10 years is a long time between albums, so Scheherazade is a true welcome back to the simple folky rooted songs from Catherine Ann Irwin and Janet Beveridge Bean of Freakwater. For some, this reunion is something special as their 1995 record, Old Paint, is always an album you may hear listed as helping put…
Power, passion and subterfuge make for a heady cocktail. And so it is in Opera Australia’s Tosca. It is a compelling thriller with a great deal of bite, being staged at Margaret Court Arena because the State Theatre is closed, while undergoing a three-year upgrade. Amidst the unrelenting drama, stirring arias and evocative set design predominate. With…
It is the summer of 1967. Young Australians are being drafted to serve in the Vietnam War. Back home, life continues. Tom (Patrick Leong) and Meg (Grace Jackson) are in a high school production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Tom takes a fancy to Meg and engages her in awkward conversation. When their respective…
As the director of delicate human dramas like Call Me by Your Name, Luca Guadagnino probably wasn’t the obvious choice to direct a remake of Dario Argento’s blood-spattered cult favourite, Suspiria (1977). But that’s exactly what he’s done and the results are impressive. Guadagnino hasn’t gone for a straight remake. This is a marked departure…
Award-winning British playwright Jasmine Lee-Jones’ provocatively-titled Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner appropriately begins in iPhone lighting. Newly-single student Cleo (Moreblessing Maturure) is lying in bed scrolling through Twitter when she comes across Forbes Magazine’s problematic AF celebration of Kylie Jenner as a ‘self-made billionaire”. Under the username @incognegro, she sets about getting Jenner cancelled…
Hot on the heels of the far more serious Trumbo comes another paean to Hollywood in the 1950s, in the form of the Coen brothers’ manic comedy, Hail, Caesar!. If you’re a fan of the movies from that period, this film will be unmissable. For everyone else though, I suspect there’s likely to be a…
A couple of fraught relationships and bygone days are at the heart of Stephen Sondheim’s pointed Tony Award-winning musical, Follies. Each year, between the world wars, Dimitri Weismann (Grant Piro) used to stage Follies, which featured beautiful chorus girls, in a Broadway theatre. It is now 1971. The theatre is in disrepair and facing demolition…
Spider-Man: No Way Home surprises, shocks and delights. It takes a trip down memory lane but remains a love story between Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and MJ (Zendaya). Spider-Man’s mentor Dr Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) also plays a central role. And the film introduces the idea of the Marvel multiverse – a collection of alternative universes,…
How very exciting for The Australian Ballet to be presenting the world premiere of a new full-length ballet … and it is spectacular. Oscar is based on the life and writings of acclaimed Irish poet, playwright and satirist Oscar Wilde (16thOctober, 1854 – 30th November, 1990). The work of Tony Award-winning choreographer Christopher Wheeldon (known…
The painfully unfunny Little is a variation on the body-swap formula that drove films such as Big and Suddenly 30. There’s little about this dud to recommend it to audiences. Jordan Sanders (Regina Hall) was a nerd when at school. But twenty years later, she’s a high-powered millionaire. Jordan has become a ruthless, work-obsessed executive…
