When kids at school are busy updating their Iphone apps and Facebook-ing their beloved, you have to wonder if Shakespeare is still relevant? It's this timely question that a class of grade 12 students are required to answer as part of an assignment. Statespeare focuses on four clashing students in particular, who are made against their will to work together (remember how fun group work was at school?) and address Shakespeare's 400 year old works. It's a veritable Shakespearean Breakfast Club. Much like the cult teen angst movie, the play sees the fairly standard assignment develop into a bonding exercise between the students - drama nerds Lachlan and Nerys and popular trouble makers Jay and Rob, allowing them to discus, debate and rehearse some of Shakespeare's most famous and compelling scenes. Statespeare is a Shakespeare mix-tape of sorts, including scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Romeo & Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus amongst others. All in all the students get swept up in the language and power of Shakespeare, and the audience gets to go along for the ride. Statespeare cleverly brings Shakespeare into the digital era and modern day school ground via a humorous and fast paced performance. Catch the show in Brisbane until the May 29 before commences a four-month national tour.
Combining camping in comfort with drinking in a vineyard, winery glamping is the trend that absolutely no one will ever complain about. It's been popping up all over the country, from Bendigo in regional Victoria, to Mount Cotton just outside of Brisbane, to a luxury pod-based version in South Australia's McLaren Vale — and now the Mornington Peninsula is getting in on the action. Meet Mornington Peninsula Glamping, which is now up and running at Blue Range Estate Wines in Rosebud. At a site overlooking not only the vineyard, but with views out over Port Phillip Bay, it features a number of luxe five-by-five-metre tents. There's three onsite at the time of writing; however there'll be ten by mid-October. Available for $265 per night, each tent is decked out with a queen-sized bed with 1000-thread-count sheets, two armchairs and a coffee table, plus solar power to keep your devices juiced. Visitors also have access to a shared cooking and eating area with two barbecues, hot water, and a choice of boutique tea or coffee, plus a luxury bathrooms in a shipping container. Mornington Peninsula Glamping is the brainchild of Christian Melone, whose family own and run vineyard, with his grandparents establishing the site back in the 80s. If you glamp over Thursday to Sunday, you can also mosey up to the winery's restaurant for a meal, tucking into the likes of tagliatelle with bay scallops and prawns, slow-roasted lamb shoulder with truffled mashed potatoes and ocean trout fillet with blood orange butter. Find Mornington Peninsula Glamping at Blue Range Estate Wines, 155 Gardens Road, Rosebud, Victoria.
The subject at hand of the latest Nine Lives exhibition may sound a little mundane, but artists Pedro Ramos and Angus Mcdiarmid will have you surprisingly mesmerised by their unique images of rocks and water. Joining collective forces, the Australian artists explore the captivating textures, vivid colours and kaleidoscopic patterns found when the land meets the sea. From sea scapes and rock formations to documenting the people around them engaging in the water that inspires them, Rocks & Water respectfully highlights the unexpected beauty found within nature. Originally from Madeira Island off the coast of Portugal, Pedro Ramos works in Sydney as a freelance photographer and tutor. A talented artists, Pedro has exhibited his works internationally and has been featured in major publications such as Vice and Monster Children. He now returns to Nine Lives after exhibiting in last year’s sold out Semipermanent show. Rocks & Water's other artist Angus Mcdiarmid is a little more local – living and working between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. He is however about to embark on a South American hiatus which I'm sure will make for some great imagery. In the mean time be sure to take in Rocks & Water, it's an exhibition you won't want to miss.
If the only thing that's been holding you back from packing up and making a home in the middle of nowhere has been the lack of electricity (and the desire to not live out of a tent), you might want to start plotting your escape. Architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) have designed a 3D-printed pod home that not only looks 100 percent epic, but can function entirely off the grid. The sustainable structure works in conjunction with a companion vehicle, which is also printed using 3D technology. Solar panels built into the pod's curved pavilion-stye roof powers it by night, and the vehicle generates its own power too through a hybrid electric system. The two share their power — get this — wirelessly through a closed-loop battery system to ensure you're not left in the dark when the sun doesn't peek out behind those clouds. The pod has been developed with the geniuses at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory as part of the Additive Manufacturing Integrated Energy (AMIE) project. The pod, which is largest of its kind at 11.6m long, 3.7m high and 3.7m wide, has been developed with the aim to illustrate "the potential of a clean energy future for a rapidly urbanising world by demonstrating the use of bidirectional wireless energy technology and high performance materials to achieve independence from the power grid at peak-demand times". 3D printing has given us everything from a chewable toothbrush, 60-second cupcakes, and titanium sculptures, but this has to be the most dream-worthy 3D printed possibility yet. Via Dezeen. Image: SOM.
