It’s a question worth pondering, perhaps over a glass of eggnog or while chowing down on some chestnuts, fresh from roasting on an open fire: “If all animals became round overnight, would their daily life still run that smoothly?” And the answer is … not so well and damn Continue Reading
Escape from reality: Maxwell’s Demons takes you to the far worlds of the imagination
SNAPSHOT Maxwell Maas may be the greatest mind the world has ever known, but at 10-years-old he has a lot to learn. Adventuring to distant worlds through his makeshift multiversal closet door, Max will encounter greatness and menace on a cosmic scale. Fans of Gaiman’s Sandman will feel at Continue Reading
Book review: The Seven Imperfect Rules of Elvira Carr by Frances Maynard
Imagine for a second that you were plonked down in the middle of a foreign country with limited language skills and only a passing familiarity with the culture after a lifetime spent hidden away from the outside world. What would that feel like? How disorienting would it be? Would Continue Reading
Snuggle up and listen as David Tennant reads The Christmas Bear
Quite frankly, such is my love and admiration for British acting wunderkind, David Tennant – he portrayed my favourite Doctor Who for a start plus he is, as you will no doubt have noticed, rather easy on the eye – that he could read a grocery list or the directions Continue Reading
Tick tock! How time travel is represented in fiction
SNAPSHOT For ages I’ve been thinking about doing a video analyzing time travel in fiction and doing a comparison of different fictional time travels – some do use wormholes, some relativistic/faster than light travel with time dilation, some closed timelike curves, some have essentially “magic” or no consistent rules Continue Reading
Movie review: Wonder
Hollywood has a long and enduring love affair with social outliers. In countless films it has celebrated them as the outsiders, the others, who stand outside the banality and sameness of mainstream society and whether by design or unwanted but seized-upon circumstance, boldly forge their own path. The thing Continue Reading
“Here’s Johnny!” Watch iconic movie lines get animatedly reimagined
I love people with the capacity to take near-omnipresent things like iconic movie lines, which are bandied around like confetti at an environmentally-unfriendly weddings and make them into something wholly different, and most importantly, fun. Brighton, UK animator Nick Murray Willis has taken quotes from the likes of Lord Continue Reading
Goodbye Woody! Dive into this poignant supercut of Pixar film endings
I am always torn when it comes to endings. On the one hand, I love following the myriad twists and turns of a story, gathering up its various narrative loose ends, threads and ideas until I am in possession of (hopefully) a satisfying conclusion. But on the other hand, Continue Reading
First impressions: Travels With My Father
Even if you get along brilliantly well with your father, and I am thankful that I did while my dad was alive, the idea of travelling with them anywhere, let alone on a kid of replacement gap year, is fairly intimidating. After all, it’s one thing to share a Continue Reading
Ready to get scarily generous? Sesame Street’s Sharing things gets you in the mood
Oh Sesame Street, take me to the Snackside Down! I’m not usually a fan of scary horrific alternate realities but when they’re part of an alternate Sesame Street parody reality where Stranger Things, Netflix’s hit show where up is down and down is up and your laundry bill to Continue Reading