Year: 2024

In the same way that it was quite the baffling result that 2019’s Joker “laughed” its way to a billion dollar haul at the box office, Joker: Folie à Deux and all its “Fuck you” energy to WB fandom and mainstream appeal is a strikingly anti-audience effort that deserves praise for being so bold with its…

“It’s about time we properly celebrate our debut album Liminality at home.” That’s the opener on Future Static‘s Instagram post announcing their first ever Australian headline tour – and we couldn’t agree more. Europe and the UK have already enjoyed a tour in support of Liminality (check out our five star review HERE), and the…

D-Link has announced that it will expand its Aquila Pro range with the new AQUILA PRO AI M60 AX6000 Dual-Band Wi-Fi 6 Mesh Systems. Available as a Single/Add-On unit and in 2-pack or 3-pack, D-Link will continue to bolster the three common Wi-Fi issues, being coverage, speed, and usability. The AQUILA PRO AI M60 range…

Christian White’s The Ledge is a thriller-mystery about revisiting the past and not liking what you find there. Set in the fictional Victorian mountain town of West Haven, chapters alternate between the present and the past, carefully holding the tension between the two in terms of both storytelling and broader themes of nostalgia and growing…

This past week, Australian indie-pop/rock sensations The Rions dropped their much-anticipated second EP, Happiness in a Place It Shouldn’t Be. The six-track offering arrives just in time for summer, destined to carry on the breeze and dominate airwaves all season long. It’s an energetic, heart-filled collection of groovers, set to become the soundtrack of festivals…

Last month I was lucky enough to visit Buffalo, New York for the first time since 2019. A lot has changed in this city since my last visit, but today I want to talk about a restaurant that opened up in August 2023 – Southern Junction. From the outside it looks like a typical Texan…

After almost eight long years, punk pioneers Green Day are finally coming back to Australia, and the excitement is real. 2020 saw the cancellation of their highly anticipated “Hella Mega Tour” due to COVID, leaving Aussie fans hanging. But now, with their “Saviors Tour” set to hit Australia early next year, Green Day are more than…

A five-part short form black comedy series presented by Screen Australia, Buried is a mum-noir comedy thriller created and written by Miriam Glaser & Charlotte George, directed by George, produced by Fran Derham and starring Glaser as Abi, a single mum who accidentally kills a stranger on her morning school run.  With this violent incident,…

If you’re going to have a restaurant in one of the most highly contested areas of Manhattan, you’re going to need a strong offering. Thankfully, Fasano Restaurant is well up-to-task with spritely, classic service and a sense of grandeur that’s a little bit of Rome and 90s New York rolled into one. The thing you’ll…

If you’ve been an Australian for more than about five minutes, you know some of the wild things we can get up to –  legal and illegal. It’s the latter that Australia’s Most Bizarre Crimes author Dr Peter Coleman takes a deep-dive into – the weirdest and wackiest crimes that Aussies have committed over the…

Thanks to polished cinematography, bloody, brutal violence, and another fierce performance from Samara Weaving that furthers her chokehold on horror at large, Azrael transcends any tropes it may flirt with and forges through as a strong example within the post-apocalyptic subsect of the genre. A visceral survivalist actioner with biblical undertones, the Azrael of the title…

Australian rock band Ceres are back with their first new music in five years. Their fourth studio album, Magic Mountain (1996-2022) is out on October 4th and it’s some of their most formative work yet. Laying pretty low over the last five years, it was assumed that the group was on hiatus, and when they…

Operating as a double entendre for both the literal titular roadside placement and the relationships within Jason Buxton‘s tense drama, Sharp Corner lays focus on the vehicular and emotional torture put forth by a series of fatal crashes that take place on a suburban front lawn that kisses the edge of a tight curvature on…

How good is not having to travel more than 15 minutes to get to a gig after a long working week? In short, it’s pretty bloody good. Bringing world class acts to Western Sydney is well overdue, and having Boy & Bear, Middle Kids and Dylan Wright grace the impressive Sydney Coliseum in Rooty Hill…

When it comes to depicting real-life violence on screen, Australian director Justin Kurzel has an enviable history of such.  His 2011 debut, Snowtown, was a harrowing re-enactment of the South Australian body-in-a-barrel murders that plagued the 90s for close to a decade.  In 2021 he represented the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre through the psychologically taxing…

