Year: 2015

Summer is here and if one thing Summer is tailor-made for it is fun in the sun. What better way to spend a Summer Saturday than grabbing some friends and family, and heading to Ballarat Beer Festival – Victoria’s original boutique beer Festival, celebrating all things liquid gold on the picturesque Ballarat City Oval on…

Few films of recent years have had ingredients for wonder so specific as Birdman. Michael Keaton portraying a washed up, former comic book star trying to revitalise his career in an inventive script co-written and directed by the man who brought us Biutiful; the potential for amazement is through the roof and somehow, the film…

Joss Whedon’s The Avengers: Age of Ulton is going to be met with alarmingly high expectations, especially with how successful and acclaimed the last Avengers film was. Marvel’s big gun will be hitting up cinemas worldwide come May 1st, and the world has been blessed with another look at the very big, very loud superhero…

This March, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) is set to house Epic Intimacy: The Cinema of Zhang Yimou & Gong Li as part of its China Up Close program. From the 6 – 15 March, enthusiasts are invited to congregate together and celebrate the legacy of the award winning Chinese director and his exquisite…

Surprisingly enough, Taken 3 has topped the box office this week with an astounding $5 million. Albeit stating in 2013 that there would be no further sequels as “she can’t get taken again. That’s just bad parenting”, it appears the masses were keen for more of Liam Neeson doing the impossible. Following behind on $3…

WARNING: This review contains spoilers. “Hitler….Hitler…” was the name on the roll call rather than Bueller for this episode of Danger 5, which had the super team undercover at an American high school. Hitler’s disguise this time is a letterman jacket-wearing jock, who hopes to find a date and be crowned the King of Christmas…

To say that “the stakes are high” would be a gross understatement when being confronted with the new trailer for the third (and assumed final) series of House of Cards, which was released today. We’re so used to seeing Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) as a manipulative, cunning and at times, evil politician desperately trying to climb…

Hannah, Marnie, Jessa and Shoshanna have never really been particularly likeable characters. They’re insecure, self-obsessed, naïve, entitled, rude, and often deluded about their own lives. Why, then, do I keep coming back, season after season, to keep watching their misadventures? The answer to this question has eluded me ever since I first started disliking Girls…

Angels and Airwaves are not your usual band. They are an art project; a multimedia amalgamation who have delivered a brilliant fifth studio album in The Dream Walker. On it, Tom DeLonge (also vocalist of Blink-182) and Ilan Rubin (of Nine Inch Nails) have further explored the dimensions of their own collaborative capabilities, reaching out to different audiences through the themes that circulate…

Next time I’m heading into the city to meet up with friends at Federation Square they will find me round the back enjoying a beer (or two) at BEER DELUXE – isn’t that just the most fabulous name for a place serving over 250 types of beer plus a decent food menu! Tucked at the…

In our 12th instalment of “Stumbled Upon”, we meet Adelaide’s Love Cream, winners of the Australian final of the 2014 Emergenza international band contest and chat about just where their name came from (it appears to be more innocent than you would think) and get a sneak peak at their debut album, First Taste ….

The Secret Garden Festival recently dropped the news that it had completely sold out all tickets for the 2015 festival, which was only testament to the event’s continued popularity and faith from the loyal public who’ve backed it for so long. Today, the Sydney organisers dropped the full line up of artists set to perform…

Ahead of their Australian tour next month, American rockers NEEDTOBREATHE are sharing exclusively with AU review readers their ten favourite songs to listen to on the road. And you know this is a band who spend a lot of time on it. So enjoy these amazing ten tracks and keep it as a playlist for…

Last month we sat down with Queensland artist Karl S Williams backstage at Festival of the Sun in Port Macquarie. We talk to him about his live show, his music, the past year and what might be in store in the future…

A&E’s Bates Motel has two excellent seasons to speak highly for the vision creators Carlton Cuse, Kerry Ehrin and Anthony Cipriano have used to turn this classic thriller into a prolonged and in-depth psychological timeline. Freddy Highmore’s Norman Bates and Vera Farmiga’s Norma Bates are put under the microscope and their unhealthy relationship has been…

