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SparklyPrettyBriiiight

Andrew's wonderful world of pop culture

More than just toys: How Toy Story beautifully explores issues of abandonment (video essay)

Posted on June 30, 2019June 30, 2019 by aussiemoose

No one likes to be abandoned or neglected. It cuts to the very core of our self-worth and lovability and the even the prospect of it, quite understandably, leaves us quaking in our existential boots. The same goes for the toys of Pixar’s Toy Story series, says Isaac of The Continue Reading

Posted In Animation, MoviesTagged In Pixar

Comics review: Check, Please! (Book #1: #Hockey) by Ngozi Ukazu

Posted on June 30, 2019June 30, 2019 by aussiemoose

If you have even one romantic bone in your body, and I’m guessing there must be than one unless your heart is concrete and your soul solid granite, put aside any notions that you have looking at the cover of Check, Please! (Book #1: #Hockey) by the supremely-talented Ngozi Ukazu. Continue Reading

Posted In Comics

A mass of movie trailers: Ad Astra, After the Wedding, Plus One, Trolls World Tour, Under the Silver Lake

Posted on June 29, 2019June 29, 2019 by aussiemoose

Movies! Movies! Movies! Fortunately for a cinephile like myself, they never stop but keeping up with the neverending cascade of trailers can take a lot of time and effort, and were I to put them all on the blog, more site real estate than I could afford, and frankly that Continue Reading

Posted In Movies

Book review: While You Were Reading by Ali Berg and Michelle Kalus

Posted on June 29, 2019June 28, 2019 by aussiemoose

Have you ever made a titanically bad life decision, the kind for which there is no reasonable response, other than to run for the hills and tried to pretend that barn burner of a life-changing incident never happened? Beatrix Babbage has; after an accidental confession lays her best friend Cassandra’s Continue Reading

Posted In Books

Movie review: Yesterday

Posted on June 28, 2019June 28, 2019 by aussiemoose

At what point do you give up on a dream, one that has sustained you through dead end jobs, living at home with your parents, a rolling tumbleweed of a romantic life and a general sense of early promise unfulfilled? That’s the great dilemma facing Jack Malik (Himesh Patel), who Continue Reading

Posted In Movies

Songs, songs and more songs #10: BANKS, Sigrid, MXMS, Olivia O’Brien, Holy Ghost!

Posted on June 28, 2019December 6, 2019 by aussiemoose

One of the great joys of life is listening to music that you really love. I mean really, REALLY love. Each month I listen to a lot of new music, and while I like pretty much all of it, not all of it really gets down into the very depths Continue Reading

Posted In Music

Book review:The Lady From the Black Lagoon by Mallory O’Meara

Posted on June 26, 2019June 26, 2019 by aussiemoose

History can be cruel. A person can stand, deservedly or not, atop the passing colossus of time, full as it is of flimsy whims and fickle fortunes, as if they were and are always meant to be there, and then a scant generation later, they are nothing but a footnote Continue Reading

Posted In Books

Weekday movie poster art: Toy Story 4

Posted on June 26, 2019June 24, 2019 by aussiemoose

I love movie posters and I love and adore the Toy Story series of films, the latest of which Toy Story 4 is a brilliantly-worthy addition to films 1, 2 and 3, and so, the creation of posters by a group of artists celebrating what I would argue is Pixar’s Continue Reading

Posted In Animation, MoviesTagged In Pixar

Fear the Walking Dead: “Skidmark” (S5, E4 review)

Posted on June 25, 2019August 19, 2020 by aussiemoose

SPOILERS AHEAD … AND CLEVER CATS, BURNT-OUT PLANES AND INTERESTING NEW FRIENDSHIPS … You gave got to love Daniel (Rubén Blades). A consummate survivor who has survived the very worst that the zombie apocalypse, and Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) for that matter, can throw at him, Daniel is the kind Continue Reading

Posted In TVTagged In Fear the Walking Dead

Some friendships are wild at heart: The enduring friendship of Animals

Posted on June 25, 2019June 24, 2019 by aussiemoose

SNAPSHOTWild, outrageous and utterly hilarious, Animals is the acclaimed new film from director Sophie Hyde based on the book of the same name by Emma Jane Unsworth, featuring stunning lead performances from Holliday Grainger and Alia Shawkat. (synopsis courtesy Jumpcut Online) At first glance, you may not think that Australian Continue Reading

Posted In Movies

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Recent Posts

  • Festive book review: A Snowy Seaside Christmas by Eliza J Scott
  • On 2nd day of Christmas, I watched … Oh. What. Fun.
  • Burning gingerbread men and festive snow funnies – Thoughts on Prep & Landing: The Snowball Protocol
  • Festive book review: Keeping a Christmas Promise by Jo Thomas
  • On 1st day of Christmas … I decorated my tree with 10 new pop culture ornaments incl. Elio, Up, The Muppet Christmas Carol … and more!

