Movie: Gayby Baby First-time feature director Maya Newell has a voice of maturity beyond her years. This film is an achievement in telling the stories of four Australian children, and their parents, who are all same-sex couples. The kids are great kids: loving and empathetic, and – as one of them says jokingly, occasionally pure …
Author Archives: cafedave
rather die than change
Around ten years ago I read an article on heart attack survivors that proved people would rather die than change – given simple lifestyle changes to make, that would literally save them from having another, this time fatal, attack, the majority of people were unwilling or unable to make the change. Changing (especially after a certain age) …
movie: Last Cab to Darwin
Movie: Last Cab to Darwin I wanted an Australian film with lots of footage of the Northern Territory, and it offered that and more. Michael Caton (The Castle) is excellent as a Broken Hill cab driver who takes his first ever trip out of the town he was born in, in search of the NT’s …
netflix: Rage
netflix: Rage This is one of those movies where you wonder how anyone signed on for it, how it was made, and then you are just lost in the awfulness of it and struggle to look away. One for Cage-completists only.
A day (almost) without podcasts
A lift to the train station meant that it was too late, by the time I realised, to go back home for the earbuds I’d left in my jacket pocket. And so I faced to prospect of a whole day without audio entertainment, until I was finally – hopping In the car for an evening …
book: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Even though I read the sequel when I was a child, I’d never actually read the more famous prequel. As it turns out, it probably only takes about an hour to read in its entirety – it’s a very short, dark, child-friendly tale, hard to read without hearing the songs and picturing the visuals of …
Bedtime stories
One of the joys of reading bedtime stories is, through repetition, seeing the evolving ways the kids interact with stories. Tonight we read The tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck, a story about a good natured but simple duck who is (spoilers) unaware that her fox landlord is preparing to roast her for dinner. The story is …
Customer service
I had another reminder of the gap between my own understanding of what constitutes a simple user experience, and what a less-savvy computer user might deem simple. We still have a long way to go, but I’m continuing to learn. When helping someone use a computer, as in many things, listening is more important than …
book: the magic pudding
Book: The Magic Pudding When I was in infants school, there was a 4-volume illustrated series about the Magic Pudding, but volume (aka ‘slice’) two was always on the book repair shelf, and couldn’t be read. It turns out that Kel had a copy of this book, so over the weekend I read it aloud …
Netflix: the hundred foot journey
Netflix: The hundred-foot journey. Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Manish Dayal provide some strong performances in something of a formulaic story, but the parts about food and cooking lift it to be a better film than it would otherwise deserve to be. Reminds me of Ratatouille, Doc Hollywood and the Netflix Chef’s Table story in equal …