Sometimes animated children’s movies don’t seem to be sure exactly what audience they’re aiming for: adults who would rather be watching Atomic Blonde, or kids who would rather be watching Atomic Blonde. It’s traditional these days to fill children’s movies with pop culture jokes kids couldn’t possibly get in the hopes of getting bored parents to crack a smile, and the trailer for The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature shows that the upcoming sequel to The Nut Job is no exception. The parent-targeted humor starts with the very title, a reference to New Jersey hip-hop trio Naughty by Nature; their big hit, “O.P.P.,” reached #94 on the Top 100 of 1991, 26 years ago. By way of reference, this is the equivalent of putting a joke about Martha and the Vandellas (“Come and Get These Memories,” #94, 1963) in the title of The Little Mermaid, if “Come and Get These Memories” had been about the joys of infidelity. In other words, it’s a timeless approach.

But it’s an approach that will likely go over the heads of the youngest audience members, who are shockingly uninformed about hip-hop hits from decades before they were born. And how are your children going to get into good schools if they can’t appreciate the subtleties of an animated movie in which Will Arnett plays a purple squirrel? To that end, this post contains not only the trailer to The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature, but everything your college-bound children will need to understand the film before seeing it, a sort of annotated version for budding intellectuals. The first foundational text you’ll want to watch and discuss with your kids before a screening of The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature is the original music video for Naughty by Nature’s “O.P.P.” And here it is:

After your children have thoroughly absorbed Treach, Vin Rock, and DJ Kay Gee’s anthem and you’ve walked through the lyrics line-by-line with them (“It’s sort of like a, well, another way to call a cat a kitten,” makes for a fun guessing game), they’ll be ready for an informed viewing of The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature, which comes out on Aug. 11. So here’s where you can buy tickets to see Atomic Blonde.

Ah, the arts. Humanity’s record of our all-too-fleeting hopes and dreams, sent floating like paper lanterns into the river of time, a softly flickering message to future generations that we, too, once lived and breathed and loved. But in this benighted age, it seems like fewer and fewer of us even find time to ask the big questions art has always sought to address, much less seek to answer them in our own work. There are many causes for our ever-accelerating cultural decline—slashed education budgets, structural inequality, avocado toast—but there’s only one solution, at least on the individual level: buckling down and building the skills necessary to express oneself artistically, no matter what structural or cultural obstacles are thrown in the way by those who would bar the temple door from fear or ignorance.

To that end, here is a new video from the guys behind Homestar Runner in which Strong Bad teaches you how to draw a ham sandwich made from the entire head of a pig named “Oinkers”:

Simply sublime. Is there anything in the world more satisfying than basking in the glories of the pictorial arts, even if only for a few brief moments? Now here’s an ad for Viking River Cruises:

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Disney and director Guy Ritchie have hit a wall with casting the lead roles for their upcoming live-action remake of Aladdin.

Over 2,000 actors and actresses have read for the roles of Jasmine and Aladdin—yes, they tested Riz Ahmed and Dev Patel—but so far the search has gone nowhere. Casting an Aladdin seems to be the main area of difficulty, as Disney is reportedly having trouble finding a male of Indian or Middle Eastern descent who can both act and sing. One agent whose client read for the part called the casting process “a mess.” For Jasmine, the studio is leaning towards new Tara Sutaria or new Pink Ranger Naomi Scott, both of whom are of Indian descent. Because of these casting woes, shooting, which was set to begin this month, has been pushed back to August. The only person who has definitely been locked down is Will Smith, who will play Genie. (I maintain the stern belief that Jack Black would have been perfect for that role.)

Casting this Aladdin is a tricky situation for Disney and Ritchie. Even in 1993, audiences took issue with Aladdin’s portrayal of Arab culture. In his review of the film, Roger Ebert wrote that the film’s use of ethnic stereotypes was a “distraction,” as “[m]ost of the Arab characters [had] exaggerated facial characteristics—hooked noses, glowering brows, thick lips—but Aladdin and the princess look like white American teenagers.” Prior to Aladdin’s home video release, Walt Disney Studios even agreed to change the lyrics to the opening number “Arabian Nights,” after the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee rightly raised hell. Former Disney executive Dick Cook defended the song, saying, “The irony in all of this is that this is the first movie in years where both the hero and heroine are Arabic, and both are obviously terrific role models, not just for Arabs but for everybody,” but Disney changed the offensive lyrics for video release, although even the new version refers to the story’s setting as “barbaric.”

On social media, fans responded with long lists of suggestions drawn from Bollywood and established stars with Indian heritage. But a subset of criticism has focused on the fact that Ritchie and the studio were considering casting Indian actors at all, given that all the characters in the movie are Arab.

Ritchie and Disney very well may be having genuine trouble finding a viable actor for Aladdin, a role that is demanding and requires an exhausting amount of charisma, but the fact that they’re even looking at Indian actors at all raises red flags. Yes, the original Aladdin movie was based on a story from Arabian Nights about a young Chinese boy, but Disney is remaking its own version of the story, the Arabness of which it has repeatedly acknowledged.

