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SparklyPrettyBriiiight

Andrew's wonderful world of pop culture

Hot Dog Girl – can a princess, a pirate, a hot dog, and a carousel operator find love?

Posted on March 16, 2019March 14, 2019 by aussiemoose

SNAPSHOTElouise (Lou) Parker is determined to have the absolute best, most impossibly epic summer of her life. There are just a few things standing in her way: She’s landed a job at Magic Castle Playland . . . as a giant dancing hot dog. Her crush, the dreamy Diving Pirate Continue Reading

Posted In Books

Movie review: Isn’t it Romantic?

Posted on March 16, 2019December 9, 2019 by aussiemoose

It’s all too easy in our self-aware, postmodern age to be cynical about love, true love, and specifically its cinematic purveyor of choice, romantic comedies. After all, they’re an easy target – full of cliches, well-worn tropes, generalised characters formed by questionable life choices, odd best friends happy to subvert Continue Reading

Posted In Movies

Songs, songs and more songs #3: MANE, Elk Road & JES, Eves Karydas, Haelos, Eilish Gilligan + Eurovision update

Posted on March 15, 2019December 6, 2019 by aussiemoose

Life is full of all kinds of experiences, good and bad. Sometimes we can express how they make us feel and sometimes we can’t; for those times when words escape us, we have music artists to do the heavy-lifting, articulation-wise for us, such the five featured in this post. Hailing Continue Reading

Posted In Music

Monsters Inc: Gain a new perspective via Pixar’s Side-by-Side

Posted on March 15, 2019March 15, 2019 by aussiemoose

SNAPSHOT Monsters Incorporated is the largest scare factory in the monster world, and James P. Sullivan (John Goodman) is one of its top scarers. Sullivan is a huge, intimidating monster with blue fur, large purple spots and horns. His scare assistant, best friend and roommate is Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal), Continue Reading

Posted In Animation, Movies

Star Trek Discovery: “If Memory Serves” (S2, E8 review)

Posted on March 13, 2019March 13, 2019 by aussiemoose

SPOILERS AHEAD … AND BLUE SINGING PLANTS AND FAIRLY-INVASIVE THERAPY WITHOUT THE COMFY COUCH … Hands up everyone who loves dredging up really super-traumatic memories? And again, those of you who like doing that in a dank cave-like structure underground on restricted Federation planet Talos IV – the very same Continue Reading

Posted In TV

Movie review: Non-Fiction (Doubles vies)

Posted on March 13, 2019April 9, 2019 by aussiemoose

When is a comedy not really a comedy? When it’s Non-Fiction (Doubles Vies), a 2018 French film from director Olivier Assayas (who also wrote the screenplay), the trailer for which recalls some madly funny descent into adulterous farce but which in actuality plays more as a neverending literary festival where Continue Reading

Posted In Movies

Are Mickey, Donald and Goofy “Outta Time”? Yeah, they kinda are …

Posted on March 12, 2019March 12, 2019 by aussiemoose

SNAPSHOT Mickey and Donald set out to rescue Goofy after he time travels back to the past in one of Professor Von Drake’s inventions. (synopsis via YouTube) The space/time continuum is a highly-delicate construct it seems. One small slip, one tweak of the timeline, one Goofy act (pun wholly and Continue Reading

Posted In Animation

Book review: A Love Story for Bewildered Girls by Emma Morgan

Posted on March 12, 2019March 12, 2019 by aussiemoose

To hear Disney, Hallmark or a thousand other purveyors of romantic dreamscapes tell it, all we want it to fall headlong into someone’s arms, surrender ourselves to them and live, fairytale-like, happily ever after. It’s a captivating idea, that love could be that all-consuming and satisfying, that everything we’ve ever Continue Reading

Posted In Books

IDGAF! Thoughts on Grace and Frankie season 5

Posted on March 10, 2019March 9, 2019 by aussiemoose

One of the great rewards of getting older, and they are there, creaky body parts and forgetful memory notwithstanding, is the increasing sense that you can do as you please. Of course, you can’t always do that since people weirdly insist on your wearing clothes on public transport and a Continue Reading

