Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture

Winter TV 2019 – February Shows

January was a big month for TV shows, but amazingly Netflix and other channels just brought even more to the table in February. Maybe the cold weather is keeping us indoors, but all these exciting shows are a good reason to stay in. One Day at a Time Returning for its third season on Netflix,…

Winter TV 2019 – Sci-Fi & Fantasy Drama

Finally, on to my favourite categories of TV: sci-fi/fantasy dramas. I love how shows can really build a world and a universe; and really open up the experience of these kinds of imaginative characters and adventures in a way that movies just cannot do. I also love how streaming TV has given a channel for…

Winter TV 2019 – Kids/Animated

With all the comedies, movies, and prestige dramas coming to streaming TV, many people may not realize (unless they have kids) that it’s also a channel with a growing number of animated series and kid-oriented shows. Knowing that often their target audiences are the kids of parents who grew up with “Saturday morning cartoons”, reboots…

Winter TV 2019 – Comedy

Whoa my goodness! I’m trying my darnedest to watch over a dozen shows which have debuted or made their season premiere within the last month. In the TV universe, winter has apparently become the new fall. If anyone was still doubtful that streaming had revolutionized the television programming landscape, this should definitely prove it —…

Aquaman – Movie Review

It’s great to enjoy some superhero action during the holidays, and despite the uneven track record of DC Comics movies so far, Aquaman was enjoyable, light, adventure fare. Director James Wan (of Fast and Furious fame) smartly avoided the loud, dimly-lit, incoherent example of Zack Snyder’s Justice League movies, and skewed closer to Wonder Woman….

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – Movie Review

After having seen so many super-hero movies (especially Spider-Man movies) already, I did not expect to be impressed (never mind blown-away) by this movie. It not only needed to bring something fresh to the well-trodden Spider-Man story, but in order to be visually impressive, it also has to compete with Pixar’s animation benchmark and other…

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald – Movie Review

At first I thought the negative reviews for Crimes of Grindelwald might just have been critical, but now that I’ve seen it, I can understand how this movie has been hurt by its overabundance of story. Even the first Fantastic Beasts movie had a hard time deciding if it was about Newt Scamander and his…

Fall TV 2018 – Part 3

After another 2 weeks, the fall TV season is definitely in full swing. I’ve already given up on some shows (Goodbye, Manifest!) and some I’m still waiting out to see (Talkin ’bout you, Murphy Brown!). Another thing I’ve been waiting for has been the new “witch” shows to debut. I was semi-excited for the Charmed…

Fall TV 2018 – part 2

The flood of premieres slowed down a bit over the last couple of weeks, but there were still some interesting premieres with a few surprises. Doctor Who Hugely anticipated was the arrival of Jodie Whittaker as the latest incarnation of the reincarnating Doctor — first time as a woman. In the premiere episode, everything…