I was honored to be one of the judges in Christianity Today​’s 2020 Book Awards. I reviewed Andrew Le Peau’s Write Better: A Lifelong Editor on Craft, Art, and Spirituality for the ​“Culture & the Arts” category, and I found it an immensely helpful, encouraging, and practical book. (The runner-up in that category, Andrew Peterson’s Adorning the Dark, is also really enjoyable.) And congratulations to my friend Jake Meador, whose In Search of the Common Good took the top place in the ​“Politics and Public Life” category.

I missed that Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep, Gerald’s Game) is adapting Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw for Netflix. James’ novella was previously the source for The Innocents, my favorite horror movie of all time. Writing for Birth.Movies.Death, Emily Sears considers the movie’s atmospheric approach to the supernatural and psychological aspects of its storyline: ​“As in James’s ghost story, the horrors seen in The Innocents are less frightening than those it awakens in our imagination.”

You may think an article defending Dungeons & Dragons from a Christian perspective is silly and unnecessary, but some of us grew up in religious circles that vilified — and continue to vilify — Dungeons & Dragons as a gateway to the occult. In any case, Phil Tallon does an excellent job of summing up the pros of Dungeons & Dragons (e.g., creative and interactive gameplay, communal storytelling) while addressing some of the concerns and criticisms that have surrounded the game.

Vox​’s Brian Resnick talks to a meteorologist to learn why sunsets are better in the winter. Turns out, it’s a confluence of several factors, including atmospheric conditions and the angle at which the sun sets: ​“During the fall equinox, the sun pretty much sinks into the ground at a 90-degree angle. Nearer the winter solstice, the sun sets on more of an angle, drawing out the time it takes to set. Which is to say: Sunset colors linger closer to the winter solstice, which allows us to enjoy them for longer.”

Alissa Wilkinson’s review of Frozen 2 discusses the movie, sure, but she also uses it to explore Disney’s massive influence on our pop culture and entertainment, and the trap that the company seems to be falling into with its endless reboots, remakes, and sequels.

By my lights, Frozen 2 is still a plenty enjoyable film, even if it lacks its predecessor’s subversive spark. But for me, watching generative and derivative nostalgia spar within it prompted a different sense of the familiar: bleakness about the future of mouse-eared entertainment. Disney, whatever its faults, has often been a pioneer in storytelling; now it’s resting firmly on its laurels, too often electing to spin the wheel again rather than try to reinvent it.

Nostalgia has its place. Remembering the feeling of homesickness reminds us where we came from, that we come from somewhere. But too much yearning for the past without a concomitant attempt to live in the present and push toward the future is a dangerous trap for a culture to fall into, both because it risks becoming stagnant in its art and because it may begin to to worship the past as the only place worth living in. Too much yearning for the past makes us incurious about the world. And if, as Proust wrote, the past we remember is not necessarily the one that existed, remaining stubbornly beholden to it can render us altogether incapable of dealing with the present.

The bigger Disney gets, the more it controls what most Americans — and people around the world — will see at the movies and on their TV screens, and thus it bears enormous responsibility for seeing into the future. Looking backward too much, recycling old content and relying on old formulas endlessly, becomes a snake eating its own tail.

This is why she’s one of my favorite movie critics.