Culture Clips: Old Year, New Tricks
The new year is nearly upon us. Forget running from it, forget hiding. Like a tiger, it’ll soon bound from the weeds and pounce on us all. Yes, the new year is a time for change. Take, for instance, Macaulay Culkin, who didn’t even wait for the Times Square ball to drop to announce a […]
Aquaman’s Box-Office Stocking Overflows
Nothing says Christmas like a soggy superhero with a big fork. So said the masses that scurried to their local theaters this weekend in advance of the holiday—plunking down whatever they had left over from their Christmas shopping for tickets to Aquaman. The DC superhero flick earned $67.4 million to take the box-office crown. That’s […]
Culture Clips: Gifts for Everyone!
Tis the season to hand out gifts. But in our harried culture, not everyone has time to write letters to Santa Claus these days. And since Kris Kringle doesn’t have a Twitter account (or does he?), we at Plugged In thought we’d ask for a few presents for some culture’s movers and shakers. So Santa—can […]
Social Animals Showcases the Inspiring, Terrifying World of Instagram
In Social Animals, a new documentary directed by Jonathan Ignatius Green, a teen laments the chaos that is Instagram: “You have to deal with the perverts, the disrespectful teenagers, the racist people, and family members,” she says. “That’s too much.” But is she going to delete her account? Probably not. Instagram may be “too much,” […]
Spider-Man: Into First Place
There are those who say that we live in an infinite number of universes. For some scientists who reject the idea of a Creator, it helps explain the outrageously outlandish improbability that life exists at all; and many a science-fiction and comic book writer has leveraged the theory to create wildly creative twists on well-worn […]
Top Television 2018: Paul Asay and Kristin Smith’s Year-End Picks
Fun fact: About 495 scripted television series were reportedly aired in 2018. If true, that’s a new record—up from the old record of 487 set last year, which in turn was up from the previous record of 455 set the year before. That’s a lot of television. And even for Plugged In’s intrepid television reviewers […]
Is a PG-13 Deadpool Movie a Good Thing?
I’ll be seeing Once Upon a Deadpool today—the new PG-13 version of the very, very, VERRRRRY R-rated Deadpool 2. But already, without having seen a second of the new cut, I’m super conflicted. On one hand, Deadpool (actor Ryan Reynolds under the mask and prosthetics) can be pretty funny, and much of Deadpool 2’s humor […]
Fee, Fi, Ho, Hum: Ralph Wins Again
Hey, there, friend! Glad you stopped by. Bad news, though: You might just as well move on. That’s right, move along. Read our review of Netflix’s Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (which was still in a handful of theaters over the weekend, as well as now streaming online, though Netflix didn’t report its earnings), or […]
Ralph (and Disney) Win Again
The best thing about Thanksgiving? The leftovers. And this weekend, the same could be said of the box office—at least for the movies in question. With just one new release in theaters (and that one not very prominent), the weekend’s box-office derby featured a veritable cornucopia of reheated cinematic holdovers. Indeed, the whole top five […]
Of Turkeys, Technology and Accidental Texts
Many of us likely spent our Thanksgivings with family and friends, passing the mashed potatoes and side-stepping politics as much as humanly possible. But Thanksgiving at Wanda Dench’s house looks a little different. In 2016, 59-year-old Wanda invited her teen grandson and his girlfriend over for Thanksgiving dinner via text. Or, at least, that’s who […]