No one ever handles life quite like they expect to, nor the way triumphantly-inspiring feel good Hollywood tales laud or cajole you. That’s partly because life is unpredictable daring you to ready yourself for its almost wilful twists and turns but because we are imperfect beings, our heads full of Continue Reading
Animated Aladdin revisited: Outtakes of the masterful Robin Williams at work as the genie
The late great much-missed Robin Williams was a master of his comedic craft and his role as the manic, hilarious, oneliner-spitting genie in the 1992 animated movie Aladdin was one of his most memorabl roles. And for good reason. Every scene that Williams’ bombastically-hilarious blue-toned genie is in is a Continue Reading
Christmas in July … watching Yogi Bear’s All-Star Comedy Christmas Caper
First airing, in seasonally-appropriate style, on 21 December, 1982, Yogi Bear’s All-Star Comedy Christmas Caper was the third and final festive special for Jellystone Park’s favourite pic-a-nic loving resident. (Yogi Bera is voiced by the legendary Daws Butler) Gathering together a panoply of Hanna-Barbera characters from the well known likes Continue Reading
Christmas in July: Lucas the Spider makes some festive friends
Lucas the Spider is freaking adorable any time of the year. But there’s something about Christmas, a time of peace, goodwill and togetherness (and stripey festive peppermints), that makes him even more adorably sweet as he tries to befriend a fly to be his buddy at the most wonderful time Continue Reading
Movie review: Spider-Man – Far From Home
Ah, ain’t it great to be young and in love? Maybe, but don’t run that particular line of dreamy romanticism by Peter Parker aka Spider-Man anytime soon. Throughout Spider-Man: Far From Home, which marks Tom Holland’s second standalone outing as the webbed superhero (he has, of course, appeared in a Continue Reading
Stranger Lambs: Shaun the Sheep’s Farmageddon gets very zeitgeist-y
SNAPSHOTWhen the intergalactic visitor – an impish and adorable alien called LU-LA – crash-lands near Mossy Bottom Farm, Shaun soon sees an opportunity for alien-powered fun and adventure and sets off on a mission to shepherd LU-LA home. Her magical alien powers, irrepressible mischief and galactic sized burps soon have Continue Reading
Book review: Ellie and the Harp Maker by Hazel Prior
In a perfect, idealised world, every love story would have a happy ending, the kind that consumes your heart, sweeps you of your feet and convinces you in the very depths of your being that you are valued, loved and belong. But life, lovely though it is at times, is Continue Reading
What’s it like being Doctor Who-level famous? David Tennant tells
We have all heard the stories of fame being as much of an albatross around the neck as it is a bright and shiny Christmas bauble, normally couched in the context of a bio pic morality tale where someone realises their dreams of fame and fortune only to find the Continue Reading
Fear the Walking Dead: “The End of Everything” (S5, E5 review)
SPOILERS AHEAD … AND BEER, ZOMBIE LANDSIDES AND SOME KISSING RATHER THAN KILLING BY THE RIVERSIDE … What do you value more – your loved ones or your vocation, the thing that drives you to get out of bed in the morning and go charging into the day? If Hallmark Continue Reading
Book review: 84K by Claire North
Dystopian novels are, by their very nature, meant to be disturbing. They are intended to prompt us to question whether we’re headed as a society, which may or may not manifest as the novel details, is something we want, awakening us to the “boiling frog” of slow, seemingly innocuous trends Continue Reading