A lot of the “random talent discoveries” of the past were exploitative men obsessing over and elevating beautiful women. I'd rather have nepo babies. 

As one data point among many, it's useful to have an opinion from someone with personal experience of what Biden is like now and whose future is absolutely secure whether or not they piss off Dem gatekeepers.

Sword and sandals is a trashy genre and always has been. If this doesn't give us a anything but Paul Mescal looking sweaty and aggrieved for 2 hours, the brief has been met. 

I hope the obvious influence of Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees makes it in

I saw her stand-up in DC a couple years ago - unhinged, sweet, nerdy, hilarious, like watching a stoned but still articulate squirrel run around for an hour. 

A creepy and discouraged behavior in a four year old boy, not just a grown man. In his case the pyschological wound is never getting over that correction.

One of my favorite things they've ever done is the short "Day and Night" but it would be virtuosic to turn that kind of concept into a full movie. 

Or a kid who doesn't have any imagination because they've had too much screen time. Basically telling the story of one of those Axiom babies learning about the real world

That is 100% Brad Bird’s particular psychological bias against average people which has only gotten more entrenched as he’s gotten older. It’s not a diss, I think adults with unhealed childhood wounds make some of the best children’s stories. On the other hand, it does explain why John Lasseter and JK Rowling and…

There’s so much great anti-authoritarian kids lit though because kids are the victims of countless small tyrants. Wrinkle in Time, Matilda, Pippi Longstocking, Charlotte’s Web, Holes. It doesn’t need to specifically be about Trump to reinforce in kids that letting stupid bullies amass power is bad.

My dude, may I recommend books for adults instead of high-budget movies primarily for children. The economics just don't line up. Even genuinely revolutionary kids books get almost everything sanded off them when they become movies.

Yep, I know exactly what you're talking about. There's a grid in Scott McClouds Understanding comics that illustrates that abstraction enhances relatability so perfectly. I loved what Disney tried out in Paperman so much, but unfortunately I think mainstream kids animation is never going back to 2D or close to 2D

I hold particular personal disdain for Monsters University and Incredibles 2 because they make such boring broad story choices in such interesting worlds but I agree that it's not badly made

Have you seen Turning Red? It's no Spiderverse, but it's decidedly not Pixar's typical house style either. I think they went in the right direction with it too. They've covered pretty much all the early childhood conflicts and fears in their other movies, preteen girlhood (and I assume boyhood) is so rich in other…

And not even one Bug's Life sequel 🙈

I do also think that their plotting and overall execution is not as good as it once was. Toy Story 3 is one of the most exquisitely plotted and storyboarded movies ever made of any variety. The last Pixar that felt like that to me was Coco, everything since felt like it could have spent another six months in…

Is part of it not also that we've just grown up? 

Every other movie being a sequel is pretty par for the course for Pixar of the past 15 years. Their 2001-2009 run of uniformly worthwhile original films is an extraordinary outlier in the history of all movie studios. I don’t love it, but if they have to crank out a Monsters University so they can roll the dice on…

That’s straining my recollection! IMO Wonderful, No Good Deed, and For Good are solid, but I couldn't speak to general popularity. We sang For Good at my middle school graduation to illustrate how ubiquitous that musical was in the 2000s.

Ironically, the single positive thing I have to say about Gary Oldman’s involvement with Harry Potter is that we can agree he didn’t do a great job. It’s nothing against his acting skill. I just don’t think there’s an actor on Earth who can nail both Commissioner Gordon and Sirius Black’s exhausted, unwilling former…