Australian lawyer, journalist and comedian James O’Loghlin draws on his time as a legal aid lawyer in the 1990s as the basis of his new novel Criminals. The book revolves around three characters, connected by an armed robbery, an event which causes each of them to reconsider their lives and move in new directions. Dean…
I was actually looking forward to watching this new version of Tomb Raider. Not only because I had a lot of fun with the PC game years ago (and amazed by the used graphics in those days). And not because Lara Croft was a hot and good looking video game character. No wonder she had…
If you’ve ever seen and enjoyed Baz Luhrmann’s kinetic Romeo + Juliet (1996), you’ll probably enjoy Die in a Gunfight. Like Luhrmann, director Collin Schiffli updates Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for a contemporary audience. Although the result is a mixed bag, Schiffli gets it mostly right. The film reminded me a lot of the recent…
Do you have a list of books you were hoping to have read this year? Are you despairing that you’ll never get to cross those titles off? I hear you. The Best Australian Stories 2017 may help to fill your literary cup. Maxine Beneba Clarke edited this collection of Australian short stories. Herself an award-winning…
A quintessential Australian yarn, some decent storytelling and a few beaut performances are the hallmarks of this road trip with a difference. Rex Macrae (Michael Caton) is a Broken Hill cab driver who has spent his life avoiding getting close to people. Even his best friend and occasional lover Polly (Ningali Lawford-Wolf – Rabbit Proof…
As far as I am concerned there is always room at the table for another post-punk band if their debut is as solid as London-based Qlowski. Their new full length album, Quale Futuro?, introduces you to the quartet of Mickey Tellarini (guitar, keyboards, vocals), Cecilia Corapi (keyboards, vocals), Danny Smartt (bass, clarinet) and Christian Billard…
It’s one of those vagaries of film distribution that we sometimes get two films released at the same time with similar plots and ideas. Within the space of a couple of weeks we get two road trip movies. Both feature two people on a journey through some of Europe’s most picturesque areas. They sample the history, culture…
While it mightn’t be 28 Days Later, Cargo is an Australian zombie film with bite. It’s a survival story with a difference. Andy (Martin Freeman) and Kay (Suzie Porter) are holed up on a houseboat with their one-year-old daughter Rosie, but are fast running out of food. Something is keeping Andy from going ashore. All…
If any setting was just made for Guillermo del Toro, it’s got to be the circus. Colour, spectacle, carnies, creepy clowns, “freaks” – it positively screams for treatment from the modern master of smart horror. But del Toro is mercurial. Just as he turned his hand to big-budget action in Pacific Rim, he pivots in…
It somehow seems ironic that a film exploring the last days in the life of a famous artists should itself be about as interesting as watching paint dry. At Eternity’s Gate is a biopic of the eccentric and misunderstood artist Vincent Van Gogh who died at the age of 37 in 1890. This story of…
