'Tis the season...to hear endless loops of holiday music and feel tempted to strangle someone with red and green garland. While some Christmas carols might actually bring joy to the world, there are a lot of songs that we want to throw out with the decaying holly and the ivy.
As you celebrate this holiday season, be sure to save your digital memories by printing them out or backing them up. And beyond that, do everything you can to speak out for internet freedom.
As I have been warning about for months, 10,000 releases all opened in this very weekend, with another 5,000 coming on Tuesday. Let's just get right into it.
Once you're done unwrapping the gifts and singing the carols and observing whatever expressions of faith you feel are appropriate for the time (if any), you may want to reinforce the communal feeling with a visit to the cinema for something the whole family can enjoy.
"What if there had been room at the inn?" So many people have asked this question that I don't know who to attribute it to.
Christmas movies are a genre unto themselves: between live-action and animated features, there are literally hundreds of titles out there. Inevitably, some are pretty bad, others amusingly cheesy.
Ramachandraiah prints movie posters for a living. He's done it ever since 1971, when he bought an ancient lithograph press. He keeps it in a factory north of Bangalore, far from the English town where it was built 111 years ago.
I love a good Christmas story and this one from my dear friend Whoopi Goldberg gets me every time. It's a beautiful and simple story that I just had to share this holiday season. Happy Holidays to you all, and I wish you much magic! --MT
After the nominations were announced, the 2012 "For Fun" bloggers decided to interview each other. Here, for your amusement, is the resulting group interview.
I am over 50 but "This Is 40," the new movie starring Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann, empowered me more than any self-help book I've read about middle age and long-term marriage. And I've read a lot.
Cirque du Soleil: World's Away is a dramatic mix of circus arts and street entertainment. The acts are spectacular and original though some were seen at Las Vegas.
The Maya never predicted that 2012 would be the Year of the Cigar Box Guitar. They missed the most important story. The end of the world, which ought to be in a couple of hours, is not this year's crucial event.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is just as immersive and engaging as its predecessors (successors?), successfully transporting us back to that world as if no time has passed at all.
If this were true, if that one simple change in Christian dogma were believed, taught as a possibility and considered as one of many interpretations in a book full of contradictions, would it change for the better the entire course of the debate, fostering tolerance, acceptance and inclusion?
All professional writers have their own, personal talismans that they swear by for teaching inspiration. The theories are everywhere -- even at the very end of this commentary, where you will be told the best advice on writing you will ever get.
With everyone in our world talking about guns and America, I woke up this morning to find an All in the Family clip on YouTube that we produced over 30 years ago that has Archie Bunker on a local news channel doing an editorial on gun control.
Carole Mallory, 2012.24.12
Liz Smith, 2012.24.12