What is the Eurovision Song Contest?Started way back in 1956 as a way of drawing a fractured Europe back together with the healing power of music, the Eurovision Song Contest, or Concours Eurovision de la Chanson – the contest is telecast in both English and French – is open to Continue Reading
A mini-mass of movie trailers: You Hurt My Feelings, When Time Got Louder and Rye Lane
Being alive can be hard. It’s better than the alternative, obviously, but it comes with a host of loaded situations, emotional minefields and the gnawing sense that we might not be quite up to the job. Existential imposter syndrome, anyone? In these three films, life goes under the microscope, both Continue Reading
Book review: The Theory of (Not Quite) Everything by Kara Gnodde
Head over heart? Or vice versa? All of us tend to lean one way or the other, not necessarily wholly but to a sufficient enough extent that our decisions on what to do next in life or whom to see pivot on either a calm analysis of the evidence at Continue Reading
Pushing back is the order of the apocalyptic day – first teaser trailer for Sweet Tooth season 2
SNAPSHOTAs a deadly new wave of the Sick bears down, Gus (Christian Convery) and a band of fellow hybrids are held prisoner by General Abbot (Neil Sandilands) and the Last Men. Looking to consolidate power by finding a cure, Abbot uses the children as fodder for the experiments of captive Continue Reading
Movie review: Shazam – Fury of the Gods
If you think about, you rarely see superheroes smile or really exult with wild abandon in what they do. Sure, you’ll see moments of quiet celebration or the exhilaration of a job well done as the Big Bad of the moment is banished into the darkness from which they first Continue Reading
Book review: Cold People by Tom Rob Smith
There is a log and stories tradition of aliens invading Earth. Regardless of the medium, they usually arrive in the skies above our blue ball of life, an armada of advanced technology in terrifyingly awe inspiring form, and variously proceed to attack/enslave/pretend to help while secretly destroying us. It’s big, Continue Reading
Discover the hero just below the surface: Meet Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken
SNAPSHOTSweet, awkward 16-year-old Ruby Gillman (Lana Condor) is desperate to fit in at Oceanside High, but she mostly just feels invisible. She’s math-tutoring her skater-boy crush (Jaboukie Young-White), who only seems to admire her for her fractals, and she’s prevented from hanging out with the cool kids at the beach Continue Reading
Streaming selection 4: The Last of Us (S1, E 8-9) and Shrinking (S1, E7-8)
The Last of Us (S1, E 8-9) What matters more – the needs of the one or the needs of the many? It depends on which side of the ethical, and often emotional divide, you stand; in Star Trek: The Original Series‘s film The Wrath of Khan, Spock argues with Continue Reading
A mini-mass of movie trailers: The Disappearance of Mrs. Wu, Simulant and My Happy Ending
I love movies with a huge amount of heart. They can live in any genre and plots outlandish or sweetly nuanced but they must have some real humanity front and centre, something to stir the soul and make you feel something. These three films well and and truly fit the Continue Reading
Book review: How to be Remembered by Michael Thompson
It’s a talented writer indeed who can take an appealing out-there premise and invest it with so much humanity that you forget how extraordinary the bedrock narrative of the novel is, consumed only the affectingly real story with which you have been gifted. The consummately good writer in this instance Continue Reading