For all its love of creature comforts and security, humanity does loves a good scare. There is something soul-excoratingly visceral about sitting in your armchair or snug in bed reading about people in peril, especially when they are characters whose reality is not manifestly removed from our own. The residents Continue Reading
How animated characters got their groove: The inspired marriage of Rotoscope and Cab Calloway
SNAPSHOTIt started with Max’s brother Dave dancing on a roof in a clown costume. Footage of that was then used to model the classic Koko the Clown cartoons, which formed the basis for many Fleischer Studios films. Today, animators still use techniques like rotoscoping to turn real movement into animation. Continue Reading
Unprecedented eternal chaos or more of the peaceful same? Foundation and the fight for the future
SNAPSHOT[Foundation], based on the books that inspired films such as Star Wars, will “chronicle the thousand-year saga of The Foundation, a band of exiles who discover that the only way to save the Galactic Empire from destruction is to defy it.” Foundation stars Lee Pace (Guardians of the Galaxy, Halt and Catch Fire) as Brother Continue Reading
She can hear the soundtrack of your life: Thoughts on Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist
SPOILERS AHEAD It’s obvious from the moment you see the all-singing, all-singing, technicolour quirky trailer for Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist that this is one show that knows its way around a whimsical storyline. It practically shouts out in every gleefully-delivered frame that Zoey Clarke (played by Suburgatory‘s (Jane Levy) is a Continue Reading
How far would you go to bring back the one you love? Archive asks the big questions
SNAPSHOT2038: George Almore is working on a true human-equivalent AI. His latest prototype is almost ready. This sensitive phase is also the riskiest. Especially as he has a goal that must be hidden at all costs: being reunited with his dead wife. (synopsis via ScreenRealm) When you lose someone you Continue Reading
Book review: Saturdays at Noon by Rachel Marks
Finding a place to call home is all any of us really want. We may talk about a thousand and one other needs and wants but if really pressed, and everything else is taken away from us, all that matters is that we have people to whom we are connected Continue Reading
Time to go to Palm Springs … again … and again … and again … and, well, you get the picture …
SNAPSHOTWhen carefree Nyles (Andy Samberg) and reluctant maid of honor Sarah (Cristin Milioti) have a chance encounter at a Palm Springs wedding, things get complicated when they find themselves unable to escape the venue, themselves, of each other. Alongside Golden Globe winner Samberg (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, SNL), Palm Springs also stars Cristin Milioti (The Continue Reading
Book review: Kokomo by Victoria Hannan
ARC courtesy Hachette Australia – release date 28 July 2020. We are a people who exist uneasily between expectation and consequence. In our heady younger days particularly, but even as we get older, especially if we are optimistically inclined, we can’t help but approach a given situation with the fixed Continue Reading
Will you survive? COVID-19 and social isolation explained by a supercut of horror and sci-fi films
COVID-19 just won’t go away will it? It has wiped normal off the agenda as an everyday concept, caused untold misery, loss and heartache and changed life as we know it for the considerable future. We have all muddled through as best we can but is there a better way? Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #29: Petit Biscuit, Ellie Goulding, Julia Jean-Baptiste, Astrid S, CLIO
Life and love comes with more than their fair share of challenges and it’s safe to say that much as we would like a magic wand to be waved, there are no easy solutions to many of the things that vex and beset us (those two words don’t get used Continue Reading