SNAPSHOT Based on true events, this touching film follows a 15-year war against a cruel illness, waged on both scientific and emotional fronts by a pair of women demonstrating extreme bravery under pressure. Annie Parker (Samantha Morton) is on intimate terms with breast cancer, having watched both her mother Continue Reading
Orphan Black: “Nature Under Constraint and Vexed” (S2, E1 review)
Whoosh! And just like that, and understandably so given her daughter Kira (Skyler Wexla) and foster mother of dubious intent Mrs S. (Maria Doyle Kennedy) have just been kidnapped, Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany) is once again off and running, frantic to save the only family she really knows. A Continue Reading
Road to Eurovision 2014: Week 5 – Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Slovenia
WHAT IS THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST? Started way back in 1956 as a way to draw a fractured Europe back together with the healing power of music, the Eurovision Song Contest, or Concours Eurovision de la Chanson – the contest is telecast in both English and French – is open Continue Reading
Marvellous massing of movie trailers: Chef, Sex Tape, Lucky Them, Blue Ruin, Lucy
From indie to mainstream, and somewhere pleasingly in-between, this mixed bag of trailers offers pretty something for everyone. While I am, as always, partial to festival-friendly movies, I am willing to also believe that Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz can be funny, and that Luc Besson’s movie will make Continue Reading
Book review: The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
At first appearance, Don Tillman, the handsome 39 year old geneticist with undiagnosed Asperger’s Syndrome (and a love of lobster every Tuesday night without exception) who anchors Graeme Simsion’s delightful debut novel with his quest for a wife via questionnaires, and Shakespeare may not look to have a great Continue Reading
FUNx3: Welcome to Sweden, Everything Wrong with The Matrix and When the Easter Bunny attacks!
Welcome to Sweden! Moving to a whole other country is never the easiest of undertakings, something that accountant to the stars, Bruce Evans (Greg Poehler, brother to Amy Poehler who produced the series) discovers when he heads to Sweden to live with his girlfriend Emma (Josephine Bornebusch). Telling a Continue Reading
Can’t wait to see: Shaun the Sheep
SNAPSHOT From Aardman, the creators of Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run, comes the highly anticipated big screen debut of Shaun the Sheep. When Shaun decides to take the day off and have some fun, he gets a little more action than he baa-rgained for! Shaun’s mischief accidentally causes the Continue Reading
Weekend pop art: What if Thor had an iPhone (and a love of selfies) instead of a hammer?
Selfies are certainly a big part of the zeitgeist these days. If they’re not being declared the Word of the Year for 2013 by the Oxford Dictionary, they’re being sung about in songs by the likes of The Chainsmokers and even playing a play in embroiling President Obama and Continue Reading
Everybody listen to the music, yeah: Review of Deluxe Edition of ABBA’s Waterloo album
It was 1975, and just a year after ABBA had won the Eurovision Song Contest on 6 April 1974 in spectacularly convincing fashion, opening the way for their now legendary international career as pop superstars, I had discovered the music of Björn & Benny, Agnetha and Anni-Frid as they were Continue Reading
Now this is music #27: Figgy, TĀLĀ , Racing Glaciers, Bagheera, Bayou
So life huh? We expect it to be filled with premiere parties, champagne and organic entrees, mingling with stars and staying over for the weekend at Sandra Bullock’s place in Austin, Texas … … but instead we somehow end up, well, doing the ironing on a Saturday night while Continue Reading