All too often life can feel like one big compromise. Only the bravest among us seems able to resist the irresistible pull of compliance and self-censorship, and yet even they can be guilty of bending in a thousand small ways to inauthentic demands not their own. It is the nature of Continue Reading
Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Cinema’s most lovable miscreant goes 8-Bit
I loved Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) pretty much from the moment I saw it. There was something intoxicating about the way Ferris got way with all the sorts of things that I, good straight laced Christian lad just finishing university, would never have dreamed of attempting (but secretly wish Continue Reading
Fear the Walking Dead: “Not Fade Away” (S1, E4 review)
*SPOILERS AHEAD … AND THE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM (FUN HUH?)* Early on in “Not Fade Away”, and perched on top of the roof his dad’s girlfriend’s house watching the undead world go by while he films it, Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie) ironically notes that their new military protectors Continue Reading
The bare necessities of life? All that and more in the first trailer for the live action remake of The Jungle Book
The world is engulfed by remake fever. Or Hollywood to be more exact. Everywhere cinemagoers turn, an old, much-loved classic is being re-imagined, re-tooled, re-done because modern audiences need bright, shiny, new … or something. Who knows what’s behind it, other than perhaps studio-driven artistic laziness, but occasionally, in Continue Reading
And the winner of the best unnamed character in a TV or movie is … Vancouver, Canada
Vancouver is a beautiful, wonderful, amazing city. I’ve been there many times, partly I think because I was a Canadian in another life and needed to let my inner Canuck run free, partly because it’s on the west coast of Canada and thus way closer to Australia than Toronto Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: But Milk is Important
But Milk is Important is one of those delightfully immersive short films that manages to tell a lifetime’s worth of stories in just under 10 minutes of exquisitely-made stop motion animation. Crafted as a graduation project by Anna Mantzaris and Eirik Grønmo Bjørnsen, it is redolent with a deeply felt Continue Reading
Book review: Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse book 1) by James S. A. Corey
Space is a damn big place. Which means that if you’re going to tell a story set in the far sprawling reaches of said space, it needs to be big enough to fill the available real estate. Which is exactly what Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey – a Continue Reading
When Cookie Met Sally: Sesame Street deliciously spoofs that scene from the iconic romcom
I think we can all agree that the people who make Sesame Street are ridiculously, amazingly, creatively brilliant right? From the catchy, lively segments on learning your ABCs and 123s through to a thousand other small but meaningful segments, they routinely find a way to make education an endlessly Continue Reading
Now this is music #55: Midnight Pool Party, Back Back Forward Punch, Panama, XYLØ, Lola Marsh
Head down, you’ve been working like crazy all week. All your time, effort, concentration given over to catching trains or buses, meeting deadlines, cramming lunch into impossible small pieces of time, racing home, living life, never really stopping. Well, here’s your chance. Five artists with songs that will transport Continue Reading
Hold back the Demons: The Shannara Chronicles and the fight for magic and peace
SNAPSHOT The Four Lands, normally a land of magic and peace, faces a threat beyond man: Demons. Banished ages ago, they were held back by a magical wall known as the Forbidding. Yet the source of that magic, the magical tree known as the Ellcrys, is dying, and thus Continue Reading