Doing your bit for the environment has never looked quite so good as it does with Frank Green's colourful range of reusable cups. The durable containers are not only helping to quash Australia's single-use coffee cup waste problem, they're also super stylish and beautifully designed. And you've got the perfect excuse to add a couple to your collection (or someone else's) with Frank Green's Virtual Warehouse Sale, offering up to 50 percent off a heap of Frank Green products. From Thursday, March 18 until Sunday, March 21 you'll be able to treat yourself, a friend or your family to a stylish and sustainable cup on the cheap. Head to the website to browse all the sale items and find the best deals. Frank Green is best known for its reusable cup and bottle range featuring the brand's recognisable pastel colour palette and in-built tap-to-pay feature, but its range of stylish and sustainable goods doesn't stop there. The brand also produces homewares like ceramic reusable containers, tea, coffee and stylish ceramic french presses, as well as Disney and Minions-inspired cups and bottle for kids. FYI, this story includes some affiliate links. These don't influence any of our recommendations or content, but they may make us a small commission. For more info, see Concrete Playground's editorial policy.
Another streaming service is about to boost your viewing options, focusing on Australian movies and television while letting you watch for free. We might live in peak online-viewing times, with no shortage of platforms vying for eyeballs, but Brollie is launching with a couple of clear points of difference. Firstly, there's the lack of price tag. Secondly, there's the homegrown love. When Brollie arrives on Thursday, November 23, it will hail from independent Australian and New Zealand distributor Umbrella Entertainment — hence the name — and draw upon the company's catalogue. Open debut, that'll mean 300-plus titles ready to view. While the Aussie contingent is a big drawcard, there'll also be overseas releases among the range. So, get ready to watch local-made gems such as The Babadook and Two Hands; classics like Walkabout and Storm Boy that feature the late, great David Gulpilil; the Kylie Minogue-starring Cut; Hugh Jackman (The Son) in Erskineville Kings; and the Nicole Kidman (Special Ops: Lioness)-led BMX Bandits. Documentaries such as Servant or Slave and Ablaze will also be available. Or, get excited about Joaquin Phoenix (Beau Is Afraid)-led masterpiece You Were Never Really Here, the live-action OG Super Mario Bros, and mind-bender Vivarium with Jesse Eisenberg (Fleishman Is in Trouble) and Imogen Poots (Outer Range) among the international titles. You'll be watching along via Apple TV, Google TV, Android TV, Chromecast with Google TV and on your browser. Because Brollie is free, however, the caveat is that you'll also be watching ads. To help viewers sort through the Brollie collection, the service's team will highlight its best-of picks twice monthly, and also hero Aussie horror via an Australian Nightmares collection. "We know these iconic films and TV shows can find new and old audiences instead of gathering dust on the shelf. Brollie is about helping Aussies to access this world-class storytelling easily and, most importantly, for free so everyone can enjoy our epic screen legacy," said Ari Harrison, General Manager and Head of Sales & Acquisitions, announcing Brollie's arrival. Brollie will launch on Thursday, November 23 — head to the streaming platform's website to subscribe and for further details.
