discernment

What To Watch For During The Big Game
It's that time again, our annual preview of commercials rolling out for "the Superb Owl" as someone cleverly said. You know what we mean, the football championship with the jealously trademarked name. Right, that one. Bloomberg reports that a thirty-second commercial for Sunday's game has been selling for $5.1 to $5.3 million this year. Though analysts say…
Movie Review: The Incredibles 2
“This is crazy, right?” asks Helen Parr, a.k.a. Elastigirl. “To help my family I have to leave it. To fix the law I have to break it.” "But you have to do it, so our children can make that choice!" says her husband, Bob - a.k.a. Mr. Incredible. After all, it’s still illegal to be…
Quick Takes on the Big Game Commercials
It's reported that NBC has received over $500 million in advertising revenue for this year's Super Bowl. It's such a big event, companies pull out all the stops for this one night -- and some people admit to watching the game as much for the advertisements as for the football! Our son Caleb took a…
Movie Review –The Post
Everyone thought newspaper heiress Katherine Graham was in over her head in serving as the publisher of The Washington Post, but then she had to face a decision that would rock even the most experienced newspaperman. It was 1971 and Americans were growing weary with the war in Vietnam. The first military advisors were sent…
Movie Review: Darkest Hour
At the conclusion of the Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill said of the courageous British pilots, “This was their finest hour.” This new biographical film portrays a much darker hour, when Europe was collapsing under Nazi domination, England faced the loss of its army with invasion to follow, and King George was forced to hand…
Movie Review: Murder on the Orient Express
The Simplon-Orient Express is one of the grand trains of Europe, running from Istanbul to Paris in sumptuous luxury. Remarkably, detective Hercule Poirot finds himself on this fabulous train on a return from a case in the Middle East. More remarkably, when the train is stranded by an avalanche in the Yugoslav mountains, an American…
Movie Night: Are Your Kids Prepared?
  Our family loves movies - our sons like to take their mother to opening nights, and we have a local theater that runs popular films a couple months later at bargain prices - great for a large family! The two hour feature film is like a literary form of its own, and there are powerful…
Q&A: Are Violent Video Games Ever Appropriate?
Video games are wildly popular among young men - the Pew Research Center found that 84% of teenage boys play video games on a computer, game console, or portable device, and one survey found that 60% of daily gamers spend an hour or more every day. Two-thirds of teenage gamers say they play games with "considerable…
A Question About Fifty Shades of Grey
This morning a friend asked, "Do you think I should watch Fifty Shades of Grey with my teen and talk about it?"  We're not as strict on media as some are. We think there's some value in watching things you don't agree with and analyzing and discussing them with your teens. Sometimes, though, there's more…