After over a decade and 4 full-length studio albums with Best Coast – her band with multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno – Bethany Cosentino has stepped away to create her solo debut, Natural Disaster. Given her previous ventures in power pop/alt rock with excursions into surf rock and country, her solo work here, supported by Nashville producer…
During the late 90s and early 2000s, the pioneering Blackberry – the phone with a keyboard – dominated the tech market. At its peak, the iconic device made up 45% of the cellphone market and had some 85 million subscribers. But then egos, hubris, corporate greed, shady business deals and rival tech companies and their…
I don’t usually talk about cover art of the books that I review but just this once, I have to say that the Australian cover of Stef Penney’s excellent historical novel The Beasts of Paris does not do it justice. Some of the action of The Beasts of Paris is set in and around the…
What a delightful, joyous and life affirming hoot Miss Peony is. It concerns the fractious relationship between Chinese grandmother Adeline (Gabrielle Chan) and her 26-year-old granddaughter, Lily (Stephanie Jack). In her heyday, Adeline won umpteen beauty contests in her native Hong Kong and is still feted for her achievements all these years later. Lily is an all but…
In Greek mythology, Clytemnestra was the twin sister of the woman said to be the most beautiful in the world, Helen of Troy. Their mother was Leda. Cygnets is a new take on sibling rivalry – the pain, the pleasure, the subterfuge. It shows the two girls had different experiences with their mother. It reveals jealousy and cruelty. An…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 18 August 2023. The three-time GRAMMY® Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn presents her new recording of Eugène Ysaÿe’s Six Sonatas for Violin Solo, op. 27. Inspired by the example set by J.S. Bach two centuries earlier, legendary Belgian violinist and…
The reach and influence of Vladimir Putin is breathtaking. In A Very Expensive Poison, writer Lucy Prebble details and explores the assassination of Russian Defector Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006 and surmises that Mr Putin most probably authorised the hit. If it weren’t based on a real incident, A Very Expensive Poison may simply…
Godland was the centrepiece of the recent Scandinavian Film Festival, and now this slow moving but visually stunning Danish drama gains a cinematic release. The film is set in the frozen inhospitable wilds of Iceland in the 19th century. Lucas (Elliot Crossett Hove) is a young idealistic Lutheran priest who is sent to Iceland to…
The girls are out for a night on the tiles at a club, but not all is going according to plan. In fact, there is no shortage of sad and mad faces amidst the snorting and vomiting in the ladies’ toilets, where the action takes place. The four filthy cubicles are full. Tiff (Amelia Nemet) is inconsolable after…
Several years ago, I was fortunate to see Cirque du Soleil’s “O” at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, with performers excelling on, in and above a gigantic swimming pool. If they can create wonders in water (which they do), surely it is only a small step to freeze that life source and turn it into ice. I…
