A beaded collar, found scrunched at the bottom of a box of old junk. What’s its story? That’s what Maggie, a modern-day auctioneer in London, wonders when she finds the collar, cleans it, and recognises that once, long ago, it was someone’s precious thing. Drawing on her own love of finding precious things, author Kelly Doust delivers…
Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn makes the most of her starring role in Birds of Prey. She’s undoubtedly the bright star in a fantasy that has much going for it until it loses its way. Birds of Prey is, indeed, a twisted tale, as told by Harley herself. Harleen Quinzel is a former psychiatrist who…
The Golden Age, by Louis Nowra was published in 1985. The first production was given at the Playbox Theatre in Melbourne, Directed by Rex Cramphorn. I first saw the play in a NIDA production by Neil Armfield with Richard Roxburgh, as Francis – it was a truly memorable production. I have had, always, a ‘romance’…
The sad later life of French painter Paul Gauguin is brought into sharp focus in this slow-moving biopic. The year is 1891. Gauguin (Vincent Cassel) is already well known in Parisian artistic circles. But he’s tired of the so-called civilised world and its conventions. Leaving his wife Mette and five children behind, he ventures alone…
This is a Wilde/wild night all right – oh so deliciously wacky, in fact. Bloomshed has taken the essence of Oscar Wilde’s original farce, first performed in 1895 and given it an even more ribald and rambunctious twist. Who plays whom at any given moment appears to be somewhat of a lucky dip. Suffice to…
Heal the Living is a French art house drama with decidedly European sensibilities dealing with the touchy subject of organ donation. It is actually three stories in one, based on a novel by Maylis de Kerangal. Three young surfers leave before dawn on a pilgrimage to the raging sea. They are on their way back home when…
A ponderous first half gives way to a bloody whodunit in the second as Quentin Tarantino continues his love affair with violence in The Hateful Eight. Soon after the Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the wintry Wyoming landscape. The passengers, bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his captive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh),…
Hollywood has a habit of remaking popular European films, rather than merely releasing the subtitled original and thus broadening the audiences’ horizons and cultural experience. The latest film to undergo the bland Hollywood treatment is the 2015 Swedish comedy/drama A Man Called Ove, which was the highest grossing foreign language film for 2016 in the…
Geelong-born, Melbourne-based former street artist Rone (birth name Tyrone Wright) has crafted a remarkable time capsule three years in the making. It is set in the long-abandoned third floor wing of iconic, heritage-listed Flinders Street Station. Time is a nostalgic love letter to mid 19th century working class life in one of the world’s great cities. It is…
The speculative fiction genre got a bit of a kick in the teeth back in 2000 with the release of China Miéville’s Perdito Street Station and Jeff Vandemeer’s City of Saints and Sinners. With these came the advent of what has become known as ‘New Weird’. One source in 2023, defined New Weird novels as…
