What a hoot! Who ever believed the disco ball was dead? Clearly they hadn’t seen VELVET, an ode to all that was great about the ‘70s and early ‘80s. Mostly that was about the music, but in this show – which claimed “Pick of the Fringe (Festival)” and “Best of The Fringe” awards – it…
When Black Country, New Road released their debut (last year’s For The First Time), they were lumped together with a slew of new UK bands who mixed post-punk arrangements, prog-rock structures, and half-spoken/half-sung vocals—bands like black midi, Squid, Shame, Dry Cleaning, and Sorry (among many others). But even within that group BCNR seemed like an…
“On a normal morning, a lone police car would be parked out the front of the station, waiting for something illegal to happen.” Cedar Valley, Holly Throsby’s second novel, begins with the arrival of two strangers on the first day of summer in 1993. One, Benny Miller, has come to live in a house which…
There are movies I really could dwell on in a lyrical way. Because it’s put together cleverly and cunningly. Or because I could empathize with the characters. Or because the humorous content was taken up throughout the story in a professional way. Call me oversensitive or sentimental. But Me and Earl and The Dying Girl…
Funny, irreverent, with more than a touch of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang about it, The Nice Guys is an action-crime comedy that has the same director and writer – Shane Black – at the helm and stars Russell Crowe (Gladiator) and Ryan Gosling (The Big Short). Black also wrote Lethal Weapon and Iron Man 3,…
Opposites attract, repel, and attract again in the French comedy Two Tickets to Greece. In 1989, brash teenager Magalie and conservative Blandine were besties at school. An argument over a boy saw an end to that and Magalie moved away. Now, three decades on and two years after her husband left her, radiology technician Blandine…
We got our first glimpse of the demonic nun Valak, in The Conjuring 2. She plagued Lorraine Warren’s visions and filled her with dread. Now she gets her own outing in The Nun. The epic battle of good vs. evil pits a priest with a dark history and a sister who has yet to take…
A fabulous, fun-filled 90 minutes greets those who venture along to see Senior Moments. It combines some terrific musical numbers with skits and a series of funny voice-overs. Many of the songs are spoofs of familiar tunes, like “Quick Go The Years” rather than “Click Go the Shears”, or “I Am the Very Model of…
Pain, depression and death get a working-over in killers. The Owl & Cat’s production is the world premiere of New York playwright Kevin Armento’s work. Miranda’s (Holly Chadwick) earliest memories are destructive thoughts – mayhem, torture and split blood. At primary school she meets and befriends Bobby Barrett (Charles Russell). The pair bond over their collective negativity. In no time, they are dishing…
This grand musical comedy is based upon the 1952 film version of Singin’ in the Rain starring Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor and Debbie Reynolds. Set in the late 1920s, it is a light hearted take on a period of transition in Hollywood, with the leads playing performers caught up in the move from silent films…
