This was an oddly quiet year for the Eurovision Song Contest. Granted yes there was the kerfuffle over Russia sending along an act to compete who had, in contravention of well-documented Ukrainian law, performed in Crimea, a brazenly provocative act that saw them withdraw from the event this year, Continue Reading
Video essay: Wonder Woman – A Symbol of Progress @kaptainkristian
Hailed by her writer W. M. Marston, who was the educational consultant at publisher DC Comics, as “an antidote to the bloodcurdling images of masculinity”, Wonder Woman made her debut in December 1940 in the final eight pages of All Star Comics #8. While she didn’t get the front Continue Reading
I have been waiting for these Visitors: @gezanthony’s amazingly evocative ABBA videos #Eurovision2017
If there is one thing that really made ABBA’s name, apart from their superlatively good music and a handy high-profile win at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, its the way they pioneered the use of visual images, in concert with now-famed director Lasse Hallström, to promote their songs as Continue Reading
Book review: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka #Eurovision2017
It’s often not until something traumatic or highly unusual happens in a family that you discover how well you do or don’t know these people with whom you have spent all or much of your life. And that many of the assumptions you have made about them come unravelling Continue Reading
Movie review: Snatched
“On paper, at least …” has to be one of the most depressing lead-ins to any sentence. Throw it in front of just about any assessment of anything, and what looked to be bursting with shiny excitement and breathless anticipation is now tarnished a little (or a lot), a Continue Reading
Join the animated dots: How Disney movies are connected through hidden Easter eggs
At first glance, you might not think that every Disney film is connected. But they are, my friend, they are! From Beauty and the Beast to Aladdin, and from The Little Mermaid to Moana, every feature from the Mouse House is connected by a deliciously enticing chain of easter Continue Reading
Now this is music #88: Klyne, BRÅVES, Billie Eilish, Perfume Genius, Bipolar Sunshine
Life, you may have noticed – oh go on, you must have! – is a pretty complicated business. It zigs when you think it will zag, rises when you’re convinced it should fall, and never quite makes sense; well, not enough of the time anyway. Which is why you Continue Reading
Hello Mr Cyberman! Doctor Who joins forces with Mr Men
One of the movements that has to come to have a significant impact on modern entertainment options, apart from sequelitis which is alive and well (ish; let’s not get carried away here) is postmodernism, and specifically, it’s love of pluralism. In our 21st century meta-oriented world where the old and Continue Reading
Movie review: Things to Come (L’avenir)
In a fictional context, life is often rendered in big, bold, exclamation-rich, declarative moments, ripe with portentous meaning and unable to be shrugged off with a cursory nod and a move on to the next task of hand. But the reality is that the emotionally-intense moments of our lives Continue Reading
Book review: The Boy on the Bridge by M. R. Carey
A curious thing has happened in the realm of apocalyptic fiction of late – the arrival of hope. Previously hope was nowhere to be seen, an unimaginable luxury in a darkly dystopian world where civilisation had collapsed, humanity had surrendered to its basest instincts and Darwinism was having an Continue Reading