Begin Again, the latest ode to music’s power to change lives from the director of Once, John Carney, is a pleasingly deceptive movie. Taken on surface value alone, it is a sweet and charming story – in the world of the movie musical these are not pejoratives but rather badges of honour, Continue Reading
Jump out of the TARDIS! Doctor Who gets animated
You may have thought watching Tom Baker or David Tennant or Matt Smith in action as the 4th, 10th and 11th Doctors respectively that Doctor Who was already plenty animated enough. And while it’s true that fighting the Cybermen, the Daleks, The Silence and the Weeping Angels is a fairly active pursuit, talented Continue Reading
Falling Skies: A Thing With Feathers (S4, E8 review)
* There could be some spoilers contained within and Volm and Espheni and maybe even a Skitter-ised Partridge in a Pear Tree* Taking a line from an Emily Dickinson poem that muses on the fragile nature of hope, as both its title and inspiration, this week’s episode of Falling Continue Reading
Rap like an Animal: The Muppets want to know “So What’cha Want”?
If The Muppets, in all their glorious sweet hearted hilarious lunacy have taught us anything, apart from the fact that a good aggro drum soul is de rigeur for any song (thank you Animal), it’s that there is nothing they cannot do. NOTHING. They have performed in an old Continue Reading
Now this is music #35: GEoRGiA, Vaults, Kwamie Liv, RDGLDGRN, HANAH
I hear ya – it’s been a grindingly long week with little to enjoy but a burrito for lunch and a wine at the bar on Wednesday night before heading home on a crowded train. It’s precisely why these five songs are what you need right now. They’re by Continue Reading
Zombies are made of plastic bricks: The Walking Dead’s S5 trailer gets LEGO-ised
It feels like an undead eternity since we last saw Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and his fellow zombie apocalypse survivors locked away in a rail car by suspected cannibals at the not-so-safe sanctuary of Terminus at the end of season 4 (which apparently had an altogether more badass ending in Continue Reading
Here comes the Fall … TV! The 10 new shows I am looking forward to watching
Rejoice those of you with too little TV to watch, there is an avalanche of fresh programming on its way! For the rest of us, who are happily close to drowning in the rich seas of the new golden age of TV, and are watching more programs that we Continue Reading
Guardians of the Galaxy: Here’s a whole lot more to love about this brilliant movie
Guardians of the Galaxy is a phenomenon. Released just under two weeks ago in the USA, it has already taken in approximately $175 million domestically, with similar success overseas, it has taken everything we thought we knew about Marvel’s unarguably successful superhero films, all of which march to a reasonably similar Continue Reading
RIP Robin Williams: From Mork and Mindy to Dead Poets Society and beyond, you will be remembered
Robin Williams was an amazing man. Bursting into my childhood in the late 1970s via the colourful sitcom, Mork and Mindy (1978-1982), in which he starred as a manic, over the top alien with a penchant for eggs, learning about his new home Earth, and the eventual love of Continue Reading
Happy 40th birthday ABBA: Live at Wembley Arena to release this September
If you thought that ABBA are done celebrating their milestone 40th year, think again. Along with the Waterloo Deluxe album release, and books ABBA the Official Photo Book and ABBA The Backstage Stories / The Treasures, and The Story of ABBA by one of the band members Björn Ulvaeus, the Continue Reading