Despite perceptions to the contrary, art and crime are never far apart. Dark deeds plagued Renaissance painters like Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi. The artist Walter Sickert has been accused (posthumously) of being Jack the Ripper. And the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre is one of many “crimes of the 20th Century”….
The “wrong man” trope has a long cinematic history. It provided the basis for at least three Alfred Hitchcock classics – The 39 Steps, North by Northwest and The Man Who Knew Too Much. But it probably found its most intriguing form in the paranoid thrillers of the 1970s, like The Conversation. Now director Ferdinando…
For quite a while now, Disney/Pixar has “owned” the animation space. The decline of Dreamworks Animation has left the field basically open to them. But competitors are emerging, including (relatively) smaller player Sony Pictures Animation. Their first animated musical, Vivo, is a swing for the fences. Vivo sees the storied Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights)…
Topher Grace? Whatever happened to that guy? Well, in 2021, Home Economics happened to him. It’s not like he hasn’t been doing anything (remember BlackKkKlansman?) but his profile is a little lower than it was in his That 70s Show heyday. Home Economics is a perfectly fine but not particularly memorable series about a dysfunctional…
Australian director Cate Shortland shot to prominence with her feature debut Somersault in 2004. Since then, she’s directed the feature films Lore (2012) and Berlin Syndrome (2017), as well as television in Australia and the US. Now she springboards into the big time with Black Widow, the latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe canon….
If you’ve been pining for a bit of Parks & Recreation-style comedy, look no further than Girls5Eva. This bright breezy series from Meredith Scardino hits all the right notes in its story of a ’90s girl-band that gets a second shot at fame. Scardino was previously a producer and writer on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Kimmy……
Long merely the sidekick or annoyance to Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki finally gets some clear air and deserved screen time. This third series in the Disney / Marvel franchise on Disney + sees the Asgardian trickster thrust into a mind-bending journey. While the series once more uses time-travel as its central device, it’s…
The main thing to say about Australian TV series, Wakefield, is that you just have to watch it. It really is that good. Unfortunately in the past, local shows have tended to stick to safe (read ‘boring’) formulaic material featuring cardboard cut-out doctors, nurses, lawyers or cops but in recent years some creativity has been…
I felt uncomfortable about reviewing WandaVision while episodes were still dropping on Disney +. The series was so, well… unexpected, that I didn’t think I could grasp it until it was finished. Now it is finished, I’m still not 100% sure I’ve “got it” fully. If you’ve spent time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (the…
Come from Away opened in Brisbane this week to rapturous standing ovations. This unique production tells the true stories of the people of Gander, Newfoundland (CA) and some of the passengers of the 38 planes that were diverted there during the day of September 11, 2001. As the small town’s population more than doubled with…
