A Boston-born Jew in Montreal and a Gaza-born Palestinian in Melbourne have just published the first English-language anthology worldwide in any genre of drama, prose or poetry by Jewish and Palestinian writers. The winner of Canada’s prestigious biennial 2017 Patrick O’Neill Award, Double Exposure: Plays of the Jewish and Palestinian Diasporas is edited by award-winning playwrights…
Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810 – 1891) was the master of smoke and mirrors; the ultimate flimflam man. Although often down on his luck and short of money, he always managed to find a way out. That had something to do with his vivid imagination and a lot more to do with his grounded wife, Charity….
Political lobbyists have a reputation on a par with – if not below – politicians themselves these days, so the idea of a feature film devoted to a lobbyist spinning their dark art is perhaps an unlikely one. But in the sure hands of Shakespeare in Love director John Madden, Miss Sloane proves to be…
Much remains unanswered in the low-budget mystery-horror film, It Comes at Night. Award-winning filmmaker Trey Edward Shults follows his breakout debut Krishna with this psychological thriller. It centres on a teenage boy, Travis (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), as he grapples with mounting terrors – both external and internal – in the aftermath of an unnamed cataclysm. Seventeen…
Creativity abounds in The Drill, which is unlike anything I have seen – a combination of circus arts and interactive experiences. We’re in the midst of WWI and campaigners for peace are adamant they want politicians to listen to their pleas. A rally is planned and a petition for an end to the war is…
Consent is at the core of the coming-of-age drama How to Have Sex. Frankly, this is a film that needs to be seen by teenagers and their parents and grandparents. Everything seems to be going as it does when youngsters let their hair down, until a line is crossed. After that, there’s no coming back….
Fifty shades of bland? This offbeat film exploring a sadomasochistic relationship between two women in an unnamed community of women situated somewhere in Europe has hit local cinemas in the wake of more sexually explicit films like Blue is the Warmest Colour and Nymphomaniac, as well as a couple of other more risible films exploring…
Oscar winning filmmaker Hal Ashby was something of an uncompromising maverick who preferred to work outside the studio system because he believed they valued commerce over art. “Studios are the enemy of the artist,” his friend and mentor Norman Jewison told him rather frankly. Ashby won an Oscar for his work on editing Jewison’s In…
This is one for stalwarts of the horror gore genre because it doesn’t hold back – in short, it is tense and traumatising. Demonic carnage is unleashed to terrorise a French woman who has married into an American family. Alice (Souheila Yacoub) is with her husband, restaurateur William (George Pullar), to celebrate Will’s younger brother,…
A heady novel of love, intrigue and taking chances, Fiona McIntosh’s The Last Dance is a book made for reading in bed all night long. I’ve had this on my shelf for a while, but as I do sometimes, I left it for a while, wanting it for the right moment (I do that with…
