Film & TV

After debuting last week with the biggest opening weekend of the year with an incredible $8.80 million, Transformers: Age of Extinction has repeated at the top of the Australian box office by taking another $4.84 million over the past weekend. Even with strong competition from returning hits How to Train Your Dragon 2 and 22 Jump Street and relatively strong openings from Rio…

Thankfully, Disney’s latest installment in the animated Tinker Bell series isn’t lacking the accessible and progressive social commentary like it used to, with Tinker Bell & The Pirate Fairy standing as one very well-crafted, cheeky, and inspired work of art aimed at imbuing young girls with something that has a bit more depth than your…

The Travelling Film Festival, an inititative of Sydney Film Festival, is returning in August. The Festival will be held in the town of Casula in NSW from August 1st until August 3rd and will bring with it five diverse feature films from around the globe, as well as two short films. The program will take…

To say Irreversible is tough viewing is an understatement to say the least. When first released in 2002 the film was both universally acclaimed and condemned due to its confronting nature, and now, 12 years on from its initial release, the film is no less threatening. Given that Irreversible deals with unadulterated violence and brutal…

Recently celebrating the landmark sitcom’s 25th Anniversary, the world has begun to reflect on Seinfeld, a show which has had an unparalleled impact on popular culture. The ‘show about nothing’ got off to a lukewarm start in it’s beginning seasons, but ended with an entire globe of TV addicts in tears as the show came…

2010 film Easy Money was a runaway hit in Sweden (so much so that a US remake with Zac Efron is in the works). The film, based on the novel of the same name by Jens Lapidus, centred on Stockholm’s gangland wars, with multiple stories of the descent into darkness culminating in one fatal, climactic…

The cautionary tale of never taking anything for granted has been featured on film many many times before, but in this feature documentary film, When I Walk, filmmaker Jason DaSilva chronicles his life with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), from the moment his legs failed on him to the present day. And it’s anything but your typical…

Spooks and Spirits­ is the story of thirty-somethings Ingi (Gísli Örn Garðarsson) and Anna (Ilmur Kristjánsdóttir), a happy couple on the verge of starting the next big chapter of their lives together. Anna’s father, Ófeigur (Þórhallur Sigurðsson) is recently deceased and the couple plans to sell his house in favour of somewhere more family-oriented. But when Ófeigur makes an…

The Melbourne CBD is currently hosting a sci-fi/pop culture fan’s wildest dream right now, with the guests of this weekend’s Oz Comic-Con event settling into their hotel rooms and the city they’re calling home for the next few days. The pop culture convention, kicking off at the Royal Exhibition Building over tomorrow and Sunday, is…

I know there are time when you have watched Community and sat there wishing you could talk to Shirley about life, religion, and everything in between (at least I hope I’m not alone on this one). Today from 5:30pm to 6pm (AEST) you’ll get your chance. The bubbly Yvette Nicole Brown – who plays Shirley…

The Possible Worlds Film Festival is coming back in 2014, and this year’s program looks better than ever! Celebrating its ninth year, the Festival presents an incredible selection of the best new independent films from the US and Canada. The Festival is presented by Cosmos Tours and run by non-profit The Festivalists. This year’s Festival…

Well we all knew Transformer: Age of Extinction would open big, but did we know it would open this big? The fourth film in Michael Bay’s action franchise took $8.8 million in its Australian opening weekend, giving it the biggest Aussie opening of the year by overtaking May’s X-Men: Days of Future Past. The film also had the biggest US…

  I don’t feel like I’m speaking with a member of a multi-million blockbuster film franchise when I’m speaking with New Zealand’s Dean O’Gorman. His role as Fili in Peter Jackson’s recent film adaptation of the Tolkien-created mythology that is The Hobbit is now golden fodder for fanfic writers around the world and with the…

Fans of Billy Elliot and stage musicals in general will have the incredible chance to see a live performance of the internationally celebrated stage show Billy Elliot the Musical. A special performance of the show will be filmed live on September 28th in London’s West End, and broadcast in cinemas across Australia on Sunday October 5th. The show,…

