April 1, 2023 – SparklyPrettyBriiiight

What is the Eurovision Song Contest?Started way back in 1956 as a way of drawing a fractured Europe back together with the healing power of music, the Eurovision Song Contest, or Concours Eurovision de la Chanson – the contest is telecast in both English and French – is open to Continue Reading

Movie review: Monkey Man

(courtesy IMP Awards) Revenge is a common enough them in storytelling that having it anchor yet another action thriller feature film might seem a little been-there-done-that-don’t-really-think-I-need-the-T-shirt. After all, the John Wick series aside which is as superlative as this well-worn genre gets and which deserves all the accolades bountifully handed Continue Reading

Road to Eurovision 2024: Week 4 – Albania, Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Czechia (Semi final 2, part 1)

The short and the short of it: Getting used to the world with Plum

(courtesy ESMA 3D) SNAPSHOTWhen Plum hatches from his egg, the little dinosaur is not ready for the universe in which he was born. Carefree and mischievous, he roams around, watched by a dragonfly. However, his innocence is shattered when he makes a terrible discovery about his world … (courtesy YouTube Continue Reading

Book review: Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky

(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) There is something thrillingly intense about every book that Adrian Tchaikovsky writes. While his stories aren’t necessarily told in an adrenalised pedal-to-the-metal fashion, they are always packed full of intriguing and utterly fascinating ideas that percolate with ferocity and passion out of every word and page, Continue Reading

Weekday movie character poster art: The many faces of IF

(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTWhat if everything you believed as a kid was real? From the imagination of John Krasinski, enter a world you have to believe to see. From writer and director John Krasinski, IF is about a girl who discovers that she can see everyone’s imaginary friends — and Continue Reading

Graphic novel review: Haru (book 1) – Spring by Joe Latham

(courtesy Andrews McMeel Publishing) Adventures are supposed to be grand and gloriously thrilling things, a step far away from the everyday that takes us to places beyond imagination and our lived experience to date. And while Haru: Spring, book one of a series that will take its protagonists through the Continue Reading

Movie review: Civil War

(courtesy IMP Awards) One of the great joys of going to see movies in the cinema is when a film moves way beyond simply being something projected onto the screen and becomes an immersive experience that is so all-consuming that the real world ceases to exist and all that matters Continue Reading

Book review: Birds of a Feather by Rhianna King

(courtesy Affirm Press) As life races by at breakneck speed, it’s all too easy to assume that if we have fully realised who we are and what we could become by a certain age that it’s simply too damn late. But in Rhianna King’s utterly delightful debut novel, Birds of Continue Reading

The complications of life, love and family: Janet Planet trailer

(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTIn rural Western Massachusetts, 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) spends the summer of 1991 living at home, enthralled by her own imagination and the attention of her mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson). Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker captures a child’s experience of time passing, and the ineffability of a Continue Reading

The beginning of farewell … Star Trek: Discovery S5, E1-2 review

(courtesy IMP Awards) Star Trek: Discovery has always been about people and the connections they forge in building a better, more just galactic society. That might seem self evident since surely that is true of all iterations of a franchise that has held sway in the hearts and minds of Continue Reading

Road to Eurovision 2023: Week 2 – Israel, Latvia, Malta, Moldova and Netherlands (Semi-final 1, part 2)

Book review: The Minuscule Mansion of Myra Malone by Audrey Burges