Did you hear that Frozen song on the Oscars last night? Did something smell funny about it to you?

Listen, I'm no expert. I'm just a concerned parent, like you. I trust the Disney name when my daughters are choosing a movie at the mall. I see that name, and...

New York Post
" ... endlessly lame ..."

San Francisco Chronicle
"... too much endless and not enough love ..."

Boston Globe
"... Zefferelli's version... made you feel the love. This pallid replay just seems endless ..."

Digital Spy
"... seemingly endless ..."

Richard Rohmer turns 90 today. The major-general (ret.) is Canada's most decorated inhabitant, which makes him sound like some sort of Christmas tree, but he isn't. He's a novelist, historian and the former chancellor of the University of Windsor. He flew fighter planes in World War II and Korea, and...

Even in a fantasy world like Downton Tabby, sometimes shocking, sickening, horrible things happen, just like in real life. This week, a wonderful house party is ruined when someone brings an Australian.

The Australian, Yelli Munchkin, performs Dvorak until Mary cries, Tom gets drunk and Mrs. Patmore has a...

Winter, 1922

Meanwhile at Downton Tabby, death continues to take every character even a little prettier than Lady Minxy. First her pretty baby sister Servil, then her even prettier husband, Matthmew. It's very sad, not to say awfully suspicious. The other cats at Downton are concerned that Minxy isn't spending...

If you like repetitive stories about wealthy people -- and who doesn't? -- you have two options this weekend: The Wolf of Wall Street and Downton Abbey. Pick 'em: Martin Scorsese's latest celebration of frenzied New Yorkers shouting threats at each other on drugs, or the season premiere of Julian...

I'm a busy man, and I like my news in 50-to-100-word chunks, like fragments of Sappho. So I couldn't get by without the news aggregation site Newser. Their motto is "Read Less Know More," which is also my daughter Gretchen's approach to AP English, and we'll see how far she...

By some estimates, over half of the Internet is now used for lists of things not to say to people. 9 Things Not to Say to a Stay-at-Home Mom (Woman's Day), 13 Things You Should Never Say to a Working Mom (HLNtv), 10 Things Never to Say to a Formula-Feeding...

I'm going negative. I didn't want to do it -- no one ever wants to do it -- but it has to be done. I owe it to myself, my supporters and to America. Plus going negative works. Republicans and Democrats spent $6 billion on the 2012 elections, and almost...

I've been thinking about that 60 Minutes story, about Amazon's delivery drones, on and off all week. I feel like there was a time -- before Lara Logan started believing Baron Münchhausen tales about Benghazi -- when 60 Minutes didn't just broadcast everything anyone told them. But maybe I live...

You can't keep a bad cat down. The makers of the official James Bond movies just settled a long-running legal battle with the estate of a producer who claimed he owned the rights to Bond's archenemy, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. This clears the way -- after decades -- for the return...

Ignorance gets a bad rap. Augustine says ignorance isn't just a cause of sin, it's a sin itself - a sin of omission -- and he's right, of course. Still, we throw the word "stupid" around a lot, like it's a bad thing, especially when it comes to people like...

Arizona Congressman Trent Franks, author of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, went to college for about year, when he was 32. It's unclear whether he studied embryology or not. You don't need a fancy college degree to be a congressperson, but human nature being what it is, I'm...

I've never seen The Sopranos. I did see James Gandolfini the second last time he ever did God of Carnage, and he was incredibly good. And he'd been doing the play for a year and a half. Boy, he was great. His big speech is this:

Children...

It's been almost seven months since Glenn Beck slapped his name on someone else's awful book. (That was Agenda 21 last November. Glenn Beck "with Harriet Parke." A nightmare vision of a world where the UN makes everyone walk on treadmills all day. Really.) But the wait was worth it....

"What!" I exclaimed. "But you can't be Gatsby. He's dead!"

"I assure you," the stranger insisted, removing his false beard and mustache, "I'm alive." I had no choice but to believe him when he smiled reassuringly -- much more than reassuringly -- employing that rare inimitable smile of his,...

In Hollywood, "no" is silence over time. The way you find out you're not getting the job, that they passed, that they didn't respond to the material, that they're going a different direction, is silence. It's the call you don't get. No one wants to give you bad news, because...

I don't know what the agents told you, but this isn't a half-hour. I love half-hours, don't get me wrong, and people are doing great things. Especially (name show on network). Amazing. But what I really want to do is the kind of dark, edgy, noisy, sexy kind of long-form,...

Gas prices have just gone up for the 33rd day in a row. This would be terrible news for the recovery, but luckily in last week's State of the Union address, President Obama discovered the power to bend time with words, and used it to increase everyone's mileage.

In case...

You can't debate the NRA, and it's a waste of time to pick at their arguments, because they're not a political movement, or a marketing group or even a cult -- their worldview isn't robust enough to support a cult. Also, in a cult, someone in the leadership is usually...