For twenty-five years Stephen Page has been the creative director of Sydney’s Bangarra Dance Company, creating some innovative works that often explore complex indigenous themes and culture. He has also choreographed a number of films such as Bran Nue Dae and The Sapphires. He made his film directorial debut with Sand, one of the seventeen…
A love story against a backdrop of civil war, Skies of Lebanon has a decided artistic and poetic bent. It is the 1950s and despite not speaking a word of Arabic, Alice (Alba Rohrwacher) leaves her straitlaced existence in Switzerland for a nannying job in Beirut. In a café she meets and falls for a…
The films of Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth) are strange, off-beat, enigmatic, unsettling, confronting, and often hard to fathom, and have divided audiences. The Lobster, his first English language feature film, is no exception, and will probably go down as one of the weirdest films to hit screens this year. It won the Jury Prize…
What started out as cringe-worthy fare became anything but as laughter, hijinks and a cute and savvy youngster’s performance took over and carried the day. Written by Erich and Jon Hoeber (who together wrote RED) and directed by Peter Segal (Second Act), it became a most enjoyable spy spoof. A lot has to do with…
As a long-time fan of Kate Forsyth, I was thrilled to received an ARC of her new novel, Beauty in Thorns. This passionate and compassionate re-imagining of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale is centred on the Pre-Raphaelite artists and poets in England, and sweeps readers up into their lives, loves, losses, desires and dreams. This is how the…
It’s all good, clean, innocent, engaging, adventurous and flirtatious fun, until it isn’t. It is 1939 and I speak of a pair of first year boarding school students at Cambridge in England. These young ladies get to know lads from the university who make it a habit to climb edifices across town at night. Rosalind (Meg Taranto)…
Not to be confused with The Handmaid’s Tale — Margaret Atwood’s Booker Prize nominated dystopian novel with a strong feminist slant, which was filmed in 1990 with Natasha Richardson and Faye Dunaway — The Handmaiden is a loose adaptation of Sarah Waters’ Booker Prize nominated novel Fingersmith, which was set in Victorian England, and offers…
Maze Runner: The Death Cure concludes the generic dystopian saga based on the popular series of novels written by James Dashner. And unlike a couple of other YA adaptations, at least here the producers resisted the temptation to split the final film into two parts. We were first introduced to a group of heroes, known as…
There is a dark heart to American playwright Samantha Cooper’s world premiere work, Dawn, being staged at The Owl and Cat Theatre. It starts out with Laura’s parents wanting to have a family dinner with her, but things quickly turn sour … and it is soon clear why. Laura has told her mother, Jo, that her…
The legendary, wholesome Dolly Parton with a mischievous streak is on show in the part musical, part play, part concert Here You Come Again. It is the conceit of the creator and star of the piece, Tricia Paoluccio, who has a magnificent, rich, rounded, Dolly Partonesque voice. Her vocalisation is superb throughout this fun-filled production….
