The Rasputin Affair is a new Australian play by Kate Mulvany. The play is concerned with the assassination, in December 1916, of Rasputin; a Russian peasant, semi-literate monk and mystic, who exercised extraordinary power over the last of the ruling Romanoff family: Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra. There is a note in the…
Here is an engaging documentary about a woman in her ‘90s who still has the world at her feet … in her case the world of fashion and creativity. Her name is Iris Apfel and she is 93, extremely quick-witted, flamboyantly dressed and still married to a man who turned 100 during the making of…
It Ends With Us is one of those read-in-a-sitting books for me. Here’s the blurb: Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up – she graduated from college, moved…
In the 1950s, Biblical films were extremely popular. Sweeping epics like the Oscar-winning Ben Hur and the spectacular The Ten Commandments scoring at the box office. These stories featured timeless themes of good versus evil. But in the 60s, their popularity seemed to wane. More modern takes on Bible stories have tended to be revisionist,…
British author Francis Spufford travels to America in 1922 for his latest novel, Cahokia Jazz, but it is not an America that readers will know. The alternative world of Cahokia Jazz is one in which smallpox did not decimate the indigenous population of the North America. As a result, when European settlers started to arrive…
Do tech bros, that is entrepreneurs in the tech industry, rule the modern world without taking personal accountability for their missteps? You need not think too hard to come up with names that roll off virtually everyone’s tongues. That is a concept explored in this horror sci-fi about such a man who sets about trying…
Chaos Walking is a science fiction action adventure set on a distant planet known as New World in the year 2257. The male settlers are constantly bombarded with the thoughts of others in the settlement. These take the form of an unrelenting cacophony of sounds and visions, called The Noise. It drove the men insane…
Nicole Kidman’s star turn as Lucille Ball in Being the Ricardos is an acting masterclass. She gives an awe-inspiring, nuanced performance (an Oscar nomination awaits) alongside another seriously good showing from Javier Bardem; and impressive turns from JK Simmons and Nina Arianda. The action takes place during a single production week for an episode of…
A sensitively woven tale of love and loss, The Cakemaker leaves an indelible impression. Thomas (Tim Kalkhof), a young German baker, is having an affair with Oren (Roy Miller), an married Israeli man who frequently visits Berlin on business. When tragedy befalls Oren in Israel, Thomas travels to Jerusalem seeking answers regarding his death. Under…
One of the most creative and mind challenging works I have seen, Phantasmagoria revisits the past in order for the central character to move forward. Briony (played by Bernadette Trench-Thiedeman, Meg Dunn and Elnaz Shessgelani) is an artist – a woman whose difficult personal relationships as an adult have been informed by her upbringing. That has everything…
