Since entering my thirties, around every turn of the year I can always count on the same lingering question nagging at my subconscious like a hungry and overtired toddler: What if I never amount to anything? Something about the annual ritual of taking stock, or the barrage of “New Year, New Me” social media posts, […]
In Praise of Emotional Time Travel (Sort of)
When my kids ask me in years to come how I survived the coronavirus quarantine, will I give them the proper answer or the honest one?
Another Week Ends: the Cross of Christ, Not Giving Advice, Temptation, Jean Vanier, Pixar’s Onward, the Dating Market, and Reclaiming Moral Language
1. As we enter into Lent, Fred Sanders has a wonderful reflection on the centrality of Jesus’ crucifixion, arguing “The Cross Changes Everything.” Whether from the Apostle Paul, Charles Wesley, or the Apostle’s Creed, the salvation wrought by Jesus at Calvary is a refrain worth repeating again and again. The centrality of the Cross changes […]
Another Week Ends: Aging Presidents, Reusable Grocery Bags, the Soul of Pixar, Zero-Sum Happiness, Bad Good Books, Bomb Threats, and the Joy of Being Cancelled
1. There’s much ado about cancel culture going around the web these past two weeks. The New York Times has a pair of profiles on the new morality forming in certain circles of left-leaning activism, though to observe it on the political left is not to say that it doesn’t happen everywhere else, including the […]
Toys as Shepherds and Shepherds as Toys: Guiding the Lost in Toy Story 4
Grateful for this one from Jeremiah Lawson. For his insightful commentary on the first three Toy Story films, start here. Warning: spoilers here! Here in 2019 there seems to be an inverse proportion between the number of bids at epic storytelling and the number of successes. After eight seasons and years of commentary, Game of […]
The Real Battle Lines in The Incredibles 2
This one was written by Jeremiah Lawson. Spoilers ahead! Brad Bird’s films may be some of the most misunderstood animated films released under the name of Disney/Pixar, thanks to film critics who, over against any of Bird’s own public statements, insist that he embraces and endorses an Ayn-Rand-style objectivism. There have been inevitable attempts to […]
Another Week Ends: Self-Citation, GoT Fatigue, Pros and Cons of Moral Lit, Wonder in Children’s Books (and Movies), Millennial GENESI$, and Funeral Etiquette
1. In the academic world this week, a new study looks at self-citations among academics. One had 7,000 citations, which is pretty good–but more than 1400 of those came from his own (later) work. There’s some ‘bootstrapping’ for you. The study also found that men over the last couple hundred years have cited to themselves […]
Three Minutes of Pixar Easter Eggs
Because we could all use a mental health break this AM:
p.s. Remember when we released “The Gospel According to Pixar”? Me neither…
The Short-Term Memory of God: The Gospel According to Finding Dory
Finding Dory — Pixar’s latest box office smash — picks up where Finding Nemo left off, a year after that rebellious clownfish was found and rescued from the dentist’s tank in Sydney, Australia. Nemo’s friend, Dory, a natural blue who suffers from short-term memory loss, isn’t adjusting well to daily life in the Great Barrier […]
Another Week Ends: St. Paul’s Gift, Princeton’s Fifth Quintile, Biden’s Kierkegaard, Russia’s Soul, Pixar’s SadLab, and the Peak of Television
1) After the seriously powerful interview Colbert conducted with Vice President Joe Biden, Quartz did a closer look on the guiding philosophy that helped Biden endure the loss of his son Beau. If you’ve not watched the interview, well, go ahead and do that, but Biden describes a note that his wife left him on […]
Thou Shalt Never Feel Bad: Inside Out for the Ivy League
Sadness is having a cultural moment, and that makes me happy. Much of this is thanks to Pixar’s Inside Out, that rare film which deserves all the success and acclaim being heaped upon it. There are any number of reasons to laud the movie, as DP pointed out a couple weeks ago. Its artistic merits […]
Gospel According to Pixar: Inside Out
The reviews for Pixar’s latest, Inside Out, are not just hype. I went to see the movie on Tuesday night, and I’m still processing different parts of it, which to me is always the sign of a goodie. It’s exactly what we’ve come to expect from Pixar: appealing to all ages – wholesome, charming fun […]
