Touring in a country you’ve had a unique connection to will always be different to other shows and tours. Coming back to the country you lived in and married into, will always give you reason to perform at a level that goes beyond what could be expected from a touring act. For Ben Folds, playing […]
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The line between short stories and poetry is thin in Mandy Beaumont’s debut collection, Wild Fearless Chests, which was published earlier in the year by Hachette, off the back of a shortlisting in both the Richell Prize and the Dorothy Hewett Award run by UWA Publishing. The collection readers were promised was a catalogue of […]
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Gwyn is in a bad way. Imprisoned in the dungeons of the Clockwork City, visits from interrogators and torturers are becoming routine. But, then a wizard walks in with something she’d thought long lost. A memento from a life left behind. And suddenly the words start coming. Ascepis and his caravan. Lucian, the shapeshifter. Her […]
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Sex Education was a sleeper hit for Netflix in 2019. The show starring Asa Butterfield, Ncuti Gatwa, Emma Mackey and Gillian Anderson and a whole bunch more, finally brought some real world teenage angst about relationships to the small screen. Otis (Butterfield) whose mother Jean (Anderson) is a sex therapist, decides to team up with […]
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Bold, brash, and – dare I say – breathtaking, Bad Boys for Life may go down as one of 2020’s biggest surprises. Being squashed into the oft ignored mid-Jan release cycle with reviews embargoed until the 11th hour is not a good sign for any film really, but the long-gestating third outing for 90’s born […]
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The latest book from Gary Janetti, Do You Mind If I Cancel? might be a small one, but it contains some big laughs. This collection of essays recalls Janetti’s time as a twenty-something year old living in New York City. It is a book that will appeal to fans of David Sedaris and his colourful and […]
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Lynne Truss is an author with many feathers to her (detective’s) cap. She is the renowned grammarian who wrote Eats, Shoots & Leaves as well as a journalist by trade. Her latest release is The Man That Got Away, her second crime novel. It’s another offbeat book starring some bumbling Bobbies, Brighton Belles and British bandits. […]
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Sorry We Missed You is the latest film from acclaimed British director Ken Loach. Loach has made many great films over the years that delved into social realism. Great works like I, Daniel Blake, It’s a Free World…, Vera Drake, The Wind That Shakes the Barley; all examined the gritty undertakings of the British environment […]
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One of the pleasures of watching films is the feeling of surprise and enjoying the journey and not knowing where it will lead you. In other words, a little mystery goes a long way. In the case of Freaks by co-directors Adam B. Stein and Zach Lipovsky, it comes with an interesting premise that has […]
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In her new collection of essays, through the lens of reflecting on her reading and writing, Debra Adelaide reveals much of her own story. An avid reader from a young age, Adelaide recounts her early encounters with Tolkien at the local library, laments her own inability to reduce the number of books in her home (no matter […]
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Some of the cinema history’s most acclaimed films have revolved around stories of journalistic, procedural or investigative narratives. And with most of the selected group based on true stories, it begs the question: how can you make a gripping film where you already know the outcome of the story? Case in point: writer/director Scott Z. […]
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The 1960s set Ford v Ferrari might not sound appealing to anyone with limited knowledge of or interest in the world of motor racing. But, in the world of cinema, any story can work, regardless of its premise, thanks to the themes it examines. In the case of director James Mangold‘s latest, these universal themes cover […]
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Horror comedies are a sub-genre that are hard to pull off successfully. One has to steer tonal shifts smoothly and juggle both laughs and scares with skill and balance; all whilst not overwhelming or underwhelming on either front. Successful horror comedies include Sam Raimi‘s horror entries — The Evil Dead Trilogy and Drag Me To […]
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“Uptown Funk”, “Shallow”, “Valerie”, “Joanne,” “Late Night Feelings,” and the list goes on. Producer, songwriter, musician and singer, Mark Ronson has contributed to some of the biggest songs and records of modern times. In How to be Mark Ronson, fans are given a taste of the man behind the music and learn that this subject […]
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The Griffith Review is known for its rich collections of thought-provoking writing and picture stories. The 64th edition, The New Disruptors is no exception. It is a deep dive into the world of technological change, from the recesses of the dark web through to those new opportunities for change. This instalment is edited by Ashley […]
