There’s an idea prevalent in society that grief unexpressed isn’t grief at all. In other words, if you’re not wailing and crying and gnashing your teeth like an Old Testament prophet clad in sackcloth and ashes, then are you really grieving? It’s an idea that is gently and thoughtfully challenged Continue Reading
Fear the Walking Dead: “The Hurt That Will Happen” (S5, E2 review)
SPOILERS AHEAD … RADIOACTIVE ZOMBIES, FRIENDLY CATS AND THE SOUND OF GOOD INTENTIONS COMING UP HARD AGAINST HARD REALITY … Continuing the season 5 theme of doing good even when everyone else is doing bad, or at best, being protectively ambivalent, “The Hurt That Will Happen” celebrated the idea that, Continue Reading
Book review: Snake Island by Ben Hobson
We are an idealistic species. It may not look that way at times, most times if we’re honest with ourselves, with war, poverty, disease, brutality and avaricious criminality the seemingly obvious defining marks of what it means to be human; dig down a little further, however, and it becomes clear Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: The endless parental love of Freaks of Nurture
SNAPSHOTFreaks of Nurture is an animated short about a neurotic mother-daughter relationship inspired by the filmmaker’s own unorthodox upbringing with her single-parent mom, who is also a foster parent and dog breeder. Self-deprecating and bursting with energy, the film reveals that no matter how grown-up we think we are, we Continue Reading
Something inhuman approaches: Carnival Row and the fight against intolerance and darkness
SNAPSHOTBloom (Pirates of the Caribbean) and Delevingne (Suicide Squad) star in Carnival Row, a series set in a Victorian fantasy world filled with mythological immigrant creatures whose exotic homelands were invaded by the empires of man. This growing population struggles to coexist with humans — forbidden to live, love, or Continue Reading
Movie review: Brittany Runs a Marathon
If you were to use the likes of Oprah and Tony Robbins are your guides, you would have to assume the world is awash in victorious people, staring down all manner of existential perils and emerging, self-realisation trophy in hand, on top every single damn time. But as we know Continue Reading
Book review: The Lost Puzzler by Eyal Kless
Is humanity its own worst enemy? History is littered with example after bloody example that would suggest we are, and then some, the holders of daggers to our throats that are briefly raised only to be plunged in again and again, as we cut off our existential nose to spite Continue Reading
Saturday morning TV: The Herculoids
If I were Zandor (Mike Road) of The Herculoids, ruler of the Lost in Space-ish planet Amzot/Quasar, I would seriously consider installing some kickass space defence systems, or at the very least, a really big, red “Beware of the space dog” sign that would sail around in orbit and perhaps Continue Reading
Movie review: The Extraordinary Journey of Celeste Garcia
New beginnings are always a curious thing. They come with the shiny promise of everything new and unsullied, and yet lurking somewhere deep within, is the knowledge, however energetically repressed, that the past is never truly left behind. Whatever the truth of this observation, in The Extraordinary Journey of Celeste Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #8: Foster the People, Aurora, Alex Lahey, Ava Max, Jai Wolf
One of the reasons certain songs stick with us is because they connect so deeply and profoundly with something we have gone through. It helps, of course, if they sound insanely catchy musically, but ultimately what hooks them deep into our souls is a sense that this artist is speaking Continue Reading