The debut feature for Brisbane-based filmmaker Samuel Gay, A Guide to Dating at the End of the World is in essence a romantic comedy, albeit with a touch of sci-fi thrown in for good measure. Alex (Kerith Atkinson) is set up for a blind date by her friends, but she finds John (Tony Brockman) a…
Sand Storm is a family drama that takes place in a Bedouin Village in the desert in southern Israel. Two women, mother and daughter, are dealing with life changing events at the same time. Jalila is a 42-year-old with four children. Her eldest child is an 18-year-old university student, Layla (Lamis Ammar). Jalila is coping…
Cats is a musical that tells the story of a tribe of cats called the Jellicles and the night they make what is known as “the Jellicle choice” and decide which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new life. The first performance of Cats was in 1981 in the…
A widow with a 16-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son who prides herself on her scrupulous control and attention to detail is due to get married the next day. Her daughter is hardly enamoured by the idea and butts heads with her. Then everything changes when magically they switch bodies and have to step into each other’s…
The Golden Man Booker has revealed the shortlist of five books in contention for the Golden Man Booker Prize. This special one-off award (not to be confused with the annual Man Booker Prize), marks the 50th anniversary of the award. It’s aim is to crown the best work of fiction from the last five decades…
Inga Vesper’s debut novel The Long, Long Afternoon was a crime novel set in a perfect Los Angeles suburb in the 1950s. Vesper used that scenario to get beneath the façade of the perfect housewife and community of the time to reveal the racism, infidelity and drug use that sat beneath the surface. Her second…
In keeping with the original (2002) and the sequel (2016), My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 is very much in feel-good territory. The extended Portokalos family is in fine voice. Everyone is wanting to have their say on a trip to Greece to attend a reunion for the extended family in their father’s home village….
Peter Rabbit was a delightful revelation when it was released in 2018, readily blending live action and animation. It brought us the tale of a recalcitrant bunny (the voice of James Corden) and his prickly relationship with Thomas (Domhnall Gleeson). You may recall Thomas inherited the farm next door to nature lover, Bea (Rose Byrne)….
The second line of Peter Allen’s iconic anthem I Still Call Australia Home contains the words “From New York to Rio and old London Town”. It then goes on to say, “I still call Australia home”. Only Rio doesn’t feature in The Australia Ballet’s three parter Instruments of Dance. The triple bill has the works of resident…
The movie musical of the Broadway musical of the movie of the book. That’s what we’ve got in 2024, with a film adaptation of the successful 2018 Mean Girls musical being released twenty years after the original hit movie penned by the wonderful Tina Fey. It made a household name out of Lindsay Lohan, and…
