The state’s Department of Education is reportedly investigating a teacher who showed the cartoon Strange World (2022) to her fifth graders.
Disney
Posted inArt
How Disney Animation Provides a Gateway to Understanding Rococo
So closely do Disney’s animators assimilate the sensibility of French design that on occasion their source material appears almost more Disney than Disney itself.
Posted inFilm
WandaVision Grapples with Grief in Sitcom Style, But Falls Short
Despite its laugh tracks and various winks and nods, the Marvel superhero series is lacking in its homage to iconic television.
Posted inFilm
With Soul, Pixar Attempts to Make a Radically Different Kind of Animation
Warm depictions of Black life and music-making aside, Soul ultimately shortchanges itself with what feels like a lack of confidence in its core character.
Posted inFilm
Glimpse Heaven and Other Afterlives With Films About Life After Death
Here are some entertaining movies about the afterlife to watch.
Posted inFilm
Beyoncé’s Black is King, a Black American Vision of the African Continent
Though produced in collaboration with creatives from around the globe, there’s an unmistakable feeling that the film is meant more for Black Americans than the wider African diaspora.
Posted inFilm
Howard, a Lackluster Tribute to Beloved Disney Lyricist Howard Ashman
Known for his songs for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, Ashman deserves a documentary passionate enough to match his legacy.
Posted inFilm
How Disney Tricked the World Into Believing Lemmings Commit Mass Suicide
The 1958 nature documentary White Wilderness is one of several films the House of Mouse is less than proud of.
Posted inMusic
Four Takes on the Cover Album
Cover albums reveal something about the evolution of shared taste and cultural memory.
Posted inFilm
A Documentary on Tyrus Wong, a Long-Ignored Illustrator for Disney and Warner Bros
Wong spent 30 years in the film industry, though racial attitudes of the time kept his contributions unacknowledged until the 21st century.
Posted inIn Brief
New Artificial Nose Sniffs Out Art-Harming Pollutants
When 90 years’ worth of original drawings and sketches from Walt Disney Animation Studios traveled internationally for the first time this summer, they were accompanied by a newfangled protective device: an optoelectronic “nose.”
Posted inArt
Remixing Norman Rockwell’s Thanksgiving
Even if illustrator-cum-post-modern-artist Norman Rockwell initially titled his iconic work about Thanksgiving, “Freedom From Want“ and never mind that it was published in March 1943, the painting has come to exemplify the picture-perfect American Thanksgiving according to the dominant narrative of American culture.
Many of the individuals in Rockwell’s scene were real-life Vermonters who lived in Rockwell’s town, but what’s more inspiring about this work is the mocking, funny, sweet, and corny parodies it has inspired — many of which I have collected for you.