German agency Jung von Matt has given some of the world's most iconic cartoon characters a wonderful makeunder by recreating them with Lego blocks. With a distinct minimalist approach to these creations, Jung von Matt have used height and colour to cleverly mould these creations. Nothing displays this better than Marge Simpson's signature towering blue hairstyle. However, some of the other cartoons aren't so easy to make out. But once you find out the answer, you'll kick yourself for not spotting them earlier. Furthermore, your ability to name these characters will be a good indicator of how much time you spent in front of the television as a kid. Have a look at the images below, and score yourself on how many you can guess. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Smurfs Asterix and Obelix South Park [via Flavorwire]
So far, 2022 has been the year of Wordle — of waking up, busting out your best five-letter guesses over your morning coffee, bragging about your prowess online, getting annoyed about American spelling and grumbling about changes since The New York Times took over the popular game, too. But come March, it'll also be the year of Celebrity Letters and Numbers for the second year running, because SBS is bringing back the star-studded version of its initial 2010–12 hit that first debuted last year. Whether you watched along back when famous folks weren't doing the puzzling, you've been hooked to repeats of old episodes over the past ten years or you jumped onboard when Celebrity Letters and Numbers premiered in 2021, there's no denying the joys of this simple but delightful game show. It celebrates clever contestants doing word and number brain-teasers, each episode has an engagingly low-key vibe — all while still remaining tense as competitors try to work out the right answers, of course — and it's very easy and immensely enjoyable to play along with from home. Accordingly, it's no wonder that SBS has made a second season of its new starry format, which'll start airing on SBS and via SBS On Demand from Saturday, March 5. Comedian Michael Hing is still on hosting duties, after taking over from the OG version's Richard Morecroft. Lily Serna is also returning to flip numbers and show off her maths skills, while David Astle will again tell contestants whether they've found real words or just made them up, all with his trusty dictionary in hand — as they've both done since before Letters and Numbers had an extra word at the beginning of its moniker. As happened during season one of Celebrity Letters and Numbers, they'll be joined by three different well-known faces and a special guest each week, some vying for glory and others sitting with Astle in dictionary corner — with season two set to feature Merrick Watts, Ben Law, Tanya Hennessy, Akmal Saleh, Susie Youssef and Aaron Chen, among others. And, this new run of episodes will again span an hour each, and feature 12 instalments. Making words out of nine randomly selected letters, using six also randomly chosen numbers in equations to reach a set figure, and rearranging a jumble of nine more letters into one lengthy word in the final round — that's still all on the bill, naturally, because it wouldn't be any version of Letters and Numbers otherwise. And yes, to answer the obvious question: this is basically SBS's Aussie version of the great 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown (which SBS also airs, so it clearly knows that it's ace). Letters and Numbers, both with and without celebs, owes a big debt to a few European shows, in fact. When it first aired sans comedians more than a decade ago, the original Letters and Numbers took its cues from both French TV's Des chiffres et des lettres, which dates back to 1965 — and also from Britain's Countdown, which has been on the air since 1982, and then inspired 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. Check out the trailer for season two of Celebrity Letters and Numbers below: The second season of Celebrity Letters and Numbers will start airing on SBS and via SBS On Demand from Saturday, March 5, with new episodes dropping weekly.
Sometimes it seems like most up-and-coming bands gather their inspiration from the same batch of indie artists. If you've grown tired of the monotony, fear not, for some new sounds are coming to Australia soon — Japanese alt sounds, that is. Sonny King of Melbourne rock band Lucy's Crown is eager to show just how great Japanese alternative music can be with Australia's first Japan Music Festival. Featuring bands Jill, 101A, Sparky Quano and Kaimokujisho, King set out to represent the large range of sound that exists in the underground music scene of Japan, from J-Pop to J-Rock. "I was on tour with Lucy's Crown in Tokyo and was astonished just how good the Japanese underground bands were that we played with and thought that Australia should see them," says King. Choosing bands that were enthusiastic about coming to Australia was another big factor in how the acts were chosen. He also took into account how Australian audiences might respond to them. "It was a difficult process because there were so many good bands but we wanted diversity in both music and image and we also needed them to be accessible to the people going to the gigs," says King. Japanese music, especially of the underground variety, is constantly evolving. Yet it still holds onto the roots of the previous musical trend. Bars and clubs that cater to a particular music genre or band are very popular in Tokyo. "There are Ritchie Blackmore bars, Yngwie Malmsteen bars, Jeff Beck bars, clubs and restaurants for The Stones and The Beatles, '60s bars, '70s bars, '80s bars, the list is almost endless," says King. King is optimistic about the future reach of Japanese music in Australia. With the internet becoming such an influential way to get smaller bands heard, it's only a matter of time before musicians from Japan and other similar countries break into international markets. The problem, he says, is the oversaturation now prevalent in the music world. "It's a bit like learning to read and then being taken to a world library and being told to help yourself," says King. "You'd start with what is familiar, Australian, English, American, etcetera. and eventually you'd get around to the Japanese stuff, and that's the same with exploring world music." Though this is only the first Japan Music Festival, King is optimistic about the future. "We already have the foundations in place for next year and are receiving discs from Japanese bands who want to come." With four shows scheduled in three cities, and music and instrument demonstrations happening at select JB Hi-Fi stores, the Japan Music Festival promises music entirely different from the usual festival line-up. For now, King is keeping focused on running a successful first festival. "This is the inaugural event so once it's finished I can sit back, take a look at it with fresh eyes and raise the bar for next year."
