I'm sure there are some people who can say the title of the upcoming movie ROOFMAN without singing it like it's the chorus of the Soundgarden track 'Spoonman', but I am not one of those people

Hard to imagine anyone paying attention to the war in Ukraine, where combat nerds in bombed out basements are controlling drones to create a literal death zone where anything that moves is killed, and thinking the takeaway from that is "our troops need to spend more time running obstacle courses"

I remember hearing well over a decade ago that the edict from ABC management was that on-air female "personalities" (so hosts & panelists, not journos or experts) should be dressed like Marieke Hardy and the fact that in 2025 Crabb is still dressed that way is a fun reminder of all manner of things

This is yet another reminder that the only current use for AI is to take a situation where one (usually poorly paid) person does 80% of the work to support a bunch of hangers-on in a business and use it to get rid of that one person variety.com/2025/film/ne...

As someone who's mostly been reviewing online for the last ten years, this has largely been the case online for the last ten years. Also the case: almost nobody wants to run reviews of *any* kind, and even quasi-reviews (recaps, trend pieces) are a tough sell these days.

I used to think it was weird the way anything set in space was "Science Fiction" whereas (say) a murder mystery involving refugees in a climate change future wasn't, but then I realised that the former might be interesting while the latter was just going to congratulate me on beliefs I already held

I don't usually end a TV review with a call for various politicans and public servants to be jailed but in this case I think I was holding back: www.screenhub.com.au/news/reviews...

If you're a TV critic who's spent much of your coverage of a series based on existing IP not-so-subtly hinting that the series creator thinks very highly of himself, you don't really get to write a review of the final ep that says it's "curious" that "it seems most interested in its own concepts"

Just realised that future film-makers are going to treat this period now like we treat the 1930s, only the sexy and dangerous counter-culture heroes won't be bank robbers, they'll be political assassins

My train to Geelong was stuck at Sunshine for ten minutes while we waited for the cops to remove an “unruly passenger” so I guess that counts as The Rapture for at least one guy

High profile media sackings go like this: the first time a "much-loved" personality is dumped there's a lot of public outcry and petitions and public letters and shit. They either get their job back or score a similar one, and then when they get sacked again a year later nobody cares and that's it

If your list of best ever Science Fiction novels absolutely *must* feature some dude from the 50s then Alfred Bester is right there and Tiger! Tiger! / The Stars My Destination is roughly a billion times better than the Foundation series or any Three Laws of Robotics malarkey

I'm not usually big on crowdfunding but this really does seem like a decent cause with some very worthwhile rewards: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WDl...

Corporations don’t “give” you anything, and especially not anything creative. If you don’t like what they’re doing, stop buying it from them

It’s increasingly obvious that the only thing preventing the rise of corporate-backed fascism in the USA since the mid-80s was hard core gangsta rap

Does anyone believe South Park is ever coming back?

How long before the fascists come for The Humpty Dance?

Pretty much the only American movie genre looking beyond personal relationships that isn’t deeply right wing would be old-fashioned war movies about a unit or squadron or ship because everything else is just reheated “one man can make a difference” fantasy

Currently working on a review of The Assembly s2 and the whole idea of the show makes so much more sense / is much less sketchy once you learn that the French original was set at a pre-existing newspaper run by journalists on the spectrum

Kinda funny how we assume that there must be a clearly thought-out and logical thought process that follows obvious and agreed-upon consensus reality to arrive at the conclusion that the solution to a problem is to shoot someone in the face

It seems increasingly clear that in, say, eighteen months or so every US-dominated social media platform is going to be 98% apolitical posts about anodyne activities and harmless hobbies, and 2% slightly odd turns of phrase that can only be fully decoded on a website nobody ever publicly names

Just remembered the heroic police dog in MUZZLE was killed by a drug dealer throwing fentanyl in the dog's face and honestly if we have to have insane right-wing movies (and I'm just getting an update: we do) then that is exactly the right kind of insanity

Americans on here are like “you’ll know when *it happens* before you hear the news because everyone will suddenly be happy & smiling & a dark cloud will lift” when it’s increasingly obvious everyone’ll be even more scared & anxious & low key freaking out because whatever comes next won’t be better

You know the rule that if there’s a question in the headline the answer is always “no”? Still applies nymag.com/intelligence...

