“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” As iconic movie lines go, these immortal words of vengeance and loss from The Princess Bride are right up there among the best. How iconic exactly? So famous and suffused through the pop culture consciousness of humanity that Continue Reading
Book review: Star-crossed by Minnie Darke
Are our lives governed by fate or free choice? It’s a weighty question, one that pops up in religious and philosophical reasoning far more than it doesn’t and for good reason – a great many of us want to know whether we are responsible for our actions or can happily Continue Reading
Success or exile: Warrior Yenni faces unyielding options in Given by Nandi Taylor
SNAPSHOTUnable to watch her father waste away from a mysterious illness, fierce warrior Yenni, of the Yirba tribe, sets off for a distant empire. Determined to find a cure for her father, Yenni travels to Cresh, where she comes face to face with culture shock, prejudice, and a brazen shape-shifting Continue Reading
Book review: A People’s History of Heaven by Mathangi Subramanian
Life is often a heartbreakingly beautiful mix of the good and the bad, the joyful and the morose, the ugly and the poetic. Life’s torturously contrary state of being is captured in all its tarnished glory by Mathangi Subramanian in her debut novel A People’s History of Heaven which centres Continue Reading
Awww stormtroopers are (alien) cat people too
SNAPSHOTI Miss You is a touching animated short created by artist Henrik Tomenius about a Stormtrooper missing his cute little alien cat who is far, far away. (synopsis (c) Laughing Squid) I’m a Rebel Alliance kind of guy. I want the goodies to win … and the baddies? Well, I want them to be bested, Continue Reading
Classic book review: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
For a species wholly enamoured with its ability to stick around for the duration, humanity displays a surprising obsession with apocalyptic endings to its existence. Try zombies, alien invasions, viral epidemics, global warming, asteroid impacts, supernatural calamities … the list goes on and on and on. To this list of Continue Reading
Movie review: Jojo Rabbit
If there is one topic that is guaranteed, in something approaching land speed records, to set the ideological cat among the pigeons, it is anything to do with the Nazi era in Germany. It’s hardly surprising – in 12 years horrifically destructive years the Nazis led by Adolf Hitler enacted Continue Reading
Three invigoratingly indie movie trailers – Standing Up, Falling Down + The Kindness of Strangers + A Simple Wedding
There is something about character-driven films that really engage you in a movie. Granted, the really good blockbusters also have strong characterisation too and without it are just a lot of special effects signifying not much of anything, but it’s the indies, the smaller, human-focused dramas and comedies that really Continue Reading
Trio of tremendous TV trailers: Sex Education S2, Insecure S4 and Nora From Queens
I love TV. I also don’t have enough time for TV. Well, all the shows I want to watch anyway and in this age of Peak TV, that is more shows than I can possible keep track of (and pixels know, I’ve tried!) and watch in a lifetime. Still, the Continue Reading
Book review: Dear Girls by Ali Wong
Forging your own way in life is never easy. Society has a way, a very persuasive and often long entrenched way, of enforcing set ideas about appearance, behaviour, morality, sexuality and career choices, among a host of other things, that leave little wiggle room for those not inclined to adhere Continue Reading