This World and Me

In the decade between 1999 and 2009, Walt Disney Animation Studios was in a creative rut. The studio's films often found themselves in the shadow of their younger, sleeker sister studio, Pixar, whose touching stories brought to life by innovative computer-generated imagery cemented themselves within popular culture. The films that Pixar released during this era are instantly recognizable: Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Cars (2006), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009). Meanwhile, almost all of the films that Disney's original animation studio produced during this era faded into obscurity, forgotten instantly by a fast-changing world: Fantasia 2000 (1999), Dinosaur (2000), The Emperor's New Groove (2000), Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001), Treasure Planet (2002), Brother Bear (2003), Home on the Range (2004), Chicken Little (2005), Meet the Robinsons (2007). There is, however, one definitive ex...

A few days ago, I watched Disney's new movie Soul (2020). It's good. It is one of the best films that Pixar Animation Studios has ever made. Spoilers follow. The film follows a New York City jazz musician named Joe Gardner who finds himself dissatisfied with his life as a middle school band director and yearns to play jazz for a living. During the film's exposition, Joe receives the opportunity to audition to play the piano for a jazz quartet, and he nails it. The quartet's leader, Dorothea Williams, schedules him to play that night, and Joe is so ecstatic that he fails to look carefully while crossing the street and fatally injures himself. What follows from this point forward is a spectacular journey that forces viewers to confront existential questions. Longtime Pixar fans will already be familiar with the philosophical experience that Pete Docter evokes based on his previous film Inside Out (2015), and with Soul , Docter has truly outdone himself. After Joe injure...

I remember watching Robert Zemeckis' The Polar Express for the first time as a kid in elementary school. One snowy winter just after Christmas, my family booked a room at an indoor waterpark resort in southern Ohio called the Great Wolf Lodge. While watching the TV in that room in the evening, we stumbled across a channel broadcasting The Polar Express . Theatrically released in 2004, the computer-animated film is based off of a picture book with the same name written by Chris Van Allsburg. I had been familiar with the picture book from school, so at the time, it was a little surprising to me the extent to which the film deviates from the source material. However, understandably, the picture book was only a handful of pages long and surely doesn't contain enough material to fill a feature-length film. It has grown to be my favorite Christmas-themed film (to be honest, there are not many Christmas-themed films that I have enjoyed), and I frequently look back on it with a sens...

If this is where the monarchy is headed, count me out! Out of service, out of Africa—I wouldn't hang about! My favorite character in The Lion King is Zazu. This is the red-billed hornbill that describes himself as the King's majordomo . At the beginning of the film, Zazu delivers a morning report to Mufasa and accompanies young Simba and Nala on their way to the water hole. In what has to be a contender for the most iconic musical sequence in the entire Disney repertoire, the cubs manage successfully to ditch Zazu and go instead to an elephant graveyard. As a kid, I think there is a natural inclination to dislike Zazu. He is the annoying adult character who—much like an overbearing teacher or parent—tries to stop the children from doing the exciting thing they want to do. As I've gotten older, however, I have grown much more sympathetic towards his character. Despite being a bird less than half the size of a lion cub, he is trusted unconditionally by Simba's parent...

I have a pet peeve that comes up when I talk with someone about a song, a film, a TV show, or perhaps a book. Occasionally, one of my friends will describe such a work as objectively good or objectively bad . These phrases will always cause me to raise an eyebrow. What exactly are the objective factors that determine the quality of a creative work? I can think of a few ideas, but each seem problematic. My first thought is numbers. We could sample from a group of people who have experienced a particular work and ask them whether they think the work is "good". If a supermajority says yes, then the work is objectively good ; if a supermajority says no, then the work is objectively bad ; if there is no clear answer, then the work is objectively neither good nor bad . This method is questionable because it seems to rely heavily on mere popularity. To use an adage that one of my high school English teachers had on her little podium: "What is popular is not always right, and ...

On the first day of my freshman orientation for undergrad, my orientation leader gave us icebreaker questions to answer. One of them was "what is your favorite animal?". I thought for a second. Since elementary school, I had a particular fondness for grizzly bears because there's something incredibly charming about the intersection of fluffiness and clumsiness. It would also be a particularly relevant choice, since my university's sports team is called the California Golden Bears. However, as I thought about how to respond to this question, I realized that one animal has since overtaken the grizzly bear as my favorite animal. It was one that I had read about, wrote about, and actively admired. After all, the creature is the  fastest animal on the Earth , and its continued existence today is among the greatest triumphs in the history of environmental protection. Confident in my decision, I smiled and scribbled down my answer and returned it to my orientation leader. ...