History is all too often the art of looking back at facts and not personalities. When we examine the big epoch-defining events of our time and those that preceded it, we are often apt to look at what took place rather than who made it take place. That is largely Continue Reading
Christmas Comes to Moominvalley (adapted from the Tove Jansson classic) by Alex Haridi & Cecilia Davidsson / illustrated by Filippa Widlund
The chances are that if you haven’t heard of Christmas, then you have been living under the proverbial rock, without deliveries of junk mail or without access to a streaming platform or no nearby mall or singing angels in the sky announcing the saviour’s birth (you know, it happens ALL Continue Reading
Ho! Ho! What ho! My 2 fave British sitcom Christmas episodes – Miranda and the Vicar of Dibley
“Hi, my name is Andrew and I am a Christmas tragic.” I utter these words not out of any kind of sense of shame because, well, CHRISTMAS, but because it’s best we get it out and into the open. (Although if you’ve been paying any attention to the blog at Continue Reading
On 9th day of Christmas … I listened to The Holiday Sounds of Josh Rouse
When it comes to summoning up the sounds, and more pertinently for this review, the sounds of Christmas, there is an understandably heavy bias towards evoking the sensibilities of a cold and cosy northern hemisphere Christmas. Thanks most notably to the classic poem A Visit From St. Nicholas by Clement Continue Reading
Festively scary goings-on: The spooky fun of A Scooby-Doo! Christmas (2002)
Do creepy town-scaring ghouls, ghosts and monsters take Christmas off to be with their own demented loved ones? They do not, which frankly is a very good thing for 2002’s A Scooby-Doo! Christmas which sees Scooby (Frank Welker) and Shaggy (Casey Kasem), Velma (Mindy Kohn), Daphne (Grey DeLisle) and Fred Continue Reading
On 8th day of Christmas … I read Across the Void by S. K. Vaughn #BookReview
Nothing captures the imagination like trying to rescue someone in impossible circumstances and it doesn’t get much more impossible than the cold and unforgiving surrounds of outer space. An environment noted for its hostility to life as much as its startling beauty, journeying into space is not for the fainthearted Continue Reading
Further adventures in a galaxy far, far away: Thoughts on The Mandalorian
One of the marquee shows adorning the bright and shiny new Disney + streaming platform – quite where the “plus” comes in isn’t clear since the expansive roster of TV shows and movies is either directly Disney or from companies such as Marvel and Lucasfilm which are owned by the Continue Reading
On 7th day of Christmas … I added 10 more new pop culture ornaments to my tree incl. Ziggy, Scruffy, Star Trek: Discovery and Bing Bong
It would readily apparent by now that I really love Christmas, and by extension that I really love decorating my Christmas tree which takes pride of pop culture ornament-accented place in my lounge room every year. Granted, it’s almost 20 years old and is looking a little old and creaky Continue Reading
Book review: Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett
One of the great truisms of reading, indeed life itself it seems at times, is not judging a book by its cover. However, it is well nigh impossible to pass by the boldly bright cover of Kristen Arnett’s Mostly Dead Things, a tale of messed up families, love and weirdly-expressed Continue Reading
On 6th day of Christmas … I listened to Idina Menzel’s Christmas: A Season of Love
Recording a Christmas album may often like an invidious proposition. You are wedged, rather uncomfortably as if someone has crushed a whole tray of glass baubles into the cushion of your seat, betweem those who crave the same old same old big band sound that has, for better or worse, Continue Reading