As the second most watched drama series in the Showtime stable, it’s a bit of fan mystery as to why Ray Donovan was unexpectedly canned after delivering seven seasons of stellar entertainment. But we get that all good things must come to an end. Ray Donovan belonged to a very small group of premium television…
What is always surprising about cults is that they consistently manage to attract seemingly intelligent people who leave their ordered lives to join bizarre communities run by petty tyrants with delusions of grandeur. What is sadly not surprising is that at the centre of cults there are often innocents, the children. There’s a few plot…
You know those books that pop up so often on your feeds that you begin to feel that the universe (and lots of very savvy literary publicists) would really like you to read them? This is how I came to read The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley. Having heard many good things, and with Foley’s…
One was an author, poet, songwriter and reluctant singer adored by the masses. Egotistical, hedonistic, spiritual and depressed. He used to disappear without notice and dropped acid like it was going out of fashion. The other was his muse. She adored him and he was frequently drawn back to her. She always had a special…
Tim Minchin’s genius in picking out the best bits of our common Australian experiences and presenting them back to us like a proud parent is evident once again in Upright. Upright opens with Lucky (Minchin), on the wrong side of the country from his mother who is seeing out her last days at home, in…
Choosing the remote island of Lark to relocate to is a decision made by the Kendricks in the wake of enormous loss. Viola and her mother Deborah will never be the same again now it is only the two of them, and the safety offered by the tiny community of Lark seems heaven sent at…
Feeling and sensitivity pervade every fibre of the sensual and artistic work by French auteur Céline Sciamma (Girlhood). We’re in Brittany, France in 1760. Slow-moving but compelling, Portrait of a Lady on Fire concerns a secretive and developing relationship between a painter, Marianne (Noémie Merlant) and her subject, Héloïse, (Adèle Haenel), who has just left…
There’s a great deal of warmth and good humour in filmmaker Kore-eda Hirokazu’s (who won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for Shoplifters) wry new dramedy The Truth. It is his first film abroad in a language not his own and he worked with a totally French crew. It also marks the first time beloved Academy…
By the end I was bawling like a baby. CATS, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical as a Tom Hooper-directed and co-written (with Lee Hall) film, is a triumph of theatrics – costuming, make-up, choreography, colour and emotion. In the original 1980s stage musical, CATS takes place on the night of the annual Jellicle Ball, when…
It is suspected that viewers of The Witcher will fall into two camps – fantasy readers/gamers, and Henry Cavill fans. You’re in for a sizeable treat if you happen to be both of these things. Sure, last Friday night you may have been one of those people who trudged off to see the latest Star…