Put those glittery gumboots away: you won't be dancing to 'Padam Padam' in North Byron Bay Parklands this winter. Splendour in the Grass has become the latest Australian music festival to scrap its plans, with organisers announcing that 2024's event has now been cancelled, continuing a heartbreaking trend for the local industry. The news comes just weeks after the winter fest unveiled its Kylie Minogue-, Future- and Arcade Fire-led lineup in mid-March, and follows on from a heap of other cancellations across the Aussie festival scene of late. In February, Groovin the Moo also ditched its 2024 events just a fortnight after revealing its lineup. Also, Falls Festival took summer 2023–24 off, Summergrounds Music Festival at Sydney Festival was cancelled and This That hasn't gone ahead for a couple of years now. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Splendour in the Grass (@splendourinthegrass) "With a heavy heart, we're announcing the cancellation of Splendour in the Grass 2024," said the Splendour team in a statement. "We know there were many fans excited for this year's lineup and all the great artists planning to join us, but due to unexpected events we'll be taking the year off. Ticketholders will be refunded automatically by Moshtix. We thank you for your understanding and will be working hard to be back in future years." "We're heartbroken to be missing a year, especially after more than two decades in operation. This festival has always been a huge community effort, and we'd like to thank everyone for their support and overall faith. We hope to be back in the future," added Jessica Ducrou and Paul Piticco, co-CEOs of Secret Sounds. Splendour was set to feature Kylie and Future doing exclusive shows, plus a lineup that also spanned Turnstile, The Presets doing a DJ set, Yeat, Hayden James, Girl in Red, Baby Gravy, Tash Sultana, DJ Seinfeld, Fontaines DC, Royel Otis, Tones and I and more. Omar Apollo, The Last Dinner Party, Lizzy McAlpine, The Kills, Thelma Plum, Partiboi69, Angie McMahon, Viagra Boys: they were all also on the bill, which was due to take to the stage from Friday, July 19–Sunday, July 21. 2024's event would've marked the festival's 22nd birthday — and its third COVID-19-era fest, following the supremely muddy 2022 iteration (which was delayed for the two years due to the pandemic's early days) and 2023's go-around. Triple J, one of Splendour's long-running partners, first broke the cancellation news. Splendour in the Grass will no longer take place from Friday, July 19–Sunday, July 21, 2024 at North Byron Bay Parklands, Byron Bay. For more information, head to the festival website. Images: Charlie Hardy, Bianca Holderness and Claudia Ciapocha.
The posters for what's tipped to be Lars von Trier’s masterpiece — his upcoming five-hour sexual epic, Nymphomanic — have been unleashed, with the likes of Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Defoe and Stellan Skarsgard showcasing their best 'O' faces. The squirm-inducing effect of the promotion, shot by photographer Casper Sejersen, is only a taster for what's to come. Doubtless, the film will not shy away from unflinching portrayals of erotic ecstasy. In a typical von Trier rejection of cinematic convention, reportedly the genitals of porn actors will be spliced onto the bodies of the cast in the production process. Although it's not the first film to use unsimulated sex, evidently the avant-garde provocateur is continuing to uphold his reputation for revelling in a taboo style of filmmaking and subject matter. For example, according to Shia LeBeouf, a disclaimer at the top of the script reads: "Everything that is illegal, we’ll shoot in blurred images." Indeed, producing audience discomfort and sparking controversy is not new terrain for von Trier. Take, for instance, his grotesque tour de force Antichrist, a hard-hitting arthouse horror film that caused uproar for its scandalous depiction of genital mutilation. (If you haven’t eaten lunch yet, perhaps don’t read up on it now.) Although his films strongly divide audiences and critics, he is without question a major powerhouse of contemporary avant-garde cinema. His work is thought-provoking, technically assured, aesthetically radical and forever pushing boundaries. It is the dream of actors and cinematographers alike to work with this enigmatic artistic visionary. Nymphomaniac is due to be released in December of this year. Via Fast Co.Create
While you're probably champing at the bit to head overseas, the past two years have definitely sparked a resurgence in regional travel — and there is a vast array of incredible country escapes right on our metaphorical doorstep. Enter Talbingo. Sure, you might not have ever heard of it, but there's a whole host of reasons for you to go check it out for your next vacay. This little town in NSW's Snowy Mountains region is full of great outdoor adventures and activities from fly fishing to rewarding hikes. We've teamed up with Wild Turkey to put together a list of our favourite ways to enjoy the great outdoors in Talbingo. [caption id="attachment_841377" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Lumi1023 (Flickr)[/caption] GO FISHING AT TALBINGO DAM Talbingo Dam is one of the largest