A film that’s more interesting due to its circumstances – it was made under strict pandemic rules – rather than the actual story put forth, Ride the Eagle is sweet and well-intentioned, but can’t entirely execute its premise with any flare or depth. A take-at-face-value type dramedy, Trent O’Donnell‘s film centres on the lowly Leif…
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Perhaps the hardest band to google and get reliable information on at the moment, The Vaccines are back with their fifth album, Back in Love City, a fun and energised exploration from a band that has always been capable of creating solid, reliable and catchy rock. Coming three years after their fourth album Combat Sports,…
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It doesn’t take much for director James Ashcroft to create the most horrific of situations from the simplest of ingredients laid bare in the early stages of the eerie Coming Home in the Dark. A loving family, an idyllic New Zealand locale, and a duo of passing strangers provide all that is needed for Ashcroft’s…
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Three Australian artists today find themselves amongst the 38 international winners of the 2021 US-based Unsigned Only Music Competition. Singer/songwriter Alexander Biggs (Melbourne, VIC) and EDM artist du0 (Brisbane, QLD) have both been awarded First Place in their respective categories. Biggs was awarded First Place for the song “Madeleine” in the Folk/Singer-Songwriter category, while du0…
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In Small Joys of Real Life, the debut novel by Allee Richards, main character Eva is coming to terms with some big changes in her life. Though she’s moderately successful in her acting career, she’s never felt as passionate about it as she feels perhaps she should. When she confides this information to Pat, a friend of…
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Indie folk artist Kim Yang, released her debut EP, Ocean of Mind in 2019 and has been cementing her place in the folk world ever since. She has graced the stage with the likes of Tori Forsyth, Ben Lee and Josh Pyke, and performed at the National Folk Festival (2019 and Good Folk (2020). In…
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Spring has sprung, and Gabriella Cohen‘s latest is the perfect track to welcome in the new season. “Frangelico Dreams” offers hazy vintage rock and roll vibes with a contemporary indie twist – just what we need as the sun gets warmer and the days get longer! Fresh from recording in country Queensland while she has…
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If anyone was wondering what travel tour groups were going to look like in the near future, recent announcements from G Adventures – who have been running small group tours with a focus on sustainability since 1990 – may provide some indication or what is to come. The Toronto based company, which offers some 1,000…
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Listening to music as a form of therapy is something that most of us have done. To either lift the spirits, to try and make sense of a personal crisis that we are facing, or to even find a sad song that we can empathise with, music is always there. For Canberra-based Nina Leo, an…
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Thanks to Rialto Distribution we have 5 double passes (Admit 2) to give away for the upcoming release of Die In A Gunfight, starring Diego Boneta and Alexandra Daddario, set for release in Australian cinemas from September 16th, 2021. In New York City, a young guy falls for the daughter of his father’s nemesis. A…
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Thanks to Madman Films we have 10 double passes (Admit 2) to give away for the upcoming release of Pig starring Nicolas Cage, set for release in Australian cinemas from September 16th, 2021. A truffle hunter (Nicolas Cage) who lives alone in the Oregonian wilderness must return to his past in Portland in search of…
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This year’s Toronto International Film Festival is welcoming back a sense of normalcy after the year that wasn’t. Ticket buyers – both those attending TIFF in person and those staying at home with TIFF’s virtual platform – are spoilt for choice, with over 100 films on the line-up, ranging from blockbuster special events, gala screening…
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It’s hard to see how JBL could have arrived at a better design for the latest in their tiny JBL Clip series. The JBL Clip 4 looks infinitely more attractive than its preceding models – a petite oval speaker with a fabric grille all over it, attached to a built-in carabiner that can hook onto…
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Arlo’s Essential series has completely redefined the reliable smart home security brand. I’ve been thoroughly impressed by the balance of price and performance with devices like the Arlo Essential XL Spotlight Camera and Arlo Essential Doorbell. It’s no surprise that the Arlo Essential Indoor Camera continues the series’ dominance over the category, offering a lot…
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The convenience, and now safety, of having stuff delivered straight to your door has been one of the major things helping us get through health-mandated lockdowns since March of last year. And if anything, it’s also exposed just how flawed and backed up a lot of these systems are. Ordering from Coles and Woolies online…
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Consuming alcohol might help slow the brain down and shed a bit of that lockdown anxiety, which explains why alcohol brands have been making bank this year, but rarely does drinking one come with the knowledge that you’re also making a positive impact on the world. C.A.N is out to change that. Australia’s newest vodka…
