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!

Comic strip review: Unsupervised: A Crabgrass Comics Adventure by Tauhid Bondia

This book was read at Kalimna, Yeranda cottages, near Dungog in early January 2026. Ah, the carefree joys and fun of childhood. As adults, we all look back to that time of our life, or we are supposed, with a wistful, sigh-laced nostalgia, having lost all of the playfulness and Continue Reading

Journey to Laika’s Wildwood where magic takes flight

(courtesy Laika Studios) SNAPSHOTStep inside Laika’s Wildwood, where a powerful golden eagle commands the skies and magic takes flight. Wildwood – based on Colin Meloy’s illustrated book series – will see Prue McKeel leave behind her home of Portland, Oregon, venturing into Wildwood on a dark quest to save her Continue Reading

Book review: Bookish by Matthew Sweet

This book was read at Kalimna, Yeranda cottages, near Dungog in early January 2026. In the usual course of pop culture back and forth, a TV or streaming show would be watched in that medium, and then, the eager viewer would turn, if they were so inclined, to the book Continue Reading

Movie review: Rental Family

(courtesy IMP Awards) People are not very good at bring authentic. We talk a big name about laying your heart on the line or wearing it on your sleeve, and to be fair sizeable number of people do just that, but by and large, many of us play pretend about Continue Reading

Book review: The Naked Neanderthal by Ludovic Slimak

This book was read at Kalimna, Yeranda cottages, near Dungog in early January 2026 It is perhaps inevitable that we filter everything we see through our well-entrenched worldview. Try as we might to look beyond what we intrinsically know and understand, and it is to course possible to do that, Continue Reading

Weekend movie poster art: Character posters for GOAT

(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTFrom Sony Pictures Animation, the studio behind Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, comes GOAT, an original action-comedy set in an all-animal world. The story follows Will (voiced by Caleb McLaughlin), a small goat with big dreams who gets a once-in-a-lifetime shot to join the pros and play roarball Continue Reading

Movie review: Marty Supreme

(courtesy IMP Awards) It is a rare thing indeed in this information-saturated, preview-addicted, spoiler-suffused, endlessly-reviewed digital world of ours that anything subverts and surprises and blows expectations well and truly out of the water. Marty Supreme, starring recent Golden Globe winner Timothée Chalamet as the titular character, Marty Mauser and Continue Reading

Book review: Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

This book was read at Kalimna, Yeranda cottages, near Dungog in early January 2026. What a magical story is contained in the novella-length pages of Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newtitz. Set in a post-apocalyptic mid-21st century California, which has just won its independence after a brutal war with an insidiously Continue Reading

“I was born to play this character.” The meta fun of Wonder Man

(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTWonder Man is a meta live-action Disney+ series with a “story about acting and the journey of an actor in Hollywood.” Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars as Simon Williams, a working actor who auditions for the lead role in Wonder Man, an upcoming reboot of a classic Wonder Continue Reading

Graphic novel review: The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos by James Tynion IV and Tate Brombal (writers) and Isaac Goodhart (artist)

(courtesy Tiny Onion / Dark Horse Comics) This book was read at Kalimna, Yeranda cottages, near Dungog in early January 2026. Who are the real monsters? It’s question often asked in storylines where the obvious monsters turn out to be the good guys, or at least not the most reprehensibly Continue Reading

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