Music – Page 17 – SparklyPrettyBriiiight

#Eurovision 2021 cultural festival TV review: Toon (season 1)

Posted on May 19, 2021May 19, 2021 by aussiemoose

If you have ever felt that life is sweeping you fiercely and rapidly along to some great moment that is undeniably wonderful but most definitely not of your choosing, then you will find much with which to identify with the titular protagonist in Toon, a 2016 TV comedy from Dirk Continue Reading

And the possible Eurovision 2021 winners are … my top 10 picks for semi-finals 1 & 2

Posted on May 15, 2021May 16, 2021 by aussiemoose

In one of the many wonderful scenes that make up 1965’s The Sound of Music, the nuns muse at great musical length in one scene about how exactly you solve a problem like Maria; it seems like an impossible thing to fix, far beyond the reach of even, it seems, Continue Reading

Road to Eurovision 2021: Week 7 – The Big 6 – France, Germany, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, United Kingdom

Posted on May 12, 2021May 12, 2021 by aussiemoose

What is the Eurovision Song Contest?Started way back in 1956 as a way of drawing a fractured Europe back together with the healing power of music, the Eurovision Song Contest, or Concours Eurovision de la Chanson – the contest is telecast in both English and French – is open to Continue Reading

Road to Eurovision 2021: Week 6 – San Marino, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine

Posted on May 8, 2021May 15, 2021 by aussiemoose

Road to Eurovision 2021: Week 5 – North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia

Posted on May 1, 2021April 29, 2021 by aussiemoose

Songs, songs and more songs #48: Kito, Vanjess & Channel Tres, Amy Shark, Jagwar Ma, AlunaGeorge, Wallows

Posted on April 30, 2021April 26, 2021 by aussiemoose

I love new music. There’s something about hearing the latest and the greatest and knowing that this song, or these songs to be more accurate most of the time, will be with you for the duration. But then there’s also something great about discovering tracks you somehow missed from ages Continue Reading

Road to Eurovision 2021: Week 4 – Ireland, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova

Posted on April 24, 2021April 24, 2021 by aussiemoose

Songs, songs and more songs #47: Brooke Alexx, Isaia Huron, John Errol, Jelani Aryeh, Sorry

Posted on April 20, 2021April 20, 2021 by aussiemoose

Being human is a complicated business. We love our mothers. We struggle with weird and frenetic thoughts. We get caught in existentially sapping lockdowns. We drive across country on a bus decorated with marigolds (or something like that) and we wonder if this wonderful called love, which feels so perfect Continue Reading

Road to Eurovision 2021: Week 3 – Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Iceland

Posted on April 17, 2021April 17, 2021 by aussiemoose

Road to Eurovision 2021: Week 2 – Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark

Posted on April 10, 2021April 10, 2021 by aussiemoose

He’s gone too far! Trailer releases for a feisty and fun Cat in the Hat movie

(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOT“Today is going to be THE. BEST. DAY. EVER!” Meet the Cat in the Hat you don’t know! In the whimsical tradition of Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat comes to the big screen in his animated theatrical feature film debut, an all-new, epic adventure with Continue Reading

One last roll of the planetary dice … Project Hail Mary releases its first gripping trailer

(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTAstronaut Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) awakens with no memory of himself or his mission. He deduces he is the sole survivor of a crew sent to the Tau Ceti solar system in search of a solution to a catastrophic event on Earth. In his search for answers, Grace must Continue Reading

Book review: Rise and Shine by Kimberley Allsopp

(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) There’s a popularly-held very binary dynamic at work when it comes to love stories. You’re either falling wildly and hopelessly in love with nothing but wine and roses and sunshine through dew drop eyes ahead of you … OR … you have reached the end Continue Reading

This just ain’t his story. It’s our story.” Washington Black makes the leap from book to screen

(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTFollows the 19th-century odyssey of George Washington “Wash” Black, an 11-year-old boy born on a Barbados sugar plantation, whose prodigious scientific mind sets him on a path of unexpected destiny. When an incident forces Wash to flee, he is thrust into a globe-spanning adventure that challenges & Continue Reading

Book review: Thoroughly Disenchanted by Alexandra Almond

(Harper Collins Publishers Australia) What great longing rests in the depths of our seemingly endless hearts and soul? For most of us, it’s really no more than a guess though if pressed we could likely name a few wished and longed-for things that we would like to see manifest like Continue Reading

Graphic novel review: Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees by Patrick Horvath

(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) Appearances, as we all know and have been instructed about repeatedly, can be deceiving. For one reason or another, people project one thing while living quite another, a white lie in most cases that avoids emotional entanglement, vulnerability or the need to share in something that Continue Reading

Book review: The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

(courtesy Penguins Books Australia) Delving deep into someone’s life over a long period of time is something rarely afforded to us unless they are a family member or close friend. We might know people well and converse, laugh and cry with them over all sorts of life events but really Continue Reading

Songs, songs and more songs #124: GRANT KNOCHE, MO, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Lil Nas X + Miley Cyrus

(via Shutterstock) Life is a LOT. And while there’s no escaping that, you can find ways to work through the myriad of emotions that summons, including of course channeling it into some highly cathartic music. These five artists do that brilliantly and well and the resultant songs manage to get Continue Reading

Book review: Salvage by Jennifer Mills

(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) What would happen if the world “ended” in slow motion? In other words, rather than the big bang and boom of the usual fall of civilisation that we have seen documented in all kinds of apocalyptic storytelling, what if the cataclysmic hell of the end of Continue Reading

Movie review: Flow

(courtesy IMP Awards) It’s a rare thing indeed to emerge from watching a movie of any kind and feel both soothed and euphoric. Surely the two states are antithetical, with the more active one bludgeoning the other into emotional oblivion with boundlessly energetic vivacity? Or the former chilling you the Continue Reading