Year: 2017

Album Review: Lorde’s Melodrama (2017 LP) lives up to the hype

When “Liability” came out, it sucker punched me right in the face. You start listening to it and you’re like, ‘Oooo this is nice’, and then the lyrics sink in and your face turns red and the tears start welling and then BAM! Emotions! Lorde has a way of doing that. She knows how to…

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Live Review: Sarah Blasko + Cameron Avery – Melbourne Recital Centre (15.06.17)

As part of her The Soloist National Tour, Sarah Blasko left her audience head over heels in love after her performance at the Melbourne Recital Centre on Thursday night. Performing without a band for the first time, Blasko laid bare her iconic voice and melted the hearts of everyone present, triggering a stand ovation. Opening the…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Call Me By Your Name (Italy/USA, 2017) is a near-flawless picture that celebrates the universality of love

Thoroughly engaging, immensely poignant, and remarkably evocative, Call Me By Your Name functions as both a coming-of-age tale and a love story, likely to surprise viewers as to where it travels on both accounts. Based on the novel by Andre Aciman, and co-penned for the screen by director Luca Guadagnino (A Bigger Splash), James Ivory…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: The Little Hours (USA, 2017) is a fun, irreverent, often non-sensical comedy

Fans of off-kilter comedy should find something of value in Jeff Baena’s quirky spoof The Little Hours, a play on the 14th-century Giovanni Boccaccio novella The Decameron. With hefty doses of witchcraft, torture, and pan-sexuality peppered throughout the script, it’s not hard to see some viewers being confounded by Baena’s film just as much as those…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: The Go-Betweens: Right Here (Australia, 2017) is a love letter to a seminal Aussie band

The story of The Go-Betweens had previously been largely untold save for Robert Forster’s autobiography, Grant & I. But the film, The Go-Betweens: Right Here is set to change that. It’s a wonderful music documentary that plays out like a love letter to a seminal, Australian band. It also dives head-first into the melodrama, adventure,…

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Vivid Ideas Game Changer Shepard Fairey talks early days of street art, comsumerism and ‘selling out’ as festival comes to a close

With a career spanning close to 30 years, Shepard Fairey is a veteran of world street art. In Sydney to talk as part of Vivid Idea’s Game Changers program as well as unveil a new mural work (his largest to date) and exhibition, he spoke of his early days building the now iconic Obey project…

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Canadian Club are bringing “bad sweater” themed pop-up parties to Sydney this June and July

Canadian Club are running a string of “bad winter jumper” themed events across Sydney over the coming weeks in the bid to warm up your cold, winter evenings. Happening at venues Greenwood, The Bucket List and Casablanca, guests can expect the venues to be transformed into winter wonderlands with unique DJ line ups and giveaways…

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There’s a free Nutella food truck making its way along the East Coast this month

Yes you heard right, as if New South Wales wasn’t Nutella crazed enough, as if we already didn’t have enough Nutella cafes or Tella bars or chocolate festivals where Nutella is uber prominent in everything or infamous donuts filled with chocolatey hazelnut goodness (I’m looking at you Krispy Kreme). Those sexy evil geniuses at Nutella…

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A new Sydney Seaplanes experience is taking off at Rose Bay

Sydney Seaplanes with its fleet of five planes has recently completed the construction of a new upscale terminal at Rose Bay, featuring a lounge, restaurant, discreet VIP space, function area, and flying boat museum. A Sydney Seaplanes Flight to Palm Beach The Sydney Secrets 30-minute scenic flight ($285 per person, minimum 2 adults) tours around the Harbour…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Wind River (USA, 2017) is a tight, often brutal thriller

Having proven his worth as a screenwriter with both Hell or High Water and Sicario, Wind River serves as scribe Taylor Sheridan’s directorial debut.  Arguably arriving with high expectations, Sheridan’s tight, often brutal thriller proves his workings with such professionals as David Mackenzie and Denis Villeneuve has paid off, showcasing an ease behind the lens…

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The Iris’ Favorite Games from E3 2017

The Electronic Entertainment Expo is over for another year and before we finally rest our weary heads, we have to sort through our feelings, try and rebuild everything we saw and experienced over the last three days and figure out what we liked the most. The Iris Games team takes you through our favourite titles…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Una (UK/USA, 2016) is a gripping abuse drama that thrives through unhesitating commitment

It would have been too easy for a film like Una to result in something unreservedly perfunctory. The fable of the abuse victim confronting her perpetrator has been depicted more than one would wish to count, and the argument can be made that a fair share wishes to portray the subject matter no more than…

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Theatre Review: Wireless is eerily eruptive, quietly volatile and infinite in a confined space – Judith Wright Centre, Brisbane

A show five years in the making – Wireless is eerily eruptive, quietly volatile and infinite in a confined space. A slightly different experience every time, the show works on ambient technology bending to the will of the performers in this dance theatre conquest. Director and Choreographer Lisa Wilson explained the show is deeply rooted…

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Theatre Review: SLUT packs a lot of heart in a little show (Performances until 24th June)

According to the contestants on this year’s series of Masterchef, 30 minutes is not long enough to infuse a dish with the flavour punch the judges are looking for. But it’s more than enough time for the cast and crew of SLUT, on now at the Old Fitz theatre. This whirlwind of a play is…

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Mel Gibson and John Lithgow join Mark Wahlberg & Will Ferrell in the first trailer for Daddy’s Home 2

