It’s fair to say that celebrating Christmas is not exactly high on the list of priorities in your average garden variety apocalyptic wasteland? After all, resources are slim to none, it’s really dusty and bleak, and there’s all that time that must be devoted to brooding sessions. There surely isn’t Continue Reading
Movies
Movie review: Can You Ever Forgive Me?
One of the great pleasures of postmodern storytelling is its willingness to go beneath and beyond the obvious and explore what lies beneath the easy-to-access tropes and cliches. This means that in a film like Can You Ever Forgive Me?, the “villain” is rendered not as some ne’er do Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: The intriguing stopmotion beauty of Fabricated
SNAPSHOT A stop-motion film ten years in the making, ‘Fabricated’ is a journey through an alien world which was once our own. (synopsis via Vimeo) There is not a lot of correlation, in general, between the natural and mechanical worlds, the two quite inimical to each other in a Continue Reading
On 3rd day of Christmas … I watched Anna and the Apocalypse
If you’re a Christmasaholic, you may well wonder what zombies are doing shambling their way through your favourite holiday. After all, isn’t the song-evoked “most wonderful time of the year” a joyous time of peace and goodwill to all, chestnuts roasting over open fires and sleigh rides through the Continue Reading
On 1st day of Christmas … I decorated my tree with 11 new pop culture ornaments
I am not a Christmas traditionalist. Well, I am and I am not, said as I pivot, rather precariously on the fence of what sounds dangerously like festive decorating ambivalence. What I mean is that while I love all the warm-and-fuzzy, bright-and-shiny trappings of the season so much so that Continue Reading
Christmas movie review: The Holiday Calendar
If you are to believe Hallmark, and frankly who are we to disagree, Christmas is the ideal time to fall in love. Movie after movie – 33 this year in total, up from last year’s Grinch-ly paltry 28 – extols the wonder and magic of a time of year Continue Reading
Mary Poppins Returns is almost here! Watch 73 questions with star Emily Blunt
I know Vogue’s 73 Questions series is simply part of a big publicity push for a film, an actor and yes, the magazine itself, but they are so much fun and done so very well, that I just can’t help loving them. For a start, while they make excellent Continue Reading
Christmas movie review: Babes in Toyland (1961)
At first glance, Babes in Toyland, Disney’s 1961 aspirational attempt to create a movie as magically transportive and musically-rich as The Wizard of Oz – they didn’t but that was a pretty tall order anyway – doesn’t come across as a Christmas film of any stripe. (The festive angle Continue Reading
Trauma and healing in Welcome to Marwen
SNAPSHOT Welcome to Marwen tells the miraculous true story of one broken man’s fight as he discovers how artistic imagination can restore the human spirit. When a devastating attack shatters Mark Hogancamp (Carell) and wipes away all memories, no one expected recovery. Putting together pieces from his old and Continue Reading
Movie review: Shoplifters
There are two ways to look at the close-knit family at the heart of writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s quietly-spoken but emotionally powerful Palme D’or winning film, Shoplifters. One, held by the police who eventually portray them as would-be murderers, scam artists and kidnappers, holds that they encapsulate everything that is wrong Continue Reading