Saying that something “feel like Christmas” is at once profoundly and definitively true, and yet gloriously and warmly intangible too. Such is the season which all but dominates the final two months of the year, and realistically longer if you count the eagerness of retailers to make the most of Continue Reading
Movies
On 2nd day of Christmas … I watched Red One
(courtesy IMP Awards) While it’s highly unlikely that you have, there is a slim possibility, especially if you are of a vibrantly fecund imaginative bent, that you have wondered what might happened if someone was to make a Christmas movie that felt, in many ways, like a Marvel bang-boom-bam blockbuster. Continue Reading
Movie review: Moana 2
(courtesy IMP Awards) It was always going to be a tricky thing to follow up a massive success like Moana. Hailed as a near-perfect piece of feature animation by many, and introducing a titular hero who saved her people while growing as a person with animation as beautiful an oil Continue Reading
On 1st day of Christmas … I decorated my tree with 15 new pop culture ornaments incl. Home Alone, Schroeder (Peanuts) +Scooby-Doo!, Monsters Inc., Sonic the Hedgehog + The Golden Girls
(via Shutterstock) It will be pretty obvious if you have even so much as glanced at my blog, that I love pop culture everything. I spend my days, when I am not forced to work to pay for everything pop culture-oriented, watching movies, streaming shows, listening to music, reading books Continue Reading
Festively thoughtful movie review: The Snow Sister (Snøsøsteren)
(courtesy IMDb) Christmas is supposed to be a time of endless joy, peace and goodwill to all. But life doesn’t always play by the idealitically warm and fuzzy rules we lay down for it, and while the festive season should be all chestnuts roasting and sleigh rides, or if you’re Continue Reading
“This is it. Don’t get scared now.” Home Alone’s Kevin McAllister in Christmas classics mash-up
(courtesy IMP Awards) Christmas is always super busy, right? It’s part of the charm, part of the curse; but what if you could see a bona fide classic like Home Alone, well, fun parts of it anyway, woven into a number of other classics of the genre? And what if, Continue Reading
Festive movie review double: Your Christmas or Mine 1 and 2
(courtesy IMDb) Your Christmas or Mine? Coming with an inventive take on a romcom, let alone a festive romcom where the rules are even more restrictive, is no easy undertaking. But somehow Your Christmas or Mine manages it, delivering a story that, sure, strains the bounds of credibility but then Continue Reading
Festive movie review: The Merry Gentlemen
(courtesy IMP Awards) If you’ve watched a Christmas film or two, and this reviewer has seen a considerable share of them, then you’ll quite familiar with the idea that when things go wrong in your life, your automatic first thought is to hightail it back to your hometown. Nothing unusual Continue Reading
Movie review: Gladiator II
(courtesy IMP Awards) Sequels are tricky things to pull off. Not only are you battling against the fearsomely rose-tinted power of nostalgia, but you are trying to engender the same emotional response and devotion that the original garnered but without the full force of novelty and with a need to Continue Reading
Birthday movie review: Spellbound
(courtesy IMP Awards) We all want a happy ever after. But what about if that happy ever after doesn’t quite work as you think it will; what do you do then, when expectations are dashed, even if it’s in a good but different way? That’s the great dilemma facing Princess Continue Reading