Okay, I’m currently binging on books (even for me), so I ran out of books that I hadn’t read in my house (well, that’s a lie… there are medical books from the 70’s and 80’s that I haven’t read, but … I was not about to do that to myself), so I started to […]
In her young adult novel, Haunting Violet, Alyxandra Harvey takes us on a journey to Britain in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is a world full of rules and rigid roles, but one where a fascination with the supernatural is common. Young Violet Willoughby’s mother is a “Spiritualist Medium”, and enlists her […]
This part is a ramble/rant, but bear with me. Okay, so this may or may not be clear to you already, but just in case you missed it, or are new to my reviews, let me just lay this out for you: I am picky. When I like things, I LOVE them, and when I […]
Goodbye, 2011. Hello apocalypse. This past year in movies has felt a bit like a holding pattern, a space to get all contemplative and whimsical before the terror of 2012. Despite a few exceptions, it wasn’t a year in which tentpole summer films grabbed a majority of the spotlight (in fact, many of these failed, […]
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from Hunger Games fever it’s that YA readers were desperate to move on from the Bella Swan heroine model. Feminists, hipsters and tween girls alike have flocked to the stubbornly flawed but undeniably kickass Katniss Everdeen like she was a breath of fresh air; which, after years of a […]
Now that’s more like it. From the first frames of Santa Claus Is Coming to Town (fake newsreel footage of kids trying to get ready for the arrival of Santa Claus), I was sold. It’s filled with lush claymation landscapes, witty songs, a surprisingly complicated original plot, and themes that range from trying to be […]
The second of our classic animation trifecta is Frosty. Shorter and less revolutionary than its reindeer brethren, Frosty looks less like Coraline and more like a classic Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon. A bunch of kids get together after school on the day before Christmas to make a snowman. A magician’s magic (and very argumentative) hat […]
Another new Christmas movie for me! Although I’ve seen the animated version more times than you can shake a stick at*, and have read the book pretty consistently since childhood, I was full of enough Jim Carrey-fatigue by the time the live action version of Dr. Seuss’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas showed up that up […]