Contributor: Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

Of Moses and Dad: Fraser Heston Remembers His Father

I just wrote a story about the intersection between faith and film (look for it April 4), in which I opined that Hollywood is far from the irreligious entity Christians sometimes accuse it of being. We’ve seen a barrage of movies lately that take faith …

Read more

Movie Monday: Wimpy Kid Thumps Sucker Punch

Leave it to a wimpy kid to win a weak weekend. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules floored Zack Snyder’s newest stylized rumble Sucker Punch to claim the box office belt this week. Perhaps Wimpy took some tips from the NCAA tourney’s VCU this weekend, …

Read more

Elizabeth Taylor: 1932-2011

Last night, my wife, daughter and I started watching Cleopatra, the lavish 1963 epic starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison. It was our curious little way to mark the passing of the film’s unforgettable star: Taylor died March 23 at …

Read more

How We Shall Miss Thee, Skins. Not!

See ya, Skins. It’s been, um, interesting. On March 21, MTV bid farewell to this British import (at least for the season, and likely forever), bringing to a close one of the strangest, wackiest television sagas this side of V. And we’re just talking ab …

Read more

Movie Monday: Limitless

It was a mind-blowing weekend for the film Limitless, which edged past modest predictions to pocket $19 million and become the most-watched movie of the weekend. The rest of the box office, though, was a bit limited. Holdovers Rango and Battle Los Ange …

Read more

The Lincoln Lawyer

Going against character, Matthew McConaughey keeps his shirt on … longer than usual, we’ll say. Too bad his movie couldn’t cover up its problematic elements quite as well.

Read more

There’s a Lot of Junk on Television … Literally

So, the other night, my 17-year-old daughter and I were channel surfing, looking for a “documentary” to laugh at (like Extraterrestrial Major Leaguers: The Real Story of the 1927 Yankees), when we landed on Auction Kings, a program on the Discovery Cha …

Read more

Movie Monday: Battle Los Angeles

City of Angels? More like City of Extraterrestrials. Late last year, a horde of space-surfing aliens swooped into Los Angeles and showed us humans what’s what in the film Skyline. It made a meager $21 million in North America. Well, second time’s a cha …

Read more

“Friday”

Rebecca Black hoped her song, “Friday,” and its accompanying YouTube video, might be seen by a handful of her friends. Seventy million (and counting!) views later, the 13-year-old girl is the talk of the music industry—but not in a nice way.

Read more

Red Riding Hood

Red Riding Hood: “Oh, Grandmother! What big problems your movie has!” Wolf: “All the better to make money with, my dear.”

Read more

Look Out, Ken. There’s a New Doll in Town

You know you’re a big deal when you get your own action figure. By that measure, Mark Zuckerberg has finally made it. Forget the fact that he invented Facebook. Forget that he could now buy much of Central Europe and still have money to purchase a Cari …

Read more

Movie Monday: Rango

The box office was cold this weekend … or, at the very least, cold blooded. Rango, starring a talented-but-scaly chameleon with the voice of Johnny Depp, crawled away with the weekend’s honors, thumping the cash register for $38 million. It was a nice …

Read more

Jane Russell: 1921-2011

Actress Jane Russell died Feb. 28 at the age of 89. She was a sultry sex symbol in the 1940s and ’50s, steaming up the screen in 1943’s The Outlaw and holding her own against Marilyn Monroe in 1953’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (pictured). She also was on …

Read more

Smart Phone, Dumb User

I just finished reading Adam Holz’s “Why I’m Not Getting an iPhone” story. Pretty interesting stuff. He says that, for him at least, having access to the whole World Wide Web via smartphone would be a bad, bad thing. The more time he spends online, the …

Read more

Fight Night Champion

EA Sports’ first M-rated title packs a wallop in more ways than one. Its sparkling graphics rub up against a gritty storyline.

Read more