Happy pop culture Christmas everyone! – SparklyPrettyBriiiight

Festive wishes from Hiro and Baymax … and from me to you! Thank you for reading and just being here with me. (Image via Pinterest (c) **Sharkie19, Deviant Art**)

TV trailers triple: Loot S3 and Nobody Wants This S2 + BOOTS

(via Shutterstock) TV aka streaming with a huge dollop of humour is absolutely my jam. While I do appreciate a searing drama, my appetite for it has dropped considerably in the wake of the pandemic, and a remorselessly, overwhelmingly stressful job and so I’ve returned to my great first love Continue Reading

Book review: The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa by Stephen Buoro

(courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing) Coming-of-age stories are known for asking big questions about life. The novels usually feature a protagonist going through the messy business of sorting out who they are, how they it into the world around them and what matters to them, not just in the moment but in Continue Reading

Movie trailer x3: Wicked: For Good + Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu + Greenland 2

(via Shutterstock) I love big, sprawling, all-encompassing blockbuster movies. Movies so epic and vast you can lose yourself in, get your escapism hit for the week/day/month and still feel some deep emotional connection and reaction to the character and stories. These three films deliver all that and a whole heap Continue Reading

Songs, songs and more songs #128: Sam Sauvage, Haute & Freddy, Benson Boone, Audrey Hobert and Planet Funk … plus fun with ABBA!

(via Shutterstock) We all feel some sense of ownership with the music we listen to. Pop by its very definition is a shared, expansive group thing but it’s also something special and wonderful and unique that speaks to us and us alone in a way that’s all ours and no Continue Reading

Movie review: Somebody to Love aka Madly (Follemente) #IFF25

(courtesy Italian Film Festival 2025 / Palace Cinemas) In the whimsically storied realm of rom-coms, first dates are usually cutely delightful or awkwardly awful; either extreme works for establishing, and yes, we all know what’s coming, that this couple is MEANT FOR EACH OTHER. It’s obvious and lacking nuance but Continue Reading

The short and the short of it: The hilarious wrath of ice cream denied in El Terror

(courtesy Vimeo (c) Franco) SNAPSHOTIn the wild Sonoran desert, the greatest criminal of the Far-West suffers the wrath of a four years old child after stealing her ice cream cone. (courtesy Vimeo (c) Franco) I absolutely adore this animated short film. Discovered by disappearing one of Vimeo’s beautifully curated rabbit Continue Reading

Spooky minds present … Thoughts on Haunted Hotel

(courtesy IMP Awards) It would be fair to say that if you had any choice in the matter, that you would not stay at the Undervale Hotel. Located somewhere in update New York, the short-term lodging at the heart of Matt Roller’s Haunted Hotel should be the establishment of choice Continue Reading

Book review: Anxious Hearts by Guy Sigley

(courtesy Echo publishing) When you are consumed by anxiety, the kind that eats you alive in endlessly exhausting ways and turns even the simplest of moments into existential hell, can there even be room for love? That’s the question that consumes lifelong friends Kelly O’Mara and Finn aka Finely Walsh,protagonists Continue Reading

CHRISTMAS PREVIEW: The vivaciously funny festive joy of Christmas Karma

(courtesy First Showing) SNAPSHOTAn early Xmas gift… Christmas Karma sees ones of the greatest novels – Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol – transformed into a joyous, colourful, feel-good Christmas musical that celebrates modern-day London and all of its communities and cultures. Told from Chadha’s unique point of view and in Continue Reading

Movie review: Superman

(courtesy IMP Awards) If there’s one thing that I have never truly liked about superhero films, it’s how unrelatably inhuman so many of these heroes of our age seem to be. Oh, they try to make them seem like one of us, and to some extent they succeed, but even Continue Reading

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