Amazon’s Alexa Wants You to Have a Dollhouse
Ah, technology. Ain’t it grand? Just the other night, I asked my phone to look up directions to a movie theater, send a text and find a nearby restaurant, and poof! My little digital assistant, Siri, managed it all without a single hiccup. (It may text better than I do, frankly: I, in concert with […]
Go Figure: Hidden Figures Takes Another Win
We were braced for a big upheaval at the box office this weekend. A trio of fresh new movies hit theaters, and a handful of others, Oscar hopes still in tow, moved from the cozy enclaves of New York and Los Angeles and expanded wide across the country. Some serious turnover in the box office’s […]
Culture Clips: The Peak TV Edition
Yes, 2017 still has its New Year smell. Nothing’s gone critically amiss yet, and we still have a little breathing room to ponder what happened in the year just gone by. And while perhaps we might differ on whether 2016 was good or bad, there’s one thing we can all agree on. We sure had […]
Rogue One Ices Disney’s Record Year
Perhaps Obi-Wan Kenobi had something to do with Disney’s record-setting year. Perhaps, unbeknownst to us, the old Jedi stood at the ticket booth as we moviegoers plunked down our money and gestured to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. “This is the movie you’re looking for,” he’d say in that calming voice of his. “You […]
Pop Culture’s Top 10 Movers and Shakers (2016 Edition)
Well, not every year can be a winner. For many of us, 2016 was a time we’d rather forget. Everyone seemed so angry this year. We saw it in the nearly interminable election cycle. We saw it in the constant barrage of protests and counter-protests. Why, the atmosphere was so explosive this year that even […]
Gone, But Here
We’ve lost a lot of talented entertainers in 2016, from Alan Thicke to Zsa Zsa Gabor, from Muhammed Ali to David Bowie, from Prince to … well, too many more to mention. Earlier this week, Carrie Fisher died at the age of 60. Yesterday, her mother, Debbie Reynolds, passed away at age 84. Her son, […]
Rogue One Takes Two
Some say that the success of the new Star Wars movies is predicated on nostalgia: the affection we still feel for those beloved first Star Wars flicks made when CGI was just a random collection of letters and the only computer mouse around was the one that ate its way into a shipping box. So […]
Culture Clips: The Kids Are Just All Right
We sometimes publish depressing Culture Clips. Granted, the culture has been pretty glum as of late, what with stories about algorithms making us small-minded or the push for a third-gender option or the fact that one in 25 of us, statistically, has been threatened with “revenge porn.” But the world isn’t all candy-coated chicken livers. […]
The Box Office Goes Rogue
Did the latest Star Wars rocket to top the box office this weekend? Might as well ask if Darth Vader is a mouth breather. Yes, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story did indeed punch that ol’ hyperspace button straight to No. 1 this weekend, netting around $155 million along the way. That translates into enough […]
Culture Clips: Parents Worried About Kids’ Screen Time (But They Use Screens Just as Much)
Just call this the “log in your own eye” edition of culture clips. Parents worry a lot about how much time their children and teens spend watching screens. But according to a new report, moms and dads spend an average of nine hours a day with their own screens. “We’re not trying to make parents […]