bodies of water that make up the Snowy Mountains Scheme, and one of the enduring drawcards of this part of the world is its popularity as a recreational fishing destination. The deep waters of the dam are home to a variety of species including rainbow trout, golden perch, redfin and more. It's also one of the few places that allows catch-and-release sportfishing for the elusive trout cod. If you're planning on dropping a line here, a small recreational fishing fee must be paid. It goes towards the ample restocking of the dams with sustainable species as well as helping to fund research and maintenance about sustainable recreational fishing. [caption id="attachment_841378" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Brendan J Murphy (Flickr)[/caption] OR, HEAD TO THE DAM FOR WATER SKIING, CANOEING OR SWIMMING The sheer size of Talbingo Dam means that there's plenty of space for aquatic activities in the pristine water. There's a cordoned-off area for swimming and plenty of signage so you can't miss it. Or, if you're more of a thrillseeker, there are long stretches of deep flat water perfect for jet skiing — and the calm nature of the water makes this spot a great place to learn. If jet skis aren't your jam, then perhaps hire a canoe and set your own pace to blissfully take in the breathtaking mountain scenery that surrounds the dam. Whichever you choose, there are plenty of ways to experience this impressive body of water. [caption id="attachment_843933" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Elliot Kramer[/caption] TAKE IN THE VIEWS FROM THE OLD MOUNTAIN ROAD WALK This four-kilometre walking track follows Talbingo's first mountain road — a remnant of the Kiandra Gold Rush of the 1860s — and takes you up a short but reasonably challenging track, so be prepared to get the heart pumping. At the top, you'll find yourself at one heck of a lookout offering stunning views of the surrounding areas such as Bogong Peaks, Jounama Pondage and Blowering Reservoir (pictured above). Along the way, keep your eyes peeled for mountain wildflowers, grey kangaroos and all manner of native birdlife. [caption id="attachment_841376" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Josh Mitterfellner (Flickr)[/caption] JUMP IN THE 4WD AND MAKE YOUR WAY TO A LOOKOUT POINT While there's plenty to explore on foot, avid gearheads will be pleased to know that Talbingo forms an excellent base from which to set out on road adventures. You could hit up the nearby Black Perry lookout or traverse slightly more perilous terrain to Landers Falls (pictured above), both of which offer extraordinary views of the surrounding bushland. If you're keen to make more of a day of it, set off early and drive to the northern end of the Kosciuszko National Park to check out the region's impressively diverse landscape. [caption id="attachment_624129" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Murray Vanderveer[/caption] EXPLORE THE DRAMATIC YARRANGOBILLY CAVES AND TAKE A DIP IN A THERMAL POOL Live your Morlock dreams or pretend you're Gandalf leading the fellowship through the mines of Moria whilst you explore the hauntingly beautiful Yarrangobilly Caves. Of the 60 or so underground caves that were formed from a massive limestone belt around 440 million years ago, six are currently open to the public for guided and self-guided tours. Check out the massive stalactites and stalagmites, rare black flowstones and spacious, majestic caves, before heading back above ground to take a dip in the thermal pool which is fed by a natural spring and stays at a perfect 27 degrees all year round. [caption id="attachment_843931" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Elliot Kramer[/caption] PITCH A TENT AT BUDDONG FALLS CAMPGROUND If you're looking for some peace and tranquility among the mountains then head straight for the idyllic Buddong Falls campground. This remote patch of land is a great base to explore the surrounding national parks and maybe catch a glimpse of some of the local wildlife that make their homes within the surrounding ribbon gums and along the nearby creek and waterfall. If you're not the most seasoned camper then fear not — picnic tables, barbecues and public toilets are all readily available to make things a little more comfortable. Find out more about Wild Turkey's Discovery Series at the website. Top image: Elliot Kramer
Whether you're celebrating Galentine's Day, Valentine's Day or Singles Awareness Day this February, we're betting that a holiday to look forward to would make the occasion even better. So is Virgin Australia, and it only has sunny, summery spots in mind. The focus of its latest flight sale: trips to Queensland. Destinations from the Gold Coast up to Cairns are covered, and dates with plenty of sun, surf and sand between autumn and spring, too. Starting on Wednesday, February 14, this is a one-week-only sale — so you've got until 11.59pm AEST on Tuesday, February 20 to get booking, unless sold out earlier. More than 300,000 fares on offer. While the sale is focused on one part of the country, you still have options in terms of departure points and destinations. Within Queensland, you can leave or arrive in Brisbane, Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton, Hamilton