One of the great weights that hang, albatross-like, around our necks as we go through life, is that things are supposed to happen a certain way. Somehow our collective consciousness as a society has decided that, whatever the circumstance and no matter how individual the experience, we must all go Continue Reading
A mini-mass of movie trailers: Avatar – The Way of Water, Troll, There There, Sam & Kate + Four Samosas
Hello end of the year! It’s the traditional period in which movies come at us in numbers so considerable that your only option is to camp at your favourite cinema if you want to see them all. Leaving obvious hygiene issues aside, it means that all too often we’re having Continue Reading
Book review: Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra
Ah, the glitz and glamour of Hollywood! This relatively small piece of real estate in southern California has risen from the early days of silent pictures in the first decades of the twentieth century to have a cultural clout that continues for better or ill to bestride the globe. But Continue Reading
Movie review: Bros
Romantic comedies are one of cinema’s most popular genres for a reason. In a world full of banality and ho-hum-dom, where reality can’t really compete with our once-vibrant expectations of late – if this all seems a little bleak, ennui can strike you even if you’ve had a perfectly lovely Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #77: Felix Jaehn & Ray Dalton, half•alive, Tove Lo, George Ezra, Aidan Bissett + Eurovision 2023 update!
Love is, most of the time, at least a buoyantly fizzy and wondrously good and uplifting thing. But as we all know, often from bitter experience, just because something is notionally wonderful doesn’t mean that’s how it’ll play out in real life; in fact, sometimes it feels like love is Continue Reading
Two terrifically tantalising TV trailers: 1899 and Poker Face
Yes, we have potential viewing schedules of existing and up-and-coming shows that are the televisual equivalent of To Be Read piles so high and tottering that they will likely fall and crush us one day. True, we need spreadsheets to keep track of what we’re watching/long to watch and we Continue Reading
#Halloween animated movie review: The Addams Family 2
If you have ever, EVER, felt like a weirdo, an outsider, the strange one, the outlier or the very square peg in a mainstream round hole, then the Addams Family has likely always felt like your freaky home away from home. It makes sense – here are a group who Continue Reading
Graphic novel review: The Me You Love in the Dark by Skottie Young and Jorge Corona
Halloween is a lot of things, scary, dark and horrifying well among them. The Me You Love in the Dark by Skottie Young (I HATE FAIRYLAND) and Jorge Corona (NO. 1 WITH A BULLET) embraces all those tantalising terrific elements, and much more, in a seductively disturbing tale of what Continue Reading
#Halloween book review: Hide by Kiersten White
It’s a truism long observed that humanity is often the biggest monster at any given table. No matter what the threat is or what destructive horror it might bring to bear, it always seems to be people who are the scary ingredients in any terror cocktail, whether it’s battling aliens, Continue Reading
Everything’s scarily, hilariously meta this #Halloween: Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!
If there’s one thing that Scooby-Doo! has had going for it as a long-running series all these years, and let’s face it there’s a lot of them, it’s its propensity to not take itself too seriously. After all, you have four teenagers and a Great Dane dog – who can Continue Reading