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Andrew's wonderful world of pop culture

Movie review: Memoir of a Snail

Posted on September 28, 2024December 16, 2024 by aussiemoose

(courtesy IMP Awards) You could be forgiven for wondering if life has any redeeming features at all in master stopmotion animator Adam Elliot’s lates feature-length triumph, Memoir of a Snail. That’s not because the writer-producer-director is some kind of irredeemable pessimist; he is in fact wonderfully optimistic in the face Continue Reading

Posted In Animation, Movies

Book review: The Book Swap By Tessa Bickers

Posted on September 28, 2024September 29, 2024 by aussiemoose

(courtesy Hachette Australia) We are in love with the road to love being quick, instant and one hundred percent assured. That’s why most romantic comedies strike a chord with us because they say you can have love, it will be immediately recognisable and there will be no guesswork at all Continue Reading

Posted In Books

“You’re in my seat” Shrinking debuts season 2 trailer + poster

Posted on September 27, 2024September 28, 2024 by aussiemoose

(courtesy TVPlusUpdates X aka Twitter account (c) AppleTV+) SNAPSHOTShrinking follows a grieving therapist (played by Segel) who starts to break the rules and tell his clients exactly what he thinks. Ignoring his training and ethics, he makes huge, tumultuous changes to people’s lives … including his own. In addition to Continue Reading

Posted In Streaming

Mini-mass of movie trailers: Gladiator II, Thunderbolts* + Red One

Posted on September 27, 2024September 25, 2024 by aussiemoose

(via Shutterstock) The year might be winding down – yes, already already! – but there are still plenty of great movies to see. Plus, of course, 2025 beckons and with it cinematic delights, or possible ones anyway, which we’ll get to after a brief break over the Christmas holidays to Continue Reading

Posted In Movies

Book review: Saltblood by Francesca De Tores

Posted on September 25, 2024December 14, 2024 by aussiemoose

(courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing) The art of reinvention is one many of us practice throughout our lives but it is likely that few have undertaken quite so radical and life transformative a change as that of Mary Read, a real 17th century women who began life raised as a boy after Continue Reading

Posted In Books

Come together, differences and all: Thoughts on Centaurworld (season 2)

Posted on September 25, 2024September 24, 2024 by aussiemoose

The trick with any show that is premised on an out-there idea and some pretty bonkers (thought delightfully) world-building, is that it needs to have a reason for being beyond simply being a whole of highly enjoyable, super colourful surreality. While it’s fun to watch a show which is all Continue Reading

Posted In Animation, Streaming

Movie review: The Wild Robot

Posted on September 24, 2024December 16, 2024 by aussiemoose

(courtesy IMP Awards) Underestimate the power of animation to tell a profoundly moving and important story at your peril. As The Wild Robot, based on the book of the same name by Peter Brown, underscores again and again during its perfectly judged 102-minute running time, animated features can move the Continue Reading

Posted In Animation, Movies

Book review: Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind by Molly McGhee

Posted on September 24, 2024September 26, 2024 by aussiemoose

(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) Is it possible for a story to be both crushingly hopeless and full of hope all at the same time? They may seem to be diametrically opposed states, but as many of us know, it is possible to feel as if life is slipping through Continue Reading

Posted In Books

Comedy double: Frasier (S2, E1-2) and Bad Monkey (S1, E5-7) reviews

Posted on September 21, 2024December 18, 2024 by aussiemoose

(courtesy IMP Awards) Frasier S2: E1-2 “Ham” and Cyrano, Cyrano” A Meta-based featurette on season two of the Frasier revival, often called Frasier (2023), promises, with the excitable sense of hype for which this type of promo is known, that the show’s second season shows the characters settling into themselves Continue Reading

