Hijinks abound in The Australian Shakespeare Company’s fun-filled treat The Wind in the Willows at the Royal Botanic Gardens. Populated by favourites from British novelist Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 book, families on picnic rugs are given much to smile about during the 90-minute show without interval, set in magnificent surrounds. The first location is by the lake and…
Having not seen the original Matrix trilogy, I was totally lost for most of this fourth instalment. I took a while to understand what was going on. But it basically boils down to a simple premise – Neo has to rescue Trinity and they face many obstacles. The action takes place two decades after The…
Few directors have as formidable a reputation as Paul Thomas Anderson. Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, The Master, Phantom Thread – his films deal in big themes in majestic ways. So his latest, Licorice Pizza, might seem a change of pace for him. After all, this could be seen as a rom-com – complete with…
Craig Russell is intent on exploring the idea of split personalities, or what might make otherwise good people do bad things. In his last novel, The Devil Aspect, set in a European asylum on the eve of World War II, the question was whether it was the devil, or some other malevolent spirit that possessed…
The Lost Daughter is a challenging work from writer and director Maggie Gyllenhaal, who makes her feature debut behind the scenes. She adapts a book of the same name by Elena Ferrante (published in 2006) for the screen. The Lost Daughter concerns Leda (played by Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley in a younger iteration), an…
‘tis the season for Christmas parties and Nakatomi’s is set to be a cracker, hosted as it is by Act React in the return season of the company’s site-specific Die Hard: The Movie, The Play. The Brisbane Powerhouse’s Turbine Platform has been transformed into the Nakatomi Plaza of the 1988 action film favourite’s Los Angeles…
Anybody who has persevered through sweaty struggle to pull on a leotard will be immediately in awe of the premise at the core of debase productions’ Boyle and Waters in Leotard. It sees performer/creators Bridget Boyle and Neridah Waters sharing the stories behind vintage leotards of all shapes and sizes. From their entry to the stage,…
You have your eyes on the prize. You are so intent on making it that you can figuratively taste it. That is what confronts the couple of guys at the centre of Title of Show. They’re Hunter (Obed Wallis) and Jeff (Noah Janssen) … out to make it on Broadway. To that end, with just three weeks to cut…
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,…
Damon Galgut’s ninth novel The Promise won the 2021 Booker Prize. Not having read all of the shortlisted novels it is hard to determine whether it was the best of the five. But there is no doubt that The Promise is a towering yet often intimate novel combining family drama and incisive character observation set…
