The Greats: masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland is one of the most significant collections of European “old master” paintings ever seen in Australia. Part of the Sydney International Art Series 2015-2016, it’s now showing at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney. Spanning a period of 400 years from the Renaissance to Impressionism,…
The artistic merger of Pixar and Disney is just about complete. While the business merger was done long ago, both Disney and Pixar have been producing distinctly different product. But now Disney has released Strange World, a Pixar movie in all but name. Under the direction of Don Hall (Raya and the Last Dragon) and…
At 80 pages, Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada (translated by David Boyd) is more a novella than a novel. But Oyamada manages to pack a punch into this brevity. The three connected stories that make up the novel explore issues of parenthood and responsibility from a Japanese perspective. In the first part of…
Small Mercies by Richard Anderson is one of those books that should be mandatory reading for all Australians. I certainly hope somebody in education circles SERIOUSLY contemplates putting it into English syllabuses as I don’t think most city based Australians have a clue about the mind games that drought inflicts on people and places. I…
A supernatural horror thriller, Backrooms is a phenomenon that has grown through the internet. Co-writer and director of the film Kane Parsons was just 16 when he used open-source software to create what was initially intended as a visual effects test. The nine minute short The Backrooms (Found Footage) was uploaded to YouTube in 2022….
Shahn Devendran is the Creative Director at LadBible and series producer of a new six-part documentary series Unheard that focuses on racial injustice throughout Australia. From Indigenous Australians to asylum seekers, and a diaspora of ethnic and marginalised communities, the series offers a raw and frank insight into the racial inequalities the nation has perpetuated…
Opening night performances often end with a standing ovation, sometimes as a slowly staggered act of obligation. In the case of the conclusion of Suzie Miller’s brilliant Prima Facie, however, Queensland Theatre audience members are immediately on their feet in an acclaim of thunderous applause that lasts through three curtain calls. It is an especially…
Five young women at the pearly gates, or are they at the gates of hell? Taken far too young, they are called upon – one by one – to enunciate their deepest, darkest sins to determine just where they will end up. And make no mistake, judgment will be passed. Unfolding as five monologues, with the occasional input…
Raja (Mariya Belkin) and Victor Frankel (Vladimir Friedman), a couple in their 60s, were the unsung heroes of Russian cinema. For several decades they had dubbed Hollywood epics into Russian for cinema audiences. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, the couple left Russia and migrated to Israel. But like thousands of…
“All writers are procrastinators,” laughs filmmaker Nicholas Verso, the director of a new Australian coming of age drama Boys In The Trees. We’re sitting on the outdoor rooftop bar of QT, the newest boutique hotel/bar in Melbourne, built on the site of what was once the Russell Street Cinemas. It seems a fitting location to…
