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…
Director Perry Lang offers a polished but polarizing work in An Interview with God. This Bible-bashing drama promised much, but ultimately delivered little. Covering the war in Afghanistan provided journalist Paul Asher (Brendon Thwaites) with some of the best stories of his young career. But that endeavor ended up costing him so much more than he…
I’ve been a big fan of the Stella Hardy series (Good Money, Too Easy and now Shoot Through), and I will admit that the setting of this one appealed enormously – what with Stella returning to the family farm in the Wimmera (there’s something going on with lots of books being set in that part…
Expect to suspect everyone in Running Against the Tide, the latest novel from Amanda Ortlepp (Claiming Noah). An undercurrent of malice swims through the novel, luring readers into its depths, and tossing up red herrings that promote suspicion and tension. When Erin Travers moves to the rugged Eyre Peninsula in South Australia, she’s leaving a life of…
An original English and Yiddish adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy, Kadimah’s full length play is a lively representation of the spiritual and moral dilemma at the heart of the tale. Co-developed, co-written and directed by Gary Abrahams, it is based upon the religious tenet that women cannot study the Torah…
Recently we had Bad Grandpa, in which Jackass star Johnny Knoxville disguised himself as an old man and embarked on a series of pranks that startled and shocked unexpecting onlookers. That film was tacky, but it had several laugh out loud moments. Unlike this dumb, tacky and tasteless comedy starring Oscar winning actor Robert De…
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…
I must admit to a little trepidation when I started this book as erotica is not my preferred genre. But Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, while undeniably erotic in parts, was not erotica. Rather, it was a thought-provoking story of community, love, sex and intimacy that swept me to the Punjabi community in Southall, London,…
Fifteen years ago, Robert Randolph and his Family Band burst into rock music consciousness with Live at the Wetlands — a concert album of the band’s final performance at the celebrated NYC club and jam band Mecca that was going out of business – already a serious artistic force to be reckoned with, led by…
Hailed as a remarkable, ground-breaking work during two sell-out runs at London’s National Theatre, the feature film adaptation of the musical London Road reunites that award winning team. The script is by Alecky Blythe, music from Adam Cork and direction from Rufus Norris (Broken). London Road documents the events that shook Suffolk in 2006, when…
