There is a delicious feeling of immersive joy that overtakes any reader when they begin a book and discover in its first sparkling few sentences that not only does it possess the promise of a wholly engaging story that will propel you to turn pages with a fevered anticipatory eagerness Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: The anxious dilemma of Crosswalk (Disney’s Short Circuit series)
SNAPSHOTA crosswalk light at a quiet intersection plays games with a businessman who needs to cross it, but doesn’t want to break the law. That’s the simple premise of this hilarious short that most viewers will be able to relate to (unless you’re from New York City, where “Don’t Walk” Continue Reading
Graphic novel review: Alien Resident by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse
One of the tests of how well a story is told, particularly one told over multiple, decade-long instalments, is how easily you can leap into a later episode and still not only know what’s going on but what the characters mean to each other and how this world, so well Continue Reading
It’s great up here: Thoughts on The Great North (season 1)
Quirkiness and whimsy are big in modern animation. It makes sense – we’re in a postmodern world where casting an ironic, self-knowing eye on things is prettymuch demanded of everyone and where sincerity is often squeezed out in favour of having a great deal of idiosyncratic fun with something. What Continue Reading
Book review: Engines of Oblivion by Karen Osborne
If you have ever wondered what the end point of mercenary capitalism looks like, and to be fair, it beginning and mid points too, then look no further than the chillingly imaginative second instalment in the Memory War series by Karen Osborne. Engines of Oblivion, the successor to the endlessly Continue Reading
Deadly. Brilliant. Dramatic. Heroic. Q-Force has all the words and all the style
SNAPSHOTQ-Force follows Steve Mayweather, AKA Agent Mary (voiced by Sean Hayes), who was once the leader of the American Intelligence Agency (AIA) until he came out as gay. The Agency was not able to fire him on the basis of his sexual orientation, so they sent him to West Hollywood Continue Reading
Love and trauma: Thoughts on Feel Good (season 2)
We never really leave our past selves behind. It’s tempting idea to think we can do that, excise the traumatised or hurt parts of ourselves and pretend they were never there in the first place and have absolutely no bearing on who we are right now. But it’s ultimately a Continue Reading
Mini-mass of movie trailers: The Pebble and the Boy + Summer Days, Summer Nights + Dating & New York
The latest COVID lockdown in Sydney is still very much on, and so while I may not be able to go to the cinema, I can still dream of seeing movies there. Thankfully, the trailers keep on coming which makes all the dreaming remarkably easy. And while the actually going Continue Reading
Graphic novel review: Sea of Stars (issues 6 -10) by Jason Aaron + Dennis Hallum, Stephen Green and Rico Renzi
If Sea of Stars issues one through five proved anything, it’s that space is as far from boring as you can get. Admittedly at the start of one of the most imaginative graphic novels series you’ll ever come across, Kadyn, the nine-year-old son of long-haul space trucker Gil, thinks it’s Continue Reading
Book review: The End of the Ocean by Maja Lunde
It has become apparent to all but the comprehensively deluded among us that the planet is in deep, sustained ecological trouble. Wildfires whip through places annually that might’ve seen a terrible conflagration once a decade, droughts lay waste to once productive land and catastrophically violent storms are sweeping in with Continue Reading