(courtesy First Showing) SNAPSHOTWhile visiting a Christmas market in her Norwegian town, 8-year-old Mariann (starring Marte Klerck-Nilssen) suddenly sees an unbelievable sight: on the top shelf of a carnival game booth, the most adorable stuffed teddy bear has just moved his head and sneezed. Feeling an instant connection with the Continue Reading
Wrapping things up: Still Up (S1, E5-8) and Star Trek: Lower Decks (S1, E8-10)
(courtesy YouTube (c) AppleTV+) Still Up (S1, E5-8) The will-they, wont-they dance of the first half of the debut season of Still Up, naturally ramps up considerably in the back half but this being a British series, things don’t quite play out as rom-com obvious as you might assume. In Continue Reading
#Christmas preview book review: Weirdo by Sara Pascoe
(courtesy Allen & Unwin) This will hardly come as a news flash to anyone but life rarely lives up hype and expectation. When we’re younger, we expect bounteous riches, if not material then at the very least existential, to flow down upon us like confetti at an environmentally unsound wedding, Continue Reading
Be careful what you wish for: Wish unveils all kinds of promotional goodies
(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTIn Disney Animation’s Wish, Asha, a sharp-witted idealist, makes a wish so powerful that it is answered by a cosmic force—a little ball of boundless energy called Star. Together, Asha and Star confront a most formidable foe—the ruler of Rosas, King Magnifico—to save her community and prove Continue Reading
Graphic novel: Good Luck by Matthew Erman and Stefano Simeone
(courtesy Simon & Schuster) Great big expansive sci-fi stories are always a huge delight to lose yourself in. While the really good ones ask some fairly intense questions about who we are and why we do what do (and why maybe we should rethink that because reasons), they also have Continue Reading
Book review: Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) We live in a perilously binary world, one that separates everything into stark Os or 1s and refused to entertain the idea of halves, gradients or places in-between. Armed with that dangerously blinkered mindset, people then begin to assign worth and blame to those that either Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: The ultimate sacrifice of Crow: The Legend
(courtesy Baobab Studios) SNAPSHOTFrom the director of Madagascar, INVASION!, and ASTEROIDS! comes Baobab Studios’ latest visionary VR animation. The carefree forest animals imagine spring will last forever. However, winter comes and the animals soon realize that their lives are in danger. What they need is a hero; what they need Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #96: Jacob Collier, almost monday, Peggy Gou, Dorian Electra + Jhariah … and Eurovision 2024 news!
(via Shutterstock) Music has the power to move us in ways that perhaps we don’t always understand. The really good stuff is near impossible to ignore or dismiss, and honestly why would you want to when it makes you feel so alive, and these five songs from a group of Continue Reading
Book review: The Death of John Lacey by Ben Hobson
Humanity loves its motherhood statements. There’s something comforting about referring to brotherhood, mercy and justice because they sound full of virtue and goodness and the assumption is made, somewhat erroneously, that everyone knows exactly what’s meant by them. But, like the word “love” itself, there’s often little examination of what Continue Reading
Survival against impossible extraterrestrial odds: Invasion ends its second season with hope … and not? (S2, E6-10)
(courtesy YouTube (c) AppleTV+) What a way to finish a season! While some series which start with brooding, slow-building portent and doom, and Invasion has had that in slowly nuanced spades throughout its first season and the second, fumble things going into the big dramatic narrative payoff, this exquisitely well-delivered Continue Reading