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!

Andrew’s birthday month book review: As You Wake, Break the Shell by Becky Chambers

(courtesy Hachette Australia) One of the great gifts of sci-fi as a genre, and it has many, is its ability to take big existential issues and frame them in ways that makes them approachable, dealable and maybe even solvable. Life is a lot, we all know that, but thinking about Continue Reading

Songs, songs and more songs #147: Grimes, Tinashe, Aluna feat. Jengi, Käärijä x Joost + Rêve

(via Shutterstock) There cheers, and a metric ton more thank you, for absolutely original creativity. In a world threatened by the monochromatic idiotic blandness of AI slop, it’s exciting to see music artists pushing envelopes, trying new and innovative things and make truly arresting, interesting, endlessly listenable music. These five Continue Reading

Movie review: Tender Loving Care (British Film Festival)

(courtesy Russell Hobbs British Film Festival) There is a rich authenticity to every one of British director Mike Leigh’s films, a sense that you are seeing real people living all-too-real lives in circumstances that don’t pretend life is anything other than a hard slog. But for all the gritty honesty Continue Reading

In an age of AI, Wildwood is a film that reminds us human creativity is irreplaceable (curated article)

(courtesy IMDb (c) Laika Studios) Animation has long had the unique ability to transport us to other worlds. But stop motion takes this further, with a level of skill and intentionality that provides a perfect counter to the droning hum of AI slop infecting our feeds. Laika Studios’ latest stop-motion Continue Reading

Andrew’s birthday month book review: Match Fit by Leesa Ronald

(courtesy Allen & Unwin) It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a romcom worth its swoon-worthy salt is in need of a protagonist and their would be significant romantic interest who are hugely and endlessly likable (and yes, I have paraphrased the opening sentence to Pride & Prejudice by Jane Continue Reading

Moving in and moving on … Thoughts on Nobody Wants This S3

(courtesy IMP Awards) Finding home is something we all dream of. And not in the sense that we stumble across the property of our dreams at weekend auctions or we have a Dorothy moment, desperately trying to get home to whatever our Kansas is by clicking our heels; no, that Continue Reading

“In order to find you, you need to find yourself.” Bollywoof drops a fun first, emotionally meaningful trailer

(courtesy First Showing) SNAPSHOTBasil the springer spaniel is lost! Basil, a very British Springer Spaniel, is living his best doggy life with his favorite human, 11-year-old Luke Price, in the tranquil Yorkshire countryside. However, Basil’s idyllic existence is about to change forever as the Prices relocate halfway across the world Continue Reading

Halloween book review: The (Most Unusual) Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy by Roan Parrish

(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) If you’re someone who has grown up on the social margins, you will be ruefully well acquainted with how isolated and alone you can feel. While it feels like the entirety of the far more socially acceptable world, and yes, you will also wonder where those Continue Reading

Movie review: Wildwood

(courtesy IMP Awards) When you look at someone’s present-day life, it’s laughably easy to think that it arrived as some fully-formed agglomeration of past thoughts and deeds, feelings and mistakes and triumphs, all of them neatly woven together by the uncomplicated passage of time. But all of us know, at Continue Reading

Halloween book review: The Tinderbox by M. R. Carey

(courtesy Hachette Australia) We are so used to everything we consume these days delivering up instant gratification vibes that when it doesn’t, we are prone to simply to see it aside and find something else that will deliver the narrative sugar hit we have been conditioned to crave. Slow-burn anything Continue Reading

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