If there’s one thing you discover pretty quickly in life, it’s that acting like everyone else generally gets you more approval than doing your own highly-idiosyncratic thing. It doesn’t matter whether you’re at school, or in a church, soccer club or bee fancier society, people like their fellow human beings Continue Reading
Still Please Like Me: Season 3 trailer reminds us Josh is still trying to figure things out
SNAPSHOT of seasons 1 & 2 Season one saw Josh come to terms with the multiple changes in his life (his girlfriend had dumped him, he’d gained and lost a boyfriend, come out to his parents, lost his eccentric great aunt, and moved back in to live with his Continue Reading
Movie review: Grandma
“Time passes. That’s for sure.” (Eileen Myles) Elle Reid (Lily Tomlin) is not having a good day. With her past coming up to meet her, as it always does, to remind her things aren’t as good as they once were, and her present taking the turn for the unexpected Continue Reading
Torchwood lives on: first series of audio adventures is out with more to come
The world is a dark place my friend and no one knew that better than the tortured souls of Torchwood, hidden beneath Cardiff and fighting aliens with thoroughly disagreeable motives at every turn. A spinoff of sorts from the 2005 revival of Doctor Who – the name is,of course, an Continue Reading
Let your inner Charlie Brown walk free: Promo web app “Peanutize Me” turns you into a Peanuts character
Who hasn’t read Charles Schulz masterfully-written, warmly-engaging and cleverly-insightful comic strip Peanuts and wished they could somehow step into its ink-defined panels? Have you ever wanted to lean on Schroeder’s piano, like Lucy does, and ponder the meaning of life, the universe and as much of everything as a Continue Reading
A perfectly funny show just got better: Bill Hader joins Brooklyn Nine-Nine
One of the most enjoyable ensemble sitcoms to come along in some years has been the Andy Samberg-starring Brooklyn Nine-Nine, set in the eponymous police precinct in Brooklyn, New York. What’s set it apart from the slew of half-baked sitcoms that come and go each season, and even some of Continue Reading
Movie review: Boulevard
All too often life can feel like one big compromise. Only the bravest among us seems able to resist the irresistible pull of compliance and self-censorship, and yet even they can be guilty of bending in a thousand small ways to inauthentic demands not their own. It is the nature of Continue Reading
Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Cinema’s most lovable miscreant goes 8-Bit
I loved Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) pretty much from the moment I saw it. There was something intoxicating about the way Ferris got way with all the sorts of things that I, good straight laced Christian lad just finishing university, would never have dreamed of attempting (but secretly wish Continue Reading
Fear the Walking Dead: “Not Fade Away” (S1, E4 review)
*SPOILERS AHEAD … AND THE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM (FUN HUH?)* Early on in “Not Fade Away”, and perched on top of the roof his dad’s girlfriend’s house watching the undead world go by while he films it, Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie) ironically notes that their new military protectors Continue Reading
The bare necessities of life? All that and more in the first trailer for the live action remake of The Jungle Book
The world is engulfed by remake fever. Or Hollywood to be more exact. Everywhere cinemagoers turn, an old, much-loved classic is being re-imagined, re-tooled, re-done because modern audiences need bright, shiny, new … or something. Who knows what’s behind it, other than perhaps studio-driven artistic laziness, but occasionally, in Continue Reading