Running from Iran and back again – How do you find home when you don’t know where your heart is?
Persepolis tells the story of a smart and rebellious girl who finds herself growing up without a place to call her own.… Read the rest
Untraceable is an enjoyably crappy thriller, that makes you ponder the validity of the title. The lead is a single mother who works for the FBI, researching internet crimes. She stumbles upon a site on which a kitten is tortured on a live-feed cam, while this is being discussed in an adjoining chatroom.… Read the rest
Juno just had sex for the first time at sixteen and finds herself with a bun in the oven. What to do: abortion or adoption? Friends and parents weigh in, but it will have to be her choice. And that first choice leads to other difficult choices that have to be made about her baby’s future.… Read the rest
Aliens vs. Predator – Requiem delivers exactly what was advertised, no more, no less. While the title characters duke it out in a small town in America, plenty of humans – often entirely defenceless – get caught in the fray and are duly slaughtered in a variety of nasty ways.… Read the rest
I love time travel stories, even though they generally drive me nuts. The first Terminator movie made fictional sense: something bad came out of the future and this future could not be avoided because – in a sense – it had already happened.… Read the rest
Phoenix Wright: Justice for All is the middle part of a trilogy of games that were ported from the Game Boy Advance for the Nintendo DS. In all three games, you play defence attorney Phoenix Wright and have to get a ‘not guilty’ verdict for your clients by doing research, gathering evidence, picking apart testimony in court by cross-examination and by presenting evidence at the appropriate moments.… Read the rest
I seem to have accidentally run into a recurring theme in the books I have been reading lately: mental issues. I am choosing to see this as a fluke rather than a cosmic warning, but it is interesting nonetheless. In Running with Scissors the narrator is actually the most sane person in the book.… Read the rest
Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star sounds like the kind of book you would read with one hand in your lap. But this is not the case – for better or worse, depending on your expectations. It is the autobiography of Rich Merritt, better known in xxx-rated circles as Danny Orlis.… Read the rest
Sweeney Todd as filmed by Tim Burton plays like the demented flipside to Moulin Rouge!, sharing the stylised sets, the flashy zooms, the bigger-than-life acting and the overwhelming melodrama. This is not a bad thing. The story: a barber takes revenge on the judge who
sabotaged his marriage, locked him up and took his daughter.… Read the rest
If you’re ever visiting an Asian country, beware of vengeful pale women or little girls with runny mascara and long black hair. They seem to be all over the place these days, with a morbid fascination for multimedia. They’re making prank phone-calls, showing up in the static on your tv, ghoulishly abusing the internet or haunting videotapes.… Read the rest
