There’s an Alien in My Head
A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were channel surfing on a Friday night after getting the kids to bed. It wasn’t long before we stumbled onto the 1986 sci-fi thriller Aliens, in which Sigourney Weaver reprises her iconic role as Ripley and battles those nasty, slobbering, big-headed, multiple-jawed xenomorphs. The movie was […]
A World Without Bookstores
Life is full of mundane little pleasures that, while probably not existentially important in the grand scheme of things, nevertheless make life a little bit better. One of those pleasures for me—and one that’s very easy to take for granted—is heading to my local Barnes & Noble bookstore for a couple of hours every now […]
$10,000 for a ‘Frozen’ Doll? Really?
It’s official: Frozen is now a bona fide pop-culture phenomenon. And I’m not just talking about its eye-popping global box office performance, where Disney’s latest epic about two tragically alienated sisters has raked in a mind-boggling $1.1 billion in ticket sales—the most ever for any animated movie. In case you’re wondering, that’s good enough for […]
Movie Monday: O Captain! Our Captain!
And it’s still winter … at least at the box office as Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier topped the tallies again with an estimated second-weekend take of $41.4 million. That’s a couple million more than the decidedly more tropical-feeling Rio 2, which flew south for an estimated $39.0 million. In just two weeks in […]
Buddy, Can You Spare Three Minutes?
We live in a paradoxical world. Never in human history have we been so enmeshed, so engaged, so utterly transfixed by what has collectively come to be known as media. That phrase, of course, encompasses all manner of electronic and physical content, from movies and TV, to music and video games, to books and magazines, […]
It’s an I, I, I, I, I World?
Those of a certain not-so-tender age (ahem!) might remember a certain Burger King campaign from 1976 that boldly proclaimed, “Have It Your Way!” That was nearly 40 years ago. But in the interim, American society has taken that credo to heart … with a vengeance. Back then, the famous fast-food franchise was only talking about […]
Weed It and Weep
When I was growing up—back in the dark ages before the Internet and cell phones and social media—smoking marijuana was still pretty taboo. Sure, there were kids in my high school that did it. That was no secret. But they also got labeled potheads and stoners, which, as you might guess, weren’t the kind of […]
So … the Dalai Lama’s on Instagram?
He’s 78. He’s a monk. He hails from Tibet. And he’s one of the world’s most revered religious leaders. Oh, and he’s on Twitter. And, as of a couple of weeks ago, Instagram, too. I’m talking, of course, about Tenzin Gyatso—better known by Buddhists as the 14th Dalai Lama. And, like Catholicism’s 77-year-old Pope Francis, […]
What Should Moviegoers Expect from ‘Noah’?
The latest controversial movie to test the old showbiz axiom “all publicity is good publicity” is the forthcoming film Noah from director Darren Aronofsky. The reported $125 million action epic marks his first foray into big-budget, CGI-spectacle territory. Until now, Aronofsky has worked exclusively on smaller, grittier independent fare such as Black Swan, The Fountain, […]
Do Violent Video Games Impair Moral Development?
How much do video games—especially violent ones—influence young players? That’s an ongoing question in our culture, and one that we hear in the media virtually every time there’s a mass shooting. It’s also a question that’s more than just academic to me personally, as my 7-year-old son loves video games—despite the fact that we don’t […]