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SparklyPrettyBriiiight

Andrew's wonderful world of pop culture

#ChristmasInJuly movie review redux: The Night Before

Posted on July 17, 2022July 17, 2022 by aussiemoose

Much as we might love our parents and siblings and crazy Aunt Phyllis and her 20 cats, it’s often the families we create throughout our lives of close, trusted friends that come to define our adult lives most profoundly. That’s certainly the case in Jonathan Levine’s The Night Before, a Continue Reading

Posted In MoviesTagged In Christmas In July 2022

#ChristmasInJuly festive animation review: Sonic Christmas Blast

Posted on July 17, 2022July 17, 2022 by aussiemoose

Not being a game player of any kind, this reviewer’s only real contact with Sonic the Hedgehog had been the great pop culture soup in which many of us happily swim these days thanks to the internet where you can be exposed to a huge degree by characters and properties Continue Reading

Posted In Animation, Short film, StreamingTagged In Christmas In July 2022

Book review: The Eulogy by Jackie Bailey

Posted on July 16, 2022July 16, 2022 by aussiemoose

There is a curious time in everyone’s lives, in the immediate, disorienting aftermath of the death of a loved one, when time seems to stop but also go into a mad overdrive, mixing together the past and the present in an blender-frenzied attempt to make sense of a loss so Continue Reading

Posted In Books

Head back, waaaay back to Middle-earth: Trailer drops for Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Posted on July 16, 2022July 16, 2022 by aussiemoose

SNAPSHOTPrime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of Continue Reading

Posted In Books, Streaming

Life, death and scarred humanity: Five Days at Memorial (Apple TV+)

Posted on July 15, 2022July 15, 2022 by aussiemoose

SNAPSHOTFive Days at Memorial chronicles the impact of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath on a local hospital. When the floodwaters rose, power failed, and heat soared, exhausted caregivers at a New Orleans hospital were forced to make decisions that would follow them for years to come. The stacked ensemble cast Continue Reading

Posted In Books, Streaming

Movie review: Thor – Love and Thunder

Posted on July 15, 2022September 10, 2022 by aussiemoose

Without putting too fine a point on it, because Odin knows Taika Waititi (who can normally do no wrong – see Our Flag Means Death, Thor: Ragnarok, Jojo Rabbit) certainly hasn’t, Thor: Love and Thunder is unholy, unruly, near unwatchable mess. That’s not to say there aren’t some fine elements Continue Reading

Posted In Movies

Starting over in your 40s: Neil Patrick Harris confronts single gay life at a certain age in Uncoupled

Posted on July 14, 2022July 14, 2022 by aussiemoose

SNAPSHOTMichael Lawson (Neil Patrick Harris) seems to have it all figured out. He’s a successful New York City real estate agent with a great career, a supportive family, close friends, and a loving relationship with his partner of 17 years, Colin (Tuc Watkins). But when Colin unexpectedly moves out on Continue Reading

Posted In Streaming

Book review: The Boy With a Bird in His Chest by Emme Lund

Posted on July 14, 2022July 14, 2022 by aussiemoose

It’s all too easy to begin hiding yourself away from the world, especially if you’re told repeatedly that this is something wrong with you, that people will reject you if they know. Or even if they don’t. Sometimes that rejection and sense of fear can be cruelly anticipatory, foreseeing problems Continue Reading

Posted In Books

On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain? Thoughts on Baymax!

