July 30, 2025 – SparklyPrettyBriiiight

(courtesy First Showing) SNAPSHOTOn Christmas Eve, Cliff (starring Michael Strassner who also co-wrote the script), a newly sober improv comedian, cracks a tooth and lands in the emergency care of Didi (Liz Larsen), an older no-nonsense dentist. What begins as a routine check-up sparks an unpredictable evening of misadventures. Together, Continue Reading

“You think you’re in control of this… You’re not.” The electric second full trailer for Tron: Ares

(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTTron: Ares follows a highly sophisticated program, Ares (starring Jared Leto), who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with A.I. beings. The highly anticipated sequel to the sci-fi classics Tron (1982) and Tron: Legacy (2010). Continue Reading

#ChristmasInJuly book review: Christmas is All Around by Martha Waters

(courtesy Hachette Australia) When you’re diving into a festive rom-com read, you hope and pray that you’ll be served up lashings of magical romance and renewal and healing in bountiful measure. That’s precise you get in the magnificently heartwarming joy and wonder that is Christmas is All Around by Martha Continue Reading

#ChristmasInJuly retro movie review: Christmas in July

A lot can happen in just one day! Just ask Jimmy MacDonald (Dick Powell), the protagonist of the 1940 Preston Sturges film, Christmas in July, who’s a grunt office worker from a working class neighbourhood of New York City who heads off to his menial day job in an office Continue Reading

#ChristmasInJuly book review: The Merriest Misters by Timothy Janovsky

(courtesy Hachette Australia) Who doesn’t adore a good love story? Even better, one set at Christmas when everything is at a peak of wonderfulness, magic is in the air and anything and everything seems possible (bar finding a parking spot at the locla mall but then, that’s a whole other Continue Reading

Movie review: The Fantastic Four: First Steps

(courtesy IMP Awards) Most superhero movies, if you look beyond the bangs and the booms and the epic struggles for curdely painted yet titanic struggles between god and evil, are about connection. Friendship, camaraderies, even family figure strongly, even with figures like Batman or Iron Man who might otehrwise be Continue Reading

Songs, songs and more songs #126: Sally Shapiro, Parcels, Moses Sumney & Hayley Williams, Juno Mamba & edapollo + Tiësto/Odd Mob & Goodboys

(via Shutterstock) Making music is, like a lot of creative endeavours, driven by individual talent and imagination. But often where the magic really happens is when likeminded, talented souls come together and in this case at least, literally make sweet music together. It’s a thrill to see and a joy Continue Reading

Graphic novel review: William of Newbury by Michael Avon Oeming

(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) Fascinating though it may be for past events junkies like this reviewer, history doesn’t come alive for everyone. It’s a real pity because not only is delving into the annals of history brilliantly interesting but it ensures, as the adage reminds us, that we are familiar Continue Reading

Book review: The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles (Mossa & Pleiti book #2) by Malka Older

(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) It’s such a delight to come across a sci-fi tale that completely delights and engrosses you with its originality, thoughtfulness, wit & verve and rich characterisation, that when you do stumble across it, it feels like all your reading Christmases have come at once. Such was Continue Reading

Star Trek: Strange Worlds review: “Hegemony, Part II” and “Wedding Bell Blues” (S3, E1-2)

(courtesy IMP awards) One of the things, of many, which I have loved about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (SNW) from the very start is its embrace of genre-hopping, a willingness to be darkly serious one week and goofily quirky the next. The Original Series (TOS) and Next Generation (NG), Continue Reading

Book review: The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King

(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) All of us, to some extent or another, come to appreciate through the course of our lives just how the present owes to the past. It’s not simply that one leads to the other though that is very much a part of what takes place Continue Reading