!
Why do you guys cover some movies—particularly in the horror genre—and not others? That was essentially the question Ethan had for us recently. He wrote into Plugged In and asked: There’s a couple of movies that came into theaters (one in 2003 and the other in 2005), namely House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s […]
Lost in Stuff
Ah, Lost. You’re a little like fake John Locke from Season 6: Gone, but still freakily among us somehow. ABC’s landmark show ended months ago, but with the final season now out on DVD, Losties have been able to renew their obsession. But for some folks, plunking down $40 for the season (or about $50 […]
Movie Monday: The Expendables
It was a truly expendable week at the box office, with Sylvester Stallone’s holdover The Expendables earning top honors with a paltry $16.5 million. Still, Sly and his band of mercenaries-of-a-certain-age still had to fend off a motley collection of competitors, from the spoofy undead (Vampires Suck, $12.2 million) to Julia Roberts (Eat Pray Love, […]
