The latest installment in the Disney Villains spin-offs is a reprise of Maleficent – a twisted view of the Sleeping Beauty fable. Picking up where the original left off, Aurora (Elle Fanning) has been crowned Queen of the Moors and is living in the idyllic woods with her godmother Maleficent (Angelina Jolie), sidekick Diaval (Sam…
I think it was Billy Connolly, most likely during one of his numerous appearances on Parky, who I once heard use the phrase ‘shortbread tin view of Scotland’. In essence, the views of Scotland on shortbread tins were idealised and far from the reality of current day Scotland. Even today, if you find an image…
What do you do when the cards you’ve been dealt aren’t enough? In Jessie Cates’ (Esther van Doornum) case, she calmly takes the ultimate step. Jessie is the single mother of a troubled child, who has left. She lives with her own widowed mother Thelma (Caroline Lee). She tells Thelma she’s about to take her…
Stella is the only child of Adam, a pastor, and Ulrika, a lawyer. Stella is now of legal age and looks forward to soon taking an Asian holiday with her best friend since childhood, Amina. The two teenagers have been through much together and of course, know a lot more about each other’s true selves…
Allegra in Three Parts made me cry, I’m not going to hide it. Grab your tissues, because this story of a young girl (Allegra, aged 11 and three-quarters) who has to be one person for one grandmother, another for the other, and a third for her dad, really tugs at the heartstrings. Allegra’s being brought…
According to American novelist Flannery O’Connor, “the beginning of human knowledge is through the senses”. This underpinning of human perception is at the core of playwright Elise Grieg’s world premiere work Magpie; its all-encompassing description offers theatre-goers immersion into the experience of a Brisbane summer, where thunderstorms threaten for longer than they onslaught and nothing…
It’s rare that we get to see a film from Paraguay. It’s even rarer that this deeply conservative country would produce a film about two elderly lesbians whose relationship is undergoing something of a crisis. But that’s what we get in The Heiresses from writer/director Marcelo Martinessi. Chela (played by veteran theatre actress Anna Brun…
You have to love the Irish! They seem to have an optimism and cheeriness that’s so infectious, you can’t help but smile. Now, combine that with a Catholic nun named Sister Winnie, who likes a sneaky smoke and a Guinness, and the foundations for a heart-warming tale are set. Folk is easy theatre to watch….
When my kids were younger, they loved Pokémon. They’ve now outgrown that phase but the undeniably cute characters remain with them – and me I guess. I can’t say I was ever a huge fan, but they were a social phenomenon for a while there. The Pokémon wave however crested some time ago, so the…
Dread is palpable throughout Arthur Miller’s drama A View from the Bridge. The Melbourne Theatre Company’s version features seven actors and one old wooden chair but held me transfixed for two hours. The time is the 1950s; and the place an Italian-American neighbourhood near the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. The narrator is Alfieri (Marco…