Island, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, Emerald, Gladstone, Mackay, Mt Isa and Proserpine. And, around the rest of the country, flights to and from Adelaide, Alice Springs, Canberra, Darwin, Hobart, Launceston, Melbourne, Newcastle, Perth and Sydney are available. One-way fares begin at $69 — which'll get you from Sydney to the Sunshine Coast and vice versa, and also from Brisbane to Cairns and Brisbane to Proserpine (to hit The Whitsundays) or the reverse. Other sale flights include Sydney–Gold Coast from $79, Brisbane–Hamilton Island from $86, Melbourne–Cairns from $115 and Adelaide–Gold Coast from $119. If you're wondering when you'll need to travel, the travel periods depend on the leg — but the general range is from Wednesday, March 6–Thursday, September 12. The sale has the backing of the Australian and Queensland governments' Tourism Recovery Package, to help the Sunshine State's tourism industry after ex-tropical cyclone Jasper. Only select fares cover seat choice and checked baggage, however, with the airline announcing back in 2021 that it now splits its economy flights into three types. Economy Lite doesn't include checking any baggage or picking your seat, but Economy Choice does — and Economy Flex gives you extra flexibility (hence the name) if you have to change your plans later. Virgin's Queensland summer sale runs from Wednesday, February 14–11.59pm AEST on Tuesday, February 20 — or until sold out. Feeling inspired to book a getaway? You can now book your next dream holiday through Concrete Playground Trips with deals on flights, stays and experiences at destinations all around the world.
Like eating? Drinking? Tasting something new? Sampling as many delicious bits and pieces as you can? Being taught the tricks of the trade by culinary masters? Don't we all. Thankfully, chances to do all of the above keep popping up. Brisbane foodies have yet another cuisine and vino event to get excited about — and no, the Brisbane Food & Wine Expo isn't the same as the Good Food & Wine Show. Held at the Brisbane Showgrounds between September 28–30, this dining and sipping showcase offers a fresh round of all the things food show fans know and love: tucking into the good stuff. Exhibitors include everyone from Salt Meats Cheese to Brat Haus, with more than 80 gourmet exhibitors set to serve up the best dish possible. Yes, we're talking about free samples. When you're not hopping between stalls, you can also get comfy at the Champagne and oyster bar — or, if you prefer sausages to seafood and yeasty booze over grape-based tipples at the beer and boerewors bar too. As always, the usual advice applies: arrive hungry.
Do you live in a dog-friendly house? Do you have some spare time on your hands? Do you fantasise about hanging around at dog parks with an actual dog? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then the good folks at Vision Australia's Seeing Eye Dogs need you — again. As part of the organisation's ongoing dog-training program, it has puppies running around the place quite often, and it's in need of volunteers to raise them. That includes right now, with more adorable pooches arriving over Easter. In other words, Vision Australia is giving away puppies — although you will need to give them back. If you put up your hand to become a puppy carer, you'll get a puppy for about a year, from around its eight-week birthday to when it turns turns between 12–15 months old. During that time, you'll be responsible for introducing the sights, sounds and smells it'll meet when it starts working as a seeing eye dog (and giving your new friend heaps of cuddles). Of course, it's not all just fun, games and cuteness. You'll have to be responsible enough to take care of regular grooming, house training and exercise, and be available for regular visits. A fenced-in backyard is mandatory, too. In return, the organisation provides a strong support network, and all food, training equipment and vet care. You'll also need to be home or with the puppy most of the time — so you won't be leaving the dog alone for more than three hours a day, sat in front of Dog TV — and to be able to put effort into training and socialising the pup. [caption id="attachment_853581" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Nicola Cotton[/caption] Seeing Eye Dogs Australia is looking for people across the majority of local government areas across greater Melbourne, as well as Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat, Mornington Peninsula, Macedon Ranges and their surrounding areas. In New South Wales, you'll need to be on the Central Coast. And in Queensland, Brisbane's north and Sunshine Coast areas are the current priorities. Once the pups reach 12-15 months old, they'll return to Vision Australia — and complete their journey to become four-legged companions for people who are blind or have low vision. Keen to help? You can register for an information session or apply online right now. If you're eager but can't commit to the full year, there's also a six-month caring option. For more information about Seeing Eye Dogs Australia's puppy carers, and to apply for the volunteer roles, head to the organisation's website.
