If we’re really paying attention to the various stages of our life, and they’re hard to miss if you’re looking for them, it will become glaringly obvious that we change a great deal between the very beginning of things and the (hopefully many years distant) and their end. For some Continue Reading
When life manically defies expectations: Thoughts on I am Not Okay With this
There is nothing new under the mutant superhero sun … or is there? It appears that in a world where you might think X-Men, Legion, The Gifted and even The Incredibles and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have said all there is said about diverging away from the evolutionary mainstream (yes, Continue Reading
SXSW 2020 may not have happened in the real world but you can catch it in the virtual
Many are the events that have fallen to the remorselessness of COVID-19. Keep track of them has become almost impossible unless, you assume as many people have that events are cancelled unless advertised otherwise. While I have yet to make to a South by Southwest event, held each year in Continue Reading
Book review: American Saint by Sean Gandert
Faith is a curiously complicated thing. On one very obvious level, it’s relatively straightforward – you believe something, act on it and it becomes a central focal point of your life, driving what you do and why. However, dig a little deeper and the issue of faith is a fiendishly Continue Reading
Comics review: Vagrant Queen by Visaggio Smith and Saxon Saam
Sassy, capable and world-weary protagonists are somewhat of a dime-a-dozen in modern, self-aware sci-fi which takes great delight, with common with a great many other genres in our hyper postmodern world, in subverting, dismantling and remaking traditional ideas of heroes and anti-heroes and the very idea of adventuring for a Continue Reading
Movie review: Tigertail
There is an exquisitely poignant beauty throughout Tigertail, Alan Yang’s masterfully-realised tale of regret and loss and possible new beginnings, that gives expression, both visually and verbally to the pain we all feel at life’s profound might-have-beens. It is a slow-building pain, one that doesn’t begin to really make its Continue Reading
Book review: The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley
As highly as we might like to think of ourselves, almost all live cloaked in an eclectic assortment of lies, omissions, half-truths, fabricated portrayals and aspirational representation. It’s not a deliberate intent to deceive that drives us necessarily; rather we are often driven by a need to minimise vulnerability, to Continue Reading
Comics review: Star Trek: Picard—Countdown
It is a strategy of which, I’m sure, even the legendary Picard himself would approve. A man who happily mixed calculated insight and intuition, compassion and tenacity, whit and whimsy and steely-eyed resolved, Picard, as played by Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: The Next Generation, subsequent movies and recently to Continue Reading
COVID-19 retro movie festival: The Croods #MovieReview
With COVID-19 cutting a swathe through just about everything worldwide, it’s no surprise that cinema is being as affected as anything else. In just one day, one of my favourite cinema chains temporarily closed, the Sydney Film Festival was cancelled, the French Film Festival was postponed and my other favourite Continue Reading
Book review: Sixteenth Watch by Myke Cole
For all the mess we have made of things so far, humanity retains a fascinating capacity for believing we will be better in the future. It is perhaps the ultimate coping mechanism or the grandest of mass delusions; whatever it, for all the broken down societies and blue screens of Continue Reading