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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

  • Book review: Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear
  • Movie review: The Quiet Maid (Calladita)
  • Book review: The Dead Friend Project by Joanna Wallace
  • Why are the aliens here? Teaser trailer for Invasion S3 suggests someone has figured it out
  • During Christmas in July, I decorated my tree with 5 new pop culture ornaments

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RSS SparklyPrettyBriiiight

  • Book review: Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear
    (courtesy Hachette Australia) Any good book worth its narrative, world-building salt should be able to hold immersively entranced through every page and exciting twist-and-turn. But some books are created more equal than others in this regard, and Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear, the first book in her White Space series, Continue Reading
  • Movie review: The Quiet Maid (Calladita)
    (courtesy IMDb) This may be news to the producers of many a Hollywood blockbuster – this reviewer loves many of them but subtle they are not – but there is real power in telling an emotionally impactful story quietly. While the temptation, especially in our cliffhanger-addicted, streaming algorithm modern digital Continue Reading
  • Book review: The Dead Friend Project by Joanna Wallace
    (courtesy Allen & Unwin Book Publishers) Books that subvert expectations are quite possibly the very best kind. When you first pick up The Dead Friend Project by Joanna Wallace, you might be struck by the quirkiness of the titlenand even the taglines on the front cover and atop the back Continue Reading
  • Why are the aliens here? Teaser trailer for Invasion S3 suggests someone has figured it out
    (courtesy YouTube (c) AppleTV+) SNAPSHOTInvasion follows an alien invasion through different perspectives around the world. In Season 3, those perspectives collide for the first time, as all the main characters are brought together to work as a team on a critical mission to infiltrate the alien mothership. The ultimate apex aliens have Continue Reading
  • During Christmas in July, I decorated my tree with 5 new pop culture ornaments
    (via Shutterstock) Somewhere around five years ago, with Christmas in July gathering in popularity all the time, I decided that I would use the white tree originally bought to display Easter ornaments, to display some Christmas ornaments during the cold winter months in Australia. The wins were many – we Continue Reading
  • This Christmas in July … I read Confessions of a Christmasaholic by Joss Wood
    (courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) Christmas romantic comedies aren’t generally the time of stories to break the genre mold. And that’s perfectly okay because what you want, I would in fact argue, you need, from these types of tales is that everything that is broken can be fixed, that the Continue Reading
  • Take a big swing: Thoughts on Stick (S1, E1-5)
    (courtesy IMP Awards) Ostensibly, Stick is all about golf. Watch the trailer and even dive into the first five episodes and you will come across many discussions about why golf matters, how to play it well and what it means to the soul as well as the body. But, and Continue Reading
  • He’s gone too far! Trailer releases for a feisty and fun Cat in the Hat movie
    (courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOT“Today is going to be THE. BEST. DAY. EVER!” Meet the Cat in the Hat you don’t know! In the whimsical tradition of Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat comes to the big screen in his animated theatrical feature film debut, an all-new, epic adventure with Continue Reading
  • One last roll of the planetary dice … Project Hail Mary releases its first gripping trailer
    (courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTAstronaut Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) awakens with no memory of himself or his mission. He deduces he is the sole survivor of a crew sent to the Tau Ceti solar system in search of a solution to a catastrophic event on Earth. In his search for answers, Grace must Continue Reading
  • Book review: Rise and Shine by Kimberley Allsopp
    (courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) There’s a popularly-held very binary dynamic at work when it comes to love stories. You’re either falling wildly and hopelessly in love with nothing but wine and roses and sunshine through dew drop eyes ahead of you … OR … you have reached the end Continue Reading
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