(courtesy IMP Awards) Work is a strange thing. Pretty much all of us do it, compelled by a valid need for food, water, shelter and the occasional (or more; thank you eBay) unnecessary shiny thing or fabulous dinner out, to get out there each day and put in eight or Continue Reading
Retro movie review: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
(courtesy The Movie Database) Diving back into a film you haven’t seen for 42 years can be an interesting and yes, let’s be honest, fraught experience. Will it be as good as you remember? Is it still an escapist wonderland or schlocky ’80s pulp? And does it hold up as Continue Reading
Book review: Charles M. Schulz – The Art and Life of the Peanuts Creator in 100 Objects by Benjamin L. Clark, Nat Gertler and the Charles M. Schulz Museum
(courtesy Simon & Schuster) When you have loved Peanuts as long as this review has, it’s all too easy to assume you know everything about the comic strip and its creator, the legendarily talented Charles M. Schulz. But even though I started buying secondhand copies for twenty and thirty cents Continue Reading
“So long, Farewell” Ted Lasso: We will always “Believe” (review of S3, E11 & E12 aka finale)
(courtesy AppleTV+) Falling in love with a TV show is rarer than you might think. Oh, sure, media, both traditional and digital, gushingly make out like we’re traipsing in and out of streaming true love every second day, and while that’s feasibly possible given the plethora of programming options out Continue Reading
Weekday character poster movie character art: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTA fifth movie in the Indiana Jones franchise, continuing the story after Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). Starring Harrison Ford as adventurer Indiana Jones and Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Helena. The full cast also features Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Kretschmann, Boyd Holbrook, Shaunette Renée Continue Reading
Book review: Fault Tolerance by Valerie Valdes
(courtesy Harper Collins Booksellers Australia) There’s always been a lot to like about the gloriously flawed but found family-prioritising protagonists at the heart of the Chilling Effect series of playfully intense novels by Valerie Valdes but chief among them must surely be the fact the fact that here are saviours-of-the-day Continue Reading
A meet-cute snippet of Elemental … and some fun international character posters too
(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTIn a city where fire, water, land, and air residents live together, a fiery young woman and a go-with-the-flow guy are about to discover something elemental: how much they actually have in common. [Elemental] features the voice talents of Leah Lewis as Ember; Mamoudou Athie as Wade; Continue Reading
New dinosaurs. New habitats. New season. Thoughts on Prehistoric Planet S2
(courtesy IMP awards) Dinosaurs, and indeed any kind of prehistoric life, have long held a fascination for many people including this reviewer who, like many kids his age, loved playing ancient animal games with toys of T-rex, Stegosaurus and Triceratops. Reading about the latest discoveries and absorbing how weirdly wonderful Continue Reading
Loved ones, addiction and the struggle to Stay Awake
(courtesy IMDb) SNAPSHOTIn the debut feature, STAY AWAKE, by writer-director Jamie Sisley, brothers Ethan (Wyatt Oleff) and Derek (Fin Argus) try their best to navigate the pressures of teenage life while tending to their mother’s (Chrissy Metz) debilitating prescription drug addiction. Based on the filmmaker’s adolescence in small-town America, Stay Continue Reading
Book review: The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) There are those books that you read that are beautifully written, lovely and sweet, full of great characters and a pleasingly wrought plot that leave nary a mark upon you emotionally; and then there are novels like The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer which Continue Reading