Good old humanity. Even when they’re handed a nice bright and shiny chance to save themselves, they manage to soil it, scuff it and break in two, all the while holding a knife to their own throats. The good citizens of Wayward Pines, trapped in a future oasis of Continue Reading
The curse of the blank page: Even movie characters get writer’s block
Writer’s block is the worst. I can say that from bitter experience; many is the time that my muse, whoever or whatever it is, has deserted me and I have been left staring in growing frustration, and near panic – we writers are nothing if not melodramatic at times Continue Reading
Book review: Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
Love, it is generally thought, can pretty much change everything. Social status, geographical separation, adversarial friends or family, even death cannot compete with love’s ability to sweep all before it in a flood of hope, possibility and rose-petaled wonder. But in Me Before You by JoJo Moyes, soon to be Continue Reading
Sing! New trailer shows animals living their musical dreams
SNAPSHOT Set in a world like ours but entirely inhabited by animals, Sing stars Buster Moon (Academy Award winner Matthew McConaughey), a dapper Koala who presides over a once-grand theater that has fallen on hard times. Buster is an eternal optimist—okay, maybe a bit of a scoundrel—who loves his Continue Reading
Movie review: I Smile Back
Try as we might to close the gap, the chasm between what we want from our life and what we actually get can be intimidatingly, and sometimes, distressingly, broad. For Laney Brooks (Sarah Silverman in a nuanced, wholly effecting performance) this gap is now so large that the only Continue Reading
The Simpsons build a couch IKEA-style courtesy of Michal Socha’s couch gag
Ah, IKEA furniture. Looks funky and modern and lots of people own at least one of its pieces (including me) but my lord its a thousand kinds of evil clowns in a car to put together. The devilry of putting together your latest IKEA bookcase or cupboard is something Continue Reading
Fear the Walking Dead: “Shiva” (S2, E7 review)
*SPOILERS AHEAD … A ZOMBIE MEAT-TASTING PARTY AND MORE UNHINGED BEHAVIOUR THAN A HOUSE FULL OF LOOSE DOORS* It won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone that zombie apocalypses – or as Celia (Marlene Forte) rather delusionally calls them “new beginnings”; yep thanks, you can keep your Continue Reading
Forever Calvin and Hobbes: Kristian Williams examines the beloved comic strip’s timeless appeal
SNAPSHOT there’s no such thing as too low and high art. There are creations that either speak to people or don’t. Part of what makes the strips so timeless was that you don’t need to understand the pop culture or political context of the late eighties and early nineties Continue Reading
Grab some string and gum and make a nuclear reactor! MacGyver is back
SNAPSHOT In MacGyver, the twentysomething Mac is behind the formation of a new (but not necessarily publicized) government organization where he can showcase his amazing knack for using science and critical thinking to solve any problem that comes his way. And as you might imagine, some of those problems Continue Reading
Movie review: Alice Through the Looking Glass
As reputations go, the one possessed by Time, who in director James Bobin’s Alice Through the Looking Glass is a piercingly-blue-eyed clock man played by Sacha Baron Cohen, is certainly one of the less enviable. He is variously cast as a villain and a thief, a purloiner of life Continue Reading