There’s no question that Peanuts makes Christmas special. Spending time with Snoopy, Charlie Brown. Lucy, Sally and the rest of the thoughtfully lovable cast of characters brings not only a richness to proceedings since these are kids who really think things through, but a quirky delightfulness as they pose the Continue Reading
Book review: Ghost Species by James Bradley
As the dominant species on the ever-worsening earth block, Homo Sapiens has developed quite the existential swagger. Unchallenged for some 300,000 years, we think we are the be-all and end-all of sentient, kings and queens of all we survey, so mighty and in control that there is nothing we cannot Continue Reading
Weekend (animated) pop art: 6 amazing Instagram animators
While there are complaints aplenty about the attendant evils social media and the internet, the reality is, as with any technology, that we have gained far more than we have lost. Access to massive online audiences has allowed creators of all kinds to reach people who would never have seen Continue Reading
Time to have a retro “Christmas with the Addams Family” #ChristmasInJuly
Just how many Santas is too many? And, by extension, how many presents are too many? You might think that there can’t possibly be a surfeit of either thing at the most wonderful time of the year but in “Christmas With the Addams Family”, broadcast on 24 December 1965, that Continue Reading
Movie review: Love Sarah
Initially, and this is thanks largely to a trailer which is eager to accent the heartwarming quirkiness of it all, Love Sarah comes across a fey, souffle-light whisp of a film, the kind the British churn out (in the nicest possible way) with the polished efficiency of, well, a well-run Continue Reading
Book review: Captain Moxley and the Embers of the Empire by Dan Hanks
ARC courtesy Angry Robot Books (via NetGalley) – release date 8 September 2020 in Australia and UK. Buried somewhere deep within a great many of us is a compulsive need to seek grand, soul-soaring adventure, the kind that plucks you giddily out of the banal and the everyday and sends Continue Reading
Woof! Asterix’s Dogmatix gets his own book!
One of the great delights of the Astérix comics (and they are multitudinous), which began in 1959 under the stewardship of writer René Goscinny and illustrator Albert Uderzo – these duties are now handled by Jean-Yves Ferri and Didier Conrad respectively – is a very small, feisty and mischievously lovable Continue Reading
Taking luxury to a whole new space. Space: Thoughts on Avenue 5 (S1)
SPOILERS AHEAD … AND A CHAOTIC JOURNEY INTO THE FARTHEST REACHES OF HUMANITY … AND SPACE … When we think of venturing into space, those of us not heavily influenced by endless tales of aggressive aliens and Event Horizon-ish supernatural events anyway, we tend to think of it as an Continue Reading
They’re not going down without a fright: Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo!
SNAPSHOTScooby-Doo and Shaggy’s favorite holiday is upon us! With fake monsters and candy galore, Halloween is heaven for these hungry foodies going door-to-door. But this year, their sweet holiday turns sour when the neighborhood pumpkin patch is infected by toxic ooze, creating high-flying jack-o-lanters, and a king-sized pumpkin leader squashing Continue Reading
Book review: The Gravity of Us by Phil Stamper
Something that LGBTQIA+ people of a certain age accepted, reluctantly it is best to add and with great disappointment, was that, growing up, they were likely to never see people like them reflected in grand and epic love stories on TV, and in movies and books. It meant that as Continue Reading