Christmas comes with a lot of expectations. A LOT. Many of them are delightfully festive and tinsel-draped, some are not but one thing is for sure – finding love at Christmas comes with a host of problems, not least the idea that in the midst of falling snow, twinkling lights Continue Reading
Already listening to Christmas music: Quick reviews of new albums by Josh Turner, Darren Criss and Kristin Chenoweth
It’s a question as old as time, or at least the festive season, anyway – when should you begin listening to Christmas music? There are some, of course, who will quite seriously question why you stopped at all, wholly convinced, and honestly after the hellscape of the last two years Continue Reading
Book review: The Mistletoe Pact by Jo Lovett
For many people, Christmas is an impossibly romantic time of the year. While this applies to the heat of a Southern Hemisphere festive season too, it is far more easily conjured in the Northern side of the globe where falling snow, twinkling lights in early dark nights and decorations placed Continue Reading
A terrific trio of TV trailers: As We See It, HALO and Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock
As we race to the end of 2021, exhausted, if even we have enjoyed them ( and we have) by the sheer volume of shows now available on streaming services, which are breeding like digital, high-resolution, it’s becoming excitingly clear that 2022 has a lot of great things to take Continue Reading
Birthday movie review: Red Notice
For the most part, criminals and Bond masterminds with a propensity for over-explaining their evil plans aside, people are generally law-abiding folks who stay politely within legally-set margins. We are, for want of a better phrase, good people. Which could explain why watching other people, especially glamorous people with access Continue Reading
Birthday TV review – Every body has a secret: Thoughts on Only Murders in the Building (season 1)
Is it possible for murder to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? Likely only if you’re Dexter, but for the rest of us who are not so sociopathically-inclined, watching people solve a murder comes pretty close, especially if it wrapped in the cleverly charming packaging of Only Murders Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: The touching wonder of Louis’ Shoes
SNAPSHOTLouis, 8-and-a-half years old, is autistic. He arrives at his new school and is about to introduce himself. Louis’ Shoes, originally known as Les Chaussures de Louis in French, is co-directed by a selection of talented animation filmmakers: Marion Philippe, Kayu Leung, Theo Jamin, Jean Geraud Blanc – students at Continue Reading
Movie review: Just Like That #sydfilmfest
For a species known for its inquisitiveness and love of freedom of expression, humanity, at least the more authoritarian parts of it which are far too commonplace for anyone’s liking, has an enduring liking for enforcing spirit-constraining rules on itself. Perhaps they made sense once upon a time when threats Continue Reading
Five Disney classics told by one classic storyteller: The hilarious narrative-spinning of Olaf Presents
If ever there was a breakout character from Frozen, the Disney animated juggernaut that bestrode the world when it first came out in 2013, it is the very much alive garrulously exuberant to a fault snowman Olaf (voiced with a boisterous of childlike wonder by Josh Gad) whose sheer presence Continue Reading
Book review: A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow
One of the inestimable joys of reading anything by Alix. E Harrow, who has given the superlatively evocative joys of The Ten Thousand Doors of January and The Once and Future Witches, is her sublimely invigorating gift for gloriously reinventing well-worn tropes and cliches for the better. Equipped with rich Continue Reading