You could call A Hologram for the King a coming-of-age story for a man or a midlife crisis tale. It’s Tom Hanks in less-than-populist filmmaking mode. The film features an unconventional narrative based on a culture clash. In recession-ravaged 2010, American businessman Alan Clay (Hanks), broke, depressed and freshly divorced, arrives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia…
Despite the success of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator and Mel Gibson’s visceral The Passion of the Christ, the lavish big budget Biblical epic and sword-and-sandals drama has gone the way of the once popular Western. They have become a moribund genre that holds little appeal or relevance for today’s movie going audiences raised on a diet…
Based upon writer/director Gary Ross’ original screenplay, Free State of Jones tells the extraordinary story of a little known episode in American history. It concerns Newt Knight, a fearless Mississippi farmer, who led an unlikely band of poor white farmers and runaway slaves in an historic armed rebellion against the Confederacy at the height of…
There is a dark heart to American playwright Samantha Cooper’s world premiere work, Dawn, being staged at The Owl and Cat Theatre. It starts out with Laura’s parents wanting to have a family dinner with her, but things quickly turn sour … and it is soon clear why. Laura has told her mother, Jo, that her…
– Captain Fantastic – Only in cinemas from 8 September 2016 We have 10 double in-season passes thanks to eOne Films. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE Viggo Mortensen stars in Captain Fantastic, the hilarious and heartfelt journey of a father raising his six children off-the-grid in the American wilderness. Far from…
Set in Paris in the lead up to the French national day, Bastille Day is an action-thriller featuring British actor Idris Elba (Pacific Rim) as a rogue CIA agent. He plays Sean Briar, the agent tasked with trying to come to terms with what at first appearances could be a terrorist attack. An explosion kills…
The Regulars by Georgia Clark has a chick-lit premise but offers depth and plenty of food for thought. Here’s the blurb: Best friends Evie, Krista and Willow are just trying to make it through their mid-twenties in New York. They’re regular girls with typical quarter life crises: making it up the corporate ladder, making sense…
A whodunit-murder-musical – an unlikely combination I grant you – Curtains is the Australian premiere of a show written by Broadway legends John Kander and Fred Ebb (creators of Cabaret and Chicago). A parody of backstage homicide mystery plots, Curtains – based upon the original book and concept by Peter Stone* – is set in…
The Disney Theatrical Productions arm of the Disney Company have brought to Sydney a spectacle of old fashioned musical theatre in a contemporary (new fashioned) post-modern, popular culture version of a tale of Middle Eastern origin, Aladdin. Disney had made an animated version of the tale in 1992, and it became a most successful member…
In 2008, Philip Roth published his 29th novel, Indignation, a story that returned him to his own youth, growing up in Newark, New Jersey before attending a small liberal arts college. One of America’s most honored and accomplished writers – having received a Pulitzer Prize – Roth was 75 years old when he turned back…
