Culture Clips: The Post-Truth Edition
We live in a post-truth world. Or, at least, so says the Oxford English Dictionary. The hallowed caretaker of the King’s English dubbed the phrase “post-truth” as its Word of the Year. It’s not the first time that Oxford’s made a rather unusual pick for its annual word: Last year it ignored words entirely and […]
Fantastic Beasts Find No. 1
After two rather strange weeks in theaters, the box office took a fantastic turn. A fantastic beasty turn, that is. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the hotly anticipated Harry Potter prequel, broke out in a big way in North America, stuffing an estimated $75 million into its curiously expansive marsupial pouch. It wasn’t […]
Arrival and Us: Are We All Speaking the Same Language?
Almost everyone likes Arrival. The $24.1 million worth of people who saw it thought it was just fine. (It gets a “B” from viewers, according to Cinemascore.) Secular critics thought it was fantastic. (It’s got a 93% “freshness” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and plenty of reviewers are calling it one of the best movies of […]
Culture Clips: Hollywood Reacts to the Election
We begin this week where we began last: with the election. Even though President-Elect Donald Trump was a former reality star himself, that doesn’t mean that Hollywood was thrilled with his win. The Los Angeles Times gathered celebrity reactions on Twitter and discovered that while Scott Baio and Kirstie Alley were cool with the results, […]
Doctor Strange Wins Again
It’s autumn, no question. We’re watching football. We’re raking leaves. Some of us may already be basting the Thanksgiving Turducken. But at the movies, it sure looks an awful lot like summer. For the second straight weekend, a Marvel superhero movie—Doctor Strange—stood atop the box office wearing its nifty sentient cape, collecting an estimated $43 […]
Culture Clips: How Google Shapes Election News
And so it begins. As Adam Holz said last week, Culture Clips is moving to a new time (now) and a new place (here), also known as “Tuesdays” and “this blog.” And because this blog is a different sort of beast than our Culture Clips are used to, the weekly wrap of relevant pop culture […]
Strange Days at the Box Office
Never underestimate the drawing power of Benedict Cumberbatch in a cape. Doctor Strange, the latest fringe Marvel character to get his own big movie deal, performed a nifty little magic trick this weekend. His titular movie teleported straight to the top of the box office, conjuring an estimated $85 million into Disney’s already packed coffers. […]
Boo! Madea Scares Up Another Win
The theaters were filled with top-flight superstars this weekend: multi-Oscar winner Tom Hanks. Ageless action hero Tom Cruise. Ben Affleck—a guy who, um, directs really, really well. But none had the moxie to best Tyler Perry in drag. For the second straight weekend, Boo! A Madea Halloween took the weekend’s box office crown and daintily […]
The Walking Dead Has Gone Too Far … Even For Some of Its Fans
At least 17 million people watched the Season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead—massive numbers in today’s fragmented television landscape. More people watched the villain Negan beat two characters to death with his barbed bat Lucille than watched Sunday Night Football that evening. I was one of them. You can find our review of the […]
Big Return For Accountant
When a big-time win is dependent on tracking money—lots and lots of money—it’s good to have a talented CPA on your team. The Accountant whipped out its handy-dandy abacus and crunched the numbers until they were all smashed to a fine powder. By the time all the credits had been credited, the debits debited and […]