January 14, 2025 – SparklyPrettyBriiiight

(courtesy IMP Awards) It’s a rare thing in this hyperconnected, digitally frenzied age where something is demanded of you almost every second of every day to just sit back, switch off and spend some time with old friends. And when that happens, when the gods smile upon you with an Continue Reading

Movie review: Wallace & Gromit Vengeance Most Fowl

Book review: The Bogan Book Club by John Larkin

This book was read at Kalimna, Yeranda cottages, near Dungog in early January 2025. A sense of belonging, identity and purpose is what defines us but what happens when it’s rent asunder and all we have are the vestigial rags of who we once were? That’s the great dilemma facing Continue Reading

Movie review: Grey Matter

(courtesy IMDb) What is it like to lose someone before you actually lose them? Ask anyone who has walked with a loved one through the long dimming road of dementia, and you will hear harrowing tales of what it is like to see that person disappear task by task, memory Continue Reading

What does it feel like to be alive? Love Me asks some big and deeply moving questions

SNAPSHOTLong after humanity’s extinction, a buoy and a satellite meet online and fall in love. As filmmakers Sam & Andy demonstrate in their wildly imaginative debut feature, telling the love story of a smart buoy and an orbiting satellite that spans a billion years and probes the mysteries of being Continue Reading

Goodbye Star Trek – Lower Decks: Review of S5, E4-10) + thoughts on the series

(courtesy IMP Awards) Saying goodbye to any series you love is always a desperately sad affair. Sure, you could argue, if you’re head was made of Romulan stone, that the end of any series is hardly the end of the world, and yes, in the grand scheme of things, that’s Continue Reading

Movie review: Mufasa: The Lion King

(courtesy IMP Awards) Full admission upfront: this reviewer, for reasons that still evade him, never quite warned to The Lion King, the 1994 animated gem from Disney that introduced us to the world of Mufasa, Simba and the Elton John-soundtracked Circle of Life. Two trips to the cinema were made Continue Reading

Book review: The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis

(courtesy Hachette Australia) Back cover blurbs are written with a singular purpose in mind – to entice a reader, with thousands of reading possibilities at their bookstore-packed disposal, to pick a particular book and take it home to be read (or in the case of this reviewer, to be added Continue Reading

The short and the short of it: Sage words and a some affectionate parodying in The Badger, the Rabbit and Billy

(courtesy YouTube (c) Birdbox Studio) SNAPSHOTThe Badger, The Rabbit, and Billy is an amusingly introspective animation by Birdbox Studio about an older badger gently encouraging a young rabbit to take the first steps on a journey to find himself. Before the badger could finish, however, another bunny named Billy happily danced around and letting them know Continue Reading

Movie review: Sonic the Hedgehog 3

(courtesy IMP Awards) Is it possible to quip merrily while still saving the world? You might think the level of concentration needed to avert global annihilation might preclude any and all comedic utterances, black humour laced and otherwise, but in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, directed by Jeff Fowler (who also Continue Reading

NYE book review: This Year’s For Me and You by Emily Bell

(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) In a great many seasonally redemptive romcoms, tragedy is usually just the curtain raiser to something good and wonderful down the track. Sure, the person’s heart is torn in two and terrible changes are wrought in the fabric of their life, but by and large, the Continue Reading