Year: 2015

Last night marked the end of yet another successful Sydney Film Festival as the traditional Closing Night Gala saw SFF awards announced and the world premiere of Neil Armfield’s anticipated film adaptation of Holding the Man. Before the screening, which was met with a rapturous, emotional applause, a one-hour awards ceremony was conducted in Sydney’s…

If you didn’t manage to catch British comedy series Toast of London when it first aired on the ABC, you best drop everything you’re doing right now and take a trip to your local shopping centre to grab series one on DVD. Written by Matt Berry and Arthur Mathews, the show centres around Steven Toast,…

From prolific Oscar Winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Freakonomics and dozens of others) comes the much talked about new film Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, one of three films Gibney has showcased at this year’s Sydney Film Festival (the others were Steve Jobs: The Man…

Most of the crew involved in We Are Still Here are veterans to the horror genre, and their collective talents come together beautifully in this half satire, half serious story. Director Ted Geoghegan pays homage to the vintage and slightly cheesy, always stringing a thread of self-awareness through the film while it unfolds with a…

East England county Norfolk is a drab, scrappy location for Guy Myhill’s The Goob and it’s got just the atmosphere necessary to tell a tale of one family’s disquieting struggle with abuse and oppression that runs alongside the portrayal of a young boy’s – the family’s youngest – need for identity and a stable role…

What do you get when you make a Woody Allen film with Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Parker Posey in an unconventional awkward love triangle and throw in some existentialism? You get Irrational Man and the first trailer for it has arrived. Director Woody Allen has kept a tight lid on the script for this…

In our 55th instalment of “Stumbled Upon”, we meet Ohio’s The Speedbumps, and chat about meeting at university, their collaborative process and their brand new album, Soil to the Seed. Band Name: The Speedbumps Website / Social Media: thespeedbumps.com Facebook / YouTube / Instagram Genre: Indie Folk Members & their roles: Erik Urycki – Guitars,…

Fresh from playing Singapore’s Music Matters, Perth group Our Man in Berlin have announced a national tour (sans Adelaide unfortunately) in support of their five track sophomore EP Spirit Down, due out June 19th – the title track off which has already been making waves. Combining melancholic, guitar based songwriting with dense, rhythmic electronica, Our…

Marquee Las Vegas are temporarily lending us their main man, Jason Lema to rock the upcoming Belvedere Winter Ball White Party at Marquee Sydney. It all goes down on June 27th, and with Lema in charge we thought it’d be a good idea to catch up with the renowned DJ to get a picture of…

Following its success at The Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, and at Universal Studios Japan, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is set to open at the world’s original Universal Studios Park, in Hollywood, in Spring 2016 (Autumn in Australia, should we get technical). Though this has been known for a…

In the lead up to the release of Terminator Genisys we take a look at a featurette with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Emilia Clarke discussing the “The Guardian”. With the much older Arnie going up against his younger Terminator self it’s a case of two for the price of one! But the role of “The Guardian”…

In an exclusive interview which took place last week during the Sydney Film Festival, I got to sit down with acclaimed filmmaker Ramin Bahrani – a man who critic Roger Ebert hailed as “the director of the decade” before his passing (in turn, 99 Homes was dedicated to Ebert) – to talk about his new film 99 Homes,…

After two successful seasons, showcasing the finest in cult and now classic cinema from around the world, In The House will be returning to Sydney’s Event Cinemas on George Street this September for their third season – with a special screening of Akira taking place at the end of July along the way. The third…

Set against the backdrop of the early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. centers on CIA agent Solo and KGB agent Kuryakin. Sound familiar? That’s because we’re talking about the popular 1960s television series of the same name, which is getting a cinematic revamp courtesy of Guy Ritchie (Lock…

All those hardcore fans of the ladies of Litchfield Correctional, rejoice! Orange is the New Black returns to its Netflix home today (June 12th) with a third season guaranteed to impress. Following on from the events of Season 2 where fans were introduced to the terrifying Vee (Lorraine Toussaint), had our hearts broken with the back…

