(courtesy Halloween Specials Wiki) While Snoopy remains as culturally ubiquitous as ever and Peanuts is still one of the most popular comic strips out there, that has more to do these days with the number of specials and TV shows that keep popping up on AppleTV than anything else these Continue Reading
New releases October book review: Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus
(courtesy Allen & Unwin – Australia) It’s an interesting exercise diving into the sophomore follow-up to the debut effort of an author which was globally super popular and a phenomenon on all kinds of levels unto itself. For a start, millions of people around the world have been waiting eagerly Continue Reading
Float away and save the planet with Cloud Girl
(courtesy Animation Magazine) SNAPSHOTCloud Girl tells the story of an 11-year-old avid reader entrusted with a magical quill that can grant any wish it writes. When she wishes to fly and for her guinea pig, Airbag, to talk, the duo embark on a dangerous adventure to save the planet. The Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #146: U2, Bash Croft, The Linda Lindas, New Constellations + Lykke Li
(via Shutterstock) The glorious thing about music is that you’re constantly finding and discovering new artists to add to the ones you’ve known for ages and ages, all of them mixing together into a lifelong playlist which soundtracks who you are every step of the way. In this post’s selection, Continue Reading
Want some hilariously hellish hospitality? Thoughts on Haunted Hotel returns S2
(courtesy IMP Awards) It may come as a surprise to those seeing a blog full-to-bursting of Halloween posts this October that this reviewer is not one for horror. That may seem to be a small and niggling liability in a season devoted to horror, both its manifestation and banishment, but Continue Reading
Halloween picture book review: The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt by Riel Nason (writer) and Byron Eggenschwiler (artist)
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) There is an inestimable delight to opening a picture book and falling into a story which delivers imaginative and poetic wordplay and vividly arresting, often gorgeous illustrations; it doesn’t matter whether you are reading them to endlessly eager nieces and nephews (in my case) or simply Continue Reading
New release October book review: Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) We live in an age where people are, with a few notable exceptions, divorced from the natural world, or what’s left of it, around them. We catch our trains, eat at our favourite restaurants and live our concrete-clad, digitally buttressed lives without any sense of the Continue Reading
The Halloween short and the short of it: The haunting impact of Night of the Living Dread
SNAPSHOTWhen a power cut ruins Ruby’s bedtime routine, she finds herself haunted by some unwanted guests. The only way for Ruby to get a peaceful night of sleep is to confront her visitors. (courtesy Laughing Squid) What’s scarier than zombies and vampires and aliens and ghosts and werewolves and any Continue Reading
New releases October review: She Lied First by Dinuka McKenzie
(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) A good, no, great crime thriller is always something to be savoured, enjoyed and thereafter, remembered. But for that to happen you need an author who understands that the crime is not the only thing and that for any of it to impact beyond the Continue Reading
Tiny ton of TV and movie trailers 10/26: Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, 12 12 12, Minimum Wage + The Child
(via Shutterstock) The tsunami of viewing possibilities continues, and while all this endless choice used to alarm and unnerve me because how could I possibility get to it all, now I see it as a TBW (To Be Watched) menu of possibility that’s exciting because who knows what I’ll watch Continue Reading