To borrow a phrase from this record’s boldest rocker, in a world dominated by American Idol Voices, Disney divas and flash in the pan pop star wannabes, the collaboration of k.d. lang, Neko Case and Laura Veirs proves to be one of the world’s best kept secrets. Of course, Canadian lang has had a long…
OK, I want you to stop for a moment and imagine a TV show that combines Harry Potter, Jane Austen and The Walking Dead. If you can get your head around that, you’ll have some idea what to expect from Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. This sumptuously made mini-series (7 episodes in total) is an…
We’ve seen a number of films recently about elderly people behaving badly and refusing to go gently into that good night, although the nadir of this sub-genre would have to be last year’s awful Dirty Grandpa. We even had the British comedy Golden Years, in which an elderly couple, fed up with the way their…
Question: How often can you watch a musical based on a 1939 MG movie musical? Answer: As often as they revamp the story the amazing way this production was. What a magical re-interpretation The Wizard of Oz is. You will be smiling all the way home when you leave the theatre. Jon Driscoll’s video designs were…
In 1613 William Shakespeare (played in All is True by Kenneth Branagh) was the most famous writer in England. But then his beloved Globe Theatre burned to the ground during a performance of his final play Henry VIII after a prop misfired. Shakespeare retired following that disaster and returned home to Stratford-upon-Avon. There he pottered…
Bob Dylan is his own man, someone who has forged his own path in music, not restricted by convention. A Complete Unknown focuses on what he did and how he did it between 1961 to 1965. Arriving unannounced, with guitar in hand, as a 19-year-old, Dylan seeks out the legendary Woody Guthrie, who is in…
The superior and effective Australian-produced horror film Talk To Me taps into the trope of a group of teens playing around with the supernatural and facing some nasty consequences (like Ouija, for example) but gives the familiar ideas a freshness. At a party in a small South Australian town, a group of teens play games…
A time of change, discovery and shock. That is what confronts Abbie (Ayesha Harris-Westman), a high school student who meets her bff in the most unlikely place. Abbie is in the bathroom at school when she has her first period and doesn’t have the necessary female hygiene product with her to deal with the situation in which she finds…
I can’t speak highly enough of the comic might of Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville (with libretto by Cesare Sterbini), as performed so adroitly by Opera Australia. If you have not seen this hilarious opera, let me draw a comparison to the cleverness inherent in arguably the finest popular British TV comedy Fawlty Towers….
Hustlers is a comedic drama about savvy strip club employees who turn the tables on their Wall Street clients. At the start of 2007, Destiny (Constance Wu) is struggling to make ends meet. She needs to provide for herself and her beloved grandmother, who brought her up. But it’s not easy: the managers, DJs and…
