For the past 6 years I’ve made a list of my top 10 non-work-related books I read that year. I swear I did this last year too and somehow can’t find where I put it, so I’m now making a master list I can track over time. By now most…

This was a fascinating decade for animated movies. There was the (relative) decline of Pixar, the Disney Revival, Studio Ghibli closing, then reopening, and a wealth of talented new directors and studios. It was a great decade for animated features and ten is a weird arbitrary number of films to…

For everyone who had “Reality TV” as the topic for your office’s “what will Alex blog about next” pool, congratulations. I’m surprised I’m talking about this as well. I’ve never been interested in reality TV whatsoever but there’s a new online show that I think shows the potential of reality…

2017 was the 100th anniversary of animated feature films. Today, animated movies are box office juggernauts. In 2016, of the worldwide top 25 grossing films, 9 were animated (not including films like Warcraft that used animation extremely extensively or films like Your Name that were released internationally but only made…

This is not a review of Your Name (Kimi no Na wa), the film by Makoto Shinkai that came out last year and is finally showing in theaters in the US. If you want a review here it is: The movie is a excellent and you should seek it out…

A bunch of articles have been circulating the internet praising the Boston Public School (BPS) system’s decision to adopt a new map. They are replacing the old Mercator maps with maps using the Gall-Peters projection. The Gall-Peters ensures that landmasses are all the correct size. The traditional Mercator projection dramatically…

For animated movies, the announcement of the Oscar nominations is a much more exciting announcement than the announcement of the winners. That’s because animation occupies a odd space in Hollywood. Animated films are massive money earners, but still aren’t taken seriously as excellent films (just look at how many animated…