In a recent interview with MTV, Nolan talked about how Star Wars has been his inspirational benchmark as a filmmaker, and how he hopes to give viewers of his movies a similar experience.

Now whenever I hear a moviemaker saying, in effect, that he wants to make the next Star Wars, I think, Good luck. Few movies have changed the game the way George Lucas' 1977 space opera did.

That said, my wife and I took in Inception this weekend. As with most hyper-hyped movies these days (Avatar, anyone?), I expected to be disappointed.

I wasn't, at least not from a storytelling perspective. (Some of its suicide-driven violence deserves more attention than I'll give it here. So read Paul Asay's review for that.) The sheer originality of Nolan's film about thieves invading dreams actually exceeded my expectations. Not everyone feels that way, of course. Not even all of my colleagues. Some actively disliked the thing. But for my part, as I walked out of the theater, I told my wife I had never seen anything quite like Inception. It might not have made quite the impact on me that Star Wars made when I was 6. But it was in the ballpark in terms of sheer storytelling audacity. For me it joins a very short list of movies that reset the narrative boundary markers on what can be achieved in a film.

And that brings me to this question: What movies, new or old, have had a similar effect on you? What stories left your jaw on the floor?

My best friend and I loved 'em, and whenever he was over, we'd stuff socks in our shirtsleeves (to make our muscles look bigger) throw some bath towels around our necks and zip around our back yard, fighting for truth, justice and the American way.

My dad hated 'em: When I was about 6 years old, he went through a beautiful religious experience—but one that threw our house in chaos. Superheroes were among the casualties. My dad thought that superheroes, what with their godlike powers, were designed to replace the ultimate hero, Christ, and were thus banned.

Well, sorta. Reading superhero comics or watching Superfriends on television was not allowed. But I could pretend I was a superhero as much as I wanted. To this day, I'm not quite sure why there was this inconsistency, but there it was.

I was reminded of all this when I heard that Westboro Baptist Church—the cultlike Kansas group that regularly pickets soldiers' funerals, churches and, at one point, Focus on the Family—is scheduled to protest at Comic-Con in San Diego today. The story I saw had a member holding a sign saying "God Hates Nerds."

"The destruction of this nation is imminent," reads Westboro's website, "so start calling on Batman and Superman now, see if they can pull you from the mess that you have created with all your silly idolatry."

Now, I've got some pretty strong opinions about Westboro's operation—I cringe that they call themselves a "church," quite frankly—but do they have a point here?

I see where they're coming from, I suppose, but I'd have to disagree. Once I grew up and began examining superheroes for myself, I began to see them as not replacements for Christ, but as echoes of Him. Not perfect echoes, mind you: They often resemble our sinful selves as much as they represent a sinless Savior. But they nevertheless allow us to delve deeply into some Christian themes—redemption, sacrifice, salvation, the nature of good and evil—in ways that feel new and resonant. Little wonder the Christian subculture has long co-opted the superhero trope to tell its own stories, from Bibleman to Larryboy.

My dad, great guy though he is, never quite understood what I saw in superheroes. But he's grown to accept that, perhaps there can be something to see.

I was intense. Moody. Liked things my way. Got mad—really mad—when things didn't go my way.

God must have known I needed some help, because in 5th grade I met Joe. Joe was pretty much my polar opposite. He was even-keeled when I boiled over. He would look at me like an exasperated parent when I would drop all the dice on a game of Risk I was losing badly. ("Nuke attack!") Joe put up with me, but he never shied away from telling me I was acting like an idiot.

Joe lived two blocks north from my house if I cut through the neighbors' yards on the way to school. We did everything together—from fifth grade all the way through college. We played Risk and the arcade game Twin Cobra. We helped each other on our paper routes. Lived at the swimming pool in the summers. Listened to music. Talked a lot about girls. A lot.

In short, we were best friends.

Joe turns 40 this weekend; I'll cross that threshold myself in a couple weeks. But we still keep in touch regularly, sharing stories about our kids and their exploits—not to mention the music we're listening to these days. It's impossible for me to picture what life might have been like without Joe as that steadying influence throughout the awfulness and insecurity of my adolescence.

And yet, according to a New York Times article published in June, a growing number of teachers, school administrators and other folks involved with children are actively seeking to discourage the classic "best friend" connection between young students. Why? Because they believe the inherently exclusive nature of a best-friend relationship may be hurtful to other students who feel excluded.

