Which Disney Princess Movie is the Best Disney Princess Movie?

So last night I was watching Tangled on the Disney Channel. I really like Tangled. It has lots of my favorite things: Mandy Moore, magic hair, self-sacrifice, Zachary Levi (quite honestly, Zachary Levi is enough to make me love anything, I loved him as Fandral in Thor: the Dark World and he was TERRIBLE in that movie--being Chuck in Chuck wins you a lot of slack with me), and some of the most beautiful animation in any of the Disney Princess movies. Anyway, during the scene when Flynn and Rapunzel are in the boat watching the floating lanterns drift up into the air and singing a song that I used to keep on my standard playlist for many years ("I See the Light" a song that 100% of the time makes me tear up) I started thinking to myself "this movie is amaze-balls." And, because of who I am and how my mind works I immediately asked myself "but how does it stack up against the other amaze-balls Disney Princess movies?" What follows is a short meditation on that question.

Movie Review: Trumbo

Several times throughout Trumbo someone tells Dalton Trumbo, the great screenwriter, that a perspective project is a mess "but there's a great story in there somewhere." To me these lines come off as high irony, because for all of its many virtues this movie suffers from the same problem--there is a good story in there somewhere, but it has been lost in the shuffle.

Top Ten Fictional Worlds

It's been a minute since I've done a top ten list. This time I've decided to focus on something particularly close to my heart as a scholar, fictional worlds. You can find my thoughts on the theory and philosophy of fictional worlds in other venues, but for this blog I am interested in the most basic question of all: which fictional worlds are the best.

Album Review: Adele's 25

It is not, at this moment in time, possible to stream Adele's new album 25, so I went to Target and bought a physical copy. On a CD. It has some liner notes and everything, which is dope.

Movie Review: The Night Before

Let me open this review by way of a confession: I really enjoyed The Night Before.

Billy Zane Got Swoll, and 25 Other Thoughts That I Had While Viewing The Phantom

Hello friends,

I took the month of October off from writing this blog--sometimes you want to watch TV and movies, read books, and listen to music without thinking about what you will write about, but thought that I would inaugurate my return with a set of real time thoughts of a viewing of The Phantom (1996) starring hero of American cinema and Titanic lifeboat seat thief Billy Zane!