What a superb visual and aural feast Walanbaa Yulu-Gi is and how it has metamorphosised since Burn the Floor first burst onto the scene 25 years ago. Featuring the incredibly talented First Nations’ performer Mitch Tambo, the production has no shortage of sizzle. The deft footwork … the singing … the showmanship is top shelf all the…
Things no one will say about Charlie Kaufman’s new film, I’m Thinking of Ending Things: “Aww, that was sweet”; “What a cliched Hollywood ending”; “That movie made total sense”. Kaufman’s latest excursion into weirdness is almost Bergman-esque in its inscrutability. Indeed, it shares more than a little DNA with Bergman’s classic Persona (1966). But as…
What a thoroughly entertaining showpiece! I last saw The Wedding Singer when it played at the Athenaeum Theatre last May. Now, at the State Theatre, at the Arts Centre, it remains just as fun filled and comedic, but it appears even slicker. The leads are intact among the 20-strong cast and are truly memorable. Collectively, the company sing,…
Topher Grace? Whatever happened to that guy? Well, in 2021, Home Economics happened to him. It’s not like he hasn’t been doing anything (remember BlackKkKlansman?) but his profile is a little lower than it was in his That 70s Show heyday. Home Economics is a perfectly fine but not particularly memorable series about a dysfunctional…
Not as ambitious in scope and scale as his previous film Boyhood, which was filmed over a period of twelve years, Richard Linklater’s latest film has been touted as “a spiritual sequel” to his 1993 slacker classic Dazed And Confused. While steeped in a strong sense of nostalgia for the early 80s, it also explores…
Moving from cinema releases to Netflix hasn’t really slowed Adam Sandler’s production company Happy Madison. They currently have 14 movies in the pipeline. But the latest HM production to make it to the small screen is The Wrong Missy. This crashingly predictable rom-com fails on just about every level – but completely unpredictably unearths a…
Two is play by Jim Cartwright written in 1989. It is a play for two actors playing fourteen characters. Two, like Mr Cartwright’s first and famous play, Road (1986), comes from his identity and personal ownership of the private dilemmas of his community, focusing on the marginalised and disenfranchised. He was born in Farnsworth, Lancashire,…
The Tokyo Ballet’s romantic, tragic and haunting Giselle is spectacular. It looks and sounds magnificent. It is the story of a charming and naïve peasant girl with a weak heart, who attracts the attention of a woodsman, Hilarian and a count in disguise, Albrecht. Giselle falls for the latter, but humiliated, the former vows revenge. That comes when…
This live recording finds Nada Surf joining forces with the esteemed Potsdam, Germany-based orchestra Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg. Quite simply – indie rock meets strings! At this point in Nada Surf’s career, Peaceful Ghosts captures the perfect challenge for the quartet. Take an extensive catalogue that spans 24 years, whittle it down to 13 tracks, choose…
Actor-director Bradley Cooper shows his success in A Star is Born was no fluke with Maestro. This impressionistic portrait of the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein is technically dazzling, although its oblique approach may distance some viewers. As with A Star is Born, Cooper again pulls triple duty as director, actor (in the titular role…
