Our family saw Kung Fu Panda yesterday and it was great. Check out the opening sequence. One of my favorite reviewers doesn’t like it. I think he’s right about its moral shallowness but that just makes it conventional Hollywood fare. The most enlightened character seems to worship “The Universe” but he gets at least one thing right about that: there are no accidents.
This dude does sensitive portraits of animals, almost as if they were people.
Imagine having P. J. O’Rourke deliver your commencement address.
My favorite: “He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any one I know.”
—Abraham Lincoln
This is engineering at its best.
A toddler fools the art world, or at least one ghetto within it. Actually, I kind of like his stuff.
The kids and I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows the other night so I finally got to read Alan Jacobs’ review. I had been saving it and all other Harry-related stuff to avoid spoilers. Professor Jacobs’ review is very good. He passes over J. K. Rowling’s many shortcomings as an author and celebrates her strength, her ability to weave a moral universe. He pulls in Chesterton and his celebration of “penny dreadfuls” and says Harry is the same sort of thing, only better.
Here is J. K. Rowling herself saying she made the epilogue vague on purpose and then filling in some detail. It’s kind of an epilogue to the epilogue and most welcome.
