Let’s face it – if you had a choice between happy, jolly Santa Claus coming to pay you a visit, laden with toys, a hearty laugh and a longing for milk and cookies, and a cloven-hoofed demonic bringer of retribution and doom as payment for bad deeds done, you’d no doubt Continue Reading
Sisters: The Farce Awakens: Why Amy Poehler and Tina Fey’s film is just like Star Wars
It appears, and you may be surprised by this, that Sisters, the new hilarious comedy from Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a small barely-on-the-radar movie opening soon, have a great deal in common. Yes, really. OK, not at all, but that’s not stopping Continue Reading
On 2nd day of Christmas … I read Stick Man by Julie Donaldson and Axel Scheffler
There’s a very good reason why the song “I’ll Be Home For Christmas”, first recorded in 1943 by Bing Crosby and written for soldiers fighting overseas and far from their loved ones, is such a Christmas favourite. It encapsulates everything that most of us – I appreciate not everyone Continue Reading
So many worlds: You can laugh through all of them with new sci-fi comedy Tripped
SNAPSHOT The Inbetweeners’ Blake Harrison stars in E4’s mind-bending new comedy drama as Danny, an average 24-year-old who has been friends with stoner Milo (newcomer George Webster) since they were kids. Danny decides it’s time to grow up, settle down and marry long-term girlfriend Kate (BAFTA Award winner Georgina Continue Reading
On 1st day of Christmas … I watched the film Get Santa
Christmas films, especially those with good old Santa’s name in the title, generally tend to follow the same well-worn path. Someone, oh let’s say Santa himself, gets into trouble, caught in a situation that a man of hundreds of years experience and worldly-wiseness has never encountered in all his Continue Reading
The vibrantly musical world of Alê Abreu’s Boy and the World (O Menino e o Mundo)
SNAPSHOT “Cuca’s cozy rural life is shattered when his father leaves for the city, prompting him to embark on a quest to reunite his family. The young boy’s journey unfolds like a tapestry, the animation taking on greater complexity as his small world expands. Entering civilization, industrial landscapes are Continue Reading
“Do you think we’ll change things?” Outlander S2 teaser trailer asks the big unknowable questions
SNAPSHOT “Season Two of Outlander begins as Claire and Jamie arrive in France, hell-bent on infiltrating the Jacobite rebellion led by Prince Charles Stuart, and stopping the battle of Culloden. With the help of his cousin Jared, a local wine merchant, Jamie and Claire are thrown into the lavish Continue Reading
“The best stories infuse wonder”: 20 Years of Pixar
One of the most transformative experiences of my life took place in 1995 when I went to see a movie called Toy Story. It was the first feature film from a new animation company called Pixar, and as a lover of well told animated stories from way back, I Continue Reading
Slavery or death: What would you choose At the End?
Humanity really doesn’t do all that well when it comes to aliens appearing unheralded in our skies. We’re either slaughtered, herded, bombed, or in the case of short film, At the End, offered sanctuary by a fleet of alien ships from a supernova that will engulf and destroy Earth. Continue Reading
Now this is music #59: Paris Wells, Moguai ft. Cheat Codes, Transviolet, DWNTWN, Pell
I hear ya – it’s Friday and frankly you’ve only got enough energy left to dial up the local pizza place, twist the top off a bottle of wine and collapse on the couch to watch “Real Surviving Housewives of the Amazing Race” or something. But sometimes, and hear Continue Reading