Being one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the last five years becomes a little tough to back up over time but I will tell you that Brooklyn’s Parquet Courts have struck gold again with their new long player Human Performance. It does not succeed because it gives you more of the same Parquet…
Great Lake Swimmers know their lane and stay in it during their most recent LP, A Forest of Arms. That lane is aptly described by the album’s title; triumphant and scenic, the band sticks to that aesthetic for album’s entirety. The Toronto-based band members presently include Tony Dekker (vocals, guitar), Erik Arnesen (banjo, guitar), Joshua…
Do you have a list of books you were hoping to have read this year? Are you despairing that you’ll never get to cross those titles off? I hear you. The Best Australian Stories 2017 may help to fill your literary cup. Maxine Beneba Clarke edited this collection of Australian short stories. Herself an award-winning…
A searing love affair between a former Italian war bride and a well-travelled National Geographic photographer comes alive under the direction of Jessica Claughton. With music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown and book by Marsha Norman, the musical is based on the 1992 romantic drama by Robert James Waller. The book had previously been…
Men treat women badly. Indigenous Australians are often unfairly targeted. Not all men. Not all indigenous Australians. Enough though to call it out … still, regardless of all that has been said and written about these subjects. She is Vigilante deals with these issues, with strength and purpose … with drama, pathos and humour. Seven…
Huge on effects, writer and director James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) takes Superman into a newly imagined DC universe. The film’s opening sets up the contention that, for the first time, the superhero has been beaten … and it has just happened. He lays bloodied on the snow, barely alive, and needs to call…
The Girl on the Page by John Purcell is a pacy page-turner that raises interesting questions regarding the divide between commercial and literary fiction. Through the characters of Amy, a commitment-resistant book editor, and Helen, a literary great who is struggling with the manuscript she’s been paid a whopping advance for, this novel gets to…
Think anarchic black comedy, add small town period drama, throw in a dash of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and stir liberally and you have the ingredients of an Aussie tall tale. Based on the best-selling novel by Rosalie Ham, The Dressmaker is a bittersweet Australian yarn. It is 1951. Tilly Dunnage…
Love in the slaughterhouse? On Body and Soul is a quirky drama about an unlikely romance between two lonely employees in a Budapest abattoir. The film won the prestigious Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival; but it’s an art-house film that will have limited interest to a broader audience. Endre (Géza Morcsányi) is the…
Sex, crime and bad behaviour characterise the ’60s dark period drama romance Roaring, the debut work for writer and director Staz Barres. Vera (Jackie von Lierop) desperately wants to make it in show business. She seeks fame. As it is, she works in a dead-end job as a waitress, alongside her friend Jane (Daisy Paxton-White). The pair…
