Month: August 2020

Lockdown Photography Project: Look Closer

It’s safe to say that my travel options are severely limited right now, what with Australia’s international and state borders slammed shut and Melbourne suffering through Lockdown: Part II (a bigger but not better sequel nobody asked for). But who said that you can’t play tourist in your own neighbourhood?

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Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie – Book Review

Evil Under the Sun marks an important milestone in my re-readathon – if Wikipedia is to be believed, I’m now precisely halfway through Christie’s back catalogue of detective novels with the book review no. 33! Since I officially committed to this challenge back in August 2018, I should probably complete it by August 2022. Let’s hope that the world is in a decent shape by then, or at least limping back to normality.

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Hot Fuzz – Film Review

This action comedy from Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright is a little too long (seriously, which comedy from the last few years isn’t overlong?), but the enormously entertaining finale and the winning buddy chemistry between Pegg and Nick Frost more than make up for its flaws.

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Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie – Book Review

I felt that it was time to strategically sprinkle in another of Christie’s big-time stinkers into my re-readathon. Like The Big Four, Passenger to Frankfurt is another of Dame Agatha’s failed attempts at a spy novel about a world-wide conspiracy out to destroy the existing social order. While the former is just plain terrible, the latter also has the dubious distinction of being probably the weirdest book Christie ever penned, and not in a good way. It was first published in 1970 to mark her 80th birthday, and, at the most charitable, it can be seen as a window into Christie’s view of the world she found herself in the twilight of her years.

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Leon: The Professional – Film Review

A stylish and eccentric thriller that feels thoroughly French despite the English-speaking cast and the New York setting, with Natalie Portman in what surely must be one of the most memorable child performances of all time.

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Toy Story artwork in progress 08/2020

To infinity and beyond! Buzz is now finished, even if he looks a tad creepy at the moment with his blank eyes. After I finish the finer details that are too fiddly to do with fabrics, next is the assembly time, where I put the top and bottom halves of the artwork together on the background, and pray that they fit.