December 6, 2025 – SparklyPrettyBriiiight

(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) Ever since Charles Dickens published his novella A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas aka A Christmas Carol in 1843, it has been adapted repeatedly (almost immediately as a play in 1844), its universally relevant truth of finding redemption in the Continue Reading

Festive book review: Good Spirits (Ghosted, 1) by B.K. Borison

Festive movie review: Champagne Problems

(courtesy IMP Awards) In a world where hype and PR all too often turn out to have more substance than the thing they’re promoting, it’s always a pleasant, if low-key, delight when something turns out to be better than the vehicle used to promote it. Champagne Problems is one such Continue Reading

Songs, songs and more songs Christmas songs #1: Sara Evans, Anaïs Reno, Lady A, Thelma & James, Mia McIntosh, Ingrid Michaelson + more … also Christmas releases by Eurovision artists!

(via Shutterstock) While Christmas albums from a wide variety of artists are hardly out of style, what is most remarkable in this year of our festive lord 2025 is how many Christmas singles have made their way out into an tinsel-draped, eggnog-addled world. Maybe there were always a lot of Continue Reading

Animated movie review: In Your Dreams

(courtesy IMP Awards) As a lifelong fan of animation, one of the things that I love about the artform, and which still holds true even in the face of ever more sophisticated CGI, is how much it emboldens and empowers the imagination. If you dream it, and good lord there Continue Reading

Festive book review: Grace and Henry’s Holiday Movie Marathon by Matthew Norman

(courtesy Amazon) Life’s “Great and Terrible Sadnesses” have a way of wiping absolutely everything before them and even reducing a season full of love and good cheer like Christmas to a dull, depressive footnote in a long line of unremarkably barren calendar moments. That’s certainly been the experience of Grace Continue Reading

Festive movie review: Jingle Bell Heist

(courtesy IMP Awards) Is grand larceny the path to true love? Not typically, no, but this is Christmas and when the festive season comes calling, it seems that anything and everything is possible. Which is just as well for Jingle Bell Heist, a festive London-set romcom which asks what might Continue Reading

Festive book review: The Christmas Tree that Loved to Dance (A Tall Tale) by Miranda Hart (illustrations by Lucy Claire Dunbar)

(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) Ever since I discovered her breakthrough sitcom Miranda, I have loved the whimsy and old-fashioned chatty cheerfulness of comedian/writer/actor Miranda Hart with the sort of enthusiasm that people much younger than me reserve for zeitgeist-heavy K-Pop bands. She embodies all of the fun and silliness of Continue Reading

A whole new world: Thoughts on Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age

(courtesy AppleTV) Losing yourself in a documentary is one of life’s great, often unsung, pleasures. If they’re done well, and many are, they are gateways to magical places of knowledge and experience, a chance to find yourself somewhere you’ve never been or to get lost in the rapture and wonder Continue Reading

Festive book review: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year by Beth Moran

(courtesy NetGalley) Life is full to the brim with traumatic moments. Hardly a surprise there; while most of us head into life all wide-eyes, enthusiastic and bushy-tailed, believing no harm can befoul us and all we will have are sunshine and rainbows, we soon discover life, alas, has other ideas. Continue Reading

It’s beginning to look a lot like the festive season … Christmas ads 2025 round-up

(via Shutterstock) I know there is a significant school of thought that rails against the materialism and rampant consumerism of Christmas. And yes, while I can see it, and it’s valid point as far as it goes, it leaves aside the fact that much of that drives this need to Continue Reading