Based on the 1975 classic film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, a cheeky Camelot spoof on the legendary King Arthur’s quest to find the elusive treasure, the musical Spamalot is a pretty silly show. But silly is not as easy to do as it might seem. Thankfully, Spamalot sees Brisbane Arts Theatre giving audiences nothing…
Twenty-five years ago Kazunori Yamauchi created the world’s most accurate car racing simulation game: Gran Turismo. He and his team had spent five years perfecting it. Video gamers quickly became obsessed. Then UK marketing executive for Nissan, Danny Moore had a crazy, but revolutionary idea. In Neill Blomkamp’s movie Gran Turismo, Moore (Orlando Bloom), convinces…
Moby was making electronic dance music hits before we knew to call it EDM, when it was still called techno/dance pop, but his bold sonic experiments, often mixing musical genres with cinematic flair, have taken his music far beyond the dance floor. While he had an early breakout disco hit with “Go,” and was a…
Viggo Mortensen (The Two Faces of January) stars in a tale of morality and friendship set against an unforgiving mountainous landscape during the Algerian War. The year is 1954 and the war is just starting. Remote village schoolteacher Daru (Mortensen), an ex-French Army soldier, who lost his wife a decade earlier, is caught in the…
When a band puts out a “best of” album it is often the sign of a big change: they’re breaking up; looking for a quick way to fulfill their contract with a label so they can sign a better contract somewhere else; or maybe just cashing in. When Snow Patrol released their Greatest Hits in…
Remembering Pirates is a new work by Christopher Harley, who gave us Blood Bank at the Ensemble Theatre late last year. The ‘core’ of the drama in this new play is similar to the last one by Mr Harley. Two brothers: one of them lost (Michael), the other (John) subsequently traumatised. (In Blood Bank, it…
In The Freedom of Emma Herwegh, author Dirk Kurbjuweit explores what for many readers will be a little-known period of German history. That is an attempted revolution led by a group of intellectuals following a failed French Revolution in 1848. Its focus is Emma Herwegh, the wife of a German poet and political agitator against…
I can’t think of an actress who has epitomised class, style and magnetism more than the late, great Audrey Hepburn (1929 – 1993). The documentary Audrey charts her life’s course. Notwithstanding remarkable and well-deserved success, there was also much pain and sadness. She was just a young girl when her parents split and war broke…
It’s lively. It’s cheery. It upends political correctness. In fact, it is the perfect holiday treat. I speak of School of Rock The Musical, featuring the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyrics by Glenn Slater and book by Julian Fellowes. Based on the 2003 film, which was a hit for Jack Black, who played…
Warm, witty and engaging, Ordinary Days is a contemporary musical about making real connections in a city that never sleeps – New York. It is about our search for meaning and purpose, and how to celebrate beauty and the simple things in our everyday lives. The longer it went the more I embraced and fell…
