Vodcast: What Would Paddington Do?
Paddington 2 lands in theaters today. And if you missed this lovable stuffed bear’s big-screen debut back in 2015, well, suffice it to say this sequel offers more of the same. Now sometimes, more of the same is a bad thing. But in the case of Paddington, it’s actually a good thing. Because as cute and […]
Russell Brand’s Unexpected Journey: From Addiction to … Jesus?
If you had to choose five celebrities whom you thought were least likely to have a spiritual encounter with Jesus, who would be on your list? It’s an interesting thought experiment, isn’t it? One who might have made my list is the British comedian/actor perhaps most famous for being Katy Perry’s ex-husband: Russell Brand. He […]
Culture Clips: An Injured NFL Star and God’s ‘Perfect Plan’
The Philadelphia Eagles’ Cinderella season may have come to a screeching halt last week. The NFL team’s star quarterback, Carson Wentz, suffered a season-ending ACL tear. But while many fans and commentators grieved what could have been, Wentz himself was tweeting this inspiring message: “I know my God is a powerful one with a perfect […]
Musical Musings 2017: Adam Holz’s Year-End Picks
We sometimes get emails that take us to task for “hating” what we review. To an extent, I get that. There’s lot to critique, and sometimes it can feel as if all we do is categorize varieties of moral dreck. But I have a confession: One of my great joys is when a musical artist […]
Pop Culture’s Complicity in Sexual Harassment
Complicity. The word sounds vaguely menacing. Even if we’re not quite sure what complicity means, it sounds … bad. To be complicit, Merriam-Webster’s dictionary says, involves “helping someone commit a crime or a wrong in some way.” We’re hearing that word used a lot lately—albeit perhaps slightly less literally—in connection with the sexual harassment and […]
Culture Clips: Time’s Person of the Year Is a Hashtag Movement
Each December, speculation builds about who Time magazine will select as its Person of the Year. That tradition that dates back to 1927, when Charles Lindbergh was selected as the inaugural honoree (according to Wikipedia’s entry on the subject.) Past recipients include almost every U.S. president since then (with the notable absence of Gerald Ford), […]
Culture Clips: Do (Late Night) Nice Guys Finish Last?
I watched about five minutes of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert the other night. That was as much as I could take before Colbert’s political monologue drove me in search of something kinder, gentler. Something like, say, the Tonight Show with host Jimmy Fallon, who’s mostly eschewed the kind of political skewering that has […]
To See or Not to See: Is That Our Question?
Every couple of years or so, we try to survey Plugged In’s users to see what you think of the website: what works, what doesn’t, what you’d like to see changed or added. Our team got the results of our latest survey this week. And there was one contrasting set of suggestions that I felt […]
Culture Clips: The Most Hated Man in Nerd-dom?
Luke almost didn’t come back. Mark Hamill portrayed Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars trilogy, launching him into the kind of superstardom few ever actors ever achieve. No wonder he was a bit tentative about reprising his iconic role. “I was just really scared,” he told the New York Times recently. “I thought, why […]
Miley vs. Hannah
Miley Cyrus just threw Hannah Montana under the bus. Hannah Montana, of course, was the famous character who rocketed young Miley into the stratosphere of superstardom. The Disney Channel series of the same name aired from 2006 to 2010. It spawned a concert tour (Best of Both Worlds) and a concert-tour movie (Hannah Montana & […]