Something happened this year which I didn’t expect would ever occur, I bought a subscription to Apple Music, and while I don’t want to shill for them unpaid - I definitely have more access to new music coming out than I ever had before. Gone are the days where I would have to slum it with a YouTube playlist whenever Kendrick Lamar dropped a surprise LP, now I can just stream it without ads…
Belle is pretty comfortable in her provincial life in this version, animated with sheer beauty. Belle is not the first Mamoru Hosoda film I have seen, I recall liking The Girl Who Leapt Through Time a lot when I was younger, but I missed out on Summer Wars and his other acclaimed features. I’ve heard his virtual worlds grate against the sensibilities of some people, yet I am not among these…
Cathy Wilcox’s excellent political cartoon Out of the Dark is a beautiful work which requires almost a decade of Australian context to appreciate. Imagine if you will, you lived in a country where for the past almost-decade, your country was run by a crew of conservative cronies whose corruption was not investigated by the complacent media who reinforced their power by giving them a free ride in…
The maximum amount of Robert Kerman discourse, and also a critique of Cannibal Holocaust.
It’s a Halloween themed hullabaloo with all your favourite monsters! When I think about Halloween, it is a bittersweet feeling. As an Australian I got little candy for proselytising the pumpkin holiday because few outside the kids who saw American cartoons on TV knew what it was. The spooky season is upon us, and I have a substantial Blu-Ray collection of the classic Universal Monsters cycle to…
You’ve gotta love the wisps of cloud with that font, which begins the movie proper. I heard on Twitter once that Millennials choose a mediocre children’s movie to base their entire personality around, and for a lot of them that movie happens to be Space Jam . Maybe it was the soundtrack album with Quad City DJs and R. Kelly on it (which in the latter case taints its legacy) that enraptured a…
This is partially about Kentaro Miura’s passing, I promise. But it’s about other stuff too, and I haven’t updated the blog in a while so I have to keep you up to date. I try to avoid publishing something that’s either a bummer or connected to my mental health, but I kinda have to do both to express what has happened to me. My twin brother was in the process of adopting a puppy, he bought absorbent…
ABC gets a sure-fire true crime hit with this three-part documentary series. I’ll get around to reviewing Luna Park when it reopens and has a new Big Dipper constructed, because I want to experience the place in person rather than just reminiscing about its glorious past. But this year something happened that I couldn’t ignore both as a theme park fan and as a person whose extended family is tied…
“ At all costs, the Christian must convince the heathen and the atheist that God exists, in order to save his soul. At all costs, the atheist must convince the Christian that the belief in God is but a childish and primitive superstition, doing enormous harm to the cause of true social progress. And so they battle and storm and battle away at each other. Meanwhile the Taoist Sage sits quietly by…
I wasn’t expecting this to be the first post I’d make this year, but I figured there was no timelier moment to read the diary of Anne Frank than now. So much about this book resonated with me during quarantine, the overwhelming sense that nothing would be normal again, the crushing despair at being confined to a small space, and the flagrant return of fascism to our modern day hellscape makes The…
An embarrassment of riches for Christmas albums, poverty for the artists. I get it, you’re suspicious of me writing this article, how can I - a convert to Taoism review Christmas albums with the authentic believer in the Christmas holiday miracle? Well, you’ve forgotten I was raised in a Christian household half my life and I’m mostly into the season for the elves. Gotta love those elves . Anyway,…
Before The Crocodile Hunter , there were these two blokes entertaining us. We’re scraping the bottom of the barrel tonight, as The Enchanting Existential Dread of Aussie Theme Parks examines the case of Leyland Brothers World, Magic Kingdom in Lansvale, and the notorious Wobbie’s World. I packed these altogether in the same article because I was worried I wouldn’t get enough material out of them…
It’s a humble Civic Video sign, but it’s lit like Cinema Paradiso to me, can’t believe it’s taken twenty years for me to notice its logo’s VHS-shaped. I did something I haven’t done in years tonight, I set foot inside a Civic Video… because the handwritten sign outside proclaimed they were closing down mid-August. A mixed bag of bittersweet nostalgic emotions washed over me, I grew up with Civic…
Perhaps the director of Fritz the Cat might have a bone to pick? When you read news about the Disney/20th Century Fox merger, a couple of properties you care about come to mind first, Star Wars and X-Men . Nobody spares a thought for the granular details of nerd-franchises or corporate buyouts unrelated to those unless a woke celebrity on Twitter’s critiquing the senseless monopolistic tendencies…
Only when you see AKIRA in Dolby Surround do you recognise that tag-line’s truth in advertising, Neo-Tokyo explodes at peak volume. I’ve heard rumours, through dubious internet sources, that seeing AKIRA on the big screen instead of your telly or computer screen is a borderline religious experience. I’m a weird heretic who does not recognise the Streamline dub, preferring the newer Pioneer AKIRA…
I deserved this Toblerone, because looking sad on a shopping mall bench while taking selfies is harder than Jaden Smith made it seem. My twin brother let me borrow his Netflix password, and thus enabled my exploration into a realm of serialised entertainment which devoured several midnight hours I needed to kill right now, all my DVDs and books were packed away in plastic buckets because I’m…
Looks like it’s party time at King Diamond’s house! This Halloween I decided to give you something fun, a cherished relic from my nineties childhood that not many of you know about, as it was overshadowed by the impact of the more popular World of the Unknown series of Monsters , Ghosts and UFOs . The Usborne Book of the Haunted World might be one of the scariest things I brought home from a…
Postcard from Old Sydney Town, in its prime. Old Sydney Town is one of those relics of school excursions which isn’t easy to forget, it was a massive part of a lot of our childhoods, and along with Bathurst Goldfields this place was on the list of rites of passage like Wonderland Sydney which all children of the nineties went through. It was a peculiar blend of theme park and living museum, sort…
Bondi Aquarium, courtesy of the Powerhouse Museum. Jurassic Park warned us about combining all the problems of a theme park with maintaining a major zoo, and Australian theme parks in particular seem to have bad luck with that balancing act. Let’s look at about three of those and find out why mixing animals with carnival rides is a terrible game plan for most of the suburban parks who attempt such…
Wouldn’t it be wonderful, for every boy, girl, woman and man? Wonderland Sydney was my favourite park in Sydney, hands down, I only visited twice but I enjoyed every minute I spent there. Compared to the abrasive indoor Sega World Sydney, Wonderland Sydney was more akin to my type of park I want to spend my time in. It was outdoors, it was charming, and there was a plethora of things to see and do…