It’s not looking like the most festive of Julys at the moment. A combination of complacency and Australian Federal Government ineptitude with quarantining returning overseas travellers and the vaccine rollout mean Sydney, where I live, is deep in the midst of a fortnight lockdown, that may yet get extended by Continue Reading
Weekday poster pop art: Jungle Cruise debuts new character images
SNAPSHOTInspired by the famous Disneyland theme park ride, Disney’s Jungle Cruise is an adventure-filled, rollicking thrill-ride down the Amazon with wisecracking skipper Frank Wolff and intrepid researcher Dr. Lily Houghton. Lily travels from London, England to the Amazon jungle and enlists Frank’s questionable services to guide her downriver on La Continue Reading
Movie review: Good on Paper
The habitually cynical and mistrusting excepted, people are by and large quite willing to believe the best of someone else. It makes sense – we want a world in which people are who they say they are, in which those in whom we placed our trust and with whom we Continue Reading
Book review: Shards of Earth (Final Architecture book 1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
In a world beset by a myriad of challenges right now, most notably COVID-19 and climate change, throwing yourself deep into the expansive surrounds of a brilliantly-written soap opera can be the panacea for a host of reality-driven ills. If you feel the need for such a diversionary road, you Continue Reading
TV cartoon fun! Say hello to Jellystone! and Chip and Dale
I am a big kid at heart. One of the most obvious manifestations of my childlike-ness is my love of animation, which began all the way back when, at it does for so many people, when I was a kid. I have enormously fond memories of school holidays or Saturday Continue Reading
Dance! Sing! And fall in love in Schmigadoon!
SNAPSHOTDescribed as a parody of iconic Golden Age musicals, Schmigadoon! centers around a couple on a backpacking trip designed to reinvigorate their relationship as they accidentally discover a magical town living in a 1940s musical. They then learn that they can’t leave until they find “true love.” The six-episode season Continue Reading
The end of our world is the beginning of his: Thoughts on Sweet Tooth
MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD … AND GLORIOUSLY EXCESSIVE SUGAR CONSUMPTION AND TOY DOG MONITORING … Watching a must-see series about the near-end of the world caused by a virulent flu-like disease at a time when the world is still struggling to get on top of a virulent flu-like disease must seem Continue Reading
Mini-mass of movie trailers: Suicide Squad, The Duke, The Harder They Fall, Twist, Joe Bell + The Green Knight (featurette)
As I put this post together, Sydney, Australia, where I live, has just, and I mean just entered a fortnight lockdown to combat the spread of the incredibly virulent Delta strain of COVID-19. It’s exhausting to be back in another lockdown but what makes it worse is that there are Continue Reading
Aliens are coming … The countdown to Invasion
SNAPSHOTSet across multiple continents, Invasion follows an alien invasion through different perspectives around the world. Earth is visited by an alien species that threatens humanity’s existence. Events unfold in real-time through the eyes of five ordinary people across the globe as they struggle to make sense of the chaos unraveling around them. Continue Reading
Book review: One Hundred Days by Alice Pung
As a people, and even in the face of all evidence to the contrary, we like to believe that things can be as good as our daydreams. We see families as Norman Rockwell paintings of domestic perfection, Christmas as a uniform time of seamless joy and warm-spirited harmony and love, Continue Reading