Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Movie Review

It’s not because I loved the book (click here to read my short yet dissatisfied review) that I had high hopes for Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. A movie version, directed by the very creative Tim Burton, and featuring a cast of excellent actors including one of my favourites, Eva Green, as the titular…

What I watched on TV this summer

Now that the summer is ending, and the fall tv season is around the corner, I wanted to look back at what I watched over the holidays. Though I technically watched all these shows on my TV, none of them were actually broadcast over the summer. The shows I enjoyed (The Night Manager, Black-ish, Star…

Kubo and the Two Strings – Movie Review

There aren’t many animation studios left, but I’m really glad that there’s Laika (who also brought us Coraline and The Boxtrolls), the kind of studio willing to put a lot of craft into their movies (they’re still committed to stop-motion animation!), and tell imaginative tales rooted in folklore and fantasy. Kubo and the Two Strings…

Jason Bourne – Movie Review

I realize that I wanted this new Bourne movie, but now I wish that they’d left the franchise alone. With Matt Damon back to reprise the role, and director Paul Greengrass returning too, I expected a wonderful return to form (helping us fans forget about the detour into Aaron Cross/Jeremy Renner territory). At first, things…

Star Trek Beyond – Movie Review

I guess it says something that a die-hard Star Trek fan like myself took so long to see Star Trek Beyond. (Why did they call it that, anyway? The title makes it seem like the Enterprise crew is going to travel outside the galaxy or something, rather than stay in the nebula-around-the-corner.) This is…

2016 Fall TV Preview

Well, now that the TV season has ended, it’s time to enjoy the summer. But before we all head outside into the sun (Yah, right!), we can take a quick glimpse at what’s coming in the fall (and winter) to network TV. Granted, the sands of television are definitely shifting away from the networks towards…

Captain America: Civil War – Movie Review

So the summer blockbuster season has officially begun! Civil War really kicks the Marvel super-hero franchise up a notch by bringing together most of the characters introduced in previous movies, along with a few new ones. Enough kids have finally arrived at the playground for us to stop playing catch and start a decent baseball…

Seven Summer Movie Sequels 2016

Wow, it’s been a while since I made it out to the movie theatre! But now that we’re all gearing up for summer blockbuster season, I thought I’d pick out seven sequels that I’m looking forward to seeing. I know it’s a little sad that summer movie season is made up of so many sequels,…

Oscar Schmoscar 2016

I’m really cutting it down to the wire this year (since the Oscars are tomorrow) to give my two little cents on some of the nominated movies. As usual, please don’t expect me to predict the winners or have some Oscar-calibre comments. I started this series of annual posts when I didn’t really care about…