(courtesy IMP Awards) With yet another superhero movie in the form of The Marvels beckoning us to cinemas, and a few more on the way including the upcoming DC tentpole, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, it’s likely a good time to ask whether audiences are collectively over watching superhumanly empowered Continue Reading
Book review: A Mirror Mended (Fractured Fables #2) by Alix E. Harrow
(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) Much as we love things as they were written originally, there’s also a great deal of fun to be had, and in this postmodern world of ours we love to indulge it, subverting and playing with all kinds of storytelling forms. While the purists will insist Continue Reading
Sitcom double: Frasier 2023 (S1, E5-6) and Upload (S3, E5-8)
(courtesy IMP Awards) Frasier 2023 (S1, E5-6) One of the interesting things that come into play when a much-loved character comes out of hiatus is that you watch to see how much of what we loved about them is retained and how much of a new persona is forged in Continue Reading
Graphic novel: Beetle & the Hollowbones by Aliza Layne
(courtesy Simon & Schuster) Coming into your own is, in theory, a wonderful thing to have happen. You know yourself, you get yourself and you live the kind of life that’s authentic and matters to you; that’s in theory, of course, which is a wonderful place to live where everything Continue Reading
UPCOMING READS: The Mercy of Gods (Captive’s War #1) by James S. A. Corey
(courtesy Gizmodo (c) Orbit) SNAPSHOTHow humanity came to the planet called Anjiin is lost in the fog of history, but that history is about to end. The Carryx—part empire, part hive—have waged wars of conquest for centuries, destroying or enslaving species across the galaxy. Now, they are facing a great Continue Reading
Book review: The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter & Other Essential Ghosts by Soraya Palmer
(courtesy Allen & Unwin) Making sense of life can often take everything we’ve got. While many events are ostensibly straight forward such as births, deaths and marriages, they never occur in a vacuum and are tangled, rather ferociously and labyrinthinely, in a whole host of grievances, hurts, family dynamics and Continue Reading
Documentary review: The battle for survival on Life on Our Planet
(courtesy IMP Awards) There’s an interesting trend in some parts of modern documentary making that views the enthralling wonder of information in and of itself as not enough to keep peoples’ attention. To be fair, we do live in a hyper-attentive age where people are pulled in a thousand different Continue Reading
Movie trailer double: Ghostbusters – Frozen Empire and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
(Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash) Big bold intelligent blockbusters. They are the perfect mix – epic in a way that makes going to the cinema to see them eminently worth it but full of clever ideas and compelling characters which means we’re not met with empty spectacle but thrills Continue Reading
Comics review: Wallace the Brave 5: The Great Pencil Quest by Will Henry
(courtesy Simon & Schuster) Now five collections into the wonderful world of Wallace the Brave, it struck me as the latest volume, The Great Pencil Quest, thumped onto my doorstep (figuratively at least; apartments aren’t known for their door steps) it struck me once again how much we need cartoonists Continue Reading
Book review: Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum (translated by Shanna Tam)
(courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing) Bookshops are, for book buyers at least, innately warm and comforting places. Quite apart from the fact that they offer a wealth of possible storytelling possibilities, they also feel like a step away from the hustle and bustle of day-to-day life which to greater or lesser extents Continue Reading