Take a slice of nostalgia and add in colourful characters, headlined by a young “brainiac” with designs on furthering herself; then stir in a scintillating score with humour and heart, and a surfeit of highly talented and melodic voices. What comes out is a very special night of original Australian musical theatre that compares favourably…
The Aquarius of the title is a two-storey 1940’s apartment block in the upper-class seaside district of Boa Viagem Avenue in the Brazilian city of Recife. The eponymous apartment block has been the home for Clara (played by Brazilian actress Sonia Braga), a middle-aged former music critic and breast cancer survivor, most of her life….
There is a decent yarn to be told in Jasper Jones, but with the story the filmmakers had to work with it didn’t quite shake out that way. Based on the Australian best-selling novel by Craig Silvey, this is the tale of Charlie Bucktin (Levi Miller), a bookish boy of 14 living in a small…
Political lobbyists have a reputation on a par with – if not below – politicians themselves these days, so the idea of a feature film devoted to a lobbyist spinning their dark art is perhaps an unlikely one. But in the sure hands of Shakespeare in Love director John Madden, Miss Sloane proves to be…
Rarely anymore does a debut album get me revved up but that is exactly what happened the first time I heard the songs of Cameroon-born artist Laetitia Tamko, aka Vagabond. Infinite Worlds is an album of finding herself with no musical boundaries and that is the beauty of her record. At times, Infinite Worlds oozes…
Sally Hepworth’s latest novel, The Mother’s Promise, should come with a “Tissues needed” warning. I cried. More than once. Chances are you will, too. Here’s the blurb: The bestselling author of The Secrets of Midwives delivers her most powerful novel yet. Alice and her daughter Zoe have been a team of two all their lives. With no family…
Every now and then I watch a movie and afterwards I can’t decide whether it’s good or bad. iBoy is such a movie. I thought the initial idea was fascinating. The fact that Tom (Bill Milner – Broken), got a bullet through his head, while fleeing from robbers, and his iPhone (which he was using…
The Mystery of Love and Sex, is an American play, the second of a trilogy of plays by Bathsheba Doran published under the title, The Marriage Plays. The first play is Kin; the third, Parent’s Evening. The Mystery of Love and Sex presents a modern ‘nuclear’ family: Howard (Nicholas Papademetriou), a successful crime fiction novelist…
Rosie Jones previously gave us the documentary The Triangle Wars, about a people powered community protest over a proposed development in the suburb of St Kilda. Her latest film, The Family, is a vastly different offering. It explores the history of the strange abusive sect established by former yoga teacher Anna Hamilton-Byrne in Ferny Creek…
There have been many great films that have depicted teachers as caring individuals who have moulded young minds and shaped their charges for the better – from To Sir With Love through to Lean on Me, Dangerous Minds, and Dead Poet’s Society – and there have also been a few that have depicted the jaded…
