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….
Colm Bairéad’s The Quiet Girl is a deeply affecting work – I had tears running down my cheeks on the final scene. We’re in rural Ireland in 1981. Cait (Catherine Clinch) (aged 9) is one of five children who keeps to herself, says very little but observes much. There is no love shown to her…
Although I’ve seen a considerable number of episodes of the television series Star Trek at a young age, I’ve never felt like a real Trekkie. It fascinated me, but not to such an extent that I’d greet everyone in my daily life using a Vulcan salute. When the next generation Star Trek episodes started (with…
Oh, Canada is a confessional … a reckoning for a dying man. Writer and director Paul Schrader collaborated with actor Richard Gere 45 years ago on American Gigolo and it has taken them this long to reunite. Gere plays feted Canadian documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife at the end of his life, while Jacob Elordi is…
The films of Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth) are strange, off-beat, enigmatic, unsettling, confronting, and often hard to fathom, and have divided audiences. The Lobster, his first English language feature film, is no exception, and will probably go down as one of the weirdest films to hit screens this year. It won the Jury Prize…
Sitting there watching Fifty Shades Freed, the final instalment in the Shades of Grey trilogy, I could only think, “Lame, tame and who to blame?” So very little happens … for so much of the film. Yes, the characters have sex – most of it conventional and a few turns in the red room – but that,…
Ryan Adams live used to be “watch and see” because Adams might do something nuts like kick someone out of the show, walk off the stage, go into a rant and then go into another rant. Basically, the music would be absolutely spot on but you were always a little scared to shout out a…
A Peter Pan origin story, Peter and the Starcatcher is a slapstick pantomime fantasy, infused with music, dance and puppetry. So, it is a bit of a liquorice all sorts, which tickles the funny bone most when the cast ad libs, as Colin Lane and Pete Helliar are so adept at doing. Look out for…
Some of the most extraordinary and outrageous feats performed on stage. Add next level, utterly hilarious, child participation and you have Circus 1903. No Big Top here. Rather, the creature comforts of Arts Centre Melbourne’s premier venue. It goes down a treat thanks to the supreme artistes and the cheeky and cherry patter of ringmaster David Williamson. He is…
Multi-award winning indigenous American author Louise Erdrich has set her new novel The Mighty Red in the heartlands of the Ojibwe people (Erdrich herself is a member of the Turtle Band, a tribe of the Ojibwe). Set on the banks of the Red River in North Dakota, country used for growing sugarbeet but also subject…
