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, […]
Taking a Bite Out of Tourism
I saw a piranha in Nebraska once. Granted, the fish in question—safely ensconced in a friend’s dorm room—subsisted entirely on Cheetos, old test papers and unwary college freshmen, which means it didn’t present a danger to normal folks. But if piranhas splash around in Nebraska dormitories and gnaw on calculus textbooks (“the fish ate my […]
It’s All About Celebrity, Dahling!
She’s famous for being famous—a minor actress who paved her way to celebrity through reality television, gossip rags and a touch o’ scandal. She’s been a sex symbol, a red-carpet fixture and a resident of the California penal system. She’d be a fitting icon for today’s celebrity-obsessed culture—if her celebrity heyday hadn’t been in the […]
Unplugged
Let me make a confession: I kinda like media and technology. I work with it, I play with it, I write about it for a living. We live in an amazing time, filled with gadgets and entertainment options inconceivable when I was a little boy. A decade ago, the Internet was a relatively new plaything. […]
Movie Monday: The Other Guys
Salt couldn’t do it. Dinner With Schmucks couldn’t do it. But, after three weeks on top of the box office, a couple of Other Guys finally managed to knock off Christopher Nolan’s thriller Inception. The Other Guys, a Will Ferrell-helmed send-up of those action-packed buddy-cop flicks that have flourished on the big screen since, oh, […]