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!

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S4 review: “Level-Five Transporter Accident”(E5) + “Off-Hour” (E6)

(courtesy Memory Alpha) “Level-Five Transporter Accident” Now here’s some fun! Star Trek meets the Muppets in an episode which demonstrates once again that Strange New Worlds is more than happy to go there, and with gusto and fierce imagination into the sort of places many other sci-fi series fear to Continue Reading

New releases August book review: Every Time She Wakes by Petronella McGovern

(courtesy Allen & Unwin – Australia) If you ever have the opportunity to go to a book launch of any kind, even it features a genre that usually doesn’t trouble the heaving shelves off your overstacked TBR, then you must go. Not only will, of course, have the great pleasure Continue Reading

Movie review: The Dog Stars

(courtesy IMP Awards) When I read The Dog Stars by Peter Heller, the novel on which the great Ridley Scott’s latest movie is based, I was struck by how forcefully hope sat at the centre of a post-apocalyptic tale of a world brought to its civilisational knees by a virus Continue Reading

New releases August book review: Everything that is Beautiful by Louise Nealon

This novel was mostly read at Kalimna, Yeranda Cottages, Main Creek (Dungog) NSW, August 2026 Secrets can usually only stay secrets for so long. Somehow, some way, what was holding them in place far away from public gaze and collective knowledge corrodes and falls away and the truth outs, unable Continue Reading

Some friendships are bulletproof: Thoughts on Ride or Die

(courtesy IMP awards) Even if you are a Woman of a Certain Age (and yes, this is directly referenced in the show; I will leave you to work out exactly how), or even a Man of you know, you will still likely be familiar with the phrase “ride or die”. Continue Reading

New releases August book review: I Love the Whole World! by Victoria Hannan

This novel was read at Kalimna, Yeranda Cottages, Main Creek (Dungog) NSW, August 2026 The title of this remarkable novel is your first indication that there is something special in the offing. I Love the Whole World! may sound like the exuberant, chemically-adjusted and enhanced exclamation of someone at a Continue Reading

Graphic novel review: Star Trek: Lower Decks – Second Contact by Ryan North / Derek Charm / Jack Lawrence

This graphic novel was read at Kalimna, Yeranda Cottages, Main Creek (Dungog) NSW, August 2026 The streaming version of the series may be dead and buried but thank goodness the graphic novels are not. Star Trek: Lower Decks remains alive and comedically well in a series of graphic novels including Continue Reading

Peanuts special review: Snoopy Presents: There’s No Place Like Home, Snoopy

(courtesy IMDb) With no new comic strips since the year 2000 when creator Charles M. Schulz died having already made the decision to retire the beloved and iconic home of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy and the gang, it has been up to an array of comic strip collections and Continue Reading

New releases August book review: Billie King by Shannon Kelly-White

This novel was read at Kalimna, Yeranda Cottages, Main Creek (Dungog) NSW, August 2026 Life is so full of quiet, everyday moments that we can forget how momentously explosive it can be, how, that hiding in those self-same nuanced and seemingly unremarkable slivers of time, can sit some of the Continue Reading

Once he was an Avenger … but who is he now? VisionQuest drops an intriguing first trailer

(courtesy First Showing) SNAPSHOTThe Vision (Paul Bettany), rebooted and having escaped those who sought to use him as a weapon, has been in hiding. His quest for new meaning and discreet existence is interrupted when a bounty is placed on his head, forcing Vision to forge real connections and embrace Continue Reading

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