May 2025 – Page 4 – SparklyPrettyBriiiight

“If it goes up in flames?” “It will burn”: Andor S2, E4-6 review

Posted on May 4, 2025May 2, 2025 by aussiemoose

(courtesy IMP Awards) Star Wars: Andor is a superlatively impressive show on all kinds of levels but where it is really excelling in this humble reviewer’s opinion is the way in which it is deconstructing a host of romantic myths about what it means to be standing in defiant opposition Continue Reading

Dance your pain away with Mon Montha #StarWars #Maythe4thBeWithYou #Andor

Posted on May 4, 2025April 30, 2025 by aussiemoose

(image courtesy IMP Awards) Star Wars: Andor, now four episodes into its second season, is a remarkable show in many ways. But one of the things that really sets it apart is the sheer raw humanity of many of the characters, best exemplified in the third episode, “Harvest”, where a Continue Reading

Road to Eurovision 2025 – Week 6 – Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Montenegro, Serbia (semi-final 2, part 3)

Posted on May 3, 2025May 16, 2025 by aussiemoose

What is the Eurovision Song Contest?Started way back in 1956 as a way of drawing a fractured Europe back together with the healing power of music, the Eurovision Song Contest, or Concours Eurovision de la Chanson – the contest is telecast in both English and French – is open to Continue Reading

“I’m starting to think I am better at being in the closet.” Full trailer for Overcompensating

Posted on May 3, 2025May 2, 2025 by aussiemoose

(courtesy First Showing) SNAPSHOTA24 and MGM’s Overcompensating is a college-set ensemble comedy about the wild, chaotic journey of Benny, a closeted former football player and homecoming king, as he becomes fast friends with Carmen, a high school outsider on a mission to fit in at all costs. With guidance from Continue Reading

Book review: Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

Posted on May 2, 2025May 2, 2025 by aussiemoose

(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) Watching a writer’s journey is often a gloriously fascinating thing. Going from an impressive debut to successive novels that build upon actual realisation and beguiling promise, many writers go from strength-to-strength, honing their talent and their gift for evocative wordsmithing into something that leaves you breathless Continue Reading

Movie review: The Last Showgirl

Posted on May 2, 2025April 30, 2025 by aussiemoose

(courtesy IMP Awards) It’s rare for a movie to really leave a mark on your heart and soul. Most movies, while thoroughly enjoyable and well worth your cinematic or streaming time, glance off you, never to be heavily thought of again; they have their moment, sometimes a very good one, Continue Reading

Movie review: Ocean with David Attenborough

(courtesy Oceanfilm.net) OOOO OOOO OOOO

Book review: Dancing With Bees by Anna Maynard

(courtesy Allen & Unwin Book Publishers) Love is way more weighty and muscular and substantial than many people give it credit for. There is a prevailing idea that romantic love is wispy and wafty, all red roses and swoons and sighs and dreamy looks at your beloved, and while yes, Continue Reading

PAF! BAM! TCHAC! Thoughts on Asterix and Obelix: The Big Fight (Astérix et Obélix : Le Combat des chefs)

(courtesy IMP Awards) One thing that struck me, even as a kid when I first came across the Asterix (Astérix or Astérix le Gaulois) series of stories courtesy of my very progressive, globally conscious local country town library, was how fun the creators writer René Goscinny (1959–1977)/Albert Uderzo (1980–2009) and Continue Reading

Book review: The Empress Murders by Toby Schmitz

(courtesy Allen & Unwin Book Publishers) Ladies and gentlemen and ill-advised members of the ocean liner-going public – this novel is not your grandmother’s Agatha Christie. The Empress Murders by Toby Schmitz, which first moves at a liner-appropriate pace before hitting the narrative pedal-to-the-metal and gloriously defying all expectations, may Continue Reading

Strap yourself with a full-on ride with The Wild Ones

(courtesy First Showing (c) AppleTV+) SNAPSHOTExplore hidden corners of the Earth with a trio of experts as they try to save six endangered species from extinction. With crafty camerawork & survival skills, the team race to find, record, protect these elusive creatures before it’s too late. Battling the North Atlantic, Continue Reading

Movie review: Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (MI:8)

(courtesy IMP Awards) If you have seen more than you fair share of blockbusters, and the odds are if you’re a dedicated popcorn-chomping moviegoer that you have, you will be well acquainted with their propensity to go BIG, go epic and go bonkers bananas with barely a moment of hesitation. Continue Reading

Book review: The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer

(courtesy Hachette Australia) Imagination is a powerful thing. In a world held fast by the often tight and deadening hand of grim, dark and soulless reality, the ability to imagine places, people and times that operate above and beyond the everyday is a salvation, a gift that allows us to Continue Reading

Songs, songs and more songs #123: Maribou State, Moncrief, Hylite, Mild Minds and MYRNE & Shallou

(via Shutterstock) Everything feels so damn fast and intense. We’re all burnt out, we all need to chill and bliss out but apart from going and hiding in am eco-cabin in the woods far from wi-fi (not at all a bad idea, honestly), what can you do to stop your Continue Reading

Time to fly? Wicked: For Good trailer lands atop flying monkeys and enduring friendship

(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOT“You’re the only friend I ever had…” The final chapter of the untold story of the witches of Oz begins with Elphaba and Glinda estranged and living with the consequences of their choices. Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), now demonized as The Wicked Witch of the West, lives in Continue Reading

Get her home: Thoughts on Doctor Who S2 (S15) E2-8

(courtesy IMDb (c) BBC/Disney+) When you approach a series that’s been around as long as Doctor Who, which launched in 1963 making it now a grand old dame of TV and streaming programming, you have two options. If you are a devoted fan of longstanding who knows their Daleks from Continue Reading