Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Phone
IKEA, those clever Swedish furniture makers who have convinced us all to make our own furniture, are getting creative again. Their latest invention: A table that somehow cooks soup via your smartphone. Well, not your smartphone. Not unless you live in Taiwan and frequent the IKEA store there. And, of course, you’ve got to be […]
Kung Fu Panda 3 Chops its Way to Win
Quick: What’s black and white and green all over? Kung Fu Panda 3, that’s what. Never mind that most pandas will only nibble on bamboo. Fox’s rotund martial artist gobbled up a pile of dough this weekend—an estimated $41 million of it, in fact. In fact, it nearly set a January opening-weekend earnings record, finishing […]
The Revenant Chills at No. 1
Hugh Glass, the main character in The Revenant, was thought to be a goner—his still-breathing body plopped in a makeshift grave in the dead of winter. But somehow, in the cold and snow, the guy crawled back. Sounds a little like the box office performance of the movie, actually. Shrugging off a historic East Coast […]
Ride Along 2, Revenant Force Star Wars Off the Top
What does it take to topple an utterly dominant, seemingly invincible galactic force? You need a vertically challenged, fast-talking cop, apparently. Oh, and maybe a very angry bear. After four weeks bestriding the box office charts like a colossus, Star Wars: The Force Awakens fell to third this weekend—slipping behind both the comedy Ride Along […]
David Bowie’s Countercultural Legacy
David Bowie died Jan. 10 after an 18-month struggle with cancer. He was just 69. Bowie was one of the era’s most influential singers and songwriters, and he won fans as an actor, too. When I think of him, I flash back to my junior high and high school days: Listening to “Modern Love” on […]
Star Wars Forces Its Way to Fourth Straight
After three weeks of its grosses looking as colossal as that asteroid critter from The Empire Strikes Back, the latest Star Wars movie dwindled to merely the size of a sarlacc this weekend. But hey, it was still big enough to eat everybody else’s lunch. Star Wars: The Force Awakens gobbled up an estimated $41.6 […]
The Pesky Power of Words
I’m on assignment in Miami right now (I know, I know, tough work), and in the midst of flights and flight delays, I’ve been reading Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way. It’s all very interesting, and I’ve learned something new with practically each paragraph. (Did you know, for instance, […]
Star Wars Blasts to Third Win
Success, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is, hmmm? The blockbuster flick blew up the box office like it was a cut-rate Death Star (again), plunking another estimated $88.3 million into the Millennium Falcon’s smuggling chambers while doing so. And most prognosticators say that Disney’s estimates are again on the low side: Box Office Mojo thinks […]
Pop Culture’s Top 10 Movers and Shakers (2015 Edition)
The year 2015 was filled with 365 days’ worth of stuff. Big stuff, small stuff, important stuff, strange stuff. And while we all had our own individual stuff to deal with, society foisted a whole bunch more stuff on us, too. And who, among all the 7 billion or so people living on our globe, […]
The Force Awakens (And Won’t Go Back to Sleep)
So, if you’re a movie and you just had the biggest opening weekend at the box office ever, what do you do for an encore? Why, have the biggest follow-up weekend ever, of course. And that’s just what Star Wars: The Force Awakens did Christmas weekend. After collecting all the dollars (or, at least, $248 […]