One of the challenges when your band’s the second highest grossing touring band of the year, is “Getting Out of Your Own Way.” Of course, that’s a problem most working bands would love to have, but Irish rockers U2 have been such a big deal for so long, that nearly everyone on the planet has…
Three disaffected young men are at the centre of Green Day’s rock opera American Idiot. The story is expanded from their album of the same name, (released in 2004) and also features music from the 2009 album 21st Century Breakdown. Lead vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong and bassist Mike Dirnt formed Green Day in…
When John Le Carrè died he was keen to see his literary legacy live on. He specifically asked his family to do so, leading to a number of successful TV adaptations of his work and the publication of his letters (A Private Spy). Based on this wish, the family asked Nick Harkaway, Le Carrè’s youngest…
Gustave Flaubert’s 1865 brooding and bittersweet tragedy about a 19th century self destructive woman and her tragic fall from grace has been filmed many times. There was even a recent contemporary take on the character with the recent French film Gemma Bovary. And Woody Allen used Flaubert’s famous character as the template for his Blue…
This laboured, overlong comedy inverts the premise behind What Women Want, the 2000 rom-com starring Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt. In What Men Want, Taraji P Henson plays Ali, a self-absorbed and ambitious agent working in the male-dominated world of sports management. While she represents a number of Olympic athletes, she hasn’t got an NBA,…
Harry Potter is a global cultural phenomenon. It started with what became the most successful book series in history (more than 600 million sold). Then, it transformed into one of the highest grossing film franchises (with a take of upwards of 12.75 billion Australian dollars for the eight movies). Further, the theatrical production Harry Potter…
Well meaning, but heavy handed, All Saints tells the true story of a church at the edge of extinction. After trading in his corporate career to become a preacher, Michael Spurlock (John Corbett) finds his first assignment is a quaint country church with only a dozen members. The job comes with a catch: he has to close the…
Nobel Prize winning Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa has long been interested in Latin American politics and history. His 1969 novel Conversations in the Cathedral explored the dictatorship in Peru in the 1950s and his 2000 novel The Feast of the Goat is about the assassination of Dominican strongman Rafael Trujillo. Which brings us all…
Although out of favour in the US, Woody Allen is still a revered filmmaker in France. So fittingly enough, his fiftieth film as a director is actually set and shot in France. And, surprisingly enough, the dialogue is in French, with subtitles. Coup de Chance (Stroke of Luck) also turns out to be one of…
MARVELous The Show is an irreverent, R-rated, musical parody of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that has fans squealing with delight. It is risqué, comedic and delightfully silly and showcases familiar MARVEL costuming with a twist, rock and pop music, dance numbers, stunts, magic and aerial acts. It is a cross between cabaret and circus. A…