Australian zombie flick Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead may seem like your standard post-apocalyptic zombie film, but this trailer is telling us that it’s something much more than that. Made possible by the wonders of crowd-funding, the film is the debut feature from Australia’s Roache-Turner brothers: Kiah (writer-director) and Tristan (writer-producer-production designer), and is quite…

The British Academy Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) have now announced the long list of nominees for the 2015 award ceremony, which will be taking place on Sunday February 8th. Ahead of the pack is Wed Anderson and his exceptional The Grand Budapest Hotel with 11 award nominations, beating both Birdman and The Theory of…

As they wrap up another year of slaying the Golden Globes, the much adored duo of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler bring their dynamism to the bring screen in upcoming Universal Pictures film Sisters. Universal have released a first-look trailer for the Jason Moore directed film, and it’s every bit as hilarious as you would…

Ahead of announcing the complete festival lineup on February 3rd, the 22nd South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival has started rolling out a list of the screenings which will be spread across Texas come March. This year, SXSW has announced their 2015 Opening Night Film, and world premiere BRAND: A Second Coming, by…

Today in Hollywood, the winners of the 72nd Annual Golden Globe Awards were announced at the Beverly Hilton, in a televised award show with Amy Poehler and Tina Fey hosting for the third and final time. As usual, the pair delivered a hilarious opening monologue that took aim at everything from North Korea (a popular topic of…

No matter what you think of the station, Triple J has never been a station to shy away from being the equivalent to the rambunctious rebel that’s chewing gum in an upper-class high school, giving off too many pieces of music trivia that you care about. What it did do for many of us music…

That spin-off/prequel we have all been waiting for is finally here, bringing us back into Vince Gilligan’s beautifully dark world of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It has been almost a year and a half since we said goodbye to the universally acclaimed Breaking Bad so a chance to re-visit one of the show’s most memorable character,…

The hilarious Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are hosting the Golden Globe Awards for the third and final time tomorrow, and though we know they’ll be at their entertaining best – with recent subject matter like The Interview giving them plenty of material – the question really is: who will the Globes voters – the Hollywood Foreign…

Ah the dreaded work week has returned – though with it usually comes some pretty great television. Here are our picks for Free-To-Air TV in Australia for the next three nights: Monday Bones, Ch. 7, 8:30pm AEST Don’t miss the 200th episode of Bones, a Hitchcock inspired tale that borrows all the elements from classic Hollywood…

Ben & Jerry’s Openair Cinemas are back with a bang this summer, bringing music by day and movies by night to Sydney’s Bondi Beach. As part of a nationwide series of events, which are enjoyed by more than 150,000 people across Australia, the Sydney leg of the tour will take place on the lawn by…

In our 11th installment of “Stumbled Upon”, we meet Perth’s Marksman Lloyd , and chat about his latest EP, Rewrite the Ending. Musician: Marksman Lloyd Website / Social Media: www.marksmanlloyd.com Facebook / Soundcloud / Triple J Unearthed Genre: Hip Hop, Indie Members & their roles: Mark Lloyd: Emcee/ vocals What music or artists inspired you?…

German duo Milky Chance (or in the words of Lil Jon: “Ain’t that the diarrhea band?!”) headlined the Metro Theatre on Wednesday night, supported by Penelope Austin. Gwendolyn Lee was there and brings us these photos from the night:

Black Lips performed their dirty southern rock supported by Straight Arrows and Destiny 3000. Pete Dovgan brings you the photos from a very sweaty Oxford Art Factory:

After an incredible year of new Australian music in 2014, we have an incredible array of records in the pipeline for the new year. Some are from bands who we’ve been waiting to hear from again for years… some for the first time… others are continuously pumping out incredible music and we have no desire…

Destination: Waiheke Island, Hauraki Gulf of New Zealand Origin: Auckland, New Zealand Travel Time (Each Way): About 40 Minutes Last month on AU Abroad we took you on a cruise through the Hauraki Gulf off the coast of Auckland, New Zealand. This week we’re taking you to the region’s most populated island – Waiheke –…