(courtesy IMDb) SNAPSHOTStudents at École des Nouvelles Images created BOOM, an award-winning darkly comedic animation about a pair of birds who try to save their eggs during the eruption of a volcano in the center of their island home. All of the other birds had escaped to the water as Continue Reading
Documentary review: Epic Animal Migrations – Patagonia
(courtesy IMDb) Documentaries in our hyper-sensationalised digital age have a lot to contend with. With almost everything braying at us with unrelenting 24/7 intensity, you have to be loud and intense and a little tabloidy to cut through; fair enough in one sense – if everyone else is yelling, you Continue Reading
Book review: The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer
(read at Pindari cabin, Yeranda Cottages, Dungog, 2-9 January 2024) There was once a boy whose entire life was defined not by the good things in his life, and they were there in the form of a loving family, a rich engagement with learning and an overall garrulous love of Continue Reading
Movie review: All of Us Strangers
(courtesy IMP Awards) It’s a distinctly odd thing when grief finally and fully gets its murderous hooks into you. All of your life up until that point, you are told what grief is, what it looks like and the kind of trajectory it will follow which is, we’re told, much Continue Reading
Book review: Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko
(courtesy UQP) Every nation has a story that it likes to tell about itself. These stories serve to either bolster a nationalistic sense of identity, propagate an aggrandising myth of nationhood or portray history in a way that burnishes the country and its founders rather than detracts from it. Australia Continue Reading
Mini-mass of movie and streaming trailers: Spaceman, Robot Dreams, Constellation, Ripley + Alexander: the Making of a God
(via Shutterstock) Isn’t it weird to be a little relieved that things a tad quiet on the movie and streaming front atm? Clearly not whisper quiet since this post has five trailers, among many currently out there in the world, but quieter than the usual end-of-year-get-this-thing-eligible-for-the-Oscars frantic which is fun Continue Reading
Book review: City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky
(courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing) Imagination, it likely goes without saying, sits at the very heart of all writing. After all, how can a writer venture into worlds other than their known, into the souls of people they can’t possibly know except by creating them in their hearts and minds and fashion Continue Reading
Blood runs in the family: Thoughts on The Brothers Sun
(courtesy First Showing) You have to love any series that uses the energetic musical idiosyncrasy of Belgian popster Plastic Bertrand’s “Ça plane pour moi” to soundtrack a montage of two long estranged brothers bonding in L.A. at the supposed multi-million dollar vacation home of actor John Cho. You have to Continue Reading
Picture book review: Orion and the Dark by Emma Yarlett
(courtesy Allen & Unwin) We are supposed to face our fears; that’s the prevailing advice and stacked up against being frozen to the foot by dreading what terrified your soul, it’s pretty sound advice. In theory. But, and here’s the sticking point, facing what makes us fearful goes against every Continue Reading
Book review: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
(courtesy Simon & Schuster) Working out who you are is a full-time, lifelong job. But it gets going in earnest when we’re teenagers when life goes from idle, childlike curiosity to something chaotically emotional and emotional with a thousand competing questions buzzing for contemplative airtime in our head. It’s a Continue Reading