Modern animation often sets out with three distinct goals – to be riotously funny, visually striking and to have a beating heart of humanity at its core that also imparts a meaningful message. It’s a tricky trio of things to keep in balance and not every animated features well, or Continue Reading
Hotdog eggnog! Ted Lasso gets stop-motion festive in The Missing Christmas Mustache
SNAPSHOTEmmy® winner Jason Sudeikis as Ted Lasso, an American football coach hired to manage a British soccer team — despite having no experience. But what he lacks in knowledge, he makes up for with optimism, underdog determination — and biscuits. The widely acclaimed series also stars Emmy® winner Hannah Waddingham, Continue Reading
On the 9th day of Christmas … I pondered who’d be best in glass in Blown Away: Christmas (review)
Christmas is beautiful. Really, really beautiful. Look around you – lights twinkle, plain green trees (to be fair gorgeous unadorned too) are festooned in baubles and tinsel, and yes, more lights, lit sculptures hang over on streets with word like “JOY” and “PEACE” split out in festive colour … and Continue Reading
Book review: Stringers by Chris Panatier
ARC courtesy Chris Panatier – release date 12 April 2022. Release the dung beetles of imagination my friends! Never heard of them? Well, that won’t be a problem once Chris Panatier is done with you via the mad, manic and hilariously affecting delights of his second novel, Stringers, which spends Continue Reading
On 8th day of Christmas … I watched Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas
It would not be a stretch to assert that A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is the most important, iconic and thus, most adapted piece of writing in modern Christmas history. A morality tale for those who want a heartwarming story of darkness and redemption but without all the religious Continue Reading
Festive movie review: A Castle for Christmas
Whether you are staring out a frosted window, eggnog in hand, onto a snowy, pine-clad landscape in the northern hemisphere or sitting on the verandah of your summer rental down south, wine in hand and salad on the table in front of you, work long since forgotten, there is something Continue Reading
On 7th day of Christmas … I put 15 more pop culture ornaments on my tree incl. Paddington, View-Master, Goofy, Smurfette, Olaf (Frozen) + Blondie
Is there such a thing as too many new Christmas ornaments. I say NO, although my boyfriend likely thinks there is as the tubs of ornaments threaten to overwhelm our apartment (for the record he loves Christmas and my love of the season), which is why I went crazy this Continue Reading
The end of everything … or the beginning? Thoughts on Invasion (S1, E7-10)
SPOILERS AHEAD … AND SOME SNEAKY ALIEN STUFF GOING ON … Remember that scene near the end of Die Hard (which is yes, a Christmas movie) where everyone including John McClane (Bruce Willis) thinks their Christmassy ordeal is over until, all of sudden, head bad guy Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) Continue Reading
On 6th day of Christmas … Festive singing, dancing and all the feels with Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas (movie review)
Christmas is usually the most wonderful time of the year. But when you have just lost someone impossibly near and dear to me, and you have have fond and abiding memories of Christmas, it can often feel like the land that happiness forgot, a season awash in jollity, tinsel and Continue Reading
#Christmas book review: The Christmas Cookie Club by Ann Pearlman
If you take a close look at many Christmas stories, songs, TV shows and movies, a prevailing theme is that of connectedness, something we all want and crave but which becomes all the more important during the festive season when being with the ones you love becomes as critical to Continue Reading