The Times talked to several people around the country who are increasingly adopting a skeptical stance toward exclusive friendships. "When two children discover a special bond between them, we honor that bond, provided that neither child overtly or covertly excludes or rejects others," said Jan Mooney, a psychologist at the Town School, a nursery through eighth grade private school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. "However, the bottom line is that if we find a best friend pairing to be destructive to either child, or to others in the classroom, we will not hesitate to separate children and to work with the children and their parents to ensure healthier relationships in the future."

Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis, echoed those sentiments. "I think it is kids' preference to pair up and have that one best friend," she said. "As adults— teachers and counselors—we try to encourage them not to do that. We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends."

Times reporter Hilary Stout noted that the motivation behind this trend is to protect those who might feel locked out of the relational picture.

Not everyone is convinced, however, that best friendships need to be viewed with such a wary eye.

"No one can teach you what a great friend is, what a fair-weather friend is, what a treacherous and betraying friend is except to have a great friend, a fair-weather friend or a treacherous and betraying friend," said Michael Thompson, a psychologist and author of Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children. "When a teacher is trying to tone down a best-friend culture, I would like to know why. Is it causing misery for the class? Or is there one girl who does have friends but just can't bear the thought that she doesn't have as good a best friend as another? That to me is normal social pain. If you're mucking around too much in the lives of kids who are just experiencing normal social pain, you shouldn't be."

My parents moved to town last weekend, bringing with them several boxes of miscellaneous flotsam and jetsam that every move inevitably stirs up. I thought I'd gotten everything they had for me—you know, college notebooks, trophies from high school, a picture from my college graduation. But when I went over to see how they were settling in a couple days later, they had one final box for me.

"Comics and Baseball Cards," it said.

I was bit perplexed, because I was pretty sure I sold all my baseball cards at a garage sale decades ago. And my teenage comic book collection? Well, it's safely tucked away in our basement and doesn't get much sunlight.

But there it was, a box of comics and baseball cards.

I began digging through the box and quickly realized that none of it was actually mine, as far as I could tell. And there were some pretty old comics in the box. Like, 1958 old.

"Umm, Dad," I asked, "where did these come from?"

"I don't know," he said. "Why?"

"Well … there's some pretty interesting stuff in here."

Indeed there was. The real prize was DC Comics' Aquaman, No. 1 from 1962 … a comic, the Internet helpfully informed me, that might be worth a pretty penny.

Here's where the nostalgia kicks in: I didn't remember ever seeing these comics before (and, to be honest, we still haven't figured out where they came from). But I do recall spending hours in my adolescence buying, sorting, reading and re-reading comic books. The musty smell of these almost 50-year-old comics unleashed a torrent of memories in me—happy memories about an on-again-off-again hobby that continued through my teen years.

I also rifled through stacks and stacks of baseball cards, which also triggered memories of my brief flirtation with that hobby.

I know this is a long way around to make a point, but here it is: Pouring over the comics' yellowed paper made me wonder how many kids growing up today will have a similar experience. Do baseball cards and comics still hold much appeal?

I realize, of course, that contemporary comics are loaded with their fair share of content concerns. I'm really not advocating for comic book collecting here. Mostly I'm just pondering whether the proliferation of all things digital—iPhones, YouTube, MySpace, Wii, etc.—means that simple, unplugged, analog pursuits like arranging one's comics or baseball cards are doomed to go the way of the dodo, killed off by their digital replacements.

If so, I suspect fewer folks 50 years from now will know the unexpected pleasure of uncovering a long-forgotten box full of musty old stories.

Barna has been studying the intersection of Christianity and culture for years now. And while the researchers say that faith is actually doing pretty well amongst teens—more than six in 10 participate in at least one religious activity a week—there are some troubling signs. Teens don't seem to be praying or attending small groups in the numbers they once did, and they're not donating money to churches as much, either. They're also far less inclined to evangelize—to talk about their faith with non-Christians.

The latter makes sense, culturally speaking. We live in a pretty diverse, more relativist culture, and no one—particularly a teen—wants to come across as being too pushy when it comes to faith.

But Barna suggests that teens, while they're still going to church and reading the Bible, are less engaged with faith on a holistic level. They're less engaged with other Christian activities, it seems—implying that they're compartmentalizing their faith more than previous generations. And the blame for that, Barna pins at least partly on social networks like Facebook. Says David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group:

Of course, every teen is different, but I think Barna's onto something here. My teenage daughter gets bored with Facebook easily but has tons of friends at her youth group; it's not hard to figure out where she'd rather spend her time. You go where your friends are.

