Opera Australia’s Handa Opera Madama Butterfly sears with emotion. It is a splendid and spectacular offering, with surprises, against the backdrop of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. The story concerns a US navy lieutenant named Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton who takes advantage of a beguiling former Japanese geisha, Cio-Cio-San, in Nagasaki. While she – nicknamed…
Intelligent couple Stevie (Claudia Karvan) and Martin Gray (Nathan Page) have been happily married for 22 years. They have a 17-year-old gay son, Billy (Yazeed Daher) and all live a good life. Martin, who has just turned 50, has had, arguably, the finest week of his professional life. He has just been awarded the premiere prize for architecture,…
Movies based on video games are pretty common – Angry Birds, Sonic the Hedgehog and Pokemon: Detective Pikachu to name a few. But movies based on board games seems counter-intuitive. I mean, the board doesn’t move, and much of the play is inside the players’ heads. So the arrival of Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among…
The Australian western is having a bit of a renaissance and is, at the same time being reinvented. The modern Australian western seeks to question the mythology on which the country was built. It eschews the plucky settler narrative for something darker, particularly exploring the destructive effects of colonisation on Aboriginal Australians. Some recent examples…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 24 March 2023. Recorded in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic and in the wake of a series of tornadoes that wreaked havoc on his Nashville neighborhood, I Survived, It’s Over sees Rich Ruth pushing his music even…
Based on a memoir by the late Timothy Conigrave, playwright Tommy Murphy has given us an up close and personal look at a 15-year gay relationship. It starts in the teen years and works its way through to the HIV/AIDS crisis of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Tim (Declan Clifford) has his eyes on the school football…
Keanu Reeves returns as the taciturn, virtually indestructible lone-wolf assassin John Wick. This is the fourth installment in the successful franchise that has continually raised the bar in terms of staging kinetic action sequences. The 2014 original boasted some of the best stunt choreography and kinetic action sequences from a Hollywood movie. And John Wick:…
Gramercy Arms is a NYC musical collective brought together around the songwriting of Dave Derby, who keeps the focus of this third album locked in on polished power/pop that’s inspired, as the band bio says, “by the artistic heyday of the 70’s and 80’s-era.” Derby sings, plays guitar and occasionally holds down the bass, while…
Currently in limited release, Of an Age is a sensitive coming-of-age drama told in two time frames. The film opens in 1999 and Kol (Elias Anton) is three weeks off turning 19. He is friends with hyperactive Ebony (Hattie Hook), who wakes by the water’s edge at a beach in Altona dazed and confused. Using…
– Mavka: The Forest Song – Only in cinemas from 30 March 2023 (Qld) and 6 April (elsewhere) We have 5 double in-season passes thanks to Transmission Films. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE Mavka is a Soul of the Forest and its newly chosen Guardian. Her primary mission is to protect…
