Twilight Movie 2008
Movie: Twilight
Featuring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Billy Burke
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
“When you can live forever, what do you live for”
How about the opposite? When you know your life is finite, is anything worth living for?
The movie Twilight is another film aimed at a young audience. In it’s opening weekend it made $70.6 million making it the fourth highest opening film this year. According to exit polls, 55% of the audience were under 25 years old and 75% of the audience was female.
Twilight is a movie adaptation of …

A study came out of the University of Maryland that concludes that watching television contributes to viewers’ happiness in the short term, but has negative affects in the long run. In other words they found that those who say they are unhappy on average watch more TV while those who are happy spend more time socializing with others and reading. This study analyzes 30 years of national data through a series of attitude surveys.
“TV doesn’t really seem to satisfy people over the long haul the way that social involvement or …

Every single day millions of children are constantly bombarded by media. Television, Internet, Movies, Video Games, Music, Videos are some of the many forms of media that continues to feed particular messages and ideas into our children and ultimately into our culture.
Dr. Douglas A. Gentile, a developmental psychologist and assistant professor in Iowa State University’s Department of Psychology, offered an explanation.
With the 21st century offering a greater number of media than any other period in history, younger generations can view or listen to almost any sort of content at the …

New research found in the November Issue of Pediatrics, suggest that pregnancy rates are far higher in teens who watch a lot of “sexy” TV shows that involve sexual behavior and dialogue. Teens who watched such shows were twice as likely to become pregnant over the next three years.
This research focused on shows that highlight “positive aspects” of sexual behavior without properly showing the risks involved. Such shows can lead teens to have unprotected sex. This study follows previous research from the same group that have already found that watching …

High School Musical 3 has been gaining a lot of attention especially with the youth. The series has been known to be clean, fun and safe to take the family. As a full disclosure, I have never seen a single ones of these movies. However as someone spends a great deal of time mentoring youth, I wanted to take the time to at least read about it. Though it’s rated G, you really don’t know these days. I’ve walked into movies that are pg-13 with very questionable content. Also what …

Just Inappropriate for Kids or Just Inappropriate
Many people talk about how the media affects our children, how it may lead to violence or how it may encourage promiscuous lifestyles. There is a lot of merit there, but one thing that is increasingly noticeable but overlooked is the fact that the parents themselves are underestimating the influences of media in their own lives and indirectly how it affects their children.
Take a look at movie review sites where users list their ages, you’ll see adults saying the movie is inappropriate for the …

A new 685 page report from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) backs the claim that smoking in movies influences children to smoke. The report is called “The role of the Media in Promoting and Reducing Tabacco Use”.
The NCI found that tabacco advertising and marketing is causally linked to increased tobacco use. It also states that smoking depicted in films and movies are causally related to smoking initiation among youth. There are very few movies out there where smoking isn’t shown as a normal part of life. Smoking is done …

As almost everyone would agree, media has a huge influence on our thought patterns and the way we perceive the world. With the presidential candidates starting to gain more press, the bias found in different networks and media groups starts to become more visible. The bias of the media is always influencing us daily, it just happens to be more noticed this time of year especially networks like CNN or ABC (left) versus networks like FOX (right). The way we make decisions about who we vote for to how we …

On one side, we see life through the lens of media. We see love stories, we see excitement, we see happy endings. Then there is reality where there are life scarring break ups, daily boredom that drives you mad, and people who are not very happy with where there life is going. We watch, see what we want, expect our lives to be pan out in a similar way and when it doesn’t.. we can easily become discontent with what we have now. Why don’t I have this? Why don’t …

No one would argue that movies and TV shows have tremendous impact on our culture and our worldview. Where do you get your concept of courage? How about what an ideal friendship should be like? An ideal spouse? What is acceptable when it comes to violence or any moral decisions? What is culturally normal and not normal when it comes to how we treat different circumstances, especially circumstances we’ve never experienced but may experience in the future? Would you know how guns work, or how two lovers engage in love? …

Has anyone noticed that all media articles regarding teen sex, condoms and abstinence always emphasize and focus on the spread of STDs and nothing else? Editorials and commentaries used to make the case of abstinence as a moral stance or a wholesome alternative to the sexually active world we live in. It also focused on the emotional risk involved with premarital sex. Now our culture has bent so far into the realm of sexual promiscuity that the only way people could even suggest abstinence is by fear of STDs. If …

All about the Themes
Wall-E was definitely a Pixar quality film. I learned never to doubt Pixar no matter how peculiar or odd the trailers may be. I once questioned how good a movie could be about a talking fish. I was immediately blown away by Finding Nemo. In the same way, when I saw the trailer for some animated super hero movie I thought, could they really pull this off? It was incredible (that’s right i said it). So when a movie about talking cars came out I said, forget …