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"The Expendables 3" lived down to its title over the weekend as moviegoers shunned the third installment of the shoot-'em-up franchise featuring the action heroes of yesteryear. The movie grossed an estimated $16.2 million, falling short of Lionsgate's projected take of $20 million to $25 million and putting it in the No. 4 spot for the weekend. "The Expendables 3" also trailed the series' previous two movies, which debuted with $34.8 million and $28.8 million, both good for the No. 1 spot. What happened this time around?

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - Texas law enforcement officials say several Mexican drug cartels are luring youngsters as young as 11 to work in their smuggling operations. Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told Reuters the drug gangs have a chilling name for the young Texans lured into their operations. "They call them 'the expendables,'" he said. McCraw said his investigators have evidence six Mexican drug gangs -- including the violent Zetas -- have "command and control centers" in Texas actively recruiting children for their operations, attracting them with what appears to be "easy money" for doing...

Critics aren’t dumb, they know the public doesn’t much care which way their thumbs point. But critics do know that based on their opinions and reviews they can enjoy an influence over what kind of films get made. And that’s not a small amount of power. Culture is upstream from politics, after all. If you have 95 percent of critics savaging a faithful retelling of the Gospels as anti-Semitic, no matter how successful “The Passion” is, no one’s going to go near that subject matter again. And that’s the goal. Same with anything that comes close to patriotism or conservatism....

Wait a minute, wait a minute… Did I just see no meterosexuals? Did I just see bad guys that aren’t white Czechs, or some other contrived nonsense? Was that a crucifix not dipped in urine? Men and guns and badassery portrayed as good things?

It is now official. With a cast including Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren, Forest Whitaker and The Stath, Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables was sure to one of the best action films ever made. But now, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed on to join the testosterone party, which seals the deal - that this will be the biggest and best movie to hit our screens in 2010.