Contributor: Paul Asay

The Truman Show director Peter Weir turns Slavomir Rawicz’s 1956 book The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom into an achingly epic movie about prisoners who escape from a Siberian gulag.

The box office had less Grit, more guns over the weekend, as The Green Hornet buzzed to $34 million and the weekend win—with, of course, receipts still to be counted for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Thanks in part to a bevy of 3-D screenings (which acc …

I recently wrote a review of NBC’s new show The Cape (a kinda dumb but kinda fun superhero show) and noted our hero fell in cahoots with a band of odd-but-likeable bank robbers. I said that while the show features a man trying to “do the right thing—th …

Well, Plugged In’s iPhone app has been up and running for about a month now, and we’ve heard that a few of you have even downloaded the thing. This is gratifying to me personally, as I spent months slaving over code, making sure that— My editor reminds …

Avril thinks her music is more mature now that she’s all grown up. We think it’s just messier and meaner.

Forget the new releases: Cinemagoers this weekend favored an old movie based on an older movie set in the old, old West. The Coen Brothers’ True Grit triumphed at the box office after playing second fiddle the last two weekends to Little Fockers. Grit …

Is she a witch or isn’t she? That’s the question set before Nicholas Cage and his band of merry medieval cohorts. To kill or be killed is what’s on her mind.

We’re back in the office after a day off, and it looks like the new year’s starting off much as 2010 ended, at least as far as movies are concerned. Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro’s rather foul comedy, Little Fockers, was technically the repeat winner …

Well, 2010 is closing shop, making it a natural time to take stock of the year behind us and look forward to the year ahead. And if entertainment studios are doing the same thing, they may look at the year-end box office figures and have an important N …

On Dec. 28, MTV aired a special spin-off of its popular 16 and Pregnant program. Titled No Easy Decision, it focuses on a 19-year-old girl—pregnant for the second time—as she decides to have, and goes through with, an abortion. The girl, Markai Durham, …

I don’t want to write this post. How many times must we talk about Miley Cyrus’ latest indiscretion? When does this tripe stop qualifying as “news” and slips to a gossip site afterthought? I’m tired of this story. I don’t want to talk about the latest …

Personally, I don’t see Little Fockers as an ideal way to celebrate Christmas, but loads of people apparently disagreed. The Ben Stiller/Robert De Niro-fronted comedy took the weekend’s box office title, collecting an estimated $34 million en route. Tr …

Back when I was a kid, I’d write a letter to Santa nearly every year. I didn’t bother with sending it like most kids did. I’d just leave the note by his milk and cookies, figuring he probably had some spare loot under the sleigh seats. And I still reme …

It takes some serious grit to turn a John Wayne classic into a darkly ambiguous comedy. The results are both mesmerizing and maddening.

There are lots of folks who’d say there really is no such thing as an original story, and that all of our books and movies essentially rework tales we’ve been telling around the campfire since obsidian was considered cutting-edge technology. But still, …