Year: 2014

So it appears that Game of Thrones isn’t the only HBO hit returning to screens on April 6, as the third season of comedy series Veep begins on the same day. The show stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Vice President Selina Meyer, and Louis-Dreyfus has already won two consecutive Emmy’s for her brilliant performance. The new…

It seems that Australian audiences just couldn’t resist the prospect of seeing George Clooney, Matt Damon and Cate Blanchett steal priceless art back from the Nazis over the past weekend. The Monuments Men, which Clooney also directed, opened at #1 with an impressive $2.3 million, taking the top spot from action sequel 300: Rise of…

It’s hard to go past a magical Monday evening at the Sydney Opera House, under the light of a full moon with one of Ireland’s most successful and prolific singer-songwriters of all days on St Patrick’s Day. Tonight would be a night where Glen Hansard would showcase early material from The Frames right through to his most recent release Rhythmn…

Back in 2005, then trio The Octopus Project released their second record One Ten Hundred Thousand Million to critical acclaim. It saw the Austin based group reach ears around the world, including my own, thanks in part to support from blogs like Pitchfork. Since then, the “indietronica” group have expanded to a four piece and…

the AU review talks to The Used‘s Bert McCracken about their new album Imaginary Enemy, living in Australia, Australian bands he loves, the situation with the Sydney Lock Out laws and more… Photo by Kane Hibberd

Hype Machine’s Hype Hotel has been a mainstay at the SXSW Music Festival for as long as I’ve been attending the event, and this year was no exception. At the venue’s opening night, co-presented by music blog Consequence of Sound, a mixed bag of musical delights were shown off for our consumption, alongside some tacos…

Though the bright green Spotify House has been part of SXSW for a few years now (this is the third year they’ve been at the event), 2014 marked my first visit to the venue’s electric lineup. From Blondie‘s Deborah Harry joining Dum Dum Girls to hosting the hottest emerging talents – there was no shortage…

Isabella Rossellini steps onto the stage in front of a full house at Her Majesty’s Theatre to rousing applause. She is carrying a basket with two bunches of flowers, one of beautiful blooms and one of weed-like plants and explains how the blooms act like foreplay to the insects, which fertilise the flowers, whereas the…

After helping bring some of the world’s biggest artists to Austin during SXSW – from Coldplay to Soundgarden – alongside the hottest talents of moment – from London Grammar to ScHoolboy Q – the iTunes festival ended its inaugural five night run during the event with Australia’s biggest country star Keith Urban sharing the stage…

So Maggie wants to go one way; Sasha wants to go the other way; and Bob is just happy that he isn’t left alone – as he has been two times prior to joining the group. ‘Alone’ presents us with a group that has less ties to each other than the other groups; splintered together…

Scarecrow is another disenchanting cookie cutter, urban legend based horror TV movie, in a long list of similar movies under Director Sheldon Wilson’s belt. It’s not that the actors aren’t semi-decent, in fact there are some familiar names amongst the cast, Lacey Chabert from Party of Five anyone? Or that the special effects aren’t top…

The Time Being is one of those slow burning films that seems to take hold of one’s mind in a gentle unrealising way. The poignant undercurrent of the film would be nought, without the skilful persuasion of notable actors Frank Langella (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Robot & Frank, Superman Returns) and Wes Bentley (Lovelace,…

Jump throws its hat into the ring alongside other intricately woven crime comedies such as Rock n Rolla and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, working with situational humour and solid investment in story set-up, to unravel a finale that falls into place almost seamlessly. Based on a stage play of the same title by…

The musings of a self obsessed man-child might have been a more apt title for this film. Whilst on one-hand it could be held up and examined as a simple artful drama revolving around human behaviour spiralling out of control, it could just as easily be seen as a self indulgent, unsympathetic look at a…

A towering monument on the Brisbane River, the Park Regis North Quay has become a go-to destination for Brisbane bound travellers (be it for business or tourism) since the 24 floor hotel opened in 1998. We stayed for two nights in a 1 bedroom apartment overlooking the beautiful Brisbane River – blessed with similarly kind…

the AU review talks to Jarvis Cocker and Steve Mackey from the now legendary Sheffield band Pulp to talk about the new Pulp documentary that premiered at SXSW 2014, directed by New Zealander Florian Habicht (Love Story). You can also view our interview with the director over on The Iris, HERE.

