(courtesy Starlit Publishing) When is a restaurant far more than eating (hopefully) great food in a public setting? When it takes places at The Nameless Restaurant, the eponymous establishment in Tao Wong’s arrestingly involving novella which takes us to a mysterious place which offers far more than just very good Continue Reading
Movie review: Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken
(courtesy IMP Awards) If you have ever gone through that messy period somewhere in your teens, and let’s face it, you must have unless some god or another equally mythical being simply threw you down to earth with creational bombast, you will be well acquainted with that sense of who Continue Reading
Book review: The Fog by Brooke Hardwick
(courtesy Simon & Schuster Australia) The Fog was provided as a digital ARC ahead of its release on 4 September in Australia. The slow creep of horror that accompanies gothic thrillers is one of the reasons this particular genre is so widely read. There is something strangely enticing about reading Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #110: Sycco, Toro y Moi, LUPO.THEBOY, KUČKA and Anna Lunoe & Y U QT + Top 20 Eurovision songs for July
(via Shutterstock) Music by itself is wonderfully good, true, but how much better is it with some real emotional vocal power and insight added to it? Very, very good, indeed, and that is borne out in these five superlatively great songs which not only deliver a musical adrenaline hit but Continue Reading
A different kind of succession story: Thoughts on Unstable S2
(courtesy & (c) Netflix) It goes without saying (but here is this reviewer saying it anyway because writing demands it, dammit) that sitcoms are funny; after all, they didn’t put the “comedy” in “situation comedy” for nothing. They make us laugh, the good one uproariously, in a world where there’s Continue Reading
Book review: Lucky Day by Beth Morrey
(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) What a liberating read Lucky Day by Beth Morrey is! All of us, to greater or lesser extent, live ourselves constrained by a host of weird little social paradigms, spoken or unspoken rules by which we are allowed to act, speak or react, and while Continue Reading
Graphic novel review: The Man Who F#&%ed Up Time by John Layman, Karl Mostert and Dee Cunniffe
(courtesy Aftershock Comics) Who of us hasn’t wondered, in ways endlessly big or thoughtfully small, what it would be like to jump into a time machine and see what the past looks like? To walk among the dinosaurs. See the Romans battle and subdue another city or state. See the Continue Reading
Come November, we’re all going to get a little Spellbound …
(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTSpellbound follows the adventures of Ellian, the tenacious young daughter of the rulers of Lumbria who must go on a daring quest to save her family and kingdom after a mysterious spell transforms her parents into monsters. Spellbound also features an original score from EGOT-winning composer Alan Continue Reading
Book review: Ghost of the Neon God by T. R. Napper
(courtesy NewSouth Books) There is something magnificently enthralling about bearing witness to a talented author conjuring up an entire near-future world from the ground up in just 110 tautly-written pages. From nothing, we are led with brutal vivacity and a readily identifiable broken humanity into a dystopian world where civilisation Continue Reading
Movie review: Deadpool & Wolverine
(courtesy IMP Awards) We get it – saving the world, the multiverse, the life of a treasured loved one or friend, is SERIOUS. All caps, black font and dour countenance. Sure, but when did superhero movies get so damn grim? Sure, they are dealing with some deeply intense issues and Continue Reading