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Alex First

Alex First is the editor of The Blurb. Alex is a Melbourne based journalist and communications specialist. He also contributes to The Blurb on film and theatre.

Out of Season – movie review

Co-written by Marie Drucker and director Stephane Brize, Out of Season is a sensitive, slow-moving romance. Mathieu (Guillaume Canet) is a famous Parisian movie star, married to a prime-time news anchor. Four weeks before making his stage debut, Mathieu gets cold feet and pulls out, leaving everyone in the lurch. While he knows his withdrawal…

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Your Monster – movie review

Your Monster is one wild, romantic, vengeful ride – Beauty and the Beast never looked so good. It’s about an aspiring actress who gets treated shamefully and then finds the most unlikely of awakenings. Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera) has been with her writer/director boyfriend Jacob Sullivan (Edmund Donovan) for five years. She’s helped him to…

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Moana 2 – movie review

Picking up the story three years after the events in Moana (2016), Moana 2 reunites Moana (voice of Auli‘i Cravalho) with demi-god Maui (Dwayne Johnson) on a new adventure. The first film was about Moana finding her identity. This one is about discovering and uniting different tribes in the islands to ensure the future of…

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Wicked: Part I – movie review

Wicked: Part 1 is a grand spectacle. This extended musical – of which this 160-minute epic is only the first of two parts – looks magnificent on the big screen. Its colourful and captivating exterior underpins a dark side. It appears no expense has been spared to breathe life anew into the beloved stage musical,…

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Eurovision on Tour (touring) – music review

From relatively humble beginnings in 1956, when only seven nations competed, the Eurovision Song Contest has grown into a juggernaut of entertainment. There’s a great sense of anticipation before each year’s fresh competition, as TV audiences burgeon. Some 160 million people from more than 150 countries were involved in voting for their favourite artist this…

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Gladiator II – movie review

Nearly 25 years after Gladiator, Ridley Scott has gone back to the well… and this time there are sharks in the Colosseum. In Gladiator II, Russell Crowe, who played Maximus in the original, is only seen in a couple of quick throwback scenes. But even with the focus squarely on his son, Lucius (Paul Mescal),…

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