Posted In TV

We’re all looking for Someone Great right? Netflix thinks so …

Posted on March 10, 2019March 8, 2019 by aussiemoose

SNAPSHOT Aspiring music journalist Jenny (Gina Rodriguez) has just landed her dream job at an iconic magazine and is about to move to San Francisco. Rather than do long distance, her boyfriend of nine years (Lakeith Stanfield) decides to call it quits. To nurse her broken heart, Jenny gathers up Continue Reading

Posted In Movies

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Recent Posts

  • Book review: Frankie by J. M. Gutsch and Maxim Leo
  • Retro Christmas movie review: Haul Out the Holly
  • Halloween book review: Alice by Christina Henry
  • The spirit of Halloween future: Teaser trailer for 2026’s Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom
  • Halloween retro animated movie: Coraline

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RSS SparklyPrettyBriiiight

  • Retro Christmas movie review: Haul Out the Holly
    (courtesy IMDb) There’s a strange disconnect that can emerge when you’re consuming festively themed pop culture – for instance, you might be perfectly fine with reading endlessly escapist, coincidence-full rom-com novels but find their Hallmark equivalents to be a Christmassy bridge too far. You know there’s a strange kind of Continue Reading
  • Halloween book review: Alice by Christina Henry
    It’s quite the thing these days to take a classic novel as inspiration, or even an ancient one in some cases, and take it to new and exciting places that honour the original work and author but explore new territory. In many cases, it’s done brilliantly and originally well, as Continue Reading
  • The spirit of Halloween future: Teaser trailer for 2026’s Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom
    (courtesy IMDb) SNAPSHOTShaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom sees the residents of Mossy Bottom Farm looking forward to Halloween – until the clumsy Farmer trashes the Flock’s beloved pumpkin patch! When Shaun turns into mad scientist to help fix the problem, things rapidly spiral out of control… With Continue Reading
  • Halloween retro animated movie: Coraline
    (courtesy IMP Awards) There’s often admittance by people that they are “late to the party”, as if watching or reading or whatever something long after it’s come out – or sometimes, mere weeks, such is the frantic and unforgiving pace of the modern digital age which eats its newly-released young Continue Reading
  • Halloween book review: The Last Bookstore on Earth
    (courtesy Penguin Books Australia) Any time any author decides to take a well-established genre, give it a good shake-up and reshape its form entirely is a good time. Especially when it comes one as well-trafficked as the end-of-the-world genre which has been pretty much full-to-bursting with zombies and aliens and Continue Reading
  • Halloween Family Guy special 2025: “A Little Fright Music” (review)
    (courtesy IMDb) Halloween is definitely the one festival of the year where you are fully and absolutely allowed to get your freak on, to let loose, defy assumptions and expectations … and lie to your wives about going trick or treating? Hmmmm, not sure the last one is really part Continue Reading
  • Book review: Our Life in a Day by Jamie Fewery
    (courtesy Hachette Australia) Whenever we’re asked to pick the highlights for anything, whether it’s a relationship or an overseas trip or our childhood, we unerringly pick the glowingly positive high points, driven by some unspoken acknowledgement that for something to be a highlight it must have unquestionably upbeat qualities. But Continue Reading
  • The short and the short of it: It’s garden gnomes vs. golf club in FOREVER
    (courtesy YouTube (c) Omeleto) SNAPSHOTThe story begins in a cheerful and peaceful backyard garden, where brightly painted gnomes stand proudly among flowers and trimmed grass in quirky poses and scenarios. Bathed in sunlight and silence, their existence is static yet content. But their serene existence is disrupted when a golf Continue Reading
  • Book review: Tiny Uncertain Miracles by Michelle Johnston
    (courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) It is hard, if not next to impossible when you are caught down in the depths of grief and loss, and the suffocating smallness of life that often comes with it, not to feel as if there is any hope left in life. But as Continue Reading
  • Molly does her best to live up to her promise in Loot S3, E1-3 (review)
    (courtesy IMP Awards) The great joy of Loot, not just in the first three episodes of its third season but in the first two superlative seasons too, is that it is just so damn funny. Not just funny bog standard ordinary but cleverly inspired, oneliner-quoting funny, the kind of sitcom Continue Reading
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