Middle Eastern and Indian cultures and people are not interchangeable, and Ritchie, Disney, and those criticizing the casting difficulties and making casting suggestions should not treat them as such. This live-action remake is an opportunity for Disney to correct some of the original Aladdin's racist tendencies, and accurately casting Arab actors in the film’s leading roles would be a good start. By tapping Arab actors to lead the film, Ritchie and co. can reject Hollywood’s reflex to lump all brown characters into one group and instead champion true diversity in Hollywood and really give audiences a new fantastic point of view.

As a firm grasp on reality has become increasingly inadequate to explain the behavior of the Trump administration, we’ve turned increasingly to works of fiction, from King Lear to the Harry Potter series, in hopes of finding some way to make sense of it all. With the latest scandal involving Donald Trump Jr., one comparison in particular seems inevitable.

According to the Daily Beast, the comparison to The Godfather’s hapless scion isn’t just the province of cultural commentators and social media wits: “Fredo” has been some Trump insiders’ nickname for Don Jr. since the early days of the presidential campaign.

Some of the Don Jr.–is–Fredo crowd have already acknowledged the flaws in the analogy, namely that it would, by extension, make Donald Trump the equivalent of Vito Corleone. But you don’t have to play out the string that far to see where the likeness comes up short. Comparing the son of the president of the United States to the impotent, treacherous brother of a fictional Mafia don is grossly unfair. To Fredo.

Yes, Donald Trump Jr. is, like Fredo Corleone, a coddled, semi-competent adult child who owes whatever success he has found in life entirely to his family connections. Sure, Don Jr. managed to compound his disastrous attempt to “help” his father’s campaign by meeting with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton by posting his own incriminating emails to Twitter, much the way Fredo claimed to be aiding his brother, Michael, in making a deal with Hyman Roth by conspiring behind his back and unwittingly set Michael up for an attempt on his life. And OK, both Don Jr. and Fredo seem to have spent their lives struggling and failing to escape the enormous shadow of their successful fathers.

But part of what makes Fredo Corleone such a great and enduring character is that he just wants, at heart, to be respected and, in the case of his brother, loved. He’s not a hateful or violent man, just desperate and sad. Donald Trump Jr. killed a baby elephant for sport and posed with its severed tail; when assassins made an attempt on his father’s life, Fredo was too flustered to even hold a revolver. Don Jr. has been Donald Trump’s hatchet man, doing the dirty work that his father was too smart to sully his hands with. Fredo is a puppy dog; Don Jr. is an attack dog.

What’s more, Fredo Corleone was played by John Cazale, who may have the best (brief) track record of any actor in movie history. Cazale, who died at the age of 42, acted in only five movies, but every one of them was nominated for multiple Oscars, and four of them won at least once. Perhaps you could argue that, as far as presidential campaigns go, Donald Trump Jr. has an undefeated 1–0 record, but it seems pretty unlikely that in 40 years we’ll look back on the Trump presidency the way we do The Godfather, or even The Deer Hunter. If you really need a cinematic analogue for the Trump administration, try the words “Oscar winner Suicide Squad.”

Andy Serkis stopped by The Late Show on Tuesday night to promote War for the Planet of the Apes, in which he stars as chimpanzee Caesar. Host Stephen Colbert had nothing but praise for Serkis, telling the actor that he corrects anyone who calls Serkis “an amazing motion-capture performer,” by pointing out “No, he’s a fantastic performer who is famous for doing motion capture.” Colbert proved his point by airing a clip of Serkis in the film with the special effects stripped away, allowing Serkis’ face to be seen and his performance to be fully appreciated by anyone who doubts his talents.

Naturally, Colbert, a major Lord of the Rings fan, could not go a full minute without mentioning Serkis’ most famous mo-cap role, playing both Sméagol and Gollum in the Peter Jackson films. In fact, Colbert even asked Serkis to get back into character to read some Trump tweets—which Serkis did wholeheartedly, crouching in his chair. “What’s covfefe, precious?” Give the man an Oscar, already.

It takes a big man to admit he was wrong, and on Tuesday night, Stephen Colbert became that man, issuing a moving apology to Eric Trump. “We always thought you were the dumb one,” Colbert told the president’s son during his monologue, in the wake of Donald Trump Jr.’s crazy Twitter confession Tuesday morning. “We were wrong.”

Colbert has always been known as the classiest late-night host, and this admission that he overrated Donald Trump Jr.’s intelligence further confirms that he’s the last true gentlemen. Here’s hoping Eric Trump accepts Colbert’s olive branch—or better yet, dreams up something even dumber than Don Jr.’s latest fiasco to prove Colbert wrong. He’ll have to go pretty far to out-stupid his brother, who just tweeted out evidence he committed a crime in an attempt to “own” reporters, but if there’s one thing the Trumps understand, it’s betting big on stupid.