Much of the time, the way we react to life is purely instinctual, especially when we’re children and we form our defensive responses less on reason and more on emotion and a need for some kind of perceived protection. The problem with these perfectly understandable responses to childhood trauma is Continue Reading
Movie review: The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Belonging is a powerful thing for anyone. Whether it is to a person or a place or a group of some kind, we all need to feel like we have somewhere to call our own, a sanctuary from the vicissitudes of life, an anchor in a world all too ready Continue Reading
A mini-mass of movie trailers: Hillbilly Elegy, Sylvie’s Love, I’m Your Woman + news on new Sandra Bullock film
Let’s hear it for streaming platforms when it comes to watching films in the time of COVID. While my preference is always to see films on the big screen in the darkness and escape of a movie theatre, the reality is that even where cinemas are open and operating, getting Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #36: SG Lewis, Disclosure, Lupa J, Satin Jackets, SLUMBERJACK
The best songs, the ones that really lodge themselves deep in the very heart of who we are, and to which we return whenever we need to feel something, really feel something again, are those that combine great music, meaningful lyrics and a sense of personal investment by the artist. Continue Reading
Book review: A Beautifully Foolish Endeavour by Hank Green
If aliens were to invade Earth, and let’s be honest, if popular culture is any guide they are queued all the way back to the Kuiper Belt waiting to do so, the first question we would need to ask ourselves is who do need saving from – them or ourselves? Continue Reading
How does Stranger Things set the mood? Lessons From the Screenplay investigates
Stranger Things, an undeniable watercooler hit par excellence which is soon (“soon” being a relative concept in these COVID-delayed times; don’t hold your breath is all I’d say) to treat us to a fourth season of Spielbergian ’80s horror-filled delights, has never been short on atmosphere. It has always had Continue Reading
Fear the Walking Dead: “The End is the Beginning” (S6, E1 review) + The Walking Dead: World Beyond – “Blaze of Gory” (S1, E2 review)
FEAR THE WALKING DEAD If you can cast your mind, lo these many months back to when season five of Fear the Walking Dead (is there any other option, really?), you will recall that the Smiling Dictator Virginia (Colby Minifie) had split up our merry band of survivors, casting everyone Continue Reading
COVID-19 retro movie festival: Farmageddon #MovieReview
One of the great enduring joys of any movie or TV show that comes from Aardman Animations is the cheekiness and sense of fun that infuses every last frame. Movies like Chicken Run (2000), Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and Arthur Christmas (2011), and now, of Continue Reading
Book review: The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott
Sociopaths and psychopaths aside, no one ever wakes up one day and thinks to themselves that now is the time I will put aside all my lofty hopes and dreams for the future and choose instead to do those things which slowly but surely corrode my soul and eat away Continue Reading
Comics review: The Ludocrats by Gillen, Rossignol, Stokely, Bonvillain, Cowles
If there is one thing that this quirk-obsessed reviewers adores, love and sends 100 dozen roses to on Valentine’s Day, it is a story that goes full Mad Cow Disease imaginative, puts the pedal to the sugar high idiosyncratic pedal and goes wherever the hyper-coloured inspiration takes them. Which is Continue Reading