With just over a month to go till The Walking Dead shuffles back a-wailin’ and a-moanin’ onto our screens, we are being given a steady stream of what-ifs and maybe and could this character actually die predictions from all over the interweb. While only showrunner Scott M. Gimple, series Continue Reading
Book review: The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg
Would you want to spend an extended amount of time with a morbidly obese daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants from the Chicago suburbs by the name of Edie Middlestein who started eating in childhood to soothe all her existential aches and pains and found herself unable to stop? Or Continue Reading
Movie review: The Hobbit The Desolation of Smaug
There is something akin to high ritual to entering the cinema to see another in Peter Jackson’s sumptuously-realised visions of Tolkien’s Middle Earth. You must suitably prepare yourself for another epically-long journey into the wilds of the lands of the dwarves, the elves, the orcs and of course Gandalf Continue Reading
Movie review: Frozen
It is a rare thing indeed to walk away from any movie feeling utterly besotted and charmed, but Frozen manages this act of animated seduction with aplomb, using a winning combination of an engaging storyline with consequences, heartfelt and funny characters, and songs that fairly demand the movie be Continue Reading
FUTURE ZEITGEIST: Pop culture goodness I am looking forward to in 2014
I love new years! I am most definitely not one of those cynical old souls who reaches New Year’s Eve, harrumphs with Scrooge-like intensity and balefully glares at the next 365 days, convinced they will be just as awful as I imagine them to be. While I am old Continue Reading
LOOK BACK: My 10 favourite TV shows of 2013 (+ 3 I would rather forget)
I remember the simpler days of my youth. One commercial channel, one government channel and you could only watch as many programs as you had waking hours since PVRs were but a distant twinkle in some yet unborn tech head’s eyes (best not to think that one through too Continue Reading
READ BACK: The 4 books + 1 literary article I loved most in 2013
2013 was not exactly a triumph of book reading quantity over quality. Not that any year should be of course since it is not how many books you read that matters as whether the books you do read are beautifully written, enthral and move you in some way and Continue Reading
LOOK BACK: The 10 movies I loved most in 2013
I need to make it very clear from the outset that Sharknado is not one of the 10 movies that most struck a chord with me this year*. Yes I have used it as the title shot of this post but frankly it was all I could do to Continue Reading
LISTEN BACK: The 10 songs I loved most in 2013
So many songs, so few Gb on the iPod! This year I featured something like 100 songs in my Now This is Music series, and they were only a sampling, yes a sampling,of the 100s of songs that came my way. If the internet has done one thing (beyond Continue Reading
Happy last minute pop culture Christmas greetings!
Right it’s Boxing Day here in Australia and I hadn’t planned on any more Christmas posts but I kept forgetting all sorts of fun festive posts by my favourite TV shows, music artists and movies and had to share them. You’re Ho! Ho! Ho! welcome. Continue Reading