People, by and large, place a great deal of faith in first impressions. They are an unofficial yardstick by which the worth of a person is judged and we cling them as social markers like a drowning man holding tenaciously to a buoy. But it becomes quickly apparent in Continue Reading
Weekend pop art: Tom of Tom and Jerry squished, rolled and generally bent out of shape
I watched a lot of cartoons as a kid. A LOT. One of my great favourites was good old Tom and Jerry, created in 1940 by William Hanna and Joseph Barbara, in which a persistent cat (Tom) was always bested by a wily, cheeky mouse (Jerry) and ended up Continue Reading
Now this is music #117: NONONO, Metric, Smith & Thell, Chloe Lilac, Lauren Aquilina (+Eurovision update)
Life is lots of things. That may sound the opening line of Captain Obvious’s treatise on life and living but that’s because it’s true – every day we rise and fall, laugh and cry, fall in and out of love and ride the emotional rollercoaster of being human. What Continue Reading
The Secret Life of Pets 2 trailer – how well do we really know our pets?
SNAPSHOT The Secret Life of Pets 2 will follow summer 2016’s blockbuster about the lives our pets lead after we leave for work or school each day. Illumination founder and CEO Chris Meledandri and his longtime collaborator Janet Healy will produce the sequel to the comedy that had the Continue Reading
Jellystone Dark: DC’s re-imagined Yogi is more intense than the average postmodern bear
SNAPSHOT In Yellowstone Park, legends speak of a spirit bear referred to as “the Yogi,” which few if any have actually encountered. Real or not, when a bear seems to have graduated from stealing picnic baskets to kidnapping actual campers, Ranger Smith decides it’s time to stop this menace—so Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: Scavenger and the case of the well-disposed alien
Watch the average movie that tells the tale of our imagined encounters with extraterrestrial life and it becomes readily apparent that we don’t expect the meeting to go all that well. There’s an inherent expectation that we will be invaded or annihilated or enslaved or accidentally expunged, or all Continue Reading
Goodbye Rick Grimes: Review of The Walking Dead, S9E5 ep “What Comes After”
SPOILERS AHEAD … IS RICK ALIVE OR DEAD? OR MERELY INDISPOSED? TRUST US, WE’LL SAY SO BEST BACK AWAY NOW (BY HORSE OR ON FOOT) IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW … So this is the end my friend the end for Rick (Andrew Lincoln) right? Well, yes and Continue Reading
It’s #StrangerThingsDay – why not hang out with something hungry for blood?
If you look at the average current calendar of events, it’s crowded with a variety of commemorative days celebrating everything from pancakes, cats, auras, shopping and vegans. That’s a lot of celebrating my friends, and now thanks to Netflix, you can add Stranger Things Day to the mix. But Continue Reading
TV review: Russia with Simon Reeve
Who doesn’t love to immerse themselves in a good travelogue? After a day spent battling mindless-rushing commuters and immutable deadlines at work, with no prospect of leaving, Peter Paul and Mary-like, on a jet plane for anywhere exotic anytime soon, there is something inordinately appealing about seeing somewhere beyond Continue Reading
Weekend pop art: Colour-coded pop culture characters
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bh8zOfPgbLs/?utm_source=ig_embed Do you ever take in the amazing creativity of someone like, oh say, French art director Linda Bouderbala and muse upon the moment of inspiration when the genius idea of grouping together pop culture characters of a particular character came to her? Nope, just me? Well, I muse upon Continue Reading