SNAPSHOT A growing nation of genetically evolved apes led by Caesar is threatened by a band of human survivors of the devastating virus unleashed a decade earlier. They reach a fragile peace, but it proves short-lived, as both sides are brought to the brink of a war that will Continue Reading
On the 9th day of Christmas 2013 … I read I Saw Mommy Biting Santa Claus
This festive season, as you hang your stockings “by the chimney with care”, you might wander want to reconsider hoping that “St Nicholas soon would be there”. For it seems that even Santa, that seemingly immortal figure removed from the concerns and troubles of our world, except for the Continue Reading
Johnny Depp is the ghost in the machine: Transcendance teaser trailers
SNAPSHOT “Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is the foremost researcher in the field of Artificial Intelligence, working to create a sentient machine that combines the collective intelligence of everything ever known with the full range of human emotions. His highly controversial experiments have made him famous, but they have Continue Reading
On the 8th day of Christmas … I listened to Nerina Pallot’s We Made It Through Another Year EP
There is a fitting wistfulness to Nerina Pallot’s just released Christmas EP We Made it Through Another Year. Not so much because of the British artist herself whom I have found over the course of many LPs and EPs, and in everyday Twitter conversation, to be every bit as Continue Reading
Movie review: American Hustle
If there is one thing that David O. Russell’s sublime new movie American Hustle, establishes very early on, it’s that appearances can be deceiving. As this affectionate, and at turns dramatically intense and comically over the top tribute to the 1970s opens, we see Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale), a small Continue Reading
On the 7th day of Christmas 2013 … I watched “Tis the season to be murdered” (Hart to Hart, S2 E5)
“Oh Jonathan! What a lovely day. This is going to be the best Christmas ever.” And with those words, Jennifer Hart (Stefanie Powers), who by this stage in season 2 of Hart to Hart (1980) should know better, dooms the Harts to another festive season littered with murder and mayhem. Continue Reading
‘Twas the couch gag before Christmas: The Simpsons’ title sequence gets its festive on
SNAPSHOT Springfield is inundated with holiday revelers after the nuclear power plant springs a radiation leak, causing snow to fall all over town. When the tourists drive up Christmas shopping prices, Marge (Julie Kavner) opens up the Simpsons’ house to boarders in the all-new “White Christmas Blues”. If there Continue Reading
On the 6th Day of Christmas … Hey Carol listen to this! 3 Christmas songs I love and their origins
Ah Christmas music. You either love it or you hate it. No points for guessing that I love it, since I am a self-confessed Christmas junkie and festive music is after all the soundtrack to my tinsel-clogged addiction. But it goes well beyond the fact that it’s Christmas and Continue Reading
Movie review: Saving Mr Banks
It’s often been observed that history is a malleable property, written by the victors, with facts added or deleted as the authors of a particular account see fit. Naturally, this doesn’t just apply to the great epic moments of the past such as the fall of Rome or Genghis Continue Reading
On the 5th day of Christmas … I read 5 delightfully unusual Christmas-themed books
For all of my love of pushing creative envelopes, and turning things inside and out with postmodern glee, I also have a sentimentally-laden, corny-storyline loving traditionalist in me, who very rarely gets his way except at Christmas time when the many tales of redemptive love, chestnuts roasting on an Continue Reading