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RSS SparklyPrettyBriiiight

  • Festive book review: A Snowy Seaside Christmas by Eliza J Scott
    (courtesy Storm Publishing) While any kind of Christmas romcom is usually good for the soul, helping you to believe in redemption, healing and true love, the really good ones, at least for this reader, also project a strong sense of cosy and supportive community. That’s important because finding your special Continue Reading
  • On 2nd day of Christmas, I watched … Oh. What. Fun.
    (courtesy First Showing) Christmas is a LOT. Even if you love the season, and this reviewer loves like an elf excitedly stocking Santa’s sleigh before downing a vat of eggnog and decorating every tree in the garden, all of us reach a point, even for a second where it all Continue Reading
  • Burning gingerbread men and festive snow funnies – Thoughts on Prep & Landing: The Snowball Protocol
    (courtesy IMDb) SNAPSHOTThe Emmy-winning franchise returns after more than a decade, following Christmas elves Lanny and Wayne as their holiday mission unfolds with many merry mishaps. The fourth installment [sic] continues the holiday adventures of an elite team that prepares homes worldwide for Santa’s arrival. (courtesy Disney+ media) After a Continue Reading
  • Festive book review: Keeping a Christmas Promise by Jo Thomas
    (courtesy Penguin Books) When you love dearly dies, suddenly everything about them becomes vitally and inviolably important. That hit home very hard to me in the wake of the passing of my dad (2016) and then my mum (2019); suddenly I need to watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation every year, Continue Reading
  • On 1st day of Christmas … I decorated my tree with 10 new pop culture ornaments incl. Elio, Up, The Muppet Christmas Carol … and more!
    (via Shutterstock) When I bought my first Christmas tree as an adult way back in 1992, I bought some pop culture ornaments but I mostly stuck to the sorts of ornaments and baubles I remembered from childhood. But as time went on, I increasingly bought more and more pop culture Continue Reading
  • More than a single snowflake … Thoughts on The First Snow of Fraggle Rock
    (courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTThe Fraggles eagerly await the first snow of the season and all the traditions it brings, but when only a single snowflake arrives and Gobo can’t write the yearly holiday song everyone is expecting, the season is thrown off course. For the first time ever, Gobo journeys Continue Reading
  • The festive short and the short of it: You’ve got a friend in the A Disney Holiday Short: Best Christmas Ever
    (courtesy Disney+) SNAPSHOTWhen Santa mistakes the doodle on a girl’s list for a holiday wish, she wakes up on Christmas morning to find an unusual new friend under the tree. Directed by Taika Waititi and featuring the voice of John Goodman, the short follows the heartwarming story of the friendship Continue Reading
  • Festive book review: Good Spirits (Ghosted, 1) by B.K. Borison
    (courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) Ever since Charles Dickens published his novella A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas aka A Christmas Carol in 1843, it has been adapted repeatedly (almost immediately as a play in 1844), its universally relevant truth of finding redemption in the Continue Reading
  • Festive movie review: Champagne Problems
    (courtesy IMP Awards) In a world where hype and PR all too often turn out to have more substance than the thing they’re promoting, it’s always a pleasant, if low-key, delight when something turns out to be better than the vehicle used to promote it. Champagne Problems is one such Continue Reading
  • Songs, songs and more songs Christmas songs #1: Sara Evans, Anaïs Reno, Lady A, Thelma & James, Mia McIntosh, Ingrid Michaelson + more … also Christmas releases by Eurovision artists!
    (via Shutterstock) While Christmas albums from a wide variety of artists are hardly out of style, what is most remarkable in this year of our festive lord 2025 is how many Christmas singles have made their way out into an tinsel-draped, eggnog-addled world. Maybe there were always a lot of Continue Reading
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