What is the Eurovision Song Contest? Started way back in 1956 as a way of drawing a fractured Europe back together with the healing power of music, the Eurovision Song Contest, or Concours Eurovision de la Chanson – the contest is telecast in both English and French – is open Continue Reading
Fast bullets and a really serious bad guy: Deadpool 2 drops its final trailer
SHAPSHOT Deadpool forming a team of mercenaries and mutants to protect a mysterious kid (Hunt for the Wilderpeople’s Julian Dennison) from the arrival of a hardass cyborg from the future, Thanos. (synopsis (c) io9) Ladies and gentleman behold – the Merc With the Mouth aka Wade Wilson aka Deadpool Continue Reading
Telltale signs: You know it’s a Wes Anderson film if …
SNAPSHOT You know you’re watching a Wes Anderson film if there’s a rich micro world with a focus on art direction. Wes Anderson’s films have become synonymous with unique and idiosyncratic production design that makes us feel we’ve entered inside a human dollhouse. (synopsis via Laughing Squid) I have Continue Reading
Book review: Scales of Empire (Dragon Empire Trilogy #1) by Kylie Chan
First Contact in science fiction storytelling is normally an eminently serious undertaking, with the meeting of alien and human usually presaging some great generation-defining moment that may be good or bad but is never less than gravely portentous. In Kylie Chan’s Scales of Empire, a sci-fi novel and the Continue Reading
Big risks and taxi fares: John Boyega interviewed on The Feed
Go hard or go home is a mantra beloved by many, a rallying cry to give something everything you’ve got or not bother at all. Pretty inspiring stuff right? Well yes, but as John Boyega, star of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Pacific Rim: Uprising explains with down Continue Reading
Jasmine the greyhound and the healing power of a gentle soul
SNAPSHOT In 2015, The Feeln Network posted a beautiful animation that told the amazing story of Jasmine the greyhound. In 2003, police in Warwickshire, West Midlands England came upon a locked barn from where they heard the pitiful whimpering of a young greyhound who had been abandoned and starved. Continue Reading
Comics review: Atlas & Axis
One of the things I have long-loved about the European style of storytelling, and the reason why I have consumed everything from Agaton Sax and the Moomins as a child through to The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery as an adult, is that it is not afraid Continue Reading
Psycho in space: Nightflyers is one ship you don’t want to hitch a ride on
SNAPSHOT Nightflyers follows eight maverick scientists and a powerful telepath who embark on an expedition to the edge of our solar system aboard The Nightflyer – a ship with a small tightknit crew and a reclusive captain – in the hope of making contact with alien life. But when Continue Reading
Movie review: Rampage
There was a time when blockbusters had the power to not only thrill and awe us, but to move us as well, an intoxicating mix that saw films like Die Hard, Independence Day and even Alien/s and Terminator not only clean up at the box office, but find a Continue Reading
You DRINK coffee? Amateur! 1967 Cookie Monster EATS the machine that makes it
You can’t miss the fact that Cookie Monster, by sheer dint of name alone, loves cookies. And who can blame him? They’re freaking delicious! But coffee? Or more precisely, coffee machines? In this hilarious IBM promotional film from 1967, Cookie Monster goes to town on a very chatty coffee Continue Reading