For the third night of SXSW music, it was pretty much business as usual after the tragic events of the prior night, though for yours truly it was difficult to get excited to line up for hours to get into any of the night’s biggest shows. Thankfully, one of my favourite bands of the moment…

With Jess’ sister thrown into the mix, we were expecting only one thing from this episode: trouble. New Girl did not fail us, kicking off immediately with a game of “Sky Knife”, in which knives are thrown into the ceiling. From there, the crux of the episode was gotten to quite quickly: Abby wants to…

Smart, sobering and quietly haunting, Blue Caprice recounts the horrors of the notorious 2002 Beltway sniper attacks. The poisoning and corruption of rational thought creates a chilling portrait of insanity and at its core, a toxic father-son relationship. The Iris sit down with Isiah Washington who stars in the film, ahead of its Australian release…

“Sometimes silence is a scream.” Such is the conclusion the unnamed protagonist of The Missing Picture comes to, after pondering his father’s starvation-suicide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. The unusual style of this poetic documentary is anchored by the intricate clay figurines made for the film, representatives of the Old and New people…

It’s the most wonderful time of the year for television lovers; we are mere weeks away from the season premiere of the fourth season of TV juggernaut Game of Thrones. Fans have been waiting patiently since the third season ended last year, with the fate of the Seven Kingdoms unknown (unless you’ve read the books…

Lars Von Trier’s latest film, Nymphomaniac is quite an ambitious project for the Danish director. The film is split into two parts (Volume I and Volume II), the first of which was screened in its extended form at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. The commercial release of the film is another matter though….

Just days after the opening of 300: Rise of An Empire, the trailer has dropped for another long-awaited sequel to a stylised graphic novel adaptation from the mid 2000’s. Released in 2005, Robert Rodriguez’s film adaptation of Frank Miller’s Sin City was an experiment in how visually faithful a film can be to its source…

Sometimes out of the horror of war there are unusual and intriguing stories to be told. One of these is that of The Monuments Men, a group of civilians tasked with rescuing stolen art masterpieces and culturally important work from the Nazis and returning them to their rightful owners. From the opening sequence we are…

RAKE goes into courtroom procedural overdrive this week when Cleaver Greene agrees to represent no less than four men at four separate hearings in one day. Sydney is in a legal frenzy: there are five royal commissions and seven ICAC hearings taking place at the same time. Every other lawyer in town is tied up,…

3D action sequel 300: Rise of an Empire came out victorious at the Aussie box office over the weekend. The long-gestating sequel to 2007’s 300 took an impressive $3.17 million over the weekend, beating out last week’s top film, Non-Stop. The goodwill held over from the original film definitely helped Rise of an Empire, and…

Back in 2012, I had the privilege of joining Jake and Stav of Bluejuice as they took to the skies with the wonderful guys at Red Baron at Sydney’s Bankstown airport in their flagship Red Bull Stunt Plane. There are only two ways to describe it: exhilarating and nauseating. Both myself and Jake didn’t return…

We caught up with singer-songwriter Simone Felice ahead of the March 14th release of his new album Strangers to find out a bit more about the new record, his thoughts on the state of radio, the Americana revival and more. Hi, how are you? Hi Simon, it’s nice to hear from you. Yeah, it’s great…

Just wrapping up a massive Australian tour, Richard Fortus – famed guitarist of Guns N Roses and now The Dead Daisies – takes some time to chat to the AU about how he approaches The Dead Daisies and their reputation as a supergroup; what’s in store for him both as a solo artist and as…

Following the SXSW special screening of the new Wes Anderson film The Grand Budapest Hotel, Austin was graced with the presence of Mr. Anderson himself, in conversation with director Richard Linklater and accompanied by the film’s music supervisor Randall Poster and actor/long-time collaborator Jason Schwartzman. In addition to the comment on the possibility of sequels,…