Christmas is supposed to be a happy time, the most wonderful time of the year in fact if you are to believe the song’s creators, Edward Pola and George Wyle. But even times as wonderful as this can become harried and busy and your mood may take a dive as people Continue Reading
On 11th day of Christmas… I listened to Christmas Party by The Monkees
For a band formed in 1965 for a TV series that ran from 1966 to 1968, The Monkees, comprised of Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork and the late Davy Jones, have certainly proved they have some pretty serious musical endurance. Just how enduring their appeal and success is was affirmed Continue Reading
The Orville: Boldly going where no homage has gone before
Hands up, ardent Trekkies and those who are happy to dip their intergalactic-loving into the narratively-rich waters of sci-fi storytelling, if you have ever seen someone on their way to the toilet on Star Trek? Or bickering about marital troubles? Obsessing about child-raising methods? (Worf excepted.) Or voicing all those Continue Reading
On 10th day of Christmas … I read Terry Pratchett’s Father Christmas’s Fake Beard
Among the may things I love about the work of much-missed late Discworld author Terry Pratchett is the sense of playful irreverence that fills each and every word. A master storyteller who has a deserved legion of fans including myself to his enduring credit, Pratchett’s sense of the quirkily absurd and his Continue Reading
Movie review: Dumplin’
It will surprise exactly no one that we live in a world unforgiving of difference. If you slip neatly into the box marked “acceptability”with a minimum of fuss and a marked absence of flamboyance and free thought, you are patted on the head, awarded a gold star and sent on Continue Reading
The 12 Days of Christmas – A Tale of Avian Misery
This is the smartest, funniest deconstruction of the song “The 12 Days of Christmas” that I have ever seen. Narrated by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who possesses a voice so mellifluous and wry with inflection that she must be mandated by law, to narrate everything, and I mean everything, the short film Continue Reading
On 9th day of Christmas … I watched my 3 favourite Frasier festive episodes again
Frasier is a brilliant sitcom any time of the year you care to watch it (and honestly that should in copious amounts and often). But there’s something about the show’s Christmas episodes which really brings out what makes Frasier, which ran for 11 seasons from 1993 to 2004, such a Continue Reading
Lessons from the Screenplay: Good Will Hunting — The Psychology of Character
SNAPSHOT There’s a scene in Good Will Hunting that makes me emotional every time I watch it. It is brilliantly acted and directed, but it’s also emotional because we understand the psychology of the protagonist and witness a cathartic breakthrough. So this video examines how characters use defense mechanisms Continue Reading
On 8th day of Christmas … I read Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak
Christmas is, by any measure of popular culture, supposed to be a time when we cleave close to our families, joining us together in an unmitigatedly positive festival of joy, love and inclusivity. It’s a tantalising ideal, all right, but as many of us, even those of us in functionally Continue Reading
Thoughts on A Charlie Brown Christmas
In a world of dazzling CGI special effects and ever more postmodern, cleverly-interwoven stories, the beautiful simplicity of 1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas is striking. Holding close to the look and spirit of Charlie Schulz’s immortally-brilliant comic strip Peanuts, the animated Christmas special features, as you might expect given the Continue Reading