(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTOrion (Jacob Tremblay) seems a lot like your average elementary school kid – shy, unassuming, harboring a secret crush. But underneath his seemingly normal exterior, Orion is a ball of adolescent anxiety, completely consumed by irrational fears of bees, dogs, the ocean, cell phone waves, murderous gutter Continue Reading
Graphic novel review: Peculiar Woods (Vol. 1) – The Ancient Underwater City by Andrés J. Colmenares
(courtesy Simon & Schuster) Losing your sense of place in the world can be a hugely debilitating experience. Thais applies regardless of whether the replacement for your status quo is good or bad since any change, even if you can adapt quickly to it, leaves you feeling unmoored and uncertain Continue Reading
Book review: Beatrix & Fred by Emily Spurr
(courtesy Text Publishing) Books that absolutely defy expectations are a gloriously good treat indeed. You read the back blurb in the bookshop, decide that sounds enticing, grab the book and then after a suitable time on the TBR pile, open it up expecting it to dance to a particular narrative Continue Reading
Movie review: Quiz Lady
(courtesy IMP Awards) Everyone who’s ever undergone trauma has their own personal port-in-a-storm coping strategy. Some aren’t healthy while some are so beige healthy they border on a benign obsession which is precisely where Quiz Lady, directed by Jessica You to a script by Jen D’Angelo, finds its titular protagonist Continue Reading
Book review: Earth Retrograde by R. W. W. Greene
(courtesy Angry Robot Books) Coming up with a truly original idea in any genre or medium of storytelling is always a big ask. No matter how brilliantly one-of-a-kind your creatively epiphanic moment might be, it’s tricky not to sound like a thousand other great narrative ideas that have gone before; Continue Reading
There are no heroes. Only rebels. Blast off with the Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire trailer
(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTFrom Zack Snyder, the filmmaker behind 300, Man of Steel, and Army of the Dead, comes Rebel Moon, an epic science-fantasy event decades in the making. When a peaceful colony on the edge of a galaxy finds itself threatened by the armies of a tyrannical ruling force, Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #98: Baby Queen, Cat Burns, Tom Walker, Bonnie McKee + Jade LeMac … and Eurovision 2024 update
(via Shutterstock) One of the lovely parts of life is that we set out expecting everything to be wonderful. Fuelled by the innate optimism of youth and free from the scars of bitter experience, we naturally assume, because why would we think otherwise, that life will be one long moment Continue Reading
Movie review: The Marvels
(courtesy IMP Awards) With yet another superhero movie in the form of The Marvels beckoning us to cinemas, and a few more on the way including the upcoming DC tentpole, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, it’s likely a good time to ask whether audiences are collectively over watching superhumanly empowered Continue Reading
Book review: A Mirror Mended (Fractured Fables #2) by Alix E. Harrow
(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) Much as we love things as they were written originally, there’s also a great deal of fun to be had, and in this postmodern world of ours we love to indulge it, subverting and playing with all kinds of storytelling forms. While the purists will insist Continue Reading
Sitcom double: Frasier 2023 (S1, E5-6) and Upload (S3, E5-8)
(courtesy IMP Awards) Frasier 2023 (S1, E5-6) One of the interesting things that come into play when a much-loved character comes out of hiatus is that you watch to see how much of what we loved about them is retained and how much of a new persona is forged in Continue Reading