I think the thing that too often gets overlooked with novels as they slide into cultural irrelevance is that you probably should provide the reader with something beyond "plot" and maybe "competent prose"

Was planning to go direct from moving heavy furniture to a birthday party but instead I’m going to give the party a very special gift - the chance to breath air that doesn’t smell like a six foot tall bag of wet dog blankets

Spoiler culture is asking critics reviewing STAR WARS not to mention it takes place in outer space

Kinda explains why Albo gave that “uh, nothing to worry about, really” speech last night

Seeing people online going “Albos speech was nothing” and yeah, if you’re moderately informed it was - but it wasn’t for moderately informed online types. It was for people who get their news from their cooker workmates, News Corp headlines & Seven News, and “stay calm” is breaking news for them

It's astonishing how many things (lots) that I've brought online from around the world have been zooming towards me this month only now to have slowed to a crawl designed to ensure that none of them are delivered before Easter so I have to wait an extra *checks calendar* five days to get them

Film critics are an intelligent, insightful, hygienic group who are interesting to converse with

If I was teaching a class on how to become a successful author in Australia, lesson one would be "first become a journo at News Corp and shake a lot of hands", and the actual writing side of things might get a mention somewhere around week eight

People pushing the “whatever you think about it, we have to adopt AI if we want to control it” are strangely quiet on the “whatever you think about it, we have to adopt the gun that shoots the user in the face if we want to control it” issue

I texted @morrbeat.bsky.social that it's Trans Day of Visibility today, interrupting his own text about how 'Avatar: Fire and Ash' is now available to download "Guess Avatar is a trans story" he says – and it is! And it's also a story of trans visibility: "I see you"

Every day you can see the doomsaying “you’re not panicking enough” grifters coming out of the woodwork in real time, speed running the lessons of Covid coverage and going straight to the posts where they calmly explain that civilisational collapse is certain by mid year

I'm no expert beyond 20-odd years experience as a critic, but pop culture (movies at least) loses interest in people once they hit their 20s, and then swings back around middle age. Just look at what's in cinemas: it's *always* either teen stuff or middle-aged stuff. Without fail

There’s at least 60,000 jobs in Laverton/Truganina industrial area. It’s barely served by PT. Folks with a 15 min drive to work would face a 75+ min PT journey. This is a scenario repeated over and over across Melbourne’s suburban industrial areas. Free PT won’t get these folks out of cars.

Free public transport only really benefits people already using public transport. PT isn’t new and (in Victoria) it’s already cheap - the people not using it aren’t put off it by the price. Doubling the time your daily commute takes is also a cost!

This was true maybe two years ago but that percentage has dropped to around 15% while “young woman brutalised into becoming a killing machine by the corrupt (& often literally demonic) machinations of the rich” has taken the top spot in 2026 action

There’s a trap critics fall into after a few years on the job where they start to think simply being different or unusual automatically makes a film good and yeah sad to say despite the many good reviews MICK & NICK & NICK & ALICE, while being different, is also a piece of shit

Trouble with making public transport free is that most public transport is already at capacity (esp during peak) - the free trains simply fill up earlier, so passengers closer into the city can't get on board. You can't create more capacity with free, you just redistribute who gets on & who drives

It's weird seeing a celebrity sticking up for other celebrity's rights to do something shitty, because I know in my line of work if someone did something shitty everyone else would be queuing up to sink the boots in rather than saying "one bad decision doesn't make them bad people"

Geelong trains are packed until at least the 10.40pm service on weeknights - it’s nothing to do with the fuel crisis, rather that Melbourne’s western fringe has grown by hundreds of thousands of people while still being serviced entirely by one or two V/line trains per hour

Showing up on time for a movie is a great way to see all the three minute extended megamix versions of those commercials that are edited down to 15 seconds blipverts on YouTube

Harry Potter would have been relegated to the dumpster of history if a massive corporation didn’t keep trying to revive it to maintain profits and that’s all the reason you need to move on with your life

Not being able to leave money on the table will lead a person to writing a whole lot of stuff that isn't what they really want to write. And after enough years of that, you start running out of time to write what you really want to write....