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Downton Abbey was a television show filled with glamour, wealth and manners. For six seasons, viewers were treated to a bird’s eye view of the community connected to that famous British estate. While the film adaptation could have become just an extended episode of the series, this film instead manages to hold its own as […]
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The unnamed narrator in Ruby Porter‘s Michael Gifkins Prize winning debut novel Attraction can’t seem to get her mind to focus. She and her girlfriend, Ilana, and her best friend, Ashi, are on a road trip to the narrator’s family beach house in New Zealand’s North Island. The trip is one of escape for our protagonist, but […]
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The year is 1926, and American model Lee Miller has arrived in Paris. Leaving behind a successful career at Vogue, she’s ready to take her place behind the camera, rather than in front of it. After convincing surrealist Man Ray to take her on as his assistant, she begins her education, but soon finds herself […]
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The town that makes up the main setting of Tony Birch’s new novel The White Girl is a fictional one, but it could have been anywhere in Australia. The novel tells the story of Odette Brown, an Indigenous woman who was raised on the mission in Deane separated from her family, and in particular her father. She lives on […]
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A suburban family finds a prehistoric egg. A lonely woman aids a fallen angel. An American woman plots to take the Parisian honey industry by storm. These are just a few of the moments captured in Bindy Pritchard‘s stunning short story collection Fabulous Lives. Curious, yet always relatable, Pritchard’s vignettes are filled with the sort of […]
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The year is 1930. With talkies on the rise, the age of silent cinema is coming to a close, and it seems there’s someone on the Berlin streets who’s not quite ready to let it go. Cinema starlets are showing up dead at an alarming rate and, as if Inspector Gereon Rath doesn’t already have […]
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In October 2017 when the hashtag #MeToo went viral, a lot of the popularity was chalked up to some rich, white celebrities speaking out. What these media reports failed to acknowledge however was that the movement’s true founder was Tarana Burke. This new anthology, #MeToo: Stories from the Australian Movement, is broadens #MeToo’s scope, whilst […]
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The body count is high in Amanda O’Callaghan’s debut short story collection, This Taste for Silence. From the very first story, death, murder and unexplained disappearances emerge as a dominant theme in this collection which has been described by Ryan O’Neill as ‘utterly haunting.’ Brisbane-based author O’Callaghan is an internationally acclaimed writer of short (and very […]
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Over the recent years, it has come to my attention that some of the most problematic films that have attained a lot of critical derision have come from films that explore the trope of magical realism. Recent efforts such as Collateral Beauty, Life Itself and The Book of Henry have tried to be life-affirming by […]
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Little Stones might be the debut novel from Australian writer Elizabeth Kuiper, but it won’t be her last. The novel, of which an early version was long listed for the Richell Prize, published in Award Winning Australian Writing and received the Express Media Prize for the best work of fiction, marks the arrival of a new voice in Australian writing. One […]
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UK outfit Rudimental closed out the rescheduled Australian leg of their massive “Toast To Our Differences” world tour in style at Melbourne’s Margaret Court Arena on Sunday night, helping to elevate their fantastic album Toast To Our Differences to even greater heights. Joining the band to bask in the musically driven madness of the Melbourne crowd, […]
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It feels absolutely wonderful to see a Vietnamese film in this year’s Sydney Film Festival. Of course, there have been many Vietnamese film in film festivals before but, with a stronger focus on genre-centric cinema over the recent year, it feels invigorating for a Vietnamese critic such as myself. This year, we have Ash Mayfair‘s […]
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If you had never been to a Seth Sentry show, you would probably be unprepared for the shenanigans, or at the very least you’d know his personality was inclined towards them through his music. Seth has been away from the touring circuit for awhile but, alongside the release of his recent single “Wrong One” seemingly […]
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Hope can be a genuinely hard thing to find these days, but can often be found in the places we don’t think to look. Meg Mac’s new album offers us a quiet moment of hopeful reflection, and also brings with it a gentle reminder of her vocal and lyrical talent. Recently coming off the end of […]
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Most documentaries are good at providing observations about a subject. They are often unobtrusive and just like a fly-on-the-wall. But what do you do when you’ve chosen to chronicle an individual who is an illusionist and expert prankster by day? TV director, Ben Berman grapples with this as well as the notion of the truth […]
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