All that said, I can't help but wonder if there are better ways Christians can use Facebook—to channel it in ways that might make it a more "faithful" medium, if you will. And I'm talking about more than just hanging a Christian shingle on Facebook (though that's nifty, too), but real opportunities to connect with and help people. I mean, after all, we Christians have historically been adept at taking media and using them to further the Church—everything from stained glass windows to As I Lay Dying offers proof of that. Granted, we're already seeing lots of Christians use social networking effectively, but with both Facebook and faith both being largely about community, it seems like this trend that will only increase—necessitating perhaps a new question or two from Barna.

Dastardly Gru may have struggled in his quest to become the world's No. 1 supervillian. But he had no trouble at all propelling his film,

So, with Despicable Me's oversized victory—it made far more than most industry analysts expected—is it time to declare 2010 as a landmark year for family film? According to Box Office Mojo, G- or PG-rated films have topped the box-office tally for 11 of the last 17 weeks. And for the year, two Disney flicks—Toy Story 3 and Alice in Wonderland—hold the year's top two slots.

Here's the kicker: These family films have been, overall, pretty good. I don't think animated movies have ever been so sophisticated, and more and more filmmakers seem to understand that good, relevant stories can be told within the confines of a G or PG rating.

Sometimes, I think Christians can bemoan the state of the culture we live in. "MacGruber!" We gasp. "True Blood! Eminem! What's the world coming to?" Truth is, though, there's some awfully good stuff knocking around out there. Moreover, it's making money—which means we're likely to see this welcome trend continue. And there's nothing at all despicable about that.

Oh, it was bad. Really bad.

Contestants stand near a conveyor belt that holds various prizes (refrigerators, cars, dining room sets, etc.). They answer questions to win the items and cash. If they don't answer in time, the prizes fall off the moving belt and down a 10-story building, crashing to smithereens below. (It's said the prizes are replicas, but you'd think they'd still be expensive to create!)

This show was so lousy, in fact, I got mad and wondered if it and other inane and wasteful programs are a reason why other countries sometimes dislike us.

The Hollywood Reporter's Barry Garron reviewed Downfall so well that I'll quote him, since one cannot improve on perfection:

Considering the fact Downfall has a TV-PG rating and includes questions that few under the age of 20 could answer, ABC is obviously not gearing it toward kids. And that makes me wonder what the network must think of American adults. The network has spent millions of dollars on a show that drops things off a building just to watch them go boom. ABC calls the program "a unique, high-stakes and adrenaline-pumping game show." I would actually agree with that "adrenaline-pumping" part—because my blood did start to simmer.

With that kind of payday, you wouldn't think there'd be moviegoers left over to see anything else. Au contraire, my friend. Avatar: The Last Airbender conjured its way to more than $70.5 million for second place, while Toy Story 3 managed to squeeze another $42.2 million from the box office: The Pixar film earned $301.5 mil in three weeks.

But the big story is still Twilight and its legion of rabid, movie-going fans—perhaps the world's mightiest army not on a government till. You mess with Twihards at your own peril, as I learned after I posted a less-than-vampire-skin-sparkling review of the film. Lots of angry girls and women promptly wrote Plugged In to tell me how completely clueless I was: Several were particularly put out that I took issue with Jacob's oft-shirtless presence on screen, including in a driving snowstorm (I called it "abs-solutely silly"—a line since removed), seeing as how Jacob perpetually runs a 108-degree temperature.

Which makes me wonder why, if the body temperature is such an issue, Jake bothers with pants. Particularly those heavy jeans.

Others thought that Bella wasn't at all hasty in wishing to be undead, or quibbled with the degree to which characters lie to one another ("they just didn't tell the whole truth," one said), or my argument that the film gives viewers a slightly distorted view of what love's all about. Wrote one young reader:

Which is great, and maybe even true! Edward does treat Bella just like I'd want my 16-year-old daughter's hypothetical boyfriend to treat her. Edward is "old school," as Bella says—big on courtesy and a massive proponent of abstinence before marriage.  He seems like a pretty cool guy, despite the fact he's technically dead and all. All I'm saying is that we all get morning breath and leave the toilet seat up sometimes: Endless love is possible. Endless bliss … well, that might be a stretch.

Many of the letters I received were pretty polite, others less so. But I really, um, appreciated all the passion and thoughtfulness that went in to each and every one of 'em (though I'm also quite thankful Twihard nation doesn't know where I live).

Not that I'm taking anything back, mind you. Eclipse has some stuff going for it, but it's got its problems, too. And I can't help but wonder … if Jacob ever got a job at, like, Plugged In, will he be allowed to come into work shirtless? I mean, given his high body temperature and all?