(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) If you think the only place you will find generous amount of narrative humanity is in a book solely about actual people, then the Murderbot series by Martha Wells will have you thinking again. The first entry in the series, which kicked off in 2017, All Continue Reading
Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown #ValentinesDay
(courtesy IMDb) Love, sweet love … ain’t it the greatest? Well, yes, but not if you’re Charlie Brown sadly and no one, I repeat no one, is giving you Valentines, and in public, on the big day! The attitude, as expressed by Lucy (Melanie Kohn) in her trademark scornfully dismissive Continue Reading
Book review: Milo and Marcos at the End of the World by Kevin Christopher Snipes #ValentinesDay
(courtesy Harper Collins Australia) Unless you’ve grown in the church, it’s near impossible to fully appreciate just how all that corrosively twisted dogma can seep into your mind, heart and soul and turn your nice and healthy nascent humanity into something that looks like Eton Mess (a deliciously chaotic English Continue Reading
A massive mass of Super Bowl trailers: Twisters, Wicked, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Deadpool & Wolverine, Kung Fu Panda 4, Despicable Me 4 + The Fall Guy
(via Shutterstock) Super Bowl is HUGE. HUGE HUGE … HUGE. Apparently it’s a football game, so I’m told and – and here’s who won if that matters to you – but it’s also a chance for a metric ton of advertising of all kinds of items and, happily for those Continue Reading
Book review: The Next Big Thing by James Colley
(courtesy Pantera Press) Life can be a LOT much of the time. And that doesn’t always meaning you have a surfeit of something; often and rather ironically and perversely, it can be the sheer absence of something that can feel like a multitudinous weight upon your shoulder and weigh you Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: A man, a robot and the end of the world in Webcam
(courtesy YouTube (c) DUST) SNAPSHOTWebcam follows James Mann, a distraught man who thinks himself alone amidst the aftermath of our world’s downfall in the not-so-distant future. He lives a solitary life within a sealed bunker, taking refuge from the ravages of a world run amok. James’ only companion is a Continue Reading
Movie review: Orion and the Dark
(courtesy IMP Awards) Human beings are built to be afraid. Not in a debilitating way, of course, but in a good, fight-or-flight piece of evolutionary triumphing where we assess threats and get away from them before they can get to us. In that respect, it works well; but what if Continue Reading
C’mon and get televisually happy: Palm Royale, The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin + The New Look
(via Shutterstock) INTRO Palm Royale (via First Showing (c) AppleTV+) SNAPSHOTPalm Royale is a true underdog story that follows Maxine Simmons (Kristen Wiig) as she endeavors to break into Palm Beach high society. As Maxine attempts to cross that impermeable line between the haves and the have-nots, “Palm Royale” asks Continue Reading
Movie review: Riceboy Sleeps
(courtesy IMDb) Identity cuts sharply and deeply into what it means to be human. This foundational truth is on affectingly thoughtful display throughout Anthony Shim’s 1990s-set Riceboy Sleeps, which tells the story of So-Young (Choi Seung-yoon), a single mother from South Korea who emigrates to Canada, and specifically Vancouver, in Continue Reading
Book review: The Redemption of Morgan Bright by Chris Panatier
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) This novel will be published by Angry Robot Books on 23 April 2024 in U.K. and by Penguin Books Australia on 30 July 2024. Grief, as many of us know, can be a dark and terrifying place. Suddenly so much of what we know and loved, Continue Reading