It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Tom Ford. I guess the successful fashion designer and entrepreneur (turned screenwriter, producer and director) has had other things on his mind since A Single Man (2009); but now he’s back with his sophomore feature film Nocturnal Animals – and it’s quite a film. Based on the…
Disney’s Aladdin is simply a mind-blowing visual experience that had the audience in ecstasies that resembled an old time US revival meeting as they screamed, cheered, and gasped in adoration. With American accents it was Disney all the way with feel, audience pitch, values and quality. For me, after an adult life time involved in…
Sylvia Moreno-Garcia seems determined to write a book in every sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy and horror. She has taken on vampires in Certain Dark Things, powers in The Beautiful Ones and the gothic tradition in Mexican Gothic. Now Moreno-Garcia takes on and reinvents The Island of Doctor Moreau, one of the slightly less famous…
What a luscious production of the timeless classic, Swan Lake. It is, of course, the love story of Prince Siegfried and the Swan Princess Odette, torn apart by the villainous sorcerer Rothbart. But wait, there’s more. The Imperial Ice Stars’ original version of Swan Lake premiered in Australia in June 2006. It then toured world,…
A perennial favourite of mine, Michael Shafar is one very funny man who has no hesitation in pushing the boundaries and fortunately he is back at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with a batch of new material. He starts his 50-minute set by telling us that before the pandemic he entertained on cruise ships. Then he…
Special effects wizardry, violence and a dollop of humour drive Venom: Let There Be Carnage. The storyline is almost incidental, but split personalities are at the heart of it. Tom Hardy reprises his role as former journalist Eddie Brock, now host to bad alien symbiote Venom. When I say “host”, I mean that literally –…
Wow! What a ripping good, most entertaining, magnificently realised origin story. Cruella is clever, funny and sassy – a family comedy turned sophisticated adult offering. English children’s novelist and playwright “Dodie” Smith is best known for the novel The Hundred and One Dalmations (1956), which became the big screen animation 101 Dalmations in 1961. Disney…
This novel is an excellent example of how a book well and gently written has just as much power to affect as one written to surprise and propel. The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant reminds us that our most meaningful interactions are those that we come to by chance, and not by design. The finding of…
What can I say about The French Photographer by Natasha Lester that hasn’t already been said? Natasha goes from strength to strength, delivering old fans and new immensely engaging stories one after another. I don’t know how she does it (although if you check her blog, she shares a lot of her process)! Here’s the…
“I had the greatest time!” said one young patron after seeing Age of Stephen. Hear, hear. What an entertainer. What a sense of comic timing. What a romp – a jam-packed, fun-filled hour of entertainment with big audience appeal as Stephen Valeri’s soaring vocals channel John Farnham. A large easel sits on the stage before…
