A great sense of fun, good humour and liberal dollops of audience interaction are the constants in Paris Underground, a subversion of classic French cabaret and variety that is more than a little cheeky. Seven performers take to the stage for a couple of hours singing, dancing, tapping, contorting, climbing, telling stories and performing magic…
A superbly nuanced performance by Izabella Yena elevates an outstanding piece of writing from Benjamin Nichol, who directs kerosene with Yena. She plays Melbourne-based Millie, brought up by her grandfather, known as Gramps, who was raised in Coober Pedy. Yena weaves a tale of love, loss, loneliness and obsession. So convincing is she that I was immediately transported to…
How can you stand up to a bully? That’s the question at the centre of the crime drama Dogman. Timid dog groomer Marcello is separated from the mother of his young daughter, whom he adores … and vice versa. He lives in a barren, downtrodden Italian neighbourhood and gets on well with everyone. To make…
Sharp Pins is the solo project of Kai Slater, best known as the frontman of the art-punk band Lifeguard. Slater started Sharp Pins to explore a new musical direction, different from Lifeguard’s intense, noisier style. Blending sounds and aesthetics from 1960s and 1970s rock with modern indie-pop sensibilities, this is an under-the-radar project with maximum…
Rhett Davis’s debut Hovering won the 2020 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for best unpublished manuscript. This award has a reputation over recent years of identifying quality emerging Australian writers. Past winners have included Jane Harper, Peggy Frew, Miles Allinson, Christian White and Maxine Beneba Clarke. So to say there is some expectation around this novel…
If you liked Deadpool 2 but were put off by the graphic language and violence, then Once Upon a Deadpool is for you. This teen-friendly version is surprisingly inventive and, in some respects, works better than the original. As you might imagine, cutting out a lot of the swearing and gore has trimmed the movie…
What a delightful, funny, insightful and beautifully acted piece Quartet turned out to be. It was simply a complete entertainment package; comedy, drama, reality, a little unreality and a great deal of joy. The comfortable, regulated life of a trio of retired opera singers who live in a retirement home for showbiz veterans is shattered…
Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds’ fourth album for In The Red Records, La Araña Es La Vida summons the Mexican muse of The Great Spider Goddess of Teoticuhan, who sprouts hallucinogenic morning glories and protects the underworld, or in Kid’s eyes, the world of underground music. Recorded in a high school gym in Kansas, guitar slinger and…
At age six months, three identical male siblings are adopted out to three different families by a now defunct adoption agency. The reason they are separated has to do with a bizarre nature-versus-nurture experiment, the results of which are never published. In a nutshell, that’s the documentary Three Identical Strangers. The trio – Edward Galland,…
“I wish I could be more like one of my favourites Stanley Kubrick, able to not speak to anybody about my movie but let the movies speak for themselves,” confesses prolific Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino. Better known for the gorgeous 2009 drama I Am Love, Guadagnino was in town to introduce his latest film A…
