Year: 2016

Last night, 80’s parody band Steel Panther rocked The Big Top in Sydney’s Luna Park. If you’ve heard even one Steel Panther song, you know exactly what to expect from their live performance and god, I hope for their sake there was not a single feminist without a sense of humour in the audience. The…

When you see a Stormtrooper or a Pikachu or a Disney Princess walking by you on the street you know it’s that time of year – Supanova Pop Culture Expo is back in town. If you’re a fan of film, tv, pop culture, video games and anime then this convention is the place to be….

Gimme Danger turns the amp up to 11 and never turns down for a second in its nearly two hour running time. Super loud, super charged, and super excellent, this documentary charting the rise, quick demise, and subsequent reunion of The Stooges is one hell of a good time. Written and directed by super fan…

Sophisticated and Austen-worthy, Love and Friendship is a must see. Based on Jane Austen’s epistolary novella Lady Susan, the film centres on the original story’s namesake, played by Kate Beckinsale, a widow with a chain of scandals following her. She arrives at her in-laws’ home and is in search of husbands for her and her daughter. And…

Tune in for this week’s TV picks which are worthy of your small screen. Tuesday Game of Thrones, Showcase, 9:36pm AEST A promising episode where new alliances are forged all in the name of survival and power, and Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton’s armies face off in an anticipated battle. Thursday Cleverman, ABC, 9:30pm AEST…

Richard Kuipers, Programmer of the “Freak Me Out” program strain for Sydney Film Festival preceded a recent screening of The Eyes of My Mother with a fairly apt description: “the point where extreme art house and extreme horror meet”. While art house may outweigh horror here, Kuipers primed viewers correctly, Nicolas Pesce disturbing feature playing…

There was a lot riding on this episode for HBO and Game of Thrones, which inevitably featured Jon Snow finally facing down with Ramsay Bolton as he – along with Sansa and his relatively modest army – sought to wrestle Winterfell from the series’ most despised villain. Traditionally, these kinds of episodes would be the…

Actors Zoey Deutch, Blake Jenner & Glen Powell sit down with Larry Heath to talk about their experiences filming and starring in Richard Linklater’s new film Everybody Wants Some!!. Everybody Wants Some!! is released this Thursday, June 23rd. ———- This content has recently been ported from its original home on The Iris and may have…

Following on from his recent slew of American indie movies, Jake Gyllenhaal attempts his best to command the screen in what can only be described as the standout aspect in the labourious study of grief that is, Demolition. Having celebrated recent acclaim with titles such as Dallas Buyers Club and Wild, Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition sees…

GoEuro – an online service which helps you book flights, buses and trains within Europe – has unveiled a handy new European Summer Festival guide that might help you plan some excellent musical experiences over the coming months. The comprehensive guide breaks down just about every festival happening in Europe across Summer 2016 into a…

Melbourne group Miss Destiny are not one you can pigeon hole into one particular genre. Even their own biography has some troubles, describing the group’s music as “post-hippie, pre-punk era rock ‘n’ roll meets the origins of New Wave of British Heavy Metal, with a glimmer of Sunset Strip feel-good excess”. Say that ten times fast. And…

Singapore Airlines have announced they are increasing their services to California from October, with a new non-stop service to San Francisco on their brand new A350s, and a second daily flight to Los Angeles. From 23rd October 2016, the award winning carrier will commence daily non-stop flights between Singapore and San Francisco. Singapore will be…

A modern day Broadway classic is reimagined by Australia’s rising theatre talent in The Addams Family: A New Musical Comedy, now playing at Theatre Works in St Kilda. It is a perfect venue for the show, small, intimate and filled with dark corners for dark deeds. Telling a simple story set within the walls of…

“Love is a bird that nobody can tame” sing Carmen. Nobody but director John Bell it seems, in the latest dramatic and colourful retelling of the popular opera. Right from the opening notes the music is familiar. The set is like that of a film, lending beautifully to the very film-like opera and bringing everything to…

Glebe marches to the beat of a different drummer. Erudite misfits call it home, as do students, families, travellers and long-time residents. It’s affectionate and invigorating, a place where old terrace houses sit a stone’s throw away from UTS and Sydney University. Future leaders and creatives rub shoulders with the traditional and the comfortable. This is where you’ll find Bombay Street Kitchen. Run…

