listen, to be totally fair: i really don't think i'm going to like the new Jurassic World. i didn't care for the first, and no one seems to think this new one is any better. so i really have no business seeing it. but my father wants to see it, and i will be leaving for london tomorrow, so i thought last night, fine, yes, let's go watch it.

we got there around 7:00, hoping to catch the 7:30. but…

really gorgeous animation—especially the cooking and food, my god. i definitely fell into the camp that found this short... strange, and not necessarily in a good way. but also not necessarily in a bad way. it's risky, to be sure, and i deeply admire that, even if the story itself didn't resonate with me all that organically. and that the first female director of a Pixar short took such a strange risk... u know what... i Really admire that.

and…

dear you,

as of tonight, there are 500 of you.

back in middle school, i used to write letters to an online friend named ellie. her real name was laura, but she went by ellie. sometimes i called her larry, as a joke, and she called me tyler, as a joke.

she had so many names that when we started writing letters to each other, like bonafide pen pals, i'd address them "dear you" -- because sometimes, even when i…

this is a writer's workshop wet dream. this is a well-studied, well-executed narrative paradigm of what good writing does.

the exposition is kept to a minimum. the reality of this world is established quickly, but Krasinski does so efficiently and affectively. the physical and life-threatening stakes are marked from the get-go, as are the emotional stakes, which ultimately end up being even more terrifying and tension-inducing than the former.

there's any number of "plant and pay-offs," which are all satisfying,…