In Ross Douthat's weekend op-ed on the lecherous Harvey Weinstein, he makes, in passing, what I think is a very important point: If liberals want to restrain the ogres in their midst, a few conservative ideas might be helpful. First: Some modest limits on how men and women interact professionally are useful checks on predation. [...]
Tag: Hollywood
Brett McCracken (and Me) on Movies, Nostalgia, and Criticism
For the last few weeks I've been chatting via email with pastor, writer, and Christian film critic Brett McCracken. Brett is one of the most articulate, and consistently helpful evangelical culture writers that I know. I was eager to get some of his perspective on a variety of movie-related topics--such as the state of the [...]
Why Do Liberals Love Harry Potter?
My favorite read of the day is this article on understanding why progressives, especially millennials in the Obama to post-Obama era, are so in love with using the Harry Potter stories as metaphors for America's current cultural moment. The author has an interesting theory, one that I (mostly) agree with: American liberals love Harry Potter [...]
Why We Need the ‘Elitism’ of the Oscars

Mathematically speaking, the odds are that if you A) purchased a ticket to a movie in 2015 and B) watch the upcoming Academy Awards telecast on Sunday night, you C) won't see your favorite movies from last year win…well, anything. The New York Times observed last year that the Oscars still represent a startlingly large discontinuity between the films honored [...]
“The Force Awakens” and Getting Trapped By Nostalgia

In conversations with friends about the new Star Wars movie, I've noticed two trends. The first is that most of the people I've talked to report enjoying the movie quite a bit (and that makes sense, seeing as how the film is scoring very well on the critic aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes). The second trend [...]