Something most definitely this way comes in Neil Blomkamp’s latest short film The Firebase. And even in the midst of the hellish nightmare that is the Vietnam War, where napalm is tripping whole forests bare and the enemy seemingly lurks behind every tree and in every village, the creature Continue Reading
Now this is music #92: Freya Ridings, Froth, Rationale, Jessie Reyez, Tove Styrke
So love huh? It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times; and while Dickens never really recorded a song about love – on account of there being no recording technology at the time, a minor impediment to be sure – you can’t help feeling that if he Continue Reading
Bing Bong on the small screen? Butch Hartman has some cool ideas for Pixar TV spinoffs
Pixar is a creative well that never seems to run dry. Pretty much every film – with the exception of Cars 1-3 which has not really connected with me in anyway – brings with it a wealth of memorable characters, a involving, heartfelt and intelligent narrative and a life lesson Continue Reading
The home of beautiful misfits: Thoughts on Glow season 1 (Netflix)
As decades go, the 1980s were, possibly even more than the lurid, out there ’70s, pretty hard to miss. Drenched in hypercolour T-shirt vivid pastels, decked out in lurid leggings and shoulder pads the height of Everest, this was a decade that screamed “Look at me dammit!” It was also Continue Reading
Love the in-joke filled Silicon Valley opening sequence? Here’s what it all means
When it comes to amusingly stinging satire, it’s mightily hard to go past Mike Judge’s satire of modern tech corporate life, Silicon Valley. Gleefully parodying everything from startup culture to venture capitalist funding, tech gurus with egos bigger than their ability to starstruck programmers dreaming of making it big Continue Reading
Fear the Walking Dead: “Red Dirt” (S3, E6 review)
SPOILERS AHEAD … AND A WHOLE LOT OF ILL-ADVISED SCHEMING WITH A SIDE ORDER OF RAW HORSE … Oh the lies we tell ourselves huh? Let’s face it, the apocalypse makes hanging onto all that Mother Theresa/boy scout/George Washington morality and honesty more than a little hard to pull Continue Reading
Are there monkeys in Ernie’s bed? There are and elephants in the sock drawers too #SesameStreet
Next to Grover, who is my favourite Sesame Street monster bar none, I have a huge amount of affection for Ernie (especially) and Bert, the two diametrically-opposite housemates who have long amused and delighted with their Abbott and Costello-ish antics. Now Ernie is starring in a delightful musical number, Continue Reading
Book review: Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal
When you pick up a book and the back cover blurb happily proclaims that J. Ryan Stradal’s novel is “joyous, quirky and heartwarming”, you fully expect it to be all those things. After all, a blurb writer at a publishing company wouldn’t just make that sort of stuff up Continue Reading
Enough to start a war: Neil Gaiman’s arresting poem Hate For Sale in powerfully animated form
Neil Gaiman is an imaginative, thoughtful, powerfully-talented writer with a seemingly endless capacity to take what many of us are thinking and put it into cogent, poetically-articulate form. So when you marry up his powerful poem Hate For Sale, on the seductive (though destructive) power of hatred, with the Continue Reading
Welcome to the Jungle? Jumanji reboot does its best to entertain
SNAPSHOT In a brand new Jumanji adventure, the tables are turned as four teenagers are sucked into Jumanji’s world – pitted against rhinos, black mambas and an endless variety of jungle traps and puzzles. To survive, they’ll play as characters from the game: meek Spencer becomes a brave explorer Continue Reading