Friday night was my first time at Geelong’s latest music venue, Church. Unassuming from the outside, the converted church building is now a bar, complete with a stage and enough standing room for 150 people. For locals, this a huge feat. Sure, we’re only an hour from Melbourne, but to have something like this on…
Following the release of their latest album Hoggar, Malian Tuareg band Tinariwen have announced an Australian tour, taking in Melbourne, Sydney, Byron Bay, Hobart, Brisbane, as well as two shows at WOMADelaide. Formed in northern Mali in 1979, Tinariwen champion their people’s nomadic culture, rooted in the desert borderlands between Mali and Algeria. They are…
Films centred around degenerative illness are often walking an unenviable tonal tightrope. Push too hard towards inspiration and the characters can become vessels for an uplifting message; lean too heavily into suffering and their lives become defined entirely by their diagnosis. Onwards and Sideways understands that living with Parkinson’s can be frightening, exhausting, frustrating and,…
Onwards and Sideways may begin with a diagnosis, but its beating heart lies in everything that diagnosis cannot define. Oscar-nominated director John Madden’s tender, unexpectedly funny drama stars Rhys Ifans and Laura Linney as Tony and Emma, two strangers diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at the same clinic on the same morning. What initially binds them…
Diagnosed with the same degenerative disease, at the same clinic, on the same day, Tony (Rhys Ifans) and Emma (Laura Linney) may suddenly find themselves bound by Parkinson’s, but Onwards and Sideways is far more interested in everything that makes their experiences entirely their own. For Oscar-nominated director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love, Proof), that…
At a certain point in a long-term relationship, “When are you having kids?” seems to stop being considered an intrusive question and instead becomes accepted small talk. Marriage apparently isn’t enough of a milestone. Happiness isn’t enough of an answer. There must be a next step, and for Annie and Aaron, the wonderfully lived-in couple…
Rebel Wilson clearly has an enormous amount of affection for the girl groups that soundtracked her formative years. Spice Girls, All Saints, Destiny’s Child and The Pussycat Dolls all hover over Girl Group, a bright, loud and relentlessly enthusiastic musical comedy that wants to bottle the particular euphoria of watching a group of women harmonise,…
