SPOILERS AHEAD … AND A SCENE SO POIGNANT YOUR HEART WILL BREAK SURPRISE! SURPRISE! This is not your grandmother’s alternate universe. Unless of course she is from the Mirror Universe in which case she may, drenched in blood, anger and betrayal (it’s so “in” in alternate Paris, trust me), Continue Reading
TV
A fart in the shape of a man: Further thoughts on The Good Place (S1, E9-13, S2, E1-9)
SPOILERS AHEAD … AND A HOST OF EXISTENTIAL CONUNDRUMS … When I was first wrote about NBC’s savvy, clever new-ish sitcom The Good Place last October, I remarked on how rare it is to fall head over heels in love with a show on a first viewing. Most TV Continue Reading
Upsetting the social apple cart? The unconventional romance of Splitting Up Together
SNAPSHOT Lena and Martin were once madly in love. But, like many marriages, time and circumstance eventually took their toll. Lena (Jenna Fischer, The Office), the perfectionist, fell into the role of caretaker for everyone, including Martin (Oliver Hudson, Scream Queens). Martin felt he could never do anything right Continue Reading
Star Trek Discovery: “The Wolf Inside” (S1, E11 review)
SPOILERS AHEAD … AND ENOUGH EXISTENTIAL ANGST TO KEEP FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS BUSY FOR DECADES … POSSIBLY CENTURIES … There are monsters lurking inside all of us. That deeply unpalatable truth is narratively front and centre in Star Trek Discovery‘s latest tour de force offering with Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) wrestling Continue Reading
Weekend pop art: High-flying Disney characters go distinctly lowbrow
Think of Disney, which is well on the way to becoming the entire entertainment industry, and you think of sweet, uplifting characters, great morality and an uplifting, often inspiring take on life. Ah but not if you’re French artist Giles Bousquet who has imagined what Disney’s many iconic characters Continue Reading
More Winona face please! Stranger Things gets an Honest Trailer
It would be obvious from even just a cursory glance at this blog that I love Stranger Things. It’s not just the nostalgia factor at work although I do love the myriad influences ranging from Spielberg to Alien, E.T. to Star Wars and Dungeons & Dragons; it’s the fully Continue Reading
Counterpart asks the intriguing question – what if life was different?
SNAPSHOT Counterpart is about a mysterious world hidden beneath the surface of our everyday existence. Howard Silk (J.K. Simmons) is a lowly cog in the bureaucratic machinery of a Berlin-based United Nations spy agency. When Howard discovers that his organization safeguards the secret of a crossing into a parallel Continue Reading
Star Trek Discovery: “Despite Yourself” (S1, E10 review)
SPOILERS AHEAD … AND UNLIKE ALADDIN, IT’S NOT SO MUCH A WHOLE NEW WORLD AS A WHOLE NEW UNIVERSE … We’re not in galactic Kansas anymore Toto! In “Despite Yourself”, an apt title for an episode where the issue of identity is a constant theme, the crew of the Continue Reading
Comics review: Dastardly & Muttley (issues 1-4)
If you’ve looked around you this year and thought the world had gone quite horrifically, cartoonishly mad (hate to break it to you but it has), then you’ll find a lot to appreciate in the new(ish) Dastardly and Muttley series from DC Comics. Continuing the mostly clever reimaginings of Continue Reading
Small screen, big stories, much bingeing: My favourite TV shows of 2017
These days I don’t watch as much TV as I used to. That’s not because of some great philosphical turning against television, with which I continue to have a passionate and longstanding romance – one that endured despite a rock start at age 4 when I encountered TV for Continue Reading