The old saying goes that behind every great man stands a great woman. But what if the woman is doing a lot more than just “standing” there? What does a “supporter” deliver to a celebrity? And what should that “supporter” expect in return? Swedish director Björn Runge explores these questions in his thoughtful drama, The…
Aristophanes’ classic Greek comedy Lysistrata is a comic account of women’s extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War. They withhold sexual privileges from their men as a means of forcing peace talks. As an early exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society, it’s an apt source for Lysa and the Freeborn Dames. This new…
Most film franchises seem to run out of inspiration before too long, but the Mission Impossible series seems to have gone from strength to strength. The Brad Bird-helmed Ghost Protocol was arguably the strongest film to date. Rogue Nation took the series in a slightly different direction under the direction of Christopher McQuarrie (Oscar winning…
If you’ve ever wondered how important the ABC is to Australia, watch Mystery Road. Forget about all the political posturing. Just take in how vibrantly this institution depicts and represents our country. This network has recently given us Rosehaven (set in Tasmania) and Harrow (set in Brisbane); and now Mystery Road takes us to remote Western…
What is truth and what is fiction? At times it’s hard to tell when watching Pvt. Wars. It’s 1975 and three Vietnam vets have good reason to be housed in a mental institution. Their reality is a most unfortunate one. Perhaps there are moments of clarity among their delusions, but if so very few. The…
Many comics seem to be insecure, unhappy, lonely. They turn to comedy as a way of dealing with their emotional pain, and they often use humour as a defence mechanism. And this the plight of the heroine in Funny Cow. This unapologetically bleak tale follows a damaged woman trying to make it in the male-dominated…
You Got Older is an American play, from a young up-and-coming playwright, Clare Barron. It premiered in 2014 and won the Obie Award in 2015. You Got Older concerns cancer and dying. It seems the writer, Ms Barron, lost her job, had a break-up and received the news that her father had a bad cancer…
Recently I got a Playstation VR set for my birthday and since then I’ve spent a lot of hours in different virtual worlds. So I understand very well that in films such as Ready Player One the population spends more time in this artificial environment than in the actual world. As one already suggested at…
You might have seen Lars Von Trier’s film Melancholia. This world premiere stage production is based on it. But if you enter the theatre knowing nothing about it, I dare say you’re likely to find much perplexing. Suffice to say that like the film, events unfold in two distinct chapters. Underpinning both is depression that…
Good Muslim Boy is a tale of procrastination, bureaucratic somnambulance and frustration, but it’s brilliantly told at a breakneck pace. It’s fast, funny and powerful and had me fretting for the hero and so much relating to his predicament of being stuck in a foreign place where no one really cared about your predicament. It…
