(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTDirector Wes Anderson spoke to Kodak about how he created the distinctive desert town for his film Asteroid City. He explained how they first had to find the perfect location (Chinchón, Spain) and then built era-appropriate buildings and theme-centred accoutrements from there. He then shot it all Continue Reading
Movie review: Carmen
(courtesy IMP Awards) Losing yourself in a film is one of life’s greatest gifts. There’s something about the aura and atmosphere of a well-made, lushly-conceived movie, especially seen as the cinema gods intended on the big screen, that lets slip all the cares and concerns of the world and plunges Continue Reading
Once a rebel, always a rebel … full trailer drops for Star Wars’ Ahsoka
(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTA spin-off from the series The Mandalorian, taking place in the same timeframe as that series and its other interconnected spin-offs after the events of Return of the Jedi (1983). Rosario Dawson stars as Ahsoka Tano, reprising her role from The Mandalorian. The character was created for Continue Reading
Book review: The Birdcage Library by Freya Berry
(courtesy Hachette Australia) Weaving a mystery into any story is a thing of consummate skill and almost beauty. One wrong foot either way, however, with too much or too little revealed, too early or too late and the entire beguiling narrative, at least the envisaged one, falls into a messy Continue Reading
Everything good thing in this world started with dreams: Wonka drops its magically aspirational first trailer
(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTBased on the extraordinary character at the center of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl’s most iconic children’s book & one of the best-selling children’s books of all time, Wonka tells the wondrous story of how the world’s greatest inventor, and magician, and chocolate-maker became the Continue Reading
Movie review: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part 1
(courtesy IMP Awards) Blockbusters, at least the big, loud, sprawling modern variant that take up gigantic screen but leave little lasting impression in their wake, aren’t supposed to have any emotional impact on you. They are supposed to come in , wow you with spectacle writ large, impress with breakneck Continue Reading
Documentary review: Experience life’s extraordinary journeys with Our Planet II (narrated by David Attenborough)
(courtesy IMP Awards) Back in a far more innocent time, watching nature documentaries was simply a matter of sitting back and letting the splendour of the natural world wash over you. Not a mention was made, and honestly maybe it should have been, of the fact that humanity was trashing Continue Reading
Book review: Judas Blossom (Book 1 of The Nightingale and the Falcon) by Stephen Aryan
(courtesy Angry Robot Books) If you are history buff, you will be used to the fact that in recounting events from the near or distant past facts should take precedence over almost anything else, which is right and just and precisely what good history telling should do (this comes with Continue Reading
#ChristmasInJuly book review: Wreck the Halls by Tessa Bailey
(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) Preview copy provided via NetGalley; Wreck the Halls releases 3 October 2023. If you have even a passing familiarity with the deluge of festive storytelling that comes our way each and every Christmas season, you will be patently aware of the fact that redemption and Continue Reading
#ChristmasInJuly movie review redux: The Grinch
(courtesy IMP Awards) For a film that’s ostensibly about a person who hates Christmas with such a ferociously ill-tempered passion that he steals it away from everyone else, The Grinch wears its Christmas-loving heart very much on its tinseled sleeve. Which really makes perfect sense since at heart The Grinch, Continue Reading