2025 has been one thwackingly spectacular year – easily the best since party spoiler Covid (boo) exited stage left – the building.

SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK has been along for the ride, with you every step, breath, snicker and guffaw along the way. Cue the look-back…

Back in July, a female BBC newsreader was ‘disciplined’ by the station after she added a single additional word to a news story and accompanied that (spontaneous) modification with a nano-second- length eye expression judged to be a personal condemnation of the politically-correct-nonsense- speak she was forced to read.

‘The Donald’ had a lot of newsworthy moments in 2025. SWS judged this to be the highlight –

I do some of my best movie watching on planes. I watched THE SUBSTANCE (2024) at one o’clock in the morning on a flight back to Brisbane from Seoul, Korea. By the time we landed I was still recovering from the experience. Every person I’ve spoken to since who’s seen THE SUBSTANCE agrees – it truly is one of the most original, mind-freaking films to come along in a great many years.

Saw this one on DVD. Completely loved its quirkiness, something I wouldn’t normally associate Sean Connery with.

Why exactly did this one get the gong? Besides being generally funny, we reckon this bit of hilarity slash absurdity perfectly summarizes the SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK, er… ‘way’.

Argentinian born Lalo Schifrin composed music scores for close to 100 movies, including two of my all-time favorites DIRT HARRY (1971) and MAGNUM FORCE (1973). He is also responsible for the instantly recognizable MISSION IMPOSSIBLE theme.

Those 1990’s tv ads, complete with his distinctive horse-race-commentator’s voice, were cheese-flavoured, ear & eye-worm classics from a bygone era that somehow managed to drill their way deep down into every tv viewer’s of-the-era screen hippocampus (science talk for memory folks – but I knew that you knew that.

I could watch this scene from SUPERMAN 2 (1980) featuring Terrence Stamp a hundred thousand times and never tire of it. It’s so perfect.

What’s more left to say but…

2026 kicks off with a bang and a clang not to mention a thundering thwack on SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK with the January launch of the annual SWS Short Story Writing Competition.

It’s back bigger and badder (ie. gooder) than before with boosted cash prizes. Stay tuned,won’t you!