Basketball is huge in America; and Air Jordan shoes are now synonymous with it. Of course, that wasn’t always the case. Director and actor Ben Affleck’s (Argo) new film AIR tells the story of how the greatest basketball player of all time, the shoe and the Nike company came together. So this is one of…
The quirky dramedy Linoleum concerns a decent man of science who always wanted to be an astronaut. That man is Cameron Edwin (Jim Gaffigan). He hosts a local, late-night children’s TV science show, called “Above & Beyond”. One day a very strange thing happens – a red sports car crashes right in front of him,…
Brilliantly performed by Justine Clarke who, as the 27th Australian Prime Minister, displays determination, indignance and frustration, I would suggest one’s political predilection will have a fair say in how Joanna Murray-Smith’s words go down. As the writer, the latter has combined fact and fiction. She has taken incendiary language from shock jocks, political opponents and…
True crime and true crime podcasts are having a moment, not only in the real world but also in fiction. However, in fiction, writers can start to get behind the obsession with true crime, the ethics of these investigations and the consequences, both good and bad, of reopening old cases. Rebecca Makkai’s new novel I…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 31 March 2023. Having broken off work on a second violin concerto in 2012, the prolific Finnish composer Kalevi Aho only returned to the project after being contacted by the violinist Elina Vähälä. While aware of the weight of…
We’re among African Americans in a working-class suburb in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the 1950s. Although affable when it suits him, Troy Maxon (Bert Labonte) can be a hard man to stomach. A garbage collector, he has a “my way or the highway approach” and sometimes the choices he makes are decidedly ordinary. His upbringing was far from desirable….
The word ‘Rhinestone’ immediately makes me think of ‘Cowboy’. So, when I saw the title of the current play at Ensemble Theatre Rhinestone Rex and Miss Monica, I thought that David Williamson had delved into the great ‘Western’ genre. Well, he does a little bit. Set mostly in the living room of Monica in Sydney’s…
What a hoot! Featured performer Jay James-Moody, the artistic director of Squabbalogic Independent Music Theatre, has adapted (to the present day) and directs the musical play by Alan Jay Lerner to great effect. Dr Mark Bruckner (Blake Bowden) is a strictly evidence-based psychiatrist who has recently lost his wife. Returning to practice, he has a chance meeting…
Hirokazu Kore-eda is one of Japan’s greatest living filmmakers. You could mount a case he’s the greatest living Japanese filmmaker if you exclude animation (and thus, Hayao Miyazaki). In 2013, he took home the Special Jury Prize from the same event for Like Father, Like Son. In 2018, he won the Palme d’Or at Cannes…
Philip Selway, best known as the drummer in Radiohead, has released his third solo album revealing an affinity for the elegant and artful, technologically enhanced, somewhat experimental, larger than life arrangements that has long been part of his main band’s largest works. Surprisingly, Selway and producer Marta Salogni brought in Italian drummer Valentina Magaletti, due…