With the opening of their brand new restaurant Eat’aliano, restaurateur Alessio Ali and Head Chef Pino Russo have decided to bring a little taste of the Mediterranean to the neighbourhood of Windsor, where Asian cuisine has dominated so far. The pair, who previously worked together at Mascalzone Pizzeria in Williamstown, aim to make their wood-fired pizzas the star…

Mulled Wine and Munich Biers will rule during Australia’s official travelling Winter Festival this year as Munich Brauhaus have come on board for a pop-up Bier Hall. The European flavour of the winter festival will also be upheld by a Food Truck focusing on German sausages and a Belgian Waffle truck, sitting alongside award-winning restaurants…

Neutral Bay institution The Oaks has teamed up with iconic Japanese beer Kirin Beer to stage a unique pop-up designed to recreate a Sakaba (an informal Japanese Bar). The temporary takeover has shaped the space into a vintage Japanese garden with traditional lanterns, bamboo archways, and decorative bonsai trees (including an LED cherry blossom tree…

Penny Dreadful season three will conclude this week with a two-hour finale event that will include the season’s two remaining episodes “Perpetual Night” and “The Blessed Dark.” Both episodes are written by acclaimed series creator John Logan, and will see the Wolf of God and Dracula confront one another in a thrilling and ensanguined finale. Ethan (Josh Hartnett), Sir Malcolm…

Satanism has been a film trope in horror films for many years, and it has paid off with fantastic offerings like Rosemary’s Baby, The Devil’s Advocate and The Omen. However, it has also produced some terrible films like End of Days, The Devil Inside and Jennifer’s Body; films that tried to be different but failing for different…

A little bit of a confession before I start this review: I am not overly familiar with Iranian cinema. Apart from films by Abbas Kiarostami and Asghar Farahdi, I haven’t seen a lot of films from Iran, especially genre films. However, I saw a film called A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, a Persian-language film…

John Carney‘s latest effort, Sing Street, made its Australian debut through the Sydney Film Festival. In honor of the occasion we caught up to two of its stars, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo and Mark McKenna to talk about the film. What drew you to the project? How did you get involved with Sing Street?  Ferdia: I went to…

Dark and clever, What’s in the Darkness is in a league of its own being a mixture of crime and coming of age story. Directed by first-time director Wang Yichuan, the story follows teenager Jing (Su Xiaotong) who’s discovering her identity and sexuality. Soon she gets tangled up with a case involving a serial killer…

Disgraced – Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play is an enthralling experience for the audience lucky enough to find themselves in the Riverside Theatre of Parramatta. Director Sarah Goodes, along with designer Elizabeth Gadsby, expertly present the play and encapsulate audiences in a 90-minute sensation that stimulates thought, emotions, and further questions the notions of identity and belonging. Amir…

It’s World Martini Day today (Sunday 19th June) and being a traditionally lazy day of the week we thought you’d want to stay home and mix up some classics so you can still get involved in the global celebration. More so than most other classics, the martini is so deeply embedded in popular culture that…

Hinterland is atmospheric and disturbing – a detective drama of poetry and scale, a story of blood, soil and belonging. The first series of the acclaimed Welsh series ended with a bloody cliff hanger and now the second series will see DCI Tom Mathias (Richard Harrington), return to a world of killers and their victims…

From HBO and the creators of Entourage comes Ballers. Dwayne Johnson plays Spencer, a retired American Football Superstar who is trying to reinvent himself as a financial manager for current players in sun-soaked Miami. Among his prospective clients are Ricky, a talented but volatile wide receiver who seeks to balance his off-field antics with his…

Unapologetic, bold Australian “black comedy” Down Under had its world premiere this past week at the 63rd annual Sydney Film Festival, the only logical platform for Writer/Director Abe Forsythe to debut his second feature film seeing as it concerns one of the most talked about and shameful moments in the city’s history. This inevitably controversial…

As many travellers would know, the Fairmont Hotel and Resort brand is one associated with luxury, with stunning accommodations scattered all over the world. But there’s only one hotel in their chain that’s been built into an Airport, and that’s in Vancouver on the west coast of Canada – the entry point for all Australians who…

The idea of a straight-up solo show is non existent to Sam Simmons. Strewn with all sorts of props on stage, Not A People Person is a show full of random thoughts and solo-sketches that make not laugh at any joke in particular but simply at the absurdity of it all. Simmons gets into a mode…