CASEY PHILLIPS: Director Roland Emmerich must have been the bane of plastic Army men and ant hills as a child, because he’s clearly fascinated by wanton destruction.

When Darde Long started working as a keeper at the Chattanooga Zoo in 1985, it was a far cry from the accredited institution she now oversees as executive director.

To most people, a 10-foot-square space might feel like a jail cell.

Casey Phillips: For blues rock guitar aficionados, watching 32-year-old Joe Bonamassa's star rise has been akin to witnessing the rebirth of Stevie Ray Vaughan.

If you're a fan of digital arsenals, stop reading, go buy "Borderlands" and clear your schedule, because this game was made with you in mind.

CASEY PHILLIPS: Considering she's the source of one of the world's great unsolved mysteries, Hollywood's avoidance of Amelia Earhart as a film-worthy subject for the last 70 years is as almost baffling as her real-life disappearance.

Casey: The release of a documentary after Michael Jackson's death on June 25 was inevitable since fans were ravenous for a glimpse of Jackson's final days before his sold-out, final tour. Based on "This Is It," which is culled from 80 hours of footage shot during his preparations for the tour, it would have been a doozy.

There's a very important distinction to make between video games that are challenging and ones that are cheap. The former test players' skills to the limit. The latter test their patience.

Rhonda Westfield remembers seeing Michael Jackson on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

HOLLY LEBER: The appeal of "Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant" does not lie in the title character. It's an odd little underdog story -- a bored teenager trapped in a high school where, for some reason, everyone wears pastels. He sneaks out one night to a freak show, steals a spider, becomes a half-vampire, makes friends with a snake boy, falls for a monkey girl -- you know, ordinary stuff. All this is embellished with freaky visual effects.