The sequel to the 2015 smash comedy Daddy’s Home has received its first trailer and it’s a star studded affair that’s shaping up to be hilarious. Sean Anders directs again as Dusty (Mark Wahlberg) and Brad (Will Ferrell) join forces to provide their kids with the perfect Christmas. Their newfound partnership is put to the test when…

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Single of the Day: Queens of the Stone Age “The Way You Used To Do” (2017)

Queens of the Stone Age have well and truly started whipping up the excitement surround their return to Australia for Splendour with the release of their new single, “The Way You Used To Do”. The first cut from their highly anticipated new album Villains (produced by Mark Ronson, so there you go…), the single is a solid return…

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Happy Birthday, Purple Sneakers: How the PS name has become part of Sydney culture

Purple Sneakers have been, over the last eleven years, elevated to royal status when it comes to keeping Sydney’s nightlife pumping…especially now in the face of current adversity. When the collective and music blog celebrated a huge 10 years in the game last year as part of VIVID Sydney, the lines of people eager to get into…

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Music Video of the Day: Julia Jacklin “Eastwick” (2017)

Now enjoying the Spanish sunshine, having recently relocated to Barcelona, Julia Jacklin keeps on delivering some classically winning vibes with her new single, “Eastwick”. The release comes off the back of her nothing-but-successful Australian tour and ahead of some incredible international festival appearances including Glastonbury, Newport Folk and FYF Fest. Before she returns to Australia for Splendour…

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Applications for band showcases at SXSW opening this month

Keen to get yourself to SXSW this year as a showcasing artist? You’ve got your chance, with applications opening online this June 26th. SXSW enters its 31st year in 2018 and this March, celebrated another wildly successful year in Austin, Texas. Out of the 240 bands who submitted applications, 70 bands were invited. Over 40 bands from Australia…

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The National Indigenous Music Awards is set to shine at the Darwin Amphitheatre this August

The National Indigenous Music Awards has unveiled its line up for its 2017 ceremony and for another year running, the Darwin event has shown itself to be one of Australian music’s shining lights on the annual calendar. At the Darwin Amphitheatre, the crowd celebrates the country’s Indigenous talent under stars, in a tropical vibe unlike any…

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Mushroom’s ‘Golden Ticket’ returns – get in the running to win a year’s worth of tickets!

Who likes paying huge amounts of money for tickets, am I right? With some of the year’s biggest tours under their belt, the Mushroom Group have bended to a desire to act as Santa to many music fans, opening up their annual Golden Ticket competition for another year. Fancy this: access to a year’s worth of tickets to…

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IO Interactive goes 100% independent, takes Hitman franchise with them

For fans of the long-running Hitman series, last month’s revelation at that publisher Square Enix was parting ways with developer IO Interactive came as a shock. What would happen to the Hitman IP that IO created? Would the rights remain at Square Enix? Would IO Interactive collapse? An open letter from IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak indicates…

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Tech Review: Panasonic Lumix GH5 is the Little Mirrorless Camera that Could

I got to know Panasonic’s brand new flagship mirrorless camera for two weeks. At first we eyed each other dubiously — a full-frame freak and a mirrorless crop? How could we ever get along? But as we got to know each other, I fell more and more in love with its ease of use, its…

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Groundhog Day has a dark side in the debut trailer for Happy Death Day

It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, from Groundhog Day to recent teen drama Before I Fall, a character wakes up to the same day repeated, every day, trying to convince everyone around them they’re in a time loop. But what if you woke up to the same day, straight after your murder? That’s the question…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves (Canada, 2017) is unwieldy but compelling

Audacious is definitely the right word to start with when it comes to describing the Mathieu Denis and Simon Lavoie-directed Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves. At 180 minutes, it’s a leviathan of a film that often comes across as equal parts provocative and indecipherable. The central narrative here centers on…

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E3 2017: Hands On: Destiny 2 (PS4, 2017)

My overriding impression of Destiny 2, admittedly accrued from a period of only thirty minutes, is that it is very similar to the original Destiny. This assertion will be cause for either concern or elation depending on how much you already like Destiny. 

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Wild Mouse (Austria, 2017) spectacularly spirals down the rabbit hole of the modern mid-life crisis

Making his directorial debut, penning the script and holding the starring role, Austrian actor Josef Hader has impressed festivals around the world with the dark comedy Wild Mouse – which has had its Australian premiere this week as part of the Sydney Film Festival. The film stars Hader as Georg, a classical music critic who…

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Adelaide Cabaret Festival Review: Tina Del Twist is Gold Class

You can tell the moment that Tina Del Twist (Wes Snelling) lurches out onto stage, with a bottle clutched in her hand, knocking over several props along the way, that this is going to be a wild ride. Introducing her band, visible to only Tina, she reminisces about her recent “world tour”, which we suspect…

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Cast revealed for the stage adaptation of the beloved Aussie classic Muriel’s Wedding

Put on your best ABBA outfits because Porpoise Spit’s most iconic export Muriel Heslop is back, and this time she’s singing! A new musical adaption of one of Australia’s most beloved films, Muriel’s Wedding, hits the stage this November and after a long and exhaustive search the new Muriel has been found! Newcomer Maggie Mckenna…

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Theatre Review: I Love You Now is a funny and complex portrait of love and infidelity – Eternity Playhouse in Sydney until 9th July

June is married to Leo, but she’s also having an affair with his twin brother Rob, and her personal trainer Hellmut. And a Catholic priest, John. Leo, meanwhile, is sleeping with Rob’s sister Michelle, his therapist Dr Shaw, as well as the family au pair Melissa. On top of all of this, June and Leo…

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