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PlayStation Showcase will kick off this Friday, September 10, 2021, with a look at upcoming titles from Sony’s first-party video game studios. It’s an interesting time of year for PlayStation to hold a show like this, though unsurprising if we’re honest. Since pulling out of E3 several years ago, and its relative lack of presence…
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Contemporary music accompanying a period set film is not exactly a personality that a production should solely rely on. And whilst this unnecessary, but completely harmless, “re-telling” of the classic Cinderella does its damnedest with admittedly catchy (and colourfully choreographed) numbers – ranging from Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” to Jennifer Lopez’s “Let’s Get Loud”, by…
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Filmed in a “revolutionary” manner, the trailer for the new Peacock thriller My Son highlights the improvisation from actor James McAvoy, who during filming wasn’t given a script or any outline of the story at hand. A remake of the 2017 film Mon Garcon, My Son, co-starring Claire Foy, details the missing persons case of…
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Gesticulations, fronted by Graham Ashton of The Shambolics and Way Cool Jnr., is seemingly in the midst of a purple patch of productivity. They have just released Threadbare, which is their second long-play album of the year, following from Sense of Purgency which dropped in April. Ashton has collaborated again with multi-instrumentalist and producer Benny…
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Best known as the drummer and joint frontman of Grammy Award winning hip-hop band The Roots, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson is adding to his already overflowing resume with the credit of director as his acclaimed documentary Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) releases across Australian cinemas. Uncovering decades-lost footage of the…
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At one point in his career David Arquette was poised to be a potential acting force among the other stars of his generation. He worked the indie cinema circuit, he was profiled alongside such talent as Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith, and Matthew McConaughey, his work in the Scream films earned him box office clout, and…
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Acclaimed author Paula Hawkins (The Girl on the Train, Into the Water) returns with yet another nail-biting thriller. A Slow Fire Burning follows a cast of characters living along the Regent’s Canal in Shoreditch; each of them inextricably linked through events of the last few decades. The murder of Daniel Sutherland inside his canal boat…
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Somehow, a festival situated in the heart of Harlem, one that featured such performers as Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, and Nina Simone, had been written out of the history books. In 1969, a year on from the assassination of Martin Luther King, over six weekends in Mount Morris Park, overseen by the liberal New York…
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As easy as it would be to accuse a film like Streamline of adhering to the stereotypical tragic narrative that seems to be at the undercurrent of the majority of Australian dramas, Tyson Wade Johnston manages to include subtle commentary on the notion of toxic masculinity within the sporting field – here, specifically swimming –…
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Singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Brigitte Bardini has just released her gorgeous debut album, Stellar Lights. It’s a collection of fourteen tracks, wonderfully diverse, showing a maturity way beyond what you would expect for a debut album. It perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise that Bardini produced eight of the tracks herself, and the other six were…
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Familiar with a little father-son friction thanks to his role on TV’s Kim’s Convenience, Simu Liu experiences similar, though considerably higher emotional stakes, but no less dramatic, as the titular warrior-to-be Shang-Chi in Marvel’s latest extravagant offering, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. There’s the typical end-of-the-world dilemma to contend with, but Destin…
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If you’ve ever wondered what Sir George Martin – the legendary Beatles producer – did after the Fab Four split then Under the Volcano is the film for you. Sir Martin remained prolific in the music industry and opened up his own studio-cum-playground in Montserrat. This state-of-the-art workspace was the birthplace of many hits and…
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It’s been eighteen long months since we heard any new music from Brisbane rockers WAAX, but they have returned with a vengeance, blowing the doors off, with “Most Hated Girl” that dropped today. Lead singer/songwriter Maz DeVita says of the blistering new tune: “‘Most Hated Girl’ was definitely a COVID song that came out of…
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Believe it or not, Call of Duty: Vanguard was just announced. And with that release trailer barely two weeks old, PlayStation owners got the chance to test a slice of the multiplayer pie that is yet to come; Champion Hill. For what’s being touted as a brand new mode, feels like a callback to the…
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