Posted In Streaming

Book review: Hard by a Great Forest by Leo Vardiashvili

Posted on September 21, 2024September 22, 2024 by aussiemoose

(courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing) The phrase, “You can never go home again”, lifted from the title of a 1940 novel by Thomas Wolfe, is oft cited as proof that the past is somewhere so heavily coloured by nostalgia that viewing in anything like objective terms is all but impossible. That’s, on Continue Reading

Posted In Books

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Recent Posts

  • Book review: Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear
  • Movie review: The Quiet Maid (Calladita)
  • Book review: The Dead Friend Project by Joanna Wallace
  • Why are the aliens here? Teaser trailer for Invasion S3 suggests someone has figured it out
  • During Christmas in July, I decorated my tree with 5 new pop culture ornaments

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RSS SparklyPrettyBriiiight

  • Book review: Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear
    (courtesy Hachette Australia) Any good book worth its narrative, world-building salt should be able to hold immersively entranced through every page and exciting twist-and-turn. But some books are created more equal than others in this regard, and Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear, the first book in her White Space series, Continue Reading
  • Movie review: The Quiet Maid (Calladita)
    (courtesy IMDb) This may be news to the producers of many a Hollywood blockbuster – this reviewer loves many of them but subtle they are not – but there is real power in telling an emotionally impactful story quietly. While the temptation, especially in our cliffhanger-addicted, streaming algorithm modern digital Continue Reading
  • Book review: The Dead Friend Project by Joanna Wallace
    (courtesy Allen & Unwin Book Publishers) Books that subvert expectations are quite possibly the very best kind. When you first pick up The Dead Friend Project by Joanna Wallace, you might be struck by the quirkiness of the titlenand even the taglines on the front cover and atop the back Continue Reading
  • Why are the aliens here? Teaser trailer for Invasion S3 suggests someone has figured it out
    (courtesy YouTube (c) AppleTV+) SNAPSHOTInvasion follows an alien invasion through different perspectives around the world. In Season 3, those perspectives collide for the first time, as all the main characters are brought together to work as a team on a critical mission to infiltrate the alien mothership. The ultimate apex aliens have Continue Reading
  • During Christmas in July, I decorated my tree with 5 new pop culture ornaments
    (via Shutterstock) Somewhere around five years ago, with Christmas in July gathering in popularity all the time, I decided that I would use the white tree originally bought to display Easter ornaments, to display some Christmas ornaments during the cold winter months in Australia. The wins were many – we Continue Reading
  • This Christmas in July … I read Confessions of a Christmasaholic by Joss Wood
    (courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) Christmas romantic comedies aren’t generally the time of stories to break the genre mold. And that’s perfectly okay because what you want, I would in fact argue, you need, from these types of tales is that everything that is broken can be fixed, that the Continue Reading
  • Take a big swing: Thoughts on Stick (S1, E1-5)
    (courtesy IMP Awards) Ostensibly, Stick is all about golf. Watch the trailer and even dive into the first five episodes and you will come across many discussions about why golf matters, how to play it well and what it means to the soul as well as the body. But, and Continue Reading
  • He’s gone too far! Trailer releases for a feisty and fun Cat in the Hat movie
    (courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOT“Today is going to be THE. BEST. DAY. EVER!” Meet the Cat in the Hat you don’t know! In the whimsical tradition of Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat comes to the big screen in his animated theatrical feature film debut, an all-new, epic adventure with Continue Reading
  • One last roll of the planetary dice … Project Hail Mary releases its first gripping trailer
    (courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTAstronaut Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) awakens with no memory of himself or his mission. He deduces he is the sole survivor of a crew sent to the Tau Ceti solar system in search of a solution to a catastrophic event on Earth. In his search for answers, Grace must Continue Reading
  • Book review: Rise and Shine by Kimberley Allsopp
    (courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) There’s a popularly-held very binary dynamic at work when it comes to love stories. You’re either falling wildly and hopelessly in love with nothing but wine and roses and sunshine through dew drop eyes ahead of you … OR … you have reached the end Continue Reading
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