TV storytelling, like that of any creative medium, is essentially the art of recycling of ideas that have seen the light of day many, many times before. Christopher Booker’s 2004 book, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories proposed the existence of a finite number of story ideas, and Continue Reading
“Life is a journey to be experienced” … Happy 90th birthday Winnie the Pooh!
It may hard to believe but Winnie the Pooh, A. A. Milne’s beloved creation who, along with other characters based on his son Christopher’s stuffed animals, resides in the quintessentially-English Hundred Acre Woods, is 90 today. Yes, 90 years old! Time flies when you’re eating a great many smackerels of Continue Reading
Haters Back Off! The hilariously deluded power of self-belief
SNAPSHOT Haters Back Off! is a television comedy series starring Colleen Ballinger, based on her character Miranda Sings, that centres around “the oddball family life of Miranda Sings, an incredibly confident, totally untalented star on the rise who continues to fail upward by the power of her belief that Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: Time to get On the Same Page
Opposites attract is one of the great maxims of romance. But what if it’s not so much opposites being attracted as one person finding in the other the spark that’s been missing from their own black-and-white life? That is quite delightfully the case in On the Same Page by Continue Reading
The tricky business of being Humans (series 2 poster + trailer)
SNAPSHOT In the second eight-part series, Synths all over the world are experiencing ‘a catastrophic malfunction’, or in Mattie’s words ‘waking up’ and questioning the status they’ve been afforded by humans. (synopsis via Den of Geek) From the “Uncanny Valley”, where people recoil from a computer-generated figure that looks Continue Reading
Life unintended: The dark regrets of Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals
SNAPSHOT From writer/director Tom Ford comes a haunting romantic thriller of shocking intimacy and gripping tension that explores the thin lines between love and cruelty, and revenge and redemption. Academy Award nominees Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal star as a divorced couple discovering dark truths about each other and Continue Reading
We’re back! Gilmore Girls take us behind-the-scenes of its A Year in the Life revival
If you weren’t already excited about returning to Stars Hollow, which now has its own website – one yet to be updated, thanks to Kirk’s lost password, but it’s there nonetheless and should be updated by the launch of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life on 25 November 2016 Continue Reading
Book review: Act of God by Jill Ciment
Adversity often strikes us when we are least expecting it. That’s largely because our natural tendency, the Eeyores among us not withstanding, is to hope for the very best, to let hope spring eternal until such time as it becomes abundantly clear that it has no intention of rewarding Continue Reading
Weekend pop art: Concept artists reimagine Star Wars
There is seemingly no end to Star Wars ever-captivating universe. Not only is Disney announcing film after film for the franchise, with this year’s new entry in the cinematic canon, Rogue One, only a few short months from release, but artists continue to re-imagine their own distinctive visually-stunning takes on Continue Reading
Road to Gilmore Girls A Year in the Life #3: “Rory’s Birthday Parties” (S1, E6)
One of the enduring strengths of the Gilmore Girls is that throughout its seven season run it deftly combined a winning sense of quirkiness with real emotional resonance. Sure much of Lorelai’s (Lauren Graham) dialogue was peppered with witticism, quips and an almost inexhaustible supply of pop culture touch points, but Continue Reading