Let’s be honest here – if you drink coffee, you want what’s in the cup and usually don’t much care what’s on the outside. All of “Ulysses” in teeny-weeny text? Sure. Medieval paintings of peasants plating squash? Whatevs. Truth is, if it’s not the thing with the caffeine itself, Continue Reading
Movies
Retro French movie review: Amélie #BastilleDay
There is an exquisitely-sweet, existential joy to every last frame of Jean-Pierre Jeneut’s Amélie. Suffused with a whimsy that might seem overly self-conscious at first (but ultimately isn’t), it is an effortless celebration of what it means to be human, and the myriad flaws, foibles and blips of the psyche Continue Reading
Movie review: Spider-Man Homecoming
Superheroes are, by and large, a fairly serious bunch. Hailing from backgrounds character-formingly full of death and trauma (hello Batman, Superman), given powers which unexpectedly and absolutely alter the trajectory of their life (Deadpool, the titular here of this film) or simply born into greatness and a nobility of Continue Reading
Hope so high and … not? The 5 Stages of Watching a Spider-Man Reboot
Step right back! Step right up everyone! There’s a new Spider-Man movie in cinemas! With a new actor – Tom Holland! – and a whole new approach! What what? Really?! Yes, really. By all accounts it’s pretty damn good, but the fact remains that it is yet another reimagining/reboot/re-whatever Continue Reading
What inspired Inside Out? One man and his daughter and a bundle of new emotions #MichaelTucker
SNAPSHOT For example, the question that led to Inside Out came when the film’s director, Pete Docter, noticed something about his daughter. According to Meg LeFauve, who wrote Inside Out with Pete Docter: “The director, he had a daughter.And she was so happy all the time, and was so Continue Reading
Movie review: Baby Driver
If you were to turn down the volume on the trailer for Edgar Wright’s latest inventive piece of cinema, Baby Driver, it would look, for all intents and purposes, like a good old fashioned crime caper. Car chases through tight streets, down sprawling freeways and even within claustrophobically-small carparks, a Continue Reading
The Firebase: Sci-fi meets the Vietnam War in Neill Blomkamp’s latest short film
Something most definitely this way comes in Neil Blomkamp’s latest short film The Firebase. And even in the midst of the hellish nightmare that is the Vietnam War, where napalm is tripping whole forests bare and the enemy seemingly lurks behind every tree and in every village, the creature Continue Reading
Bing Bong on the small screen? Butch Hartman has some cool ideas for Pixar TV spinoffs
Pixar is a creative well that never seems to run dry. Pretty much every film – with the exception of Cars 1-3 which has not really connected with me in anyway – brings with it a wealth of memorable characters, a involving, heartfelt and intelligent narrative and a life lesson Continue Reading
Enough to start a war: Neil Gaiman’s arresting poem Hate For Sale in powerfully animated form
Neil Gaiman is an imaginative, thoughtful, powerfully-talented writer with a seemingly endless capacity to take what many of us are thinking and put it into cogent, poetically-articulate form. So when you marry up his powerful poem Hate For Sale, on the seductive (though destructive) power of hatred, with the Continue Reading
Welcome to the Jungle? Jumanji reboot does its best to entertain
SNAPSHOT In a brand new Jumanji adventure, the tables are turned as four teenagers are sucked into Jumanji’s world – pitted against rhinos, black mambas and an endless variety of jungle traps and puzzles. To survive, they’ll play as characters from the game: meek Spencer becomes a brave explorer Continue Reading