Former professional snowboarder Allie Reynolds wrote what she knew in her debut thriller Shiver. That book centred around the reunion of a group of old friends at an isolated ski resort when things start to go wrong. The world of professional snowboarding and the competitive nature of the characters comes very much into play in…
With major flooding in Northern New South Wales and Southern Queensland fresh in the minds of Australians, Dinuka McKenzie’s debut The Torrent, another entry in the ever growing Australian rural crime genre, hits with renewed relevance. The cold open is the discovery of a body, washed away by the flooding and caught in a stormwater…
Knowing where we came from and understanding what shaped the lives of our descendants can be confronting. In the context of Indigenous Australians, whose history stretches back eons, understanding is even more complex as it involves the disturbing events of post-European settlement. One woman’s story of discovery and understanding is told in A Letter for…
What do women want? Writer/director Renee Webster explores the question in her debut feature film How To Please A Woman. Webster has worked extensively in television on series like The Heights. Gina (Sally Phillips) is a middle-aged woman stuck in a loveless marriage. Her husband Adrian (Cameron Daddo) is a stuffy workaholic attorney who has…
Director Aaron Wilson has crafted a beautifully shot, sensitive story about love, loss and yearning with Little Tornadoes. We’re in small town, rural Australia in 1971. Leo (Mark Leonard Winter) is a steelworker whose wife has just left him without explanation. One day she just packed up all her things and disappeared. All that remains…
– How to Please a Woman – Only in cinemas from 2 June 2022 We have 5 double in-season passes thanks to Madman Films. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE Gina is not feeling fabulous. She has lost her job and feels stuck and frustrated in a passionless marriage. She has always…
Melbourne’s Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever is a band that has the appearance of following an older music model. I believe with their third long player, Endless Rooms, that model continues to pay large dividends. Artist development is pretty much a thing of the past these days but even with the success of their 2018 debut,…
Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife* is a story of hardship and resilience. This magnificently shot film follows a woman living in the Australian bush trying her best to raise four young children. Purcell plays Molly Johnson, a woman living in the Snowy Mountains in 1893. Molly’s husband – as the title suggests – is a…
Rhett Davis’s debut Hovering won the 2020 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for best unpublished manuscript. This award has a reputation over recent years of identifying quality emerging Australian writers. Past winners have included Jane Harper, Peggy Frew, Miles Allinson, Christian White and Maxine Beneba Clarke. So to say there is some expectation around this novel…
Robert Lukins’ Loveland, follow up to his debut The Everlasting Sunday, is an inter-generational family drama that takes readers from Queensland to the heart of Nebraska and a tragedy that feels destined to repeat itself. When May’s grandmother dies she learns that part of the inheritance is a house and block of land in a…
