If you thought 2014 was a bumper year for movies, and it was, then 2015 is shaping up to be every bit as big and varied with brilliant blockbusters, heartfelt indies and a panoply of other films all jostling for our moviegoing attention. Given the sheer volume of movies Continue Reading
Re-stacking the shelves: The 10 books I loved most in 2014
I have always loved to read. But somehow in the last few years I lost the habit, partly because I was frantically busy at work and barely had time to watch the TV shows I love and movies I wanted to see, but also because somehow, and I have Continue Reading
Movie review: Big Hero 6
Much like Guardians of the Galaxy before it, Big Hero 6, directed with a vivacious sense of fun and deep sense of poignancy by Chris Williams and Don Hall, is that rare Marvel-sourced movie that manages to transcend the well-established bonds of its comic-book antecedents. Not that there is Continue Reading
Re-watching the big glowing box: The 10 TV shows I loved most in 2014
Another year, another PVR up in smoke trying to cope with the insane numbers of programs I ask it to keep track of and record. Seriously it didn’t go up in smoke but it came close, damn close, with a multiplicity of new and old shows competing for my Continue Reading
Re-play the music please maestro: The 10 songs I loved most in 2014
Henry Wordsworth Longfellow once observed that “Music is the universal language of mankind.” Never has that been truer than in the second decade of the 21st century where digital technology has allowed music artists across an ever-splintering multiplicity of genres, whether they be an emerging band in Brooklyn or Continue Reading
Re-heating the popcorn: The 10 movies I loved most in 2014
2014 was a phenomenal year to be a movie lover. It seemed like every time you turned around, taking great care not to spill your oversized jumbo pack of popcorn or smear your choctop onto the blouse of the lady next to you, there was another engaging indie drama, Continue Reading
Deck the halls with pop culture icons: Merry Christmas everyone!
Another year over … Hard to believe another 365 days of movie and TV and song and book-filled wonder has passed and we’re here once again greeting Santa Claus with cookies and milk (and likely a zombie, a twerker and faulty stars too). Given it is almost the end Continue Reading
On the 12th day of Christmas … I decorated my tree with pop culture icons
When I bought my first Christmas tree as an adult in 1992 – I was technically an adult for about a decade before that but it took some money and a mindset change before I got around to acquiring my own tree; for years, in my mind at least, the only Continue Reading
Timely Christmas message: Sir Ian McKellen and Cookie Monster learn how to resist
If ever there was a word with which we all need to be familiar at this time of the year, it’s “Resist”. But like Cookie Monster, who doesn’t quite get the concept, the idea of it evades many of us as we saunter off for another bathtub of eggnog, Continue Reading
On the 11th day of Christmas … I watched “The Grimm Who Stole Christmas”
* HO HO HO! THERE ARE SPOILERS BELOW! ** “I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you; humbug.” Christmas is without a doubt a most magical time of Continue Reading