Author: Chris Singh

With six episodes to weave a coherent first season, the team behind Fear the Walking Dead certainly took their time, carefully (and sometimes clumsily) building a bunch of everyday characters, spanning three different families, into a distinctive and likeable group of potential zombie apocalypse survivors. Some of this was successful but most was not, with…

The largest publicly voted music awards in the country, The Age Music Victoria Awards, have announced the nominees for 2015, highlighting the best of contemporary, Victoria-based Australian music in the past 12 months and celebrating the enormous success of our very fine, very strong industry. As always, the awards will also shed light on the…

Trimming the fat of a large scale dance festival, Fuzzy’s Listen Out has gotten the boutique angle exactly right for the past few years. The music starts around 2pm – when most would rock up to a festival anyway – and rolls out some of the best international and local party-starters across three stages. It’s…

There has been enough fuss over Johnny Depp going into Black Mass that the commercial reception of the film is pretty much locked in; the trailers released in the lead up have all signaled a substantial turn for Depp, whose biggest role in recent times has been as a highly exaggerated and energetic pirate. Any…

18 year old Brisbane musician Max Chillen is certainly drawing influence from all the right places, citing the likes of LCD Soundsystem and TV On the Radio as inspiration for his off-kilter sound. The multi-instrumentalist is just about ready to showcase his dark dance-punk style to a wider audience with a six-song EP, titled Coffin…

The EB Games Expo has come and gone for another year; three days of video games and tech with some of the biggest, most exciting, upcoming titles. Developers such as Bethesda and EA DICE had booths set up, showcasing their latest works as either playable demos or extended previews, and in true EB Expo fashion,…

Sydney’s KLP (AKA Kristy Lee Peters) has teamed up with unstoppable Melbourne rapper Remi for her new track “Recover”, a sure-shot hit for Australia’s festival season with its breathlessly energetic vibe. Full of Kristy’s layered vocals and Remi’s witty lyricism, the hyperactive song is yet another strong offering from the multi-talented Triple J House Partyhost….

Giant cats. Explosions. Lasers. Run the Jewels have released the first official video from their new remix album Meow the Jewels, giving us some visuals to the meow-tastic “Oh My Darling (Don’t Meow)”. The results are as off-the-wall as you’d expect, mirroring the album’s larger-than-life concept with two giant cats who take over what looks…

Author and professional heartbreaker George R.R Martin has let some pretty big news slip: Game of Thrones creators D.B Weiss and David Benioff are in the process of taking their hit HBO fantasy to the big screen. This opens up many possibilities and brings up a few questions. Will the movie be at the end…

It’s here! The long-awaited official trailer to the X Files reboot has been sprung upon the internet and fans of the show are losing their minds. FOX released the two-part trailer, giving us a look into what Mulder and Scully are up to after all these years, in between showings of Gotham and Minority Report….

Online streaming service Stan have launched all 236 episodes of Friends in HD and to celebrate they are bringing something pretty darn special to Sydney. From Monday 5th October a two-week pop-up will be located near Hyde Park in the CBD, recreating the iconic Central Perk café, with free entry and free coffee. The Central…

When the red band trailer for Dude Bro Party Massacre III was first released it struck me, and it struck me extremely hard; I hadn’t laughed that loudly since my eighteenth re-watch of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. Perhaps it isn’t a coincidence then, that Mark from the classic 2003 “disasterpiece” (AKA Greg Sestero) is in…

M. Night Shyamalan has copped a lot of criticism in the previous years, some of it warranted, but most of it an overreaction to his missteps. Granted, The Last Airbender, After Earth, and Lady in the Water were particularly bad movies, right alongside the laughable The Happening which was even trashed by it’s lead actor…

We are now in the second half of the first season of Fear the Walking Dead and the showrunners have decided to flip the script, jumping us ahead nine days to the creation of a safe zone, just one of 12 quarantined areas below the San Gabriel mountains – according to the military anyway –…

Bringing numerous, awkward cultural references and hilariously blunt take-downs, Andy Samberg has nailed his first ever gig hosting the Emmy’s, opening the ceremony with a 15 minute song and an excellent monologue, in which he announces his celeb beef with Amy Pohler, laments sharing a category with Bill Cosby, and threatens the replace an orchestra…

As technological change continues to increase at an exponential rate, more and more gadgets are crossing paths with smart phone technology, with convenient wireless charging now a primary consideration. In the past, such gadgets have focused on functionality and really sacrificed aesthetic, but now that the technology has become more focused, there are gadgets out…

The latest reimaginging of a classic movie comes from Director Ericson Core, who has gone an updated Point Break for release in cinemas early next year. Our first look at the reboot showcases a promising, high-stakes, high-adrenaline action flick which zones in on Johnny Utah (Luke Bracey), a young FBI agent who is in over…

Gaspar Noé has proven himself an imaginative auteur, highly capable of and fiercely loyal to surreal, experimental cinema. He shocked with the unforgettable Irreversible and warped minds with the visually satisfying Enter the Void – undoubtedly his two most famous works – but now he seeks to add a more tender, sentimental touch with Love….

Disney has released a trailer for the live-action remake of classic The Jungle Book, giving us a really epic look into how the 1967 animation will be adapted by Director Jon Favreau. With an impressive cast, including Bill Murray (as Baloo) and Idris Elba (as Shere Khan) along with newcomer Neel Sethi as the very…

It would be hard to deny Unfriended as an imaginative and innovative film; Director Levan Gabriadze takes an initially uninspiring concept and makes it work with admirable attention to detail and a genuine sense of tension. However, in the film’s pursuit of as much realism as possible, the viewer is left unable to escape from…

The last time seasoned actor Tom Hanks teamed with seasoned Director Steven Spielberg was 2004, with romantic-comedy The Terminal, now 11 years later the dynamic Actor-Director duo have re-teamed to deliver a Cold War drama with Bridge of Spies. The forthcoming film, which also stars Amy Ryan and Mark Rylance, is about an insurance claims…

If you had seen what Madison has seen over the course of Fear the Walking Dead‘s first two episodes would you gather your two kids for a good ol’ game of Monopoly before following them out into the night to find a shotgun, while leaving a barking dog in your house, with the damn back…

Brimming with crucial social and political issues, the canvas of the ‘hood film’ has provided film directors with a vast array of meaning for decades, ever since Colors and Do the Right Thing were released to critical acclaim in the 1980s. Almost always bleak, the ‘hood film’, which predominantly deals with African-American and Hispanic-American populated…

Tearaway Unfolded, an expansion of the award-winning Tearaway game, is another inventive gem from the Media Molecule team which has now been released for Playstation 4. While the game is busy attracting acclaim from around the world, mirroring the reception the original Tearaway received in 2013, we at The Iris want to give you a…

Steven Spielberg’s legendary Jaws is about to become much, much more terrifying with an immersive cinematic experience put on by Art & About Sydney and Golden Age Cinema next January. The concept is fairly simple: the screening will take place at Andrew (Boy) Charlton Pool right by Sydney Harbour on Woolloomooloo Bay and attendees can…

On Sunday 18th October at Village Cinemas Crown in Melbourne, the cast of new comedy-drama The Dressmaker will be on hand at a red carpet premiere. The impressive line-up includes Liam Hemsworth and co-stars Judy Davis, Hugo Weaving, and Sarah Snook. What’s more is that the highly acclaimed filmmaking team will also be in attendance,…

1996 classic Trainspotting, a landmark achievement in raw British cinema, has remained the crowning achievement of Director Danny Boyle. Adapted from Irvine Welsh’s novel of the same name almost two decades ago, the black comedy is a reference point for the careers of all involved, particularly Ewan McGregor who played Renton, one of the four…

Straight Outta Compton is fresh of a huge three-week dominance in the U.S Box Office, holding onto the number 1 position despite some strong competition. The N.W.A biopic, which currently has a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, has finally made it’s way down to Australia and at the Sydney premiere we caught up with O’Shea…

At the Sydney red carpet premiere for N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton we talked to legendary emcee Ice Cube about the film’s success, the timeline of the plot, and find out if filming has inspired him, in a similar way to Dr Dre, to release new music. Having put his 10th studio album, Everythang’s Corrupt…

N.W.A have, is, and always will be integral to hip hop and it’s status as one of the most unique, and accessible, forms of self-expression in music. Birthed in the excessively rough neighbourhood of Compton, California, the group became a reference point for hip hop as a channel through which youth can make sense of…