Reading a published & successful author talking about “professional development” when it comes to writing books, and all I can think of are the (at least) six people I know who wrote one book and just… stopped

Everyone talks about the kid in the Omela hole but nobody wants to talk about that story where dinosaur aliens gave humanity teleporters only they're really cloning machines (new you appears over there, old you still here) & the aliens demand the original always be killed or no more teleporting ever

Watching MADIGAN, a cop movie Don Siegel made in 1968 that feels at least twenty years older than DIRTY HARRY (which he three years later). Soundtrack straight out of the 50s, stodgy conversations in boring sets all cops wear hats - at least the outdoor stuff in NYC has some energy.

I reviewed the upcoming season of Deadloch for @screenhub.bsky.social, and as someone who felt the first season had good parts that didn't quite mesh, this one has largely worked out the kinks (comedy-wise at least): www.screenhub.com.au/news/reviews...

Hey look, it's the ending of every single Garth Ennis war comic set after 1945

The more I think about this the more I think the path to a billion dollars is this: the entire management of Paramount explode after a failed pact with Satan and whoever takes over gives the greenlight to a STAR TREK reboot that's basically just the original series only Kirk / Spock happens for real

WUTHERING HEIGHTS (2026) wasn't it, and THE BRIDE! wasn't it either, but if you squint you can see Hollywood groping towards some kind of epic deranged gothic romance / festival of lust and whichever film does it right first is going to make a billion dollars easy

Fuck yeah, Tony Moore.

Isn’t an animated version of FIREFLY just an overcrowded and crappier version of COWBOY BEBOP?

Guessing he just went to the canteen like everyone else

This is a window into a long-forgotten time, when an Australian director could get to make a second movie in Australia, and an Australian film critic was someone anyone else gave a shit about

Last Bullet 3: We Swear It's Really The Last One This Time

Seriously, LAST BULLET 3 should have won Best Picture at this year's Oscars just for being titled LAST BULLET 3

Reading a debate on here where one side is saying “movies are inherently left wing because they are made by a group of people”, which is good news for everyone worried about corporations being a powerful force for right wing views

All you need to know about pretty much every single major development or crisis of this century is that it makes life worse for everyone but a tiny handful of people who just keep getting richer and more powerful

“Being in charge” and “taking no responsibility” seem to pretty much go hand in hand everywhere you look. If someone is suffering consequences, they’re not really the one in charge

Seems the locally-made WAR MACHINE has topped Netflix's global movie charts, which would not come as a surprise if you'd read my review over at @screenhub.bsky.social because (for a Netflix movie) it's actually pretty good: www.screenhub.com.au/news/reviews...

Now reading up on the Wankel Engine, the revolutionary rotary engine that failed to catch on almost entirely because it was named "the Wankel Engine"

This seems like the most awesome news ever until you actually read the article and get to the line "Hollywood has long sought to bring Schwarzenegger back to his Conan role, taking steps to make it age appropriate." www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

This is something I’ve considered way too much and my take is that in the early 80s The Punisher was as popular as Kraven the Hunter - he’s a character with nothing but a logo and a gun, and by the time The Punisher was going solo at Marvel Miller could sell his own vigilantes if he wanted to

Unfortunately my usual go-to for this kind of thing - "I saw Brett Ratner's underpants" - has become increasingly plausible in recent years

Time to once again point out that what a film (or book, or whatever) tells you it's about isn't always what it's actually about, and a review that just lists references and influences isn't telling you much about what it is you're actually seeing

My only writing advice is: If you don't entertain yourself you won't finish writing your book - if you don't entertain your readers they won't finish reading your book

Supposedly Melbourne’s oldest pub, which may be of interest to @beanisacarrot.bsky.social

Currently watching HELLFIRE, in which Stephen Lang plays a drifter who cleans up a small town so dirty even eating lunch is illegal. Local crime boss Harvey Keitel is introduced playing the piano to let us know that this is a sequel to his 70s classic FINGERS

If you’re worried that DC superhero comics are going to lurch to the right after Paramount takes over their owner Warner Bros, I have some disturbing news for you about the history of DC comics, and superhero comics… and the whole damn industry really

Before Xmas my new neighbours (downhill from me, new build) complained to council about water run off from my place. I told the inspector "I bet they didn't do the retaining wall properly", then spent months worrying about $5K drain repairs. Just saw the builders are back re-doing the retaining wall

Flashback Friday 👇