There was some big news yesterday for those of us who travel to the US. Qantas and American Airlines (AA) announced they’d be expanding their trans-Pacific relationship, which will introduce AA to the popular and competitive Los Angeles to Sydney route for the first time, while Qantas will return to flying direct from Australia to…

Next weekend, in the Kent Countryside of the UK, a special festival will be held dubbed Camp Wildfire for the first time. In one hand, it’s a unique concept in itself: an adventure camp by day, a music festival by night, featuring a secret lineup of bands and DJs. But the three day event (held…

After taking home the Oscar for Best Picture earlier this year, the critically acclaimed Birdman has been released on DVD and Blu-Ray today in Australia, following its digital release last month. You can read our FOUR AND A HALF STAR review of the film HERE. We got our hands on the Blu-Ray edition of the…

If director and cinematographer, Thomas Burstyn (This Way of Life) appeared on Who Do You Think You Are? It would be one fascinating episode. His family tree boasts a poet-turned-businessman father, an explorer brother and a mother who became a fashion designer after fleeing the Nazis. In Some Kind of Love Burstyn describes all of…

New in films that unexpectedly leave you completely satisfied and slightly breathless: Victoria, a two-hour, one-shot, action-drama from Director Sebastian Schipper. It’s a film that takes you all over the late-night streets of Berlin as the sun slowly creeps up and the fallout from a chance encounter continues to get more and more intense until…

To even try and explain a Roy Andersson movie is a mission in itself; his signature absurdist and surreal style is often laced with dark comedy, providing an introspective view into humanity. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch and Reflected on Existence is the third instalment from Andersson’s Living Trilogy –  films about “being a human being” – following…

Hellen Mirren’s award winning portrayal as Queen Elizabeth II in stage show The Audience will see a brief resurgence as it returns to Australian theaters. Recorded live at the National Theater The Audience follows the Queens meetings (also known as audiences) with England’s prime minister, a practice that has spanned 60 years. Mirren received a Tony award…

The 2 part mini-series adaptation of Kate Greenville’s multi-award winning novel The Secret River will be released on DVD on June 24. This epic tragedy dramatises the British colonisation of Australia in microcosm, with the dispossession of Indigenous Australians made comprehensible and ultimately heart-breaking as Will Thornhill’s claim over a piece of land he titles ‘Thornhill’s Point’….

Fresh from his crowd pleasing appearance on ABC’s Q&A, American philosopher and activist Cornel West appeared at The Astor Theatre in Perth for the first of a series of lectures around Australia, speaking primarily about race relations and the forced closures of aboriginal communities. Over the course of his career West has been a regular…

In our last feature we brought you our favourite boy band songs from the 90s – but now, it’s all about Girl Power. Who will ever forget the empowering women of that decade, with their anthemic hits of love and independence? Here, we celebrate their ability to mend broken hearts and their dance moves that changed a…

Apple held its annual World Wide Developer’s Conference in San Francisco over the weekend and announced a slew of brand new software updates across all of your favourite Apple devices from desktops to mobiles. We’ve got all the coolest announcements in one place. iOS 9 The next version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 9,…

It’s been 22 years since Jurassic Park, and long have us fans of that very first film waited for a sequel that was worthy and lo we finally have it in Jurassic World. We can now safely relegate those other two films into extinction and rest assured that this is now an honourable contender for…

By Popular Demand, Sydney Film Festival (SFF) are thrilled to release a third round of screenings at Palace Cinemas for 10 films fast approaching second screening capacity. Eight features and two documentaries make up the selection at the Palace Verona and Norton Street cinemas. This extended partnership beyond the end of the festival is a…

It feels like we’ve been waiting a long time for this, and now it’s finally here. Or at least the teaser trailer is. Mockingjay Part 2 sees the world of Panem at full-scale war with the Capitol, headed by evil President Snow (Donald Sutherland). He’s made it his mission to destroy our heroine, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence)…

A trailer for The Walk, a new thriller starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, has been released. The Walk, directed by Forrest Gump and Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis, is the true story of a death-defying plot to complete a walk between the two buildings of the World Trade Centre. Philippe Petit (Gordon-Levitt), with the help…