You’re a musical one Mr Grinch! First Tylor the Creator soundtrack song released

  SNAPSHOT For their eighth fully animated feature, Illumination and Universal Pictures present “The Grinch,” based on Dr. Seuss’ beloved holiday classic. The Grinch tells the story of a cynical grump who goes on a mission to steal Christmas, only to have his heart changed by a young girl’s generous Continue Reading

Christmas in July #5: I took joy in Mutts A Shtinky Little Christmas by Patrick McDonnell

  Mutts, a delightfully retro, self-aware comic strip by Patrick McDonnell is not your usual humourous newspaper diversion. First published in 1994, and described by the immortally-great Charles M. Schulz (Peanuts) as “one of the best comic strips of all time”, Mutts has always had a keenly-felt beating heart at the Continue Reading

Christmas in July #4: Home alone feeling scrooged? These Christmas movies deserve some love, actually (curated)

  Ari Mattes, University of Notre Dame Australia   The cultural environment in which we watch a film inevitably shapes our response to it. Engaging with the Yuletide ecology by watching Christmas films offers a genuine cinephilic pleasure, be it kitsch, ironic, or sincere. The following taxonomy is by no Continue Reading

Christmas in July #3: Watched The Flying Nun’s “Wailing in a Winter Wonderland”

  One of the great delights of The Flying Nun (1967-1970) was, and shall always be, how wonderfully sweet Sister Bertille (played by Gidget herself, the incomparable Sally Field) is in just about every scene. I know that kind of naively-enthusiastic caring character is not really in vogue anymore; people like Continue Reading

Christmas in July #1: Book review of Twelve Nights by Andrew Zurcher

  There is something deliciously wonderful about subsuming yourself in any book that takes places at Christmas, even if like Andrew Zurcher’s debut novel, Twelve Nights, it is more situational than thematic. There might be little that is innately festive in Zurcher’s lustrously-novel but that is in fact it’s greatest Continue Reading