Happy pop culture new year everyone! – SparklyPrettyBriiiight

Here’s to more movies, books, songs, TV shows, cartoon and comic strips and so much more in 2019!

Show them who’s boss: Thoughts on Running Point S2

(courtesy IMP Awards) Families, the kind that inhabit Christmas movies, heartwarming novels and feel-good streaming shows, are supposed to be all kinds of warm and fuzzy unconditionally loving and supportive, a calm port in the tossed and roiling seas of life. The Gordons are NOT one of those families. Oh, Continue Reading

Have the toys finally met their match? Toy Story 5’s final fantastic trailer

(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTIn Toy Story 5, we’re introduced to a new character Lilypad, a high-tech frog-shaped smart tablet voiced by Greta Lee that makes Buzz, Woody, Jessie and the rest of the gang’s jobs exponentially harder when they have to go head to head with the all-new threat to Continue Reading

Latest releases May book review: We Burned So Bright by TJ Klune

(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) It’s a constant feature of end-of-the-world stories that there’s a sizeable reckoning for any of the protagonists involved in the story; it makes sense – the world is about to go the way of the Dodo, life in all its forms is vapourising into nothing and, Continue Reading

Here come the aliens … and the truth: Disclosure Day drops final trailer

(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTUniversal Pictures is proud to release a new original event film created and directed by Steven Spielberg. If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? This summer, the truth belongs to 7 billion people. We are Continue Reading

Latest releases May book review: Homebound by Portia Elan

(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) Imagination of varying degrees and intensity sits at the heart of all of the stories we read. Somewhere, somehow, an author has had the germ of an idea, a glimmer of a character, a snippet of a plot, and through hard work and a deft use Continue Reading

Movie review: H is for Hawk

(courtesy IMP Awards) Having just read a book about the messiness of real, honest grief, and not the clean, tidy kind that only exists in societal expectations and narratively convenient movies, it’s refreshing to encounter another story, this one based on a memoir, where grief is shorn of all its Continue Reading

Latest releases May book review: This is Where We Say Goodbye by Howard McKenzie-Murray

(courtesy Fremantle Press) We live in a society mortally afraid of death and so, when it someone we love dies, it’s expected that our expressions of grief will not be prolonged and will stay on socially neat lanes. Its a ridiculous expectation to have for a whole host of emotional Continue Reading

Movie review: Finding Emily

(courtesy IMP Awards) Give a genre enough time in the pop culture sun and it will inevitably find itself weighed down with tropes and cliches in abundance which it is expected will be presented and accounted in every story that falls within its grasp. You can’t escape it – as Continue Reading

Eight dates … eight moments … eight chances to fall in love … Two Years Later drops trailer

(courtesy First Showing) SNAPSHOTWhen their work commute is interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic shutdowns, Emily and Ryan (starring Phoebe Tonkin & Brenton Thwaites) reunite two years later after a series of brief flirtatious interactions. Ryan proposes an idea – to go on a series of eight dates to decide if Continue Reading

Latest releases May book review: Side Character Energy by Olivia Tolich

(courtesy Text Publishing) Have you ever been rolling along in life, thinking everything is okay and then woken up one day to realise you’re actually a bit player in your own life? In other words, if there were awards for your life, and why the hell shouldn’t there be, you’d Continue Reading

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