Community fans rejoice! After hearing the devastating news in May that NBC were cancelling the brilliant and clever Community, things did not look promising. Even though the show was being shopped around various studios in the hope of finding it a new home, it was never certain that we would ever get another season of the show. But…

Horrible Bosses was a huge surprise when it was released in 2011. The film came out of nowhere and ended up being one of the funniest films in recent years, due largely to its creative and somewhat dark premise: what if three friends decided to kill each others bosses? The film was a hit critically and…

So we have come to the end of what was once one of the most popular cable shows on TV. Over the years, the quantity of viewership has regressed right along with the quality of writing, with the show’s relevance relying too much on it’s often likable characters to carry some ridiculously lame plots. Over…

  It’s only been a few months since Jason Dohring and I last saw each other. I remember it well. We were both out the front of the beautiful Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas.  His film, the crowd-funded Veronica Mars movie, was making its world premiere at SXSW and there we were on the red…

Marvel will be taking their biggest cinematic risk so far when they release Guardians of the Galaxy next month. The epic space adventure is set to expand the Marvel Cinematic Universe to the far reaches of space, and looks like the most exciting and different Marvel film to date. Clearly confident of the high quality of the…

Exciting news, Whovians! The first teaser for Doctor Who season 8 has landed, and it’s brought a release date with it. The sci-fi powerhouse will be returning to our screens on August 23rd, which is less than two months away! Although the trailer itself doesn’t reveal much, it does involve  the new Doctor (Peter Capaldi)…

I’ve not watched a huge amount of Swedish cinema in my life, but the few films that I have watched have the same stylistic feature that has led me to believe something about Swedish dramas: that they are characterised by a distinct visual and narrative style based in honesty and stark realism. This realism is…

One country. Two men. Three cities. Two Men In China sees friends- comedian and writer, John Doyle (who is best known as “Rampaging” Roy Slaven) and scientist and activist, Tim Flannery once again taking a trip. This is the pair’s first overseas sojourn as the two have previously travelled across the Great Divide as well…

The movie version of the musical of the same name, Jersey Boys, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel here, and director Clint Eastwood does a solid job and even manages to retain a little bit of that musical flair but it’s not altogether brilliant, nor is it terrible. We’re given the fairly routine storyline…

Performing arts has always been – and will always be – fertile ground for documentary filmmaking. Clashing egos and high stakes in the pursuit of a craft is always going to be fun for a camera to follow, and we’ve seen it work multiple times over in movies like Every Little Step, Mad Hot Ballroom,…

The Iris’ writers count down their top 10 films, released between January 1st and June 30th in Australia! 1. The Grand Budapest Hotel Though there are moments of unexpected violence and cruelty, ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ stands as one of the most joyous experiences I’ve had in the cinema this year. Tackling feelings of loneliness…

Brad Pitt seems to be fighting Nazis in a lot of his movies in recent years. However, from the look of Fury we’re not going to be seeing an bad Italian accents or light hearted art chasing this time around. Set in April 1945, the film centres around a battle-hardened and world weary sergeant who…

In a particularly clever marketing ploy, the advertisements for the third instalment of The Hunger Games franchise are going far beyond stock standard trailers and movie posters. Instead, an immersion tactic has been employed by releasing propaganda posters that address the fictional citizens of Panem. In these posters, different districts are “saluted” in an attempt…

In a move that will make the dictator appear even crazier, Kim Jong Un has threatened violent retribution if Seth Rogen and James Franco’s latest film, The Interview, is released. The plot of the movie is pretty simple – a talk show host and his producer are given the opportunity to conduct a rare interview…

In the lead up to this year’s Tropfest, Tropfest Australia is holding the fourth annual Tropfest Roughcut event on July 26th in Sydney. The engaging and interactive film industry event will include networking sessions, panel discussions, and conversations with industry greats, such as actor John Jarratt (Wolf Creek) and comedian Dan Ilic. The full day…

This is it, we have finally reached the end of Noah Hawley’s black comedy-crime-drama Fargo, inspired by the Coen Brothers film of the same name. Without further ado, let us launch into a recap of the episode and a little discussion, beware there’s thin ice and spoilers ahead. We open with a long tracking sequence,…