I have longed shows with a quirky, comedic bent that know they’re goofy and over the top and unselfconsciously run with it. Shows like Warehouse 13 and Eureka gave us punchy, emotionally-engaging storytelling and characters you cared about all bedded down in a wildly and colourfully zany premise, and Continue Reading
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Book review: Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
We are the products of our life experiences. Even the most empathetic among us is subconsciously influenced by personal worldviews which inform how we interpret everything that anyone says or does to or around us, complicating how we respond to another’s life circumstances that divert greatly from our own. Continue Reading
Animation Evolution: How CGI profoundly changed the way cartoons tell stories (video essay)
SNAPSHOT When CGI took over animation in the late 1990s, it didn’t just upgrade the visuals of the medium: it helped transform the way animated stories are told. In this video, I trace the progression of American animated films from conservative fairy tales to liberal allegories. (synopsis (c) Just Continue Reading
Weekend pop art: Thor Ragnarok’s colourful character posters
SNAPSHOT In Marvel Studios’ Thor: Ragnarok, Thor will arrive in Asgard after hearing about trouble in his home world, and when he arrives he finds Loki’s style of ruling (while impersonating Odin) has led to some lapses in the rules and leads to the freeing of prisoner Hela. Thor Continue Reading
Book review: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
It’s hard not to fall in love with Eleanor Oliphant. True, at first, she’s socially awkward, judgmental and cleaves to routine like it’s a liferaft in a stormy sea (you soon discover that’s exactly what it is) and is as alone as a person can get. But as Gail Continue Reading
Coco: How did Pixar’s next masterpiece come to be? (featurette + clip)
SNAPSHOT Despite his family’s baffling generations-old ban on music, Miguel (voice of newcomer Anthony Gonzalez) dreams of becoming an accomplished musician like his idol, Ernesto de la Cruz (voice of Benjamin Bratt). Desperate to prove his talent, Miguel finds himself in the stunning and colorful Land of the Dead Continue Reading
Now this is music #98: courtship., TOULOUSE, DENM, What’s So Not, R3hab and Quintino, Siobhan Sainte
Harmonies. Attitude. Intensity. Euphoric escape. They may not seem to have much in common but all of them talk of life, of distilling the part of it that you are at that moment in time and living it, breathing it, being it. In other words, having a pulse. All Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: Eddie, a darkly clever tale of a zombie lab test subject
SNAPSHOT Deep underground, a second-rate scientist mans a discarded research facility struggling to cope with extreme boredom, a desperate voiceless companion and a mystery he’d really rather not have to solve… Directed by John Lynch, and written by Jon Williams-Nobbs & John Lynch, Eddie is a proof-of-concept short for Continue Reading
Comics review: I Hate Fairyland
Gertrude is one sick, twisted, murderously-narcissistic individual. But then the odds are pretty good that you would be too if you’d tumbled into the sugar-drenched delights of Fairyland, where fauns and Giggle Giants and sentient moons and stars romp, at the age of 6 and spent 30 years trying Continue Reading
Shada: Tom Baker’s Doctor Who has been lost for a long, long time
SNAPSHOT “Shada” finds the Doctor in Cambridge working alongside companion Romana and retired Time Lord, Professor Chronotis, to defeat the evil alien Skagra who is attempting to steal the secrets to the prison planet, “Shada”. You would be hard pressed to disagree with the fact that Douglas Adams, the Continue Reading