(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) We’ve all been there. A great job presents itself, we know we can do it so we throw everything into landing it, only to discover that maybe it wasn’t the right fit after all. But is that the end of the story always? Not necessarily; sometimes Continue Reading
Festive movie review: The Merry Gentlemen
(courtesy IMP Awards) If you’ve watched a Christmas film or two, and this reviewer has seen a considerable share of them, then you’ll quite familiar with the idea that when things go wrong in your life, your automatic first thought is to hightail it back to your hometown. Nothing unusual Continue Reading
Festive book review: Christmas at the Island Hotel by Jenny Colgan
(courtesy Hachette Australia) Jenny Colgan’s books always feel like you’re falling into the embrace of an old and trusted friend, whose very presence makes all the terrors and troubles of the world dim, and then go away. That’s especially so when you return to one of the many series she Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #118: Five songs I love from Heartstopper S3 by beabadoobee, Baby Queen, Tom Odell, Griff + Angie McMahon
(courtesy Netflix) For anyone who’s ever struggled to make their authentic way into the world as a young adult because they didn’t match the world’s very restrictively narrow idea of what a person should be sexually, Heartstopper has been a liberating revelation. Warmly inclusive and funny and heartfelt to a Continue Reading
Shaun the Sheep goes charitably festive: The Knit Before Christmas support Save the Children’s Christmas Jumper Day
(courtesy Aardman) SNAPSHOTAs the woolliest day of the year approaches on Thursday 12th December, our favourite Mossy Bottom Farm residents can be seen preparing for the big day. With snow falling, festive tunes playing and Christmas decorations at the ready, Timmy’s excitement grows, and the barn calendar shows the woolliest day Continue Reading
Movie review: Gladiator II
(courtesy IMP Awards) Sequels are tricky things to pull off. Not only are you battling against the fearsomely rose-tinted power of nostalgia, but you are trying to engender the same emotional response and devotion that the original garnered but without the full force of novelty and with a need to Continue Reading
Festive book review: Christmas Ever After by Jaimie Admans
(courtesy Boldwood Books) Enemies-to-friends is a fairly standard trope in romantic comedies, festive or otherwise. So, the fact that Christmas Ever After by Jamie Admans features it should not as an almighty Santa-loving surprise; what is interesting is how effectively the author this well-worn genre element to give her rom-com Continue Reading
Birthday movie review: Spellbound
(courtesy IMP Awards) We all want a happy ever after. But what about if that happy ever after doesn’t quite work as you think it will; what do you do then, when expectations are dashed, even if it’s in a good but different way? That’s the great dilemma facing Princess Continue Reading
Birthday book review: Winnie-the-Pooh: Winter in the Wood by Jane Riordan (illustrations by Mark Burgess)
(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) Ever since I discovered my mother’s much-loved 1940s paperbacks of Winnie-the-Pooh and The House on Pooh Corner when I was a kid, I have been enchanted by the wonder and whimsical naïveté od A. A. Milne’s marvellous creations. Winnie, along with Eeyore, Piglet, Tigger, Rabbit Continue Reading
“It’s good for me. It makes me feel useful” – thoughts on A Man on the Inside
(courtesy IMDb) Ask most people what sitcom should make you do, and you’ll likely to be told it’s to make you laugh. And while you can’t really argue with that as an outcome – it’s all in the abbreviated of “situation comedy” after all – the really good sitcoms should Continue Reading