The latest film from Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismaki is Fallen Leaves, a deceptively simple and quirky rom-com about two-star crossed lovers in Helsinki. Two lonely down-on-their-luck, working class people meet at a karaoke bar. But they find the path to making a connection and maybe finding happiness is not smooth sailing. Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) is…
Established over a decade ago, Orgōne is a dynamic West Coast 8-piece soul band that draws from diverse influences such as Afrobeat, Southern soul, psych-rock, and raw funk. Their newest release, Chimera, offers a unique and immersive groovy musical experience that transcends conventional soul records’ boundaries. This record is also one of the longest players…
Grief. How to deal with it. How to cope when you have lost a beloved one. That difficult subject has been turned on its head in the MTC production of Meet Me at Dawn. British playwright Zinnie Harris has written an intriguing mystery, in which clarity is sought, but not readily provided … deliberately. Even though the truth…
EJ Swift plunges into the climate-fiction sub-genre with the at turns terrifying and hopeful novel The Coral Bones. Told across three narratives – a past, present and future – The Coral Bones is also a love letter to The Great Barrier Reef and all of the creatures that inhabit it. The action is anchored by…
The satirical virtuosity in this show is in both the writing and execution. A small, talented troupe of entertainers that has been at it annually since 2000 just keeps delivering. The only pity is that because they are based in Sydney, we rarely get to see them further south. Their material is cultural and political. They skewer noteworthy figures…
Fifty years on, it remains just as wacky, bold, sexy, energetic and as much fun as when Tim Curry first took to the London stage in 1973. Rocky Horror Show is, of course, a loving tribute to the science fiction and B-grade horror movies of the late 1940s through to the early 1970s. It’s the story of…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 9 February 2024. On Imitation of War, songwriter and guitarist Kayla Cohen advances Itasca into rockier terrain, with a suite of smoky nocturnes and uneasy idylls surveying, with refreshing urgency, mythologies and psychologies both classical and personal. Co-produced by…
– The Great Escaper – Only in cinemas from 7 March 2024 We have 10 double in-season passes thanks to Transmission Films. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE In the summer of 2014, Bernard Jordan (Michael Caine) made global headlines. He had staged a “great escape” from his care home to join…
Non-indigenous Australians have often had a rather fraught relationship with the landscape of this continent. On one hand, its “boundless plains” offered a sense of opportunity; a chance to control the environment. But the land is also sometimes perceived as a wild place that can never be controlled. This led to a pervading sense of…
Exactly what is the best of all possible worlds? You may well ask that question before, during and after watching the delicious Broadway operetta Candide. The focus is on the hapless titular character (Lyndon Watts), who is schooled by the ever-optimistic Doctor Pangloss (Eddie Perfect). Perfect, who doubles as the philosopher Voltaire, narrates the musical mayhem that ensues…