This week English alternative rock stalwarts Maxïmo Park release their eighth studio album Stream of Life via Lower Third Records. Despite logging 20 years in the industry and an impressive eight album discography, Maxïmo Park have crafted a release still brimming with energy. Rooted firmly in the sounds of the late ’90s and early 2000s,…

No stranger to the action genre already due to her work in No Time To Die, The Gray Man, and Ghosted, Ana de Armas looks to take on her biggest, most brutal challenge yet with the forthcoming release of Ballerina; officially titled From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, so as to remind us what…

Elana Stone has been a professional musician for over 20 years, with the multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter’s résumé suggesting she’s vying for the top spot as Australia’s busiest musician. When she isn’t winning ARIA Awards with All Our Exes Live in Texas, lending her talent to Missy Higgins’ touring band, producing, podcasting, writing a musical, or…

While Australia has only ever enjoyed Cirque du Soleil in its traditional touring format (usually in their “Grand Chapiteau” tent – as Luzia will be later this year in Brisbane and Sydney), over the years, select destinations around the world have come to enjoy permanent Cirque residencies. Las Vegas is famed to host the majority…

As I dive into Bright Eyes’ latest offering Five Dice, All Threes released this week, I must admit the band — and its frontman, Conor Oberst — has long eluded my musical radar. Picking up a Bright Eyes album does feel like starting at the end of a long-running series, three decades in the making….

David Williamson is Australia’s best known and most widely performed playwright and one of our leading screenwriters. One of his early plays, The Department was commissioned to open the Dunstan Playhouse in 1974. He has had over fifty five plays produced, including Don’s Party and The Club and written screenplays for several movies such as…

While the traditional E3 showcase is no more, it’s great to see studios and companies like Xbox now headlining events like the Tokyo Game Show, with their unique offerings and upcoming titles. Given that they now head not only Xbox Game Studios but Bethesda, Activision and Blizzard, it makes sense that they would get their stream. We’ve covered every announcement and…

For the final time this month we’ve updated our Discovery playlist on Spotify and Apple Music with ten new tracks, including one we premiered the music video. Singer-songwriter Alex the Astronaut is our Track of the Week this week with their new single “If You Have To Go” which dropped this morning. The track is…

If you’ve ever seen Sigur Ros live before you know just how profoundly powerful the experience can be. Intense, beautiful, joyous. These are some of the words that spring to mind when thinking about this Icelandic band, who are absolutely no strangers to Australian shores. So in some incredibly exciting news, they are coming down…

Prime Video has today unveiled the official trailer for the highly anticipated crime thriller series Cross, starring Aldis Hodge as Alex Cross, a complex, twisted, pulse-pounding thriller created by showrunner and executive producer Ben Watkins, based upon the characters from James Patterson‘s best-selling “Alex Cross” book series. Alex Cross is a detective and forensic psychologist,…

Between such culture-defining videos as “The Boy Is Mine” by Brandy and Monica, Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love the Way You Lie”, Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood”, and, arguably, the piste de résistance that is “Toxic” by Britney Spears, Joseph Kahn has solidified himself as a music video director that transcends mere lyrical inspiration. As a film…

If you grew up in the 90s or even the early 2000s, you will surely have come across one of these titles. I grew up near an Intencity arcade (shout out to those who remember) at my local shopping centre, and spent many weekends and birthday parties slamming my parent’s gold coins into that Marvel…

PlayStation was hot on the heels of their Playstation 5 Pro Announcement, announcing 21 new games coming to the system in 2025, including several new titles for PSVR2. The 40-minute presentation is full of some games you would expect, while some are a complete surprise. We’ve listed every announcement trailer from PlayStation’s September State of…

For the 16th consecutive year, NOVA Employment proudly presents the Focus on Ability Short Film Festival, a vibrant festival which invites filmmakers to celebrate the abilities of people with disabilities, sharing powerful stories that can captivate audiences around the globe. This year has been nothing short of spectacular, with generous sponsors contributing over $100,000 in…

Vampire Weekend performed what they pronounced was their largest ever headline show ever in Canada tonight at the Budweiser Stage in Toronto, Canada, as part of the Only God Was Above Us tour. For the occasion, across a two and a half hour show, the New York band performed the OG version of their Contra…