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Happy 50 – movie review

Director Eric Lavaine reunites most of the cast of his 2014 ensemble comedy Barbecue and brings them back to reprise their characters for this sequel, which was one of the hits of the recent French Film Festival. Happy 50 is also known as Plancha (“griddle”) in its original French. Eight years after the events of…

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TANZ – dance review

WARNING – FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY Ten naked women cavorting on stage in a comic book reality is the wild work of 37-year-old Austrian choreographer and performance artist Florentina Holzinger. A live back piercing in close-up, dancers being elevated off the stage by their scalp and a rat birthing from an elderly woman (complete with…

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The Bank of Dave – movie review

The feelgood film The Bank of Dave is based on the true story of Dave Fishwick; a businessman from Burnley, one of the most deprived towns in northern England. Dave became wealthy from running his own business selling vans to local customers, and he began loaning money to locals in need of support to help…

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Death of a Salesman (Chapel Off Chapel) – theatre review

Almost three quarters of a century after it was written, the power, passion and desolation intrinsic to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949) remains intact. It is a devastating and iconic piece of work, magnificently performed by the 11-strong cast from Hearth Theatre at Chapel Off Chapel. The three-hour production explores themes of change, isolation, depression,…

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Euphoria (Melbourne Town Hall)

As Gordon Gekko, in the 1987 Oliver Stone-directed hit film Wall Street, Michael Douglas said “greed, for lack of a better word, is good”. I venture to suggest that Berlin-based artist Julian Rosefeldt, who has created the impressive multiscreen installation Euphoria, would vehemently disagree. Using the musings of more than 100 economists, business magnates, writers and celebrities,…

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