Thanks to Madman Films we have 10 double in-season passes (Admit 2) to see the new drama The Whale, starring Brendan Fraser in his acclaimed comeback role and directed by Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, mother!), in cinemas from February 2nd, 2023. A reclusive English teacher living with severe obesity attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage…

Sometimes an artist’s vision is best conveyed through the use of metaphorical imagery.  Reiki Tsuno is not one of those artists! Leaning bombastically far into literal chaos and absurdity, Tsuno’s Mad Cats is a high-art-meets-low-brow martial arts extravaganza that embraces melodramatic nonsense – and is all the better for it. When he receives a message…

Coffs Harbour comedian Ben Stevenson is coping with grief in the best way that he knows how: through comedy. Using his wit as an outlet for the emotions surrounding the loss of his mother, Stevenson created Ratbag – a stand-up routine combining the darkest point in his life with uplifting stories from his childhood. The…

Whilst it isn’t always moving at a tolerable pace, nor does it necessarily answer the questions it raises throughout, Rachel Lambert‘s at-times dreamy dramedy Sometimes I Think About Dying still manages an emotional resonance as it tackles social anxiety and the feeling of disconnection that can stem from such. Daisy Ridley – in a beautiful,…

Seymour Nights in association with Sydney Festival has produced an outstanding series of free concerts this January at the Seymour Centre in Chippendale. Last night it was Elana Stone and Butternut Sweetheart who graced the stage. The weather nearly got the better of proceedings, with a downpour curtailing Butternut Sweetheart’s set.  The advantage of an…

The unexplained corpse of a white woman at the feet of three Black gentlemen doesn’t look good.  Four dead white women looks even worse, and it’s a situation at the centre of Mahogany Drive that writer/director/star Jerah Milligan navigates with precise wit and a social commentary that doesn’t quite travel where we expect it to. Before…

The international tours are back and there are some incredible acts touring Australia in February. We’ve picked five of our favourites bands and artists  that are performing. Ed Sheeran Hundreds of thousands of tickets have been sold to Ed Sheeran’s upcoming stadium + – = ÷ x Tour – (pronounced ‘The Mathematics Tour’). It’s going to be…

Happy New Year! We’re back from our summer break and we’ve had ten new tracks added to our Discovery playlist on Spotify and Apple Music. Our Track of the Week is “Birthmark” from Ontario-based band Dizzy.  The vocals from lead singer Katie Munshaw are gorgeous, with a constant beat, dreamy feels and modern production as…

If there’s one thing you can rely on when it comes to the romantic comedy genre, it’s that if there’s a wedding involved Jennifer Lopez can’t be too far from the fray.  The reliable superstar knows how to play the genre game, but if any audiences are concerned that Shotgun Wedding will play things a…

After 27 years of slicing and dicing his (and sometimes her) variety of assorted victims over 5 films, it’s nice to see the iconic Ghostface rebrand themselves as “something different”; at least that’s what’s being promised to returning franchise player Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) in the first full-length trailer for Scream VI, the hotly anticipated…

Aussie-raised and London-based Thomas Headon has been gaining a legion of fans since he released his debut single “Grace” in 2019. His first two EP’s amassed over 40 million streams, and his 440+k TikTok followers are kept amused with his prodigious output. Last year Thomas embarked on a tour in the US with his good…

As part of their long haul fleet, Jetstar have the distinction of being the only budget carrier that takes Australian passengers directly to the USA. The airline travels a few times a week between Melbourne, VIC or Sydney, NSW and Honolulu, offering an affordable alternative to its competition, as well as being the only airline…

Happy New Year! 2023 is already in full swing and we in the AU Books Team are back and ready to look ahead at some of this year’s most anticipated books. With so many books published each week, month and year, it’d be impossible to read them all. So this is only the briefest snapshot…

An elephant graphically defecates on its unsuspecting handlers, before stomping about in an uneven state amongst a storm of fornicating bodies.  An aspiring actress urinates on the face of a willing movie star in a coked-out stupor.  A tuxedoed lounge singer seductively croons about petting her girlfriend’s genitalia.  A party reveller bounces around on a…

And so we have it, the biggest concert so far this year for Sydneysiders; a packed-out, uniformly excellent performance from indie rock legends Arctic Monkeys and DMAs on support duties. It felt like a festival; it basically was. The Domain has been used quite extensively as a venue over the past few months, jumping from…

