SNAPSHOT Every year, the British retailer John Lewis runs a wonderfully heartwarming holiday advert that perks up interest in holiday shopping. While the company is indeed on Twitter as JLandPartners, a Blacksburg, Virginia man, who also goes by the name John Lewis, is the actual the owner of the Continue Reading
Being human and being hurt are the same thing: The Kominsky Method (season 1 review)
Let’s be honest – growing old doesn’t look like a whole heap of fun. Sure you have the wisdom of all those hopefully-happily accumulated years, a nice line in public transport discounts and the time to shop for all those bargains that evade the more time-pressed of us. But Continue Reading
You’re off and running with Scandinavian whimsicality with Moomin’ Move!
My oh my but doesn’t augmented reality stir up a hornet’s nest of reactions! On the surface, they’re fun electronic games that have “escaped” into the real world, giving people the chase to go on the hunt for characters and treasures, alone or together, and get some exercise in Continue Reading
Book review: The Witch Who Courted Death by Maria Lewis
Diving into a book by Australian author Maria Lewis is a guarantee that you will be plunged, with well-researched vigour, emotional resonance and palpable love and familiarity with the supernatural, into a world vary different from the everyday world we encounter. Each of her books to date, which incorporate Continue Reading
Now this is music #120: Millie Turner, Shoffy, More Giraffes, Dominic Fike, MØ
Life is, by pretty much every estimation, a serious affair. Hearts break, love dies and the worst of humanity visits itself upon us … and yet for all that potential and actual misery, it is possible to push back against that tide of trauma with defiance, cheekiness and yes, Continue Reading
Christmas goes gritty again: Klaus and the Crying Snowman
Snow might be a bit thin on the ground (read: non-existent) in the sunny climes of Australia during the festive season but in far off Scandinavia from where Grant Morrison and Dan Mora’s vividly-gritty takes on the origins of good old Santa Claus takes place (now with visibly less jolly Continue Reading
Movie review: Shoplifters
There are two ways to look at the close-knit family at the heart of writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s quietly-spoken but emotionally powerful Palme D’or winning film, Shoplifters. One, held by the police who eventually portray them as would-be murderers, scam artists and kidnappers, holds that they encapsulate everything that is wrong Continue Reading
Movie poster art: The whimsical colour and steely intent of Mary Poppins Returns
SNAPSHOT In Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns, an all new sequel with a fresh sensibility that celebrates the spirit of the original, Mary Poppins is back to help the next generation of the Banks family find the joy and wonder missing in their lives. Emily Blunt (The Girl on the Continue Reading
Film review: Boy Erased
For a species that has used endless ingenuity and creativity to scramble its way up the evolutionary pile, humanity can be hideously inflexible at times. There is something hardwired into the very fabric of Homo sapiens that lends itself to entrenched adherence to a set of beliefs, no matter Continue Reading
Surviving pageant season: Dumplin’ gloriously challenges the idea of who is beautiful and why
SNAPSHOT Directed by Anne Fletcher, DUMPLIN’ follows an outspoken plus-sized teenage girl named Willowdean (Danielle Macdonald), who’s known as Will to her friends and Dumplin’ to her mother (Jennifer Aniston), a former beauty queen who now runs the local Miss Teen Blue Bonnet pageant. In her small Texas town, Continue Reading