It’s reasonable assumption that if you are a nervous nerdy high schooler, newly-arrived in town, and the wife of the old man you stop to help across the street touches your forehead and your eyes flash with lightning, that you might more than “new kid” syndrome to deal with. Throughout Continue Reading
TV
Weekend pop art: Be My pop culture Valentine says PJ McQuade
Cole Porter knew that everyone was into love, declaring in his iconic song, “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall In Love)” … Birds do it, bees do itEven educated fleas do itLet’s do it, let’s fall in love. Someone else who knows about the universality of love and romance is PJ Continue Reading
Australia Decides for #Eurovision 2020: Which of 10 songs will be the country’s official entry? + Eurovision update
Australia is, once again, going to Eurovision! To make sure we make quite a splash and make the most of our time in the Eurovision musical sun – we are in the contest until 2023 at this stage – Australia Decides has been created to select the artist who will Continue Reading
Star Trek: Picard review: “Remembrance” and “Maps and Legends” (S1, E1 & E2)
SPOILERS AHEAD … AND A NICE SPOT OF RED TOO, IF YOU’RE LUCKY Twenty years is a long time. It may not always feel like it, so rapid is the passage of time, but it is long enough for one Jean-Luc Picard, late of Starfleet and now the overseer of Continue Reading
Living big in a tiny house: One couple turns a WW2 rail car into a cosy magical home
In an age where houses seem to be getting bigger and bigger, and the blocks on which they sit, like an adult trying to squeeze onto a kindergartner’s seat, smaller and smaller, it’s refreshing to see a host of varied people bucking the trend. This can be for a variety Continue Reading
Weekend pop art: What if the The Mandalorian had been released in the 1970s?
The Mandalorian is one of a slate recent breakout streaming hits which has benefited no doubt from the fact that it is part of the Star Wars universe but also because it is some damn fine storytelling, beautifully presented. Parts of its appeal is a Western-style narrative that feature a Continue Reading
Altered Carbon has been re-sleeved! Welcome to the season 2 teaser trailer
SNAPSHOTSeason 2 of the sophisticated and compelling sci-fi drama finds Takeshi Kovacs (Anthony Mackie), the lone surviving soldier of a group of elite interstellar warriors, continuing his centuries-old quest to find his lost love Quellcrist Falconer (Renée Elise Goldsberry). After decades of planet-hopping and searching the galaxy, Kovacs finds himself Continue Reading
Rise up together: Thoughts on Grace and Frank S6
The challenge for any series that manages to make it past the first few seasons, when cancellation lurks like some sort of televisual predator (yes, even for streaming shows) is balancing the twin competing demands of delivering up characters and situations that audiences have come to love while still forging Continue Reading
Everyone’s saying “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die” … no, really
“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” As iconic movie lines go, these immortal words of vengeance and loss from The Princess Bride are right up there among the best. How iconic exactly? So famous and suffused through the pop culture consciousness of humanity that Continue Reading
Trio of tremendous TV trailers: Sex Education S2, Insecure S4 and Nora From Queens
I love TV. I also don’t have enough time for TV. Well, all the shows I want to watch anyway and in this age of Peak TV, that is more shows than I can possible keep track of (and pixels know, I’ve tried!) and watch in a lifetime. Still, the Continue Reading