Posted on July 12, 2022July 20, 2022 by aussiemoose

Baymax, the medical robot that injected a huge amount of heart into 2014’s Big Hero 6, is adorable. He is algorithmically relentless. It makes sense; he’s been programmed to provide the best care possible to those he identifies as being in need and he will do it whether you want Continue Reading

Posted In Animation, Streaming, TV

Weekday character posters burst: Get to know everyone in DC League of Super-Pets

Posted on July 12, 2022July 8, 2022 by aussiemoose

SNAPSHOTIt sure isn’t easy being Superman’s dog! Krypto hails from Krypton and has super-powers like his owner; but his social skills are decidedly alien at the dog park and he has no idea how to be ordinary. But when Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and the rest of the Justice Continue Reading

Posted In Animation, Movies

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Recent Posts

  • Book review: The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) by Rabih Alameddine
  • Songs, songs and more songs #129: Georgia, BENEE, Sigrid, Ella Collier + Moyka
  • Don’t let the bullies win … The Twits drops its feisty trailer
  • Book review: The Shattering Peace by John Scalzi
  • Movie review: All of You

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RSS SparklyPrettyBriiiight

  • Book review: The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) by Rabih Alameddine
    (courtesy Hachette Australia) Life can often like a series of existentially testing events, punctuated by rare moments of levity and joy and wrapped in a lifetime of pain, hurt, loss and hard-won gains. That might seem bleak but for most it’s an accurate take on this thing called life, and Continue Reading
  • Songs, songs and more songs #129: Georgia, BENEE, Sigrid, Ella Collier + Moyka
    (via Shutterstock) There are some months that just reward you with brilliant songs. Songs that, for a whole host of reasons, you play over and over again and which, for this beleaguered commuter reviewer at least, making walking to the train station and back not feel quite so arduous and Continue Reading
  • Don’t let the bullies win … The Twits drops its feisty trailer
    (courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTAcademy Award-nominated filmmaker Phil Johnston reimagines Roald Dahl’s iconic characters, Jim & Credenza Twit, in their first feature animated adventure. The Twits tells the story of Mr. & Mrs. Twit, the meanest, smelliest, nastiest people in the world who also happen to own and operate the most Continue Reading
  • Book review: The Shattering Peace by John Scalzi
    (courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) Plunging into the latest novel by John Scalzi, and fortunate to have read a number of his books before this, I was well aware of just good a writer this man is and how well he imagines realities beyond our own, bringing them to life with Continue Reading
  • Movie review: All of You
    (courtesy IMP Awards) Knowledge, especially when it’s anchored in scientific truth, is a good and powerful thing. Though there are far too many in the world today who believe that facts are situational and malleable and able to bent at will to suit whatever purpose you have in mind, the Continue Reading
  • Book review: Foreign Country by Marija Peričić
    (courtesy Ultimo Press) One of the ways we survive the many vagaries of life is to tell ourselves stories; they’re usually self-serving storylines that reinforce the internal narrative we have long told ourselves to help us make sense of events that would otherwise defy easy categorisation. Are they always truthful? Continue Reading
  • One week for a lifetime … Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation gets the cinematic treatment
    (courtesy BRIT + CO via Yahoo) SNAPSHOTFree-spirited Poppy (Emily Bader) and routine-loving Alex (Tom Blyth) have been unlikely best friends for a decade, living in different cities but spending every summer vacation together. The careful balance of their friendship is put to the test when they begin to question what Continue Reading
  • Movie review: The Lost Bus
    (courtesy IMP Awards) Survival against all odds stories can often descend into overwrought melodrama with uncanny ease. Maybe it’s because the creators of these larger than life tales are dealing with such hyperbolically enhanced events that it’s all too easy for them to get swept up in the adrenaline-rushed facts Continue Reading
  • Book review: Eva Reddy’s Trip of a Lifetime by Fiona McKenzie Kekic
    (courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) Life, we are told, is a series of sliding door moments. Step one way, and your life will head down one, hopefully beneficial and rewarding course; go in the other direction and your trajectory takes on another look and feel entirely. If the choices were Continue Reading
  • The building always wins … Thoughts on Only Murders in the Building S5 E1-5
    (courtesy IMP Awards) As season five dawns, many shows are struggling to remain buoyant, fresh and divertingly interesting, with a significant number succumbing to the inevitable ennui that afflicts many a once vital program. But thanks to its previous insistence on sparkling writing, richly idiosyncratic characterisation and a willingness to Continue Reading
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