2017 In Review

Playbill reports: SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical will end its Broadway run September 16 at the Palace Theatre. The new musical featuring a score by a roster of pop and rock hit-makers, including Aerosmith, Cyndi Lauper, John Legend, Sara Bareilles, Panic! At the Disco, and David Bowie, opened December 4. The production’s Broadway run is cut short, in part, due to …

Variety reports: Disney-Lucasfilm’s “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” has cleared the $1 billion milestone in worldwide grosses in less than three weeks. “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” pulled in $120.4 million globally on the New Year’s Eve weekend with $52.4 million at 4,232 domestic venues and $68 million internationally during the Friday-Sunday period. “The Last Jedi” is now the eighth …

Another action-packed year has come and gone for this here website thingy, which in a few months will mark its 14th anniversary. I want to sincerely thank all of you, longtime JMGers and newbies alike, for coming along on the insane Trump-zaster that 2017 has been. As I mention in this post every year, aggregating breaking news is like a …

Variety reports: The world of TV had a rough year in 2017, with the death of the beloved Mary Tyler Moore hitting hard. TV’s Batman, Adam West, Jim Nabors of “Gomer Pyle,” Della Reese of “Touched by an Angel” and “The Partridge Family’s” David Cassidy were among other TV notables who died this year. It was a sad year for …

The New York Times reports: It would have seemed unbelievable in 1990, when there were 2,245 killings in New York City, but as of Wednesday there have been just 286 in the city this year — the lowest since reliable records have been kept. In fact, crime has fallen in New York City in each of the major felony categories …

Stand by for a screaming orange meltdown. Gallup reports: Americans once again are most likely to name Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as the man and woman living anywhere in the world they admire most, as they have for the past 10 years. The pair retain their titles this year, although by much narrower margins than in the past. Obama …

The BBC reports: The Queen has paid tribute to London and Manchester in her Christmas Day message for their handling of this year’s terror attacks. She said it was a “privilege” to meet the concert attack survivors in May and stressed both cities’ “powerful identities”. The monarch also remembered the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire. In the year of …

PolitiFact reports: A mountain of evidence points to a single fact: Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential election of 2016. In both classified and public reports, U.S. intelligence agencies have said Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered actions to interfere with the election. Those actions included the cyber-theft of private data, the placement of propaganda against particular candidates, and an overall …

From Merriam-Webster: Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2017 is feminism. The word was a top lookup throughout the year, with several spikes that corresponded to various news reports and events. The general rise in lookups tells us that many people are interested in this word; specific spikes give us insight into some of the reasons why. Feminism spiked following …

The Today Show reports: TIME has named The Silence Breakers, the individuals who set off a national reckoning over the prevalence of sexual harassment, as its 2017 Person of the Year. The magazine’s editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal revealed the selection Wednesday on TODAY along with the cover, a composite group photo that includes actress Ashley Judd, singer Taylor Swift and former …

USA Today reports: Ivanka Trump’s choice to remain involved in her father’s presidency helped make “complicit” Dictionary.com’s word of the year, but the site said the word resonates with a number of 2017’s biggest stories from Washington to Hollywood. “The word ‘complicit’ has sprung up in conversations this year about those who speak out against powerful figures and institutions and …

CNBC reports: President Donald Trump will be characteristically pleased with himself when he hears that one of his favorite phrases, “fake news”, has been named “word of the year” by dictionary publisher Collins. Announcing the winner, U.K.-based Collins Dictionary said the term “fake news” saw an “unprecedented” rise with usage of the term increasing 365 percent since 2016. Defining “fake …