Farcically brilliant as Alison Reynold’s sparklingly clever debut novel, The Near Daphne Experience is – the inspired title alone is frankly worth the price of admission alone, one thing must be said from the start … you really should get as far from Daphne as you can. Quite why is Continue Reading
Run! It’s the headless snowman! Getting scarily festive with A Scooby-Doo Christmas
Who doesn’t love a traditional warm and cosy Christmas? You’d think the answer would be a resounding “Nobody!” but in the festively besieged town of Winter Hollow, established 1764, everyone is afraid to celebrate Christmas, all too aware that when they do, a giant headless snowman – strictly speaking the Continue Reading
Merry Un-Christmas! I put 5 new ornaments on my #ChristmasinJuly tree – the Flintstones, Encanto, Mary Poppins, Mork from Ork + National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Christmas is such a fun, wonderful, warm-spirited, cosy and nice time of the year that it really needs to be celebrated at least twice, right? Right! So, Christmas in July is increasingly a festive thing, and while it’s not as big a deal as the main event in December, it’s Continue Reading
The truth is all in how you frame it: Thoughts on Only Murders in the Building (S2, E1 & 2)
Can murder ever truly be cosy? It appears so; the plethora of murder mysteries where resolution is a near certainty (think any of the Law and Order iterations, from a franchise which at last count had something like 403 different shows on air) or set at a cosy time of Continue Reading
Book review: Stars and Bones by Gareth L. Powell
If you’ve read a lot of science fiction, there’s an extremely good chance that you have read an enormous amount of space opera, a significant chunk of the genre that dares to imagine what humanity might be like spread out among the stars and what threats might await those engaging Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #68: Phoenix, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Maggie Rogers, Betty Who, MUNA + new ABBA lyric video for “SOS”
It’s been a rough two years and an even rougher few weeks and I honestly I need some upbeat, effervescent pop joy in my life. Thankfully songs like the five in this post, which have come to my attention via YouTube, music blogs and Shazam-ing TV shows, means that the Continue Reading
Pulling back the documentary curtain: On location with Prehistoric Planet
SNAPSHOTReal landscapes. Remarkable creatures. An extraordinary team. Watch how the creators of Prehistoric Planet brought this one-of-a-kind documentary to life. (courtesy official Apple TV YouTube Channel) There ae those among us who love to see the curtain pulled back on shows or movies they watch, and those who manifestly do Continue Reading
Movie review: Jurassic World – Dominion
Endings matter, especially when it comes to the stories we tell. We might not be able control much about our spotty, blighted existence but one thing we can most certainly influence, and to hopefully satisfying effect, are the stories we tell, and how they end. Get the finish right and Continue Reading
Book review: First Time For Everything by Henry Fry
No matter who you are, growing is never, ever easy. It becomes significantly less easier when you have the audacity to be born singularly unable to march to the beat of a mainstream drum, a “failing”, so the gatekeepers of what is normal and correct, by society’s standards anyway, that Continue Reading
Graphic novel: Lightfall (book 2) – Shadow of the Bird by Tim Probert
It makes your heart glad when you can return to a place and to characters you have come to love. Picking up Lightfall 2: Shadow of the Bird was one of those moments you have when consuming any kind of pop culture where you feel like you are back in Continue Reading