UPDATE: APRIL 7, 2020 — Florence has teamed up with sister venue Felix to launch online store Felix for Goodness. It's selling products from the grocery section of Florence, including pantry and fridge staples like sourdough, eggs, curry pastes, oils, pasta, broths and wine, which can be delivered to your door each week. This neighbourhood cafe in Camp Hill does a mean congee. Take a seat inside the historic corner store and ask for a bowl of the comfort dish — slow-cooked brown rice with ginger, snow peas, sprouts and spiced cashews. The cooks sprinkle on some house kimchi and crispy shallots, too. If you're especially keen on all the extra goodness that an egg brings as well, you'll also find a soft-boiled turmeric version in your bowl. The cafe offers a seasonal menu with coffee locally roasted by Parallel Roasters.
European holidays are back on the cards once more, though pretty soon you won't even need a passport to embark on an authentic Italian culinary adventure. Italy's famed artisan marketplace concept Mercato Centrale is heading Down Under, opening its first-ever outpost outside of the homeland in Melbourne. With sites in Rome, Turin and Milan, along with the original Florence location, the brand now has its sights set on the Victorian capital. It's in the process of transforming the three-storey, 3500-square-metre McPherson's building on Collins Street into a grand Italian homage to artisanal food, set to launch late-2022. Founder Umberto Montano launched the first of these sites back in 2014, setting out to deliver an artisan-led marketplace that works as a shared platform, shifting the focus away from any individual branding and onto the producers and their craft. Artisans are handpicked and work as solo operators within the market, with just one representative for each food product. And it gives smaller or emerging producers a shot at showcasing their wares without the huge overheads of opening a traditional shopfront. "Instead of trying to just profit from it all, Umberto developed this platform that creates opportunities and exposure for artisans who just love their food, that love what they're producing," explains Eddie Muto, the local hospitality expert who's spearheading Mercato Centrale's expansion into Australia. Muto knew Montano's concept would be the perfect fit Down Under — and for Melbourne — and he's spent the past six years driving a local iteration. "People will come along and have an urban picnic if you like," Muto tells Concrete Playground, explaining how the ground floor market space will work. "They'll go and get a little bit of salumi, a little pasta, some bread. In the morning, they've got the bakery, they can have croissants and Italian pastries. And then they can order at their table for drinks." Visitors will be able to see the artisans at work making everything from fresh mozzarella to hamburgers, lending an interactive element to the experience. Mercato Centrale's lower level will also be home to the main bar, in addition to a dedicated cocktail bar and an artisan bottle shop. Of course, there'll be an espresso bar, too, with cheaper coffees for those who stand and sip their caffeine at the bar, European-style. [caption id="attachment_856980" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Mercato Centrale Milan[/caption] Meanwhile, the second level is set to play host to a sit-down Italian restaurant filled with timber and marble; designed "to feel like home", as Muto explains. And the third floor is earmarked for an event and function space. Mercato Centrale is also positioning itself as a hub for arts and culture, so expect a jam-packed calendar of social and creative activities to come — which is worth noting for future Melbourne trips. And there'll always be live tunes to soundtrack your market adventures, from acoustic gigs to weekend DJ sets. "What we're hoping to achieve is that as soon as you step in the door, it'll be like stepping into Florence or Milan or Rome," muses Muto. "So you might walk up and ask for a panino in English and they'll respond to you in Italian!" Find Mercato Centrale Melbourne at 546 Collins Street, Melbourne, from late 2022. We'll share more info as it lands. Top Images: Mercato Centrale Rome, Milan, Turin and Florence.
