The painfully unfunny Little is a variation on the body-swap formula that drove films such as Big and Suddenly 30. There’s little about this dud to recommend it to audiences. Jordan Sanders (Regina Hall) was a nerd when at school. But twenty years later, she’s a high-powered millionaire. Jordan has become a ruthless, work-obsessed executive…
This live recording finds Nada Surf joining forces with the esteemed Potsdam, Germany-based orchestra Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg. Quite simply – indie rock meets strings! At this point in Nada Surf’s career, Peaceful Ghosts captures the perfect challenge for the quartet. Take an extensive catalogue that spans 24 years, whittle it down to 13 tracks, choose…
Energetic, colourful and captivating, this is up there with the very best productions of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s CATS and I have had the good fortune to see several of them. A massive cast of 87 (plus an alternative 13 “kitten” chorus) and a 16-piece orchestra breathe new life into a show that was first staged in…
This exhilarating hip-hop musical from Queensland Theatre is a huge crowd-pleaser, ending the year of productions on a high note. Set immediately post-Vietnam predominantly in a refugee camp in Arkansas, U.S.A., with flashbacks to Saigon, Vietgone is written by Qui Nguyen (who’s since gone on to write for Disney animation projects since penning this in…
Dan Evans did something that no-one else has ever done – he let me enjoy a work from the ancient Greek tragedies. Mention Socrates or Euripides, Medea or Oedipus and I’ll run a mile, but at the premiere of Oedipus Doesn’t Live Here Any More I was enthralled by the story of the man who…
Sally Robbins and Steven Bradbury featured in two of the most notorious moments in Australian Olympic history. Robbins is known as “Lay Down Sally” because she gave up and lay back in her boat 250 metres from the finishing line during the women’s eights’ final at the Athens Summer Games in 2004. She was reviled for…
Talk to Me marked “them” as a pair to be watched. I speak of twins Danny and Michael Philippou for whom that supernatural horror marked their feature directorial debut. Now Bring Her Back, shot in South Australia, brings more terror. Originally from Adelaide, the brothers moved to the US at the start of 2019, but…
A filmography featuring Dumb and Dumber To and Shallow Hal doesn’t exactly scream Oscar. Yet director Peter Farrelly finds himself as an Oscar frontrunner for his crowd-pleasing film Green Book. This conventional take on race relations in the American South of the 1960s seems to be carefully designed to push the right buttons. Of all…
Of all the high concept TV around at the moment, The Good Place probably has the highest concept of them all. I mean, it’s a brave show that starts out with a dead protagonist. It’s an even braver show that tackles deep philosophical themes. But it’s a brilliant show that can pull all that off…
American author Derek Miller has what can only be called an eclectic output. His The Girl in Green looked at the consequences of the invasion of Iraq while more recently, Radio Life was a post apocalyptic adventure tale. He has pivoted from this to a fascinating and moving piece of historical fiction, set in Southern…
