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**)

Discover the hero just below the surface: Meet Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken

SNAPSHOTSweet, awkward 16-year-old Ruby Gillman (Lana Condor) is desperate to fit in at Oceanside High, but she mostly just feels invisible. She’s math-tutoring her skater-boy crush (Jaboukie Young-White), who only seems to admire her for her fractals, and she’s prevented from hanging out with the cool kids at the beach Continue Reading

Streaming selection 4: The Last of Us (S1, E 8-9) and Shrinking (S1, E7-9)

The Last of Us (S1, E 8-9) What matters more – the needs of the one or the needs of the many? It depends on which side of the ethical, and often emotional divide, you stand; in Star Trek: The Original Series‘s film The Wrath of Khan, Spock argues with Continue Reading

A mini-mass of movie trailers: The Disappearance of Mrs. Wu, Simulant and My Happy Ending

I love movies with a huge amount of heart. They can live in any genre and plots outlandish or sweetly nuanced but they must have some real humanity front and centre, something to stir the soul and make you feel something. These three films well and and truly fit the Continue Reading

Book review: How to be Remembered by Michael Thompson

It’s a talented writer indeed who can take an appealing out-there premise and invest it with so much humanity that you forget how extraordinary the bedrock narrative of the novel is, consumed only the affectingly real story with which you have been gifted. The consummately good writer in this instance Continue Reading

Movie review: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Pinocchio is one of those stories that we think we know intimately and well, thanks to the 1940 Disney animated version of the book by The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi (with illustrations by Gris Grimly) which has gripped the public consciousness ever since its release and which defines for many Continue Reading

Songs, songs and more songs #83: Rose Gray, Jake Shears, Maisie Peters, Loïc Nottet and Anne-Marie + Eurovision 2023 update!

Life is HARD. For all the ups, and they are sweet, there are plenty of downs and struggling can be everything. It helps then to have singers like the five featured here to not only help you make sense of it all, but to set their thoughts and ruminations to Continue Reading

Hail the Best Pictures of the year: Montage showcases all 10 nominees

SNAPSHOTThe Best Picture nominees from 2022: All Quiet on the Western Front (directed by Edward Berger), Avatar: The Way of Water (directed by James Cameron), The Banshees of Inisherin (directed by Martin McDonagh), Elvis (directed by Baz Luhrmann), Everything Everywhere All at Once (directed by Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert), The Fabelmans (directed by Steven Spielberg), Tár (directed by Todd Field), Top Gun: Maverick (directed by Joseph Kosinski), Triangle Continue Reading

Streaming selection 3: The Mandalorian (S3, E1-2) and Not Dead Yet (S1, E3-5)

A sitcom and a sci-fi drama reviewed in the same post? Why not, I say; sure, they are wildly disparate genres, and have little to nothing in common but then that’s the joy of an eclectic taste in streaming programs. You can veer wildly from one type of narrative to Continue Reading

Book review: Terraformers by Annalee Newitz

One of the most exciting things about reading science fiction is its limitless capacity to take you to places that you never in a million years or multiverses encounter. We live in a limited world, bounded by atmosphere and space, and circumscribed by culture, geography and a thousand other finite Continue Reading

Worlds will collide: Official trailer released for Disney’s American Born Chinese

SNAPSHOT“Worlds will collide.” Jin Wang (Ben Wang), struggling with his school life and home life, meets the new foreign exchange student at his school, leading him to become involved in a battle between Gods of Chinese mythology. American Born Chinese is a series created by Kelvin Yu – a character Continue Reading

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