February 3, 2026 – SparklyPrettyBriiiight

(courtesy Allen & Unwin Publishers) Mixing a love story in with an often excoriating though wryly funny exploration of the inhumanity of big tech in the 21st century may not sound like the most viable of narrative drivers for a novel but in the hands of Elaine Castillo it is Continue Reading

All the joy … K-Pops! and the hard work and happiness of second chances

(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTMeet BJ (Anderson .Paak), a fish-out-of-water musician on the search for stardom carrying a bruised heart from a complicated past relationship. On his journey to revive his music career, BJ lands a gig with a house band in Seoul for a K-Pop competition show. While working on Continue Reading

Book review: Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven

(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) As ideals go, perfection has to be one of the most laughably impossible. Granted all ideals dance somewhere in the land of blue sky implausibility, cosily inspiring ideas that would be wondrously good if they made it from hope to actuality but which never quite manage Continue Reading

Movie review: Sketch

(courtesy IMP Awards) One of the things that you never realise about grief, until you are mired irrevocably in its desperately sad and regretful depths, is how powerless it makes you feel. On one level, of course, you know, especially when someone you love dies, that you can’t bring them Continue Reading

Book review: The Dogs of Venice by Steven Rowley

(courtesy Penguin Random House) Can you ever get away from yourself? Not really, but and this is crucial in the context of Steven Rowley’s delightful novella, The Dogs of Venice, you can get away from the place where you experienced trauma and that can make the world of difference, So, Continue Reading

Playtime has a new look as Toy Story 5 drops its first technologically menacing trailer

(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTIn Toy Story 5, we’re introduced to a new character Lilypad, a high-tech frog-shaped smart tablet voiced by Greta Lee that makes Buzz, Woody, Jessie and the rest of the gang’s jobs exponentially harder when they have to go head to head with the all-new threat to Continue Reading

Book review: Engaged, Apparently by Amy Andrews

(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) Is it possible, we muse wonderingly at the start of this review, to reinvent a trope? Or, at the very least, and trust us, it’s a very good “very least” indeed, to put a shiny new sheen on it and present it to an enraptured Continue Reading

Dark, dangerous and hilarious … Thoughts on How to Get to Heaven From Belfast

(courtesy First Showing (c) Netflix) Think tightrope walkers have a challenge on their hands? Surely a greater feat is balancing comedy and drama in a show like How to Get to Heaven From Belfast – the title alone is redolent with quirky humour and melancholic longing, all in perfect unison Continue Reading

Book review: The Distinctly Competent District Councillor by Jonas Jonasson

(courtesy Harpers Collins Publishers Australia) There is something so heartwarming about looking at life in a whimsical way. In an age when everything is so full on and so serious and unrelentingly intense – this can be both a good and a bad thing but either way, it exacts a Continue Reading

Movie review: Pillion #MGFF26

(courtesy IMDb) How do you define romance? The odds, whether you are straight or gay, or some other gloriously diverse point outside of that binary, is that you will think of tender touches, of deep friendship and shared values, of physical love and whispered words of love; you know, the Continue Reading

Graphic novel review: Assorted Crisis Events Vol. 1 by Deniz Camp (writer) and Eric Zawadzki (artist)

(courtesy Image Comics) God bless humanity – for a complicated, contrary and multifaceted species, we sure do like to keep things simple. A clear example of our preference for everything being deliciously binary or linear is the way we view time which, depending on who you ask is multiversal in Continue Reading

Movie review: People You Meet on Vacation

Book review: Moderation by Elaine Castillo