Ah Christmas music. You either love it or you hate it. No points for guessing that I love it, since I am a self-confessed Christmas junkie and festive music is after all the soundtrack to my tinsel-clogged addiction. But it goes well beyond the fact that it’s Christmas and Continue Reading
Movie review: Saving Mr Banks
It’s often been observed that history is a malleable property, written by the victors, with facts added or deleted as the authors of a particular account see fit. Naturally, this doesn’t just apply to the great epic moments of the past such as the fall of Rome or Genghis Continue Reading
On the 5th day of Christmas … I read 5 delightfully unusual Christmas-themed books
For all of my love of pushing creative envelopes, and turning things inside and out with postmodern glee, I also have a sentimentally-laden, corny-storyline loving traditionalist in me, who very rarely gets his way except at Christmas time when the many tales of redemptive love, chestnuts roasting on an Continue Reading
Down the wormhole: Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar has a trailer and a website
Christopher Nolan is an insanely talented filmmaker. A man who dares to weave the big, pressing existential questions of life into both the Hollywood blockbusters and indie movies he makes, he is passionately committed to his craft, wanting to make art as much as a successful movie. It’s an Continue Reading
On the 4th day of Christmas 2013 … I watched “Christmas Scandal” (Parks and Recreation, S2 E12)
If there is one episode that illustrates just how far Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) had come from the ditzy if eminently capable Pollyanna-esque figure of season 1 to the still wide-eyed and optimistic but far more capable and intelligent figure of season 2, it’s “Christmas Scandal”. It’s not simply Continue Reading
You will falalalala and you will like it! So says Amy Poehler and Billy Eichner as they go a-carolin’!
Quick! Sing the entire first verse of “Deck the Halls” for me! Now! Yes now! No? OK how about “O Come All Ye Faithful”? … “Jingle Bells”? … “12 Days of Christmas”? Nope? Nothing? Well you’re not alone! In a special edition of Billy Eichner’s hilarious “Billy on the Continue Reading
On the 3rd day of Christmas 2013 … I decorated my tree with Goofy, Bugs Bunny, The Jetsons, Tigger, UP ornaments
ParagraphKalexanderson viaphotopincc There’s a better than average chance you may have guessed this by now, but I am a man obsessed by pop culture in all its myriad forms. I love movies, cartoons, cartoon movies, books, music, plays, and the way society is reflected through them and I am more than Continue Reading
Can’t wait to Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow debuts poster and trailer
SNAPSHOT “The epic action of Edge of Tomorrow unfolds in a near future in which an alien race has hit the Earth in an unrelenting assault, unbeatable by any military unit in the world. Lt. Col. Bill Cage (Tom Cruise) is an officer who has never seen a day Continue Reading
On the 2nd day of Christmas 2013 … I listened to A Mary Christmas by Mary J Blige
It would be fair to argue that one of the defining attributes of Mary J. Blige as an artist is her passion. Whether it’s been channelled into songs of anguish, heartache and pain, and the understandable willingness to fight back, such as “Enough Cryin’”, or articulated in songs of Continue Reading
On the 1st day of Christmas 2013 … I looked forward to the Doctor Who Christmas Special “The Time of the Doctor”
SNAPSHOT Orbiting a quiet backwater planet, the massed forces of the universe’s deadliest species gather, drawn to a mysterious message that echoes out to the stars. And amongst them – the Doctor. Rescuing Clara from a family Christmas dinner, the Time Lord and his best friend must learn what Continue Reading