I get that it's fun to admire and have parasocial relationships with celebrities but honest to god if you're going to base those relationships on an idea that your celebrity friends are in any way good people I beg you, don't waste your admiration on actors

It's a real shame that the USA's pop culture is all set to go all-in on full-on right-wing fascist revenge fantasies just at the moment when the only deserving targets of full-on right-wing fascist revenge fantasies have been declared off limits by the full-on right-wing fascist revenge government

The AI industry and Fascism 2025 are basically both just scam artists pushing things as hard as they can because they’re trying to get people to believe a new world - that will benefit only those who go all in right now - is just around the corner

RALLY TO SAVE MEANJIN Thursday 11 Sep 9am Outside the Melbourne University Publishing office, 715 Swanston St, Carlton. A number of Australian writers and editors will speak in support of this vital cultural institution

Anyone who’s paid any attention to the Australian film industry over the last few decades knows that “culture” is very narrowly defined by the people with the money and often their definition doesn’t even include the kind of highbrow material they publicly claim to support

What exactly happened to Meanjin? And why in this manner? Some excellent observations (and questions) from @catrionamp.bsky.social over on @crikey.com.au: www.crikey.com.au/2025/09/08/m...

“I didn’t *leave* no witnesses”

Love how the end of HIGHEST 2 LOWEST is literally a music mogul going “nah, hip hop is dead bro” and instead signing up some national anthem singing outro music warbler

The novelisation of JOHNNY MNEMONIC gets more accurate with every passing year

I don’t normally sign these things but I was more than happy to put my name to this one as my loathing for VCs and my outrage at the axing of Meanjin far outweighs my imposter syndrome - and if I can manage it, my many far more qualified followers might also like to do likewise

Love it when a major cultural decision is made for "reasons" and everyone knows the real reason but because nobody's said it out loud nobody's allowed to say it out loud and so everyone is left saying "but this makes no sense" while holding each others gaze just a little bit too long

This manages to be the rare doco that's both about an extremely interesting subject and a quality viewing experience in its own right. I suspect this one will do well - who didn't like John Clarke? - but here's my cheerleading for it anyway: itsbetterinthedark.blogspot.com/2025/09/revi...

I imagine very few viewers of this will have been to Walhalla, but I last visited there maybe 35 years ago and I recognised it instantly, which suggests I haven't been anywhere memorable in the last 35 years. Also, I gave this an extra star entirely for an exploding shack gag that was pretty good

@martynpedler.com Enjoy!

Honestly these days it’s more of a surprise when a big name cartoonist from the past *wasn’t* a massive piece of shit

My hot take on the state of science fiction is that now that it's taken semi-seriously as a way to comment on society it's been overwhelmed by boring MFA grads who write well but create books nobody is excited by, while the crazy nerds who used to drive the genre are happily off writing fanfic

If nothing else, ESCAPE FROM DEATH BLOCK 13 is a timely warning of the dangers of letting prison inmates have access to grenade launchers and miniguns

An ad for the McDonald’s Big Arch burger just came on TV and I said “more like Big Arse” and I guess that’s the poet laureate gig locked in

Just heard that one of the few remaining Australia-wide mainstream outlets for arts reviews (specifically film, books, television and music) will be dumping their review pages from next month. Can't say I'm surprised (there's been pressure to axe them for a long time), but it'll still be a huge loss

The trailer for Shane Black's new Parker movie only confirms my theory that Parker will never work on the screen unless it's in a quasi-arthouse film willing to build itself around a lead who's basically a human shaped black hole into which nothing escapes but a ruthless desire to get shit done

I’ve reviewed a few local nature documentaries for @screenhub.bsky.social this year and I can honestly say this one easily featured the most confirmed kills - we’re talking serial killer, horror movie, blood sprays all over the ocean time: www.screenhub.com.au/news/reviews...

Really surprised nobody has turned UPGRADE into a series yet - a quadriplegic with a secret talking computer chip that makes him a superhero (with a perfect secret identity) so he can track down his wife’s killers does seem like the kind of concept a series could run and run with

My base guide to whether a film (or book, or whatever) is worth engaging with has always been "would I stick around to talk to the person behind this if we were at a crowded party?" which means AI is basically the equivalent of staying in the kitchen to talk to the microwave

I recently read a thoughtful and earnest review of a recent film by an author who was deeply concerned that audiences might sympathise with the right-wing central character, and then I actually watched the film and said character was portrayed as a complete fuckwit after maybe the third scene

WEAPONS kind of falls apart once you realise the creepy kids are running exactly like characters from Animal Crossing

Honestly, these chumps are so stupid if I had any kind of connections to the tech world I would be quietly laying the groundwork for announcing I have figured out a way to make (limited, small scale) time travel possible and I only need $500 billion to conquer space-time itself