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 […]
The Strangely Pro-Life Message in Alita: Battle Angel
Alita: Battle Angel thundered into theaters Wednesday. Like lots of PG-13 action flicks, it’s kinda good, kinda bad and kinda ugly. (Of course, you can read my review for more detail.) But oddly, one of the movie’s most powerful messages came in its first 10 minutes or so. The world of Alita (based on a […]
And the Best Homemade Grammy Award Goes To …
A whopping 84 Grammys were awarded this year (though not all were obviously doled out during Sunday night’s Grammy Award telecast). Childish Gambino, aka Donald Glover, took home three of them, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Lady Gaga picked up a couple, too. Country star Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour took […]
LEGO Movie 2’s Not-So-Awesome Debut
You’d think that The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part would be a blockbuster. After all, LEGOs are all about blocks, right? But while The LEGO Movie 2 did cruise to a win this weekend, it’s leaning toward more of a bust. The newest LEGO flick earned an estimated $34.4 million, which easily outdistanced its […]
Culture Clips: Wake Up, the Super Bowl’s Over
A football game of some import was played on Sunday, and lots of us watched it. But not as many as usual. According to Sports Illustrated, about 98.2 million folks tuned in to CBS’ broadcast of the Super Bowl. That’s a whole bunch of people to be sure, but it’s actually the smallest audience the […]
Super Bowl Ads Reveal a Brave, New, Digital World
“I watch the Super Bowl for the ads,” some say. And this year, those folks might’ve been some of the few who actually enjoyed it. (Why yes, I was rooting for the Rams. Why do you ask?) While football fans were treated to a 13-3 victory by the New England Patriots, commercial fans were treated […]