Modern animation often sets out with three distinct goals – to be riotously funny, visually striking and to have a beating heart of humanity at its core that also imparts a meaningful message. It’s a tricky trio of things to keep in balance and not every animated features well, or Continue Reading
Movies
Festive movie review: A Castle for Christmas
Whether you are staring out a frosted window, eggnog in hand, onto a snowy, pine-clad landscape in the northern hemisphere or sitting on the verandah of your summer rental down south, wine in hand and salad on the table in front of you, work long since forgotten, there is something Continue Reading
On 7th day of Christmas … I put 15 more pop culture ornaments on my tree incl. Paddington, View-Master, Goofy, Smurfette, Olaf (Frozen) + Blondie
Is there such a thing as too many new Christmas ornaments. I say NO, although my boyfriend likely thinks there is as the tubs of ornaments threaten to overwhelm our apartment (for the record he loves Christmas and my love of the season), which is why I went crazy this Continue Reading
On 6th day of Christmas … Festive singing, dancing and all the feels with Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas (movie review)
Christmas is usually the most wonderful time of the year. But when you have just lost someone impossibly near and dear to me, and you have have fond and abiding memories of Christmas, it can often feel like the land that happiness forgot, a season awash in jollity, tinsel and Continue Reading
On 5th day of #Christmas … I rewatched The Muppet Christmas Carol
Can you think of anything better than Christmas with the Muppets? How about Christmas with the Muppets as they bring quirky but affecting life to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, his immortal tale of festive redemption and renewal in which cruelly fossilised businessman Ebenezer Scrooge, played in this heartwarming iteration Continue Reading
Movie review: No Time to Die
Farewells are never the easiest of things to pull off. So much emotional baggage, so much pressure to make them count and be memorable in all the right ways and a host of jagged loose ends to tie up, the kind that don’t always lend themselves to neat and tidy Continue Reading
On 3rd day of Christmas … I watched Single All the Way (movie review)
It is never easy to remake any movie genre in your own creative image. Stray too far from the formula that audiences know and love and you risk killing the goose that laid the golden box office egg; cleave too closely to it however, and you lose any spark of Continue Reading
On 1st day of Christmas … I put 15 pop culture ornaments on my tree incl. The Rescuers, UP, Toy Story, Ahsoka Tano, Peanuts, Dr Seuss + Scooby-Doo
We all know history repeats itself thanks to the ongoing presence of human being in the process who alas have shown a freakish propensity for making the same mistakes over and over and over again, but did 2021 really have to ape 2020 so completely and absolutely? I think we Continue Reading
Movie review: 8-Bit Christmas
Ah, the hazy, crazy days of youth! Specifically the late 1980s when kids definitely wore bike helmets – shhhhh, no, they didn’t but don’t tell today’s kids that – and the biggest, baddest Christmas present goals out there were, beside getting a freckled Cabbage Patch Kid, was securing your very Continue Reading
Movie review: Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings
If you have ever believed that characters go a long way to making a movie, and they are integral to a considerable degree however much importance you place them, then you’ll find Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings to be vindication of that approach. For though this recent Continue Reading