2014 Plugged In Movie Awards: Best Movie for Teens
To voice your thoughts and vote for your favorite nominee, post a comment on this blog or on our Facebook page. To read our Plugged In Movie Awards introduction, link here. BEST MOVIE FOR TEENS (NOMINEES) 42 (PG-13): 42 tells the inspirational story of Major League Baseball’s first black player: Jackie Robinson. Many folks, of […]
2014 Plugged In Movie Awards
Last year, superheroes rescued more than a billion dollars from rapt moviegoers. Arrow-shooting heroines and sword-toting Hobbits both came up with Part 2’s. Americans hustled, princesses sang, minions grumbled, cars roared and starships warped. And to sum all that up, this Thursday the entertainment industry will laud the films it considers the very best of […]
Your Computer Knows What You Read (And Sometimes So Do We)
Everywhere you go these days online, you’re being watched and tracked and categorized and cataloged. It’s become something of a frivolous pastime in my family to take note of and laugh about the trail of tax software ads or sheepskin slipper ads or holiday sweater ads that follow us around for a week or so […]
It’s the Day Before 2014 and I Already Need to Catch My Breath
I’m kind of amazed you’re even reading this post right now. It’s hard to sift through the vastness of Internet space and actually settle on any one thing for longer than, say, it takes to finish this sentence. So if you’re still here, then … to say our attention spans in 2013 were fragmented is […]
So Famous It Freaks You Out
I’ve never been famous. And by the sound of the things coming from the folks who have been, I should never want to be. Justin Bieber’s going crazy these days, so famous he pretty much can’t see straight. Most of the girls on that same bullet train are either off the rails or cruising down […]
Looks Like I’ve Been Avoiding Ads for a Tad Too Long
I’m afraid I’ve become nearly totally blind to advertising. And that may be a bad thing. It’s not bad in the sense that it so rarely influences me to buy anything anymore. I’m sure I’ve saved a lot of money. But when you become blind to something, you no longer see how others are looking […]
A Few Private Thoughts
No one was much interested in watching a movie about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange: After only four weeks in theaters, The Fifth Estate has topped out well below $4 million, generating about as much buzz as a triple-A battery in the Arctic. But the controversy that swirls around Assange and the Americans who’ve dished their […]
Are Games the New Coffee—Deemed Bad for You for Years, Then Suddenly Good?
I’m not a big video game fan. I’m perfectly content to leave any stray affection for the beastly things in the capable hands and heart of our resident gaming expert and reviewer, Bob Hoose. So I guess that makes me the perfect guy to share a couple of good-news stories about games. We hear a […]
Is NC-17 the New R? (I Fervently Hope Not)
Plugged In does not review NC-17 movies. A review publication has to draw the line somewhere between PG and the porn industry, and we’ve drawn ours right between R and NC-17. It seems like a reasonable place to draw it, what with most mainstream theaters refusing to even show NC-17 movies, and keeping them locked […]
Obsessed With Looking for Lookers
This is the story of a quote, a question, a Culture Clip and a poll. And it’s not a very pretty one, even though all four are about beauty. First, the quote, from Leslie Gornstein, writing for omg.yahoo.com, on the practice of slimming, altering and retouching actors and musicians in movies, TV shows and music […]