I love movie from the 1980s. OK spoiler alert, I love movies from a number of decades, the increasingly number of which unsettles me greatly (stop aging body dammit) but movies from the ’80s, when I started going to the cinema without parental supervision, have a special place in Continue Reading
Movie review: The Bookshop
One of the most intoxicating things in life is to watch someone fulfil a long held dream. Years of quietly-nurtured hopes and expectations have come to fruition and while success is not necessarily guaranteed, the fact that the dream has found its way from the intangible environs of the Continue Reading
Fascinated you will be: The puppetry of Star Wars
SNAPSHOT [Puppeteer David Barclay], who adored puppetry since childhood, studied under the legendary Frank Oz and assisted with the Yoda character. When Oz needed to go work on another project, he gave the job to Barclay, who would go on to seamlessly recreate Yoda. Barclay also operated and voiced Continue Reading
Book review: Autonomous by Annalee Newitz
Unfettered modern capitalism, whatever your view of it, and for most people, billionaires and power brokers aside, it’s not a favourable one, is having quite the heyday of late. Governments regularly spruik its multitudinous benefits, throwing around words like “efficiency” and “market-driven” like their confetti at a neverending, privately-funded Continue Reading
Coming over all episodic: The 5 TV episodes that have left a lasting impression on me
I watch a lot of television. I mean, a LOT of television. If you’ve glanced at this site for longer than five nano-seconds, that much will be obvious. The downside to watching so much television is negligible really, but it can make remembering much of what you’ve seen, in Continue Reading
Colony: “Hospitium” (S3, E4 review)
SPOILERS AHEAD … AND DICTATORS ALIEN AND TERRESTRIAL … If the oft-blighted annals of human history have taught us anything, it’s that humanity is often its own worst enemy. Quite the cliche you might think but as Colony demonstrated with its usual incisive aplomb this week, it’s a cliche Continue Reading
Retro movie review: Finding Nemo (15th anniversary)
We all want to belong to someone somewhere. It’s a natural part of the human condition, a damn near unassailable imperative, but figuring out how to make that belonging work isn’t as simple as it looks. Take Nemo (voiced by Alexander Gould) and his over-protective dad Marlin (Albert Brooks) Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: The mistaken identity of Elderflower
SNAPSHOT Emily has opened a florist, she’s living her dream, but she soon learns her new venture used to be a front for an entirely different business all together. (official synopsis via Vimeo) One of my favourite scenes in Richard Curtis’s Christmas classic, Love Actually, is when John (Martin Continue Reading
With a little help from his Hundred Acre friends: New trailer and poster for Christopher Robin
SNAPSHOT In the heartwarming live-action adventure Christopher Robin, the young boy who loved embarking on adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood with a band of spirited and lovable stuff animals, has grown up and lost his way. Now it is up to his childhood friends to venture into our Continue Reading
Let’s be honest! More telling-it-like-it-is movie posters from College Humor
Even though the marketing departments of the various movie studios would never admit to such a thing, there’s all kinds of hyped-up porkies being told in every movie campaign. Trailers are edited, posters designed and and in-person interviews stacked to the rafters with pertinent talking points, all with the Continue Reading