Culture Clips: Happy Birthday, World Wide Web! Time To Grow Up!
Yes, it’s time to trot out the cake, light the candles and sing happy birthday to something we all know and, sometimes, love. That’s right, the World Wide Web turns 30 this month! But its father, while proud of his techno-progeny, thinks his creation has a little growing up to do. Tim Berners-Lee, who proposed […]
Captain Marvel Caps Marvelous Weekend
So, I understand some folks were calling for a boycott of Captain Marvel, largely due to star Brie Larson’s criticism of white, male movie critics. Don’t think it worked. Captain Marvel, the 21st film in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, obliterated its competition as if the movie was equipped with its hero’s plasma-blasting fists. Consider: Captain Marvel […]
Culture Clips: Leaving Neverland Leaves Viewers Disgusted, Conflicted
Not in doubt: Michael Jackson was a pretty talented guy. And all that talent helped Jackson and his posthumous reputation (the singer/dancer died in 2009) weather lawsuits, accusations and rumors about his alleged sexual inclinations. But perhaps no more. HBO’s documentary Leaving Neverland, focusing on two men who allege that Jackson molested them as young […]
Religion on the Wane? NatGeo’s The Story of God Says Otherwise.
It’s said that we’re living in a post-Christian society these days. Church attendance is declining. The number of Americans who claim no formal religious affiliation is growing. But does that mean that religion’s influence is fading? Not according to Morgan Freeman. “I’m not sure it’s correct to say that religion is on the wane in […]
How to Train Your Dragon 3 Buries Madea’s Family Funeral
The Hidden World was anything but hidden in its second weekend of business. The last chapter in the How to Train Your Dragon series experienced nary a hiccup as Toothless (the dragon) took home its second box-office win in a row. It did so by edging another franchise making its final curtain call. And while […]
A Small Life, Larger Than Life
New York’s Times Square is always a pretty bustling place. But come May 4, the energy will climb a notch or two. That’s the day that Focus on the Family will host “Alive from New York” in the square, including live 4D ultrasounds on the gigantic digital screen there. Focus President Jim Daly says in […]
Oscars: The More Things Change, the More Things Stay the Same
This year’s Oscars telecast was perhaps the first I remember where the actual telecast seemed a little anticlimactic at first. Kevin Hart’s going to be our host! No, wait, never mind! But we WILL have a popular movie category! No, no, scratch that, too! But we FOR SURE will hand out awards during commercial breaks! […]
How to Train Your Dragon 3 Flies Up to No. 1
It’s been a slow year thus far at the box office. The LEGO Movie 2 underperformed. Alita: Battle Angel staggered. We’re nearly done with February, and the only film to crack $100 million in North America has been M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass—and it needed a whole month to do so. Last year, Black Panther earned […]
Plugged In Movie Awards 2019: And The Winners Are …
Nearly 900 movies were released in North America in 2018. (About as many as Netflix put out singlehandedly.) Seems like we here at Plugged In watched most of them. Oh, we couldn’t get to all of them, of course. But for the most part if you’ve heard of a movie, we saw it, reviewed it […]
Alita Stomps on LEGO 2 Over Painful President’s Day Weekend
In the movie Alita: Battle Angel, the titular hero tells us she “will not stand by in the presence of evil.” Apparently, she won’t stand by in the presence of LEGOs, either. Alita: Battle Angel hauled its collection of spare cyborg parts to the top of the box-office heap this weekend, collecting $27.8 million during […]