Time to turn things down, people. Not simply because it’s Friday, it’s been a big week and we are ridiculously exhausted but because quiet times are good for the soul. And the heart and the body … and really, just about everything. These five quietly but powerfully talented artists know Continue Reading
Goodnight, ABBA: Björn Ulvaeus reads a bedtime story to the inner child in all of us
It turns out, and why would you have doubted it, that ABBA are good for even more than just stellar classic classic pop songs and an almost assailable position at the very heights of the pop pantheon. They are, in fact, warm and engaging storytellers; well, at least we have Continue Reading
Movie review: Sell By #MGFF20
Cinema, for all the nuance it brings to some of its storytelling, loves extremes. Especially when it comes to love where we are either treated to the glories and wonders of love true love in all its candy-coloured euphoria or the very darkest, bleakest end of times where the once Continue Reading
Book review: The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan
Grief does strange things to a person’s life. Often without warnin, all the old certainties are upended and you are plunnged into a chaos borne of sadness, loss, pain and a sense that everything good you have ever known is gone. In reality, it’s not extreme of course but such Continue Reading
Star Trek: Picard review: “The End is the Beginning” and “Absolute Candor” (S1, E3 & E4)
SPOILERS AHEAD … AND A FAKE VINEYARD AND NOT SO FAKE XENOPHOBIA AND LINGERING REGRET … In the normal course of things, humanity in general, and Star Trek in particular like their heroes to be bright, shiny and above reproach. It fits nicely with the idea that, all evidence to Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: The truth of who we are in My Body
SNAPSHOTA teenage girl is staring at herself in a mirror. She doesn’t like what she sees; fat, skinny, ugly, she looks like a monster. Maybe she should just take a step back and realize she’s not that monstrous. (synopsis via Laughing Squid) Seeing ourselves as we really are is never Continue Reading
Book review: Saving Missy by Beth Morrey
Missy Carmichael needs saving. Though at the time we meet her, at the start of Beth Morrey’s delightfully warm and insightful debut novel, Saving Missy, she would no doubt disagree with any assessment that she needs any kind of help at all. A 78-year-old English woman whose 79th birthday is Continue Reading
Billie Eilish unleashes atmospheric theme song for new Bond film No Time to Die
Bond songs are, for the most part, exercises in euphoric or profoundly-troubled bombast. They are not subtle but then are they are not lacking in elegance either, something brought beautifully to life by Billie Eilish, fresh from winning a swag of Grammy Awards, who invests a whole lot of angst Continue Reading
Trio of TV trailers: Run, Stranger Things 4 and Altered Carbon 2
Two favourites and one new show to add to the TV viewing pile! What could be better? (Apart from, you know, a year off work, a pile of books, your unwatched Netflix list and a stack of calorie-free cheesecakes.) In these cool trailers we get to catch up with an Continue Reading
Book review: Oasis by Katya de Beccera
Do you think you’re a good person? That might seem like a strangely invasive question to begin a book review with but the truth it is wholly germaine to the salient ideas that fill Katya de Becerra’s illuminatingly creepy (in all the best ways) new novel, Oasis. For while on Continue Reading