Snowstorm Snickering
A couple of days ago, Adam Holz wrote a post called “When Weather Attacks.” So I’m blaming him for the winter storm that dumped a few inches of snow on my house last night. It wasn’t too bad, as October storms go. And it’s really not fall in Colorado Springs until we get a couple […]
A Dulling Saw?
The weekly box office wrap-up is one of the most-discussed but, really, most-misleading pulse points for our culture. Every week, media outlets across the land report how much money the weekend’s biggest films took in and try to figure out where we are, culturally speaking. We at Plugged In do it, too. I danced a […]
Sucked Dry
Vampires are draining. I just got finished watching a couple of episodes of CW’s The Vampire Diaries for a television review. Tonight, I’m going to a screening of Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant. Entertainment media is buzzing over the next onscreen appearance of über-angsty vampire Edward Cullen in The Twilight Saga: New Moon (coming […]
Good ‘Citizen?’ Hardly.
It’s Friday, and around here, that means it’s movie-review posting day. We’re in the doldrums of fall—the blockbusters of summer are long gone, and the Oscar-bait films of winter have yet to roll out—which means the theaters are filled with lots of cinematic oddities. And this Friday features a full-on quirk-fest. Where the Wild Things […]
The Twitter Diet
I don’t quite get Twitter. Perhaps it’s because I’m old and uncool. Perhaps it’s because I can’t say anything worthwhile in 140 characters or less. (Though, quite honestly, a few more characters wouldn’t help that problem much.) For me, though, Twitter just never made that much sense. Maybe I should change my tweeting tune, though. […]
Having a Cow
Marge Simpson, matriarch of the long-running animated show The Simpsons on Fox, apparently posed in various stages of undress for the November issue of Playboy magazine. The magazine will hit newsstands Oct. 16. Say what you want about The Simpsons: It can be crass. It can be infantile. It can be incredibly inappropriate. It has […]
Are We Happy Yet?
Facebook, the mammoth social networking site that seems to have its massive hands in–well, everything–is now tracking the “happiness” of its U.S. users. They call it “The United States Gross National Happiness” index, and it measures the words users stick in their updates: Using words like “happy” or “excited” push the index higher. Words like […]
Is Your Term Paper 140 Characters or Less, Young Man?
I’ll try not to say this too loudly, but I don’t get Twitter. Maybe it’s because I’m old. Maybe it’s because I can’t sneeze in less than a thousand words, much less 140 characters. Maybe it’s because so many Twitter feeds are … well, kinda lame.
Lying Liars and the Lies They Lie
I’m still ruminating over The Invention of Lying, Ricky Gervais’ new comedy. I saw it last night and it was, um, not quite what I expected. Let me just say this up front: I like Gervais. I think he’s one of the funniest guys in show business. He’s also an outspoken, committed atheist, and Lying […]
The Power of Film
Just ran across an interesting Q&A-style interview with Ken Burns, one of the United States’ best-known documentary filmmakers. He opened himself up to questions from Time magazine readers, and one of them asked what drew him to filmmaking. This is what he said: My mother died when I was 11. Several years afterward, my father […]