Thanks to StudioCanal we have 5 double in-season passes (Admit 2) to see What’s Love Got to do With It?, a new romantic comedy from Working Title Films, the producers of Bridget Jones’s Diary and Love Actually, starring Lily James, Shazad Latif, Shabana Azmi and Emma Thompson. How do you find lasting love in today’s…

Marlon Williams will be bringing his My Boy tour to the East Coast of Australia next month, and has today announced that Isabella Manfredi will be joining him on all dates. This is a stellar addition to what was already promising to be a very special night. Isabella is well known from being the lead…

We’ve got the set times for Laneway Festival 2023, and some important lineup changes. Joining the bill is Windang’s favourite sons, Hockey Dad  – you will be able to catch them at the Brisbane and Sydney editions. Also, the fabulous Julia Jacklin has been added to Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. Unfortunately Baltimore’s Turnstile won’t be…

We’re thrilled that the first slice of new music to be served up by the AU for 2023 is from newcomers Turpentine Babycino. The Mulubinba/Newcastle-based indie-punk rockers launched their debut track late in 2022 with the awesome gritty and catchy “Write A Song Sounds Shit”. Today we have the premiere of “Calamity”, an emotive salve…

Best known as a finalist on the commercial television singing competition, The Voice, Prinnie Stevens is a singer and theatre performer, starring in productions including The Bodyguard and Thriller Live. In Lady Sings the Blues, Prinnie brings her Tongan Catholic heritage to stage and maps out a life and love of strong women in music….

Sitting in the audience at Werk It you’d be forgiven for rubbing your eyes and questioning what you’d imbibed prior. The 60-minute show performed by Circus Trick Tease was pretty much all killer, no filler. This was a crazy array of jaw-dropping stunts and circus artistry with lashings of sass and innuendo. As you walk…

Canadian bluegrass four-piece The Dead South are heading to Australia and New Zealand for the first time ever this month, supported by The Hooten Hallers. The sold-out tour will see the beloved band play seven shows back to back up the East Coast, returning to Northcote Theatre in Melbourne before two shows at Auckland. Due…

Many Sydneysiders are already familiar with Blanc de Blanc. Strut N Fret’s incredibly flirtatious, Champagne-fueled stab at high-class cabaret has played around the city for years, popping up every so often at different views including a sell-out season at Sydney Opera House. Now, it’s back. And quite honestly, we should all be so glad that…

Emily tells the imagined life of one of the world’s most famous authors, Emily Brontë.  The film, written and directed by Australian actress Frances O’Connor (in her directorial debut), stars Emma Mackey as Emily, a rebel and misfit, as she finds her voice and writes the literary classic “Wuthering Heights”; further exploring her raw, passionate…

“It’s an ugly book, full of selfish people who only care for themselves” isn’t exactly the sterling praise one would reap upon something as treasured as “Wuthering Heights”, but it is how author Emily Brontë’s work was described by her older, more traditional sister Charlotte upon finishing it; or, at least, that’s how Frances O’Connor…

“Rest is weird.” – This is how Elizabeth Stokes, guitar, singer and one-quarter of the formidable team, band and fast friends that are Auckland’s The Beths, starts our interview. 2022 saw them perform around 94 gigs in over a dozen countries as they took the chance to promote not one, but two albums that have…

Right from the opening of M3GAN it’s obvious what type of film Gerard Johnstone‘s A.I. horror-lite is going to be: one that doesn’t take itself remotely seriously, has its wink poised at the audience, and knows you can’t think it’s ridiculous any more than the creators already do. If its trailer didn’t already clue you…

The new year’s festivals have come and gone, and the next mighty explosion of music is the 2023 Laneway Festival. We’ve done the hard work for you, and assembled a list of all the sideshows. Many have sold out, but there are still a handful of shows with a few tickets left. Amongst the artists…

Translating a video game to screen is no easy feat. There have been so many examples of terrible franchises that companies try to cross over and while some work (Sonic, Detective Pikachu) more often than not they fail spectacularly (Resident Evil on Netflix, Monster Hunter, Silent Hill). What these adaptations fail to understand is an…

Originally scheduled for an early release starting in January of 2022, the sudden pulling of Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre from the theatrical schedule certainly didn’t bode well for a film that, from all appearances, seemed like a certified success.  Yes, it wasn’t uncommon for films to shift during the time period due to the…