Heading home can often be quite bittersweet. There are those things you remember fondly, the tropes and hallmarks of family life that bring warmth to your soul and a smile to your face; then there are the parts of being with the ones you know and love that induce teeth Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #37: Jacob Collier, The Neighbourhood, Heather Somner, Dan Croll, Lev
If 2020 has done anything, well apart from driving us to drink, despair and an unending stream of feel-good animated movies, it’s reminded us how much we need stuff that matters to us. When life is busy and frantic, it’s all too easy to get caught in all kinds of Continue Reading
Book review: Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air by Jackson Ford
In the often action-packed world of urban fantasy, where narratives move at a blistering pace and the time for introspection or contemplation is scant, it’s rare to have characters who truly wear their hearts on their sleeves. That’s not to say that characters in all urban fantasies don’t go on Continue Reading
Fear the Walking Dead: “The Key” (S6, E4 review) + The Walking Dead: World Beyond – “Madman Across the Water” (S1, E5 review)
FEAR THE WALKING DEAD SPOILERS AHEAD … AND A SHAMBLING HERCULE POIROT … Two episodes may not necessarily a comeback make but following on from last week’s wholly emotionally resonant episode, “Alaska”, Fear the Walking Dead seems to have its pulse again. While it does still seem to be veering Continue Reading
The short and the short of it #Halloween redux: A Night in Camp Heebie Jeebie
SNAPSHOTDuring a stormy night in Camp Heebie Jeebie, the ghost stories shared by a group of Jeebie Scouts become all too real. Happy Halloween! (synopsis via Vimeo) Yes, yes Halloween has shambled off this festive mortal coil for another year but it’s hard not to take one more scary detour Continue Reading
Star Trek: Discovery – “People of Earth” (S3 E3 review) / The Mandalorian – “Chapter 9: The Marshall” (S2, E1 review)
STAR TREK: DISCOVERY SPOILERS AHEAD … AND THE WARMTH OR TRUE CAMARADERIE AND A PLACE TO CALL HOME It’s rare to find a show that evokes a sense of camaraderie and belonging the way Star Trek: Discovery does. Truth be told, a bold, enduring sense of “made family” has always Continue Reading
A mini-mass of movie trailers – The Midnight Sky, Love and Monsters, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Once more to your streaming platform of choice, my friends, once more! OK granted Shakespeare likely did not have that injunction is mind when he penned those immortal words, but they are fitting, oh so fitting, in a horror-scarred year when actual films in actual cinemas kept moving release dates Continue Reading
COVID-19 retro movie review: Little Monsters #Halloween
It turns out, in case you’re wondering, that being caught up in the middle of a fast moving outbreak of slow zombies, is a pretty good way to work through some deep-seated childhood issues. Not that has-been musician Dave (Alexander England) thinks so when an impulsive decision, guided less by Continue Reading
#Halloween book review: The Lost Ones by Anita Frank
People, it so often turns out, have a fairly limited perception of time. We tend to see the past, present and future as unalterably locked away in their own sealed-off chronological prisons but the truth, as Anita Frank demonstrates with gothic-tinged dread and considerable insightful compassion in her hauntingly atmospheric Continue Reading
Weekend #Halloween pop art: Sweet & innocent Muppets go full blood-dropping horrific
SNAPSHOT“I really enjoy mashing things up…especially things that are considered cute with things that are gruesome.” (James Beck, artist) The Muppets are so cute and adorable! That is until, at the hands of impressively talented artist James Beck, they are not. In a series deliciously titled The Muppet Maniac Series Continue Reading