(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTIn Toy Story 5, we’re introduced to a new character Lilypad, a high-tech frog-shaped smart tablet voiced by Greta Lee that makes Buzz, Woody, Jessie and the rest of the gang’s jobs exponentially harder when they have to go head to head with the all-new threat to Continue Reading
Dark, dangerous and hilarious … Thoughts on How to Get to Heaven From Belfast
(courtesy First Showing (c) Netflix) Think tightrope walkers have a challenge on their hands? Surely a greater feat is balancing comedy and drama in a show like How to Get to Heaven From Belfast – the title alone is redolent with quirky humour and melancholic longing, all in perfect unison Continue Reading
Book review: The Distinctly Competent District Councillor by Jonas Jonasson
(courtesy Harpers Collins Publishers Australia) There is something so heartwarming about looking at life in a whimsical way. In an age when everything is so full on and so serious and unrelentingly intense – this can be both a good and a bad thing but either way, it exacts a Continue Reading
Movie review: Pillion
(courtesy IMDb) How do you define romance? The odds, whether you are straight or gay, or some other gloriously diverse point outside of that binary, is that you will think of tender touches, of deep friendship and shared values, of physical love and whispered words of love; you know, the Continue Reading
Graphic novel review: Assorted Crisis Events Vol. 1 by Deniz Camp (writer) and Eric Zawadzki (artist)
(courtesy Image Comics) God bless humanity – for a complicated, contrary and multifaceted species, we sure do like to keep things simple. A clear example of our preference for everything being deliciously binary or linear is the way we view time which, depending on who you ask is multiversal in Continue Reading
Book review: Here and Beyond by Hal LaCroix
(courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing) We live in troubling times. Hardly a news flash there; one glance at the nightly news is enough to traumatise you with updates on the creeping annihilation of climate change, the democracy-decimating horrors of fascism and the possibilities of new pandemics, fresh wars and death and violence Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: Grief and letting go in the digital spotlight in Light Hearted
(courtesy Little Black Book Online (c) Sye Allen) SNAPSHOTLight Hearted, a new short film from director Sye Allen, is a poignant look at what happens to life once it has been touched by grief. Joy, a widow, has her own routine in place. It’s a quiet life with the absence Continue Reading
Book review: Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe
(courtesy Hachette Australia) Before her life gets massively and royally upended, Margo Millet’s life is not an easy one. Caught between a narcissistic mother who does love daughter but only on very conditional grounds and an absent ex-pro wrestler father who is loving but only in her life when he Continue Reading
Nature’s greatest empire … witness the rise and fall of The Dinosaurs
(courtesy First Showing (c) Netflix) SNAPSHOTWelcome to The Dinosaurs – an epic journey into a lost world. From executive producer Steven Spielberg, Amblin Documentaries, and the award‑winning team behind Life on Our Planet, this groundbreaking doc series follows the rise and fall of the dinosaurs across hundreds of millions of Continue Reading
Valentine’s Day movie review redux: You’ve Got Mail
(courtesy IMP Awards) They were heady days back in the late ’90s. Back before there were omnipresent online ads enticing you impulsively and immediately purchase you didn’t know you wanted, or Twitter became a bonfire of shouted opinions or inboxes became a stressful hallmark of cubicle serfdom, receiving an email Continue Reading