Year: 2014

From the man that brought you La Femme Nikita, Leon: The Professional and The Fifth Element comes yet another stylised badass individual out to settle some scores whilst simultaneously attempting to advance humankind through a very thinly veiled pseudo-science and psychology subplot. Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is our hapless damsel unwittingly roped into being a drug…

There’s finally peace in Northern Ireland, but some people have not buried the past.  This is the premise behind first-time director Nathan Todd’s A Belfast Story. Colm Meaney (The Commitments, Layer Cake, Con Air) plays hardened detective James, who, like many of his generation in Northern Ireland, are living in times of “peace”.  In his…

One of the great things about Danny Boyle’s work is that it’s so damned colourful. Even when times are tough and the characters are going through hell, there’s always technicolour and light and thumping music. Ok, maybe not in 28 Days Later, but in the majority of his movies. It helps us digest some of the bleaker…

A few weeks back, Sydney based singer/songwriter Jack Carty emerged with his brand new single “The Joneses”, the lead track from his upcoming third long player, co-written with the one and only Josh Pyke and set for release in late September this year. Following the single’s release, Carty and his housemates have created and released…

Sydney’s Chicks Who Love Guns have returned – following the success of “Pencil Neck” – with their latest single “The Deep End”, which is being released as a 7″ alongside a slew of East Coast shows – kicking off in Sydney this Saturday at Q Bar. Until then, enjoy the brand new video clip here:

In an interview with Gigwise published yesterday, Bastille’s frontman Dan Smith was quoted as saying “I reckon The 1975 will be headlining festivals in a year or so”. In our interview with The 1975 today in Sydney, we asked Matthew Healy he they thought about the opinion. Calling the bands “mates” and humbled by the…

Following on from our feature on DEATHCATS yesterday, today we bring you the next band in our series highlighting Glasgow based bands – We Came From Wolves. We sat down with the band while at T in the Park in Scotland, and we’ll leave it to them to let you know what they’re all about,…

To celebrate the release of 20th Century Fox’s masterpiece Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, VICE’s Motherboard has partnered with Fox to produce Island of the Apes – a documentary that travels to Liberia to visit an isolated island that is home to former lab-tested chimpanzees. Here is a synopsis for the documentary: Our crew traveled to…

Los Angeles based producer Squeak E. Clean and the Brazilian DJ Zegon formed North America/South America (N.A.S.A.) born out their friendship, shared inspiration and love of music from both continents. This documentary looks at the making of their world renowned debut album Spirit Of Apollo with unlikely but brilliant collaborations such as Chuck D +…

A Most Wanted Man is an espionage thriller about terrorists. But despite this genre, the film contains no explosions, gun battles or high-tech special effects. Instead, it has more in common with The Ides Of March, in that it is a tense and dramatic labyrinth of power plays where rivals with competing agendas use political…

  Kicking off in Melbourne tomorrow is the annual Melbourne International Film Festival. The Iris will be bringing you tonnes of coverage from the event throughout its two-and-a-bit week run, but before it starts, on the off chance you’re still not sure what you want to see, we bring you our picks of the festival…

Larry sits down with Liverpool’s Circa Waves to talk about their first ever Australian tour, their local tour with Metronomy on the back of Splendour in the Grass and their upcoming UK shows with The 1975 and The Libertines. We find out what’s coming next for the band musically and how life on the road…

In their first Sydney concert since their much lauded Opera House headline gig of 2012, First Aid Kit have returned to Australia, fresh off the release of their new LP Stay Gold, here as part of the Splendour in the Grass contingency. Tonight’s performance at the Metro Theatre may be a bit of a step…

Fresh from being a part of Splendour in the Grass this weekend, we catch up with Brisbane’s The Creases to talk about their whirlwind of a year – from landing the triple j spot at Laneway to touring with Jake Bugg – their “British sound”, the debut EP Gradient (out now!) playing Splendour and much…

Watch Ash Grunwald perform “Breakout” LIVE in Singapore during Music Matters, back in May 2014. Filmed exclusively by the AU during the Sound Gallery event, put on by Sounds Australia in Clarke Quay. Watch it here!

As we pretend to pay attention to the Commonwealth Games, we are getting exposed to the city of Glasgow, in all its many colours. But here at the AU, we’re only really worried about the music. So, we headed to Scotland’s T in the Park to meet a few of the bands who call the…

When it comes to festivals in Australia, if it’s not a rare free event, it’s expensive. Though sold out, Splendour in the Grass this weekend, including camping, was over $450 for the three day (and a bit) event. Not including flights, transport and day-to-day costs, like $8 beers (I can only assume). Finding a single…

San Diego Comic-Con took place over the last weekend. The biggest pop-culture convention in the world has become the best place for film and TV studios to make their biggest announcements, and fan response within the halls can often gauge how anticipated a certain project is. While there was no massive bombshell dropped this year…

Dwayne Johnson’s big-budget re-imagining of the Hercules legend managed to take the top spot at the Australian box office over the past weekend, taking $3.51 million. This one really could have gone either way. Johnson is as popular as ever and is now considered a bankable leading man. Director Brett Ratner is commonly known as one…

Continuing a stellar run for Australian cinema in 2014 is the fantastic low-fi apocalypse drama These Final Hours. It’s a brutally honest examination of the human condition when the end is near, that covers every emotion on the spectrum in just under ninety minutes – and a neat reimagining of a well worn genre to boot….

Friday night saw Ben Howard finally make it across west for a sold out show at Perth’s Astor Theatre, kicking off a run of dates that sees Howard also take to the stage at Splendour in the Grass. Yet this was a show, as Howard revealed, that came ever so close to being cancelled, with…

At the end of last week, before he hit the stage in Sydney with Phantogram and headed to Splendour in the Grass, we sat down with electronic maestro Mas Ysa to talk about his debut EP Worth, the success of “Why”, what we can expect from his full length, his stage show and much more!…

the AU review sits down with Oscar Cash and Joseph Mount of UK group Metronomy while in Sydney, following their performance at Splendour in the Grass. We talk about their latest record “Love Letters”, their epic stage setup, their return to Australia, T in the Park, their plans for the months ahead, highlights of the…

Larry Heath sat down with two-thirds of Australian comedian trio Axis of Awesome just before they hit the stage back in May 2014 at the YouTube Fan Fest. You can now listen to our full conversation here:

the AU review sits down with Icelandic artist Ásgeir Trausti to talk about his debut record “In The Silence” and his first trip to Australia for Splendour in the Grass – as well as a couple of sideshows with Airling. We talk about the long lifespan of the debut record, and get some news about…

the AU review interviews Adelaide Hip-Hop Trio Hilltop Hoods to talk about their new record Walking Under Stars – out August 8th – ahead of their appearance at Splendour in the Grass over the weekend! We also talk about their experiences in the UK, Europe, USA, Canada, their favourite festivals, the Adelaide hip hop scene…

In one of those “yes, there is a service for that!” discoveries, AU Abroad was recently introduced to iFLYflat, a program that offers “Financial Planning for Frequent Flyer Points”. We sat down with the Founder/CEO, Steve Hui, to talk about about how the program started and we get a look at how frequent and infrequent…

It’s a simple question with no straight-forward answer, “What would you do?” if it really was your last day on the earth, if you knew it was all going to end, how would you spend your final waking moments? These Final Hours examines the dystopian world that James (Nathan Phillips) must navigate as the remaining…

It’s hard to believe that we are nearing the release of the final film in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, not to mention the final film in his entire Middle-Earth saga. The first Hobbit film, An Unexpected Journey, was met with varied response. Fans of The Lord of the Rings relished the chance to spend as much time as possible in Middle-Earth, while others were already…

The 5th annual Korean Film Festival in Australia (KOFFIA) in set to hit cinemas around the country through August and September 2014 and will bring a complement of 20 feature films and a short film competition to Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne and Adelaide. KOFFIA will visit Sydney’s Event Cinemas George Street from August 13-21,…