Author: Larry Heath

Founding Editor and Publisher of the AU review. Currently based in Toronto, Canada. You can follow him on Twitter @larry_heath or on Instagram @larryheath.

Sydney Festival Review: Meow Meow’s The Little Mermaid – Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent, Hyde Park

Positioned as one of the must-see shows of the 2016 program, Sydney Festival mainstay Meow Meow‘s The Little Mermaid is entertaining audiences nightly in the Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent at Hyde Park in a World Premiere production. The show is part two of Meow Meow’s “Little” trilogy – the first part of which, Little Match Girl, was seen at…

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Eight new TV shows to get excited about in 2016!

Though the traditional TV seasons in the Northern Hemisphere runs from September to June, thanks much in part to services like Netflix, there are now more TV shows than ever that exist outside those boundaries – starting just about whenever they feel like! And in the months ahead, a slew of brand new TV shows will…

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Just how cold was it when Kurt Russell and Samuel L Jackson filmed The Hateful Eight?

In the second part of our chat, The Iris’ Larry Heath sits down with Kurt Russell and Samuel L Jackson to talk about filming The Hateful Eight in the cold Colorado weather, and we make some comparisons to Kurt Russell’s performance in The Thing. Watch the chat here: The Hateful Eight is in limited release…

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There’s a Cloverfield follow-up film coming in two months – and we’re only just finding out about it!

For quite a long time now, a secret Bad Robot project had been listed with a March 31st release date. We were starting to suspect that the whole thing was a red herring, or that it was mistaken information by the distributor. But sure enough, JJ Abrams had a film up his sleeve – and it’s a follow-up…

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Looking back at seven of Alan Rickman’s most iconic roles

Just days after David Bowie passed away suddenly from cancer at the age of 69, the great British actor Alan Rickman has been taken from us at the same age, by the same curse. As the cinema world mourns this great loss, we wanted to take a look back at the acclaimed actor’s seven more…

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Why you shouldn’t get excited about this much hyped Friends “reunion”

Given the social media excitement surrounding this Friends “reunion”, we at The Iris think it’s important to put it into perspective. This isn’t going to be some Curb Your Enthusiasm style reunion of brilliance –  as they did in the series with the Seinfeld cast. This is just an interview for a special honouring sitcom director…

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Samuel L Jackson and Kurt Russell reveal what they had to learn for The Hateful Eight and talk Australian Audiences

In the first part of our interview series with Kurt Russell and Samuel L Jackson, The Iris’ Larry Heath sits down to talk about what they had to learn before filming The Hateful Eight, and what it was like watching the film the night before with an Australian Audience. Were we any different from the rest of…

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The Revenant and Aussie flick Mad Max: Fury Road lead unpredictable Oscars nominations for 2016

The 88th Annual Oscar nominations were revealed overnight in Los Angeles by Guillermo del Toro, Ang Lee, John Krasinski and Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs, and like the Globes earlier this week, there were plenty of surprises. Aussie flick Mad Max: Fury Road, and Spielberg drama Bridge of Spies likely sit atop that pile, receiving…

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The director of Creed is set to helm Marvel’s Black Panther

Following Sylvester Stallone’s win at the Golden Globes earlier this week, the director of the latest film in the Rocky series, Creed, as well as the brilliant Fruitvale Station, has been announced as the latest to enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ryan Coogler will take on Marvel’s Black Panther, for the character’s first ever live action film, with…

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Hilarious new trailer revealed for upcoming Coen Brothers comedy Hail, Caesar!

Next month will see the release of the anticipated new Coen Brothers comedy Hail, Caesar!, and today we’ve been gifted a brand new, hilarious trailer for the film. Set during the later years of Hollywood’s “Golden Age”, the film follows ” a single day in the life of a studio fixer who is presented with…

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Live Blog: 73rd Annual Golden Globe Awards

Join us as we live blog from the 73rd Annual Golden Globe Awards. Follow all the action on here, or on Twitter account – and watch the awards live on FOX8! ———- This content has recently been ported from its original home on The Iris and may have formatting errors – images may not be…

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The Revenant, The Martian and Mr. Robot among the big winners at the Golden Globes

It was a night that would prove difficult to predict. For every Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant) or Matt Damon (The Martian) there was a Maura Tierney (The Affair), Lady Gaga (American Horror Story: Hotel) or a Rachel Bloom (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) – a winner who was far from the odds on favourite. It made it an…

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Who Will Win? The Iris predicts the winners of the 73rd Annual Golden Globes

It’s not long now until the 73rd Annual Golden Globes kick off, live from Los Angeles on FOX8 at 12pm (with red carpet coverage from 11am, replayed at 7.30pm) tomorrow, 11th January. Ricky Gervais is back hosting festivities, returning the duties that have been masterfully held by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Expect hilarity –…

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11 films to be excited about in the first half of 2016

Now that The Force Awakens is well and truly embedded in our cinemas, it feels like we have finally come to the end of a period of one anticipated film after another. It was a record breaking year, too, with Jurassic World, Furious 7, Minions, Star Wars VII, Inside Out and the final Hunger Games working hard…

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Pee-wee Herman, Jeff Nichols’ Sci-Fi drama and Tony Robbins among early SXSW Film Festival announcements

Ahead of the 23rd annual South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference Festival in Austin, Texas this March, a handful of films set to screen have been revealed, including four World Premieres. This includes Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, directed by John Lee and produced by Judd Apatow and Paul Reubens featuring Pee-wee Herman on a new adventure, produced…

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“Enthusiasm is contagious…” Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips (USA) talks to the AU ahead of their free Sydney Festival performance

Tomorrow night, US legends The Flaming Lips are set to unleash their incredible live performances in front of some 60,000 punters as they perform a free set for Sydney Festival’s annual “Summer Sounds in the Domain” series. Ahead of the performance, I caught up with the band’s iconic frontman Wayne Coyne just after he’d touched down…

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The Iris’ Ten Favourite TV Shows of 2015

As we look ahead to the Golden Globe Awards on Monday and another year of amazing TV, we have compiled a list of our ten favourite series from 2015. With an incredible amount of competition, this was not an easy list to put together, but here we go… 10. The Weekly with Charlie Pickering  Australian TV…

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CES 2016: Netflix is now available pretty much everywhere in the world

After it took years to get Netflix in Australia, it seemed to take just moments to expand the popular streaming platform to 130 new countries around the world, when the company simultaneously announced the expansion and sent it live during Co-founder and Chief Executive Reed Hastings’ keynote at CES 2016 in Las Vegas. “Today you…

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The first trailer for Baz Lurhmann’s Netflix music drama The Get Down has arrived

“Told through the lives and music of a ragtag crew of South Bronx teens, The Get Down is a mythic saga of the transformation of 1970s New York City.” This is the synopsis for the new Baz Luhrmann series coming to Netflix later this year. It’s set to take us into the music world of NYC…

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Sydney Festival Review: The Weather Station – The Famous Spiegeltent, Hyde Park (06.01.16)

Dubbed “the next great Canadian singer-songwriter”, The Weather Station is the project of Toronto’s Tamara Lindema, whose delicate and beautiful yet precise and complex music has been acclaimed all over the world. And last night she had the pleasure of showcasing it in the first Sydney Festival performance for 2016; opening The Famous Spiegeltent in the festival’s…

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9 music performances not to miss at Sydney Festival 2016

Sydney Festival officially kicks off tonight, and with it are hundreds of incredible performances across some three weeks. Here are the nine shows we think you can’t miss… 9. Girlpool When? January 26th Where? The Famous Spiegeltent, Hyde Park Cost? $39 (plus booking fees) What? The LA duo bring a dynamic blend of instrumentation, raw…

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The “spiritual sequel” to Dazed and Confused to open SXSW; new trailer and poster debuts

Written and directed by Richard Linklater in his first film since the critical sensation Boyhood,  Everybody Wants Some follows a group of college baseball players in the 1980’s as they adjust to the freedoms and responsibilities of unsupervised adult life for the first time. It’s being dubbed as the “spiritual sequel” to his classic film Dazed and Confused (1993)…

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens was Australia’s biggest movie of 2015

Despite only being released two weeks before the end of the year, and with its daily and weekly box office receipts continuing to tally in the millions, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has easily become the biggest film of 2015 in Australia – while it narrowly scraped through to beat Spectre in the UK. According to…

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Live Review: Leon Bridges – Metro Theatre, Sydney (03.01.16)

“We’re here to make you feel good and that’s it” – Leon Bridges, addressing the sold out Metro Theatre as part of his debut Australian tour. Leon Bridges is a consummate performer; something rather extraordinary given the Texan has only been on the scene for 2 years and one record (the brilliant Coming Home). But in…

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LCD Soundsystem reunion and Guns n Roses reformation to headline two of the three nights of Coachella

Though the full lineup announcement isn’t due until next month, two of the three headliners have been leaked in the leadup to the New Year for the iconic Coachella Music Festival in California. And as they like to do, the festival is focusing on reformations and reunions to bring in the headlines and the punters…

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Film Review: Daddy’s Home (USA, 2015)

When it comes to reviewing a film like Daddy’s Home, one must take a moment to put things in context. You know from the outset – be it the trailer, the poster, the cast, the Director (Sean Anders, Horrible Bosses 2) or any of the other warning signs – that this is going to be…

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Film Review: Joy (USA, 2015)

If we keep Accidental Love out of the conversation (and he’d wish everyone would), David O. Russell has had an incredible few years. A man who struggled to get films made for almost a decade (following the successful Three Kings in 1999, his only release until The Fighter in 2010 was the underrated I Heart Huckabees…

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Film Review: The Good Dinosaur (PG) (USA, 2015)

There was a time when we would only get a new Pixar movie every few years. Now, for the first time ever, we’re getting three in a 12 month period. This started with the box office smash Inside Out earlier this year and will end with the most anticipated animated sequel since Toy Story 3…

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Short Film Review: Sanjay’s Super Team (USA, 2015)

Accompanying The Good Dinosaur in cinemas this week is Sanjay’s Super Team, a short film which sits on the other end of the spectrum as one of the most original Pixar shorts to date. In the film, which is the first animation from Pixar to focus entirely on Indian culture and religion, a young boy, Sanjay,…

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