Star Trek Beyond Boldly Goes to No. 1
The summer movie season is a time for pretenders. Studios release their biggest, flashiest products in the hope of hitting a box-office bonanza. But not every high-profile, high-budget film makes it to the top. The Ghostbusters remake couldn’t do it last week. Independence Day: Resurgence was shut out of the top spot a few weeks […]
Pokémon Go. Should We Catch ‘Em All?
In junior high, I was the only kid in school who didn’t have parachute pants. In high school, I never owned a pair of Air Jordans. And now—unlike, it would seem, the rest of the free world—I have not yet downloaded Pokémon Go. My wife has. My grown kids have. I’m about the last holdout […]
Pets Ain’t ‘Fraid of no Ghosts
When there’s movies playin’ in your neighborhood, who you gonna call? Animated pets! Or so said American moviegoers this weekend. Despite the arrival of Ghostbusters, the much-ballyhooed big-budget remake of the 1984 semi-classic, another film stood atop the doghouse once again. The Secret Life of Pets dug up an estimated $50.6 million in its North […]
Secret Life of Pets Not So Secret Anymore
Pets can be pretty expensive. You gotta buy ’em food. Take ’em to the vet. Replace the furniture they’ve scratched or gnawed on. And if you’ve got a dog like mine, maybe fork over some cash for the local mailman’s counseling sessions. It’s not often that pets make money. But few of us have pets […]
Television’s House of Horrors
Summertime TV has always been like that proverbial tree in a forest: If a show’s on but nobody watches it, does it make a sound? For years, programmers figured that fewer people watched television in the summer. And it makes sense. The days are longer. The weather’s great. People are off playing golf or eating […]
Finding Dory Flaps to First Again
We’ve all heard about the law of the jungle: Kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. We know that those who live in the jungle—be it the literal jungle of the Congo as we see in The Legend of Tarzan or the urban jungle of The Purge: Election Year—are strong and ruthless enough to […]
We All Scream for Our Screens
Last week I ruminated on the joys of unplugging for a bit. But truth is, it didn’t take me long to reconnect. Granted, my job is a little different than most, where being (ahem) plugged in is part of the gig. I’m one of the few people who vows—in the context of a performance review—to […]
Box Office Still Looks Fishy
Fish, unless they’re breaded, carved into sticks and thrown into a freezer, don’t typically last that long. You want to enjoy them when they’re as fresh as possible. But when it comes to colorful, lovable, forgetful fish, moviegoers will make an exception. Despite challenges from a beard-bedecked Matthew McConaughey and another bevy of angry aliens, […]
Is It Possible to Unplug Anymore? Even on Vacation?
Ah, vacations. A time to unplug, unwind and get away from our frazzled, workaday, always online world. Only apparently, we don’t. According to a survey conducted by Intel Security, most of us still check emails, post funny videos on Facebook and do, well, pretty much everything we do online when we’re at home or work. […]
Finding Dory Finds Cash: Lots of It
Don’t buy a blue tang fish. Just don’t. As Adam Holz pointed out a few blogs ago, the last thing the natural world needs is a run on blue tang fish. But if you wanted to, hypothetically, buy one, it’d run you about $50 at Petco. And that means that Pixar’s forgetful fish Dory—if someone […]