For eight weeks this autumn, Hamilton will boast two places to see movies. Only one will get you catching a flick outdoors, under the stars and by the river, however. That cinema: Sunset Cinema, which first popped up at Northshore in 2023 and is returning to get its projector whirring again from late-March through till mid-May in 2024. While sunset doesn't usually follow moonlight, Brisbane's outdoor cinema scene is one place where it does, with Sunset Cinema hitting town a month after Moonlight Cinema wrapped up its latest season. The latter gets a summer run in Roma Street Parkland each year, while the former opts for autumn in Hamilton. It's been a busy period to see a movie beneath the evening sky in general in the River City, with Brissie now home to a permanent year-round openair picture palace over at Brisbane Powerhouse. For Sunset Cinema's 2024 stint in the Queensland capital, films will screen at Dock D, largely from Wednesday–Saturday. The season kicks off on Thursday, March 21 with rom-com Anyone But You, then ends on Sunday, May 11 with Kung Fu Panda 4. In-between, everything from more Sydney Sweeney in Madame Web to twice the Timothée Chalamet thanks to Wonka and Dune: Part Two is on the lineup — and also Barbie, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Wicked Little Letters and Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black as well. Filmgoers can also see Kingsman director Matthew Vaughn's latest spy caper Argylle, the Mean Girls musical starring Australian actor Angourie Rice (The Last Thing He Told Me), witness Barbie's Kingsley Ben-Adir transform into a reggae icon in Bob Marley: One Love and catch Eric Bana's second stint as Aaron Falk in Force of Nature: The Dry 2. A number of double features filled with retro classics are on the bill, so the OG Mean Girls will show with Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You with Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie with Jennifer's Body. Or, there's Finding Nemo paired with Toy Story, then The Princess Bride with The Wizard of Oz. BYO picnics are encouraged, but the event is fully licensed, so alcohol can only be purchased onsite. For that, Oxford Landing is providing the wine, Manly Spirits Distillery Co the gin for G&Ts and Mountain Culture Beer Co the brews. Didn't pack enough snacks? There's hot food options, plus plenty of the requisite cinema treats like chips, chocolates, lollies and popcorn. Choose a VIP seat in the sunset lounge, which comes with premium bean lounges and the best view of the screen, and your popcorn will be bottomless, in fact. Sunset Cinema is doing headphones for its audio, so you'll be listening in via bluetooth once the flick kicks off at last light (with gates opening at 5.30pm). And, your movie-loving dog won't miss out, with the picture palace pooch-friendly, but Rover will need to stay on a leash.
All day, every day that it's open, West End's Covent Garden is firmly in the gin game. Gin and tonics, gin cocktails, gin shots — if you like your alcoholic beverages made from juniper spirits, that's what you'll find here. That remains true from 11am on Saturday, January 25; however the Boundary Street joint is going a little more gin crazy than usual on that date. It's calling the celebration Ginuary, and we recommend that you arrive thirsty. Revamping the event since 2019, this year's shindig will involve four gin degustation stations — slinging tipples from Ink Gin, Four Pillars Gin, Brookie's Gin and Fever Tree. There'll also be ten different types of canapes served between 12–4pm, with all of the above setting gin-lovers back $39. Plus, you can either keep buying gin drinks as you go, or you can opt for a $149 ticket. The latter will get you four hours of unlimited drinks, spanning more than 100 Australian gins — served as 30ml serves with mixer or on the rocks — as well as tap beers, house wines, soft drinks and juices. Highlighting how huge the past year was in the gin world, Covent Garden is compiling a hottest 100 of Australian and New Zealand gins for the occasion, too, complete with a countdown on the day. You can vote online in advance, then hear the results live on the day.
Mark this down as one of 2026's must-see tours: Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds are playing a slate of shows in Australia. Three gigs will take over Victoria Park in Brisbane on Tuesday, January 27. The group's Wild God tour is finally making its way to this part of the globe, after dates across UK, Europe and North America in 2024 and 2025. Fans can get excited about a two-and-a-half-hour concert focused on the band's 2024 record Wild God, but also spanning their four-decade career. 'Red Right Hand' and 'Into My Arms' have indeed been on the set list so far. Cave and Ellis last hit the stage Down Under sans the rest of The Bad Seeds on the Aussie run of their Carnage tour in 2022, supporting the 2021 album that shared the tour's name — which actually marked Cave and Ellis' first studio album as a duo. Bandmates across several projects since the 90s — including Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, and Grinderman — Cave and Ellis are Aussie icons, with careers spanning back decades. Together, they also boast more than a few phenomenal film scores to their names as well, including for The Proposition, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Road, West of Memphis, Far From Men, Hell or High Water and Wind River. Images: Megan Cullen.
UPDATE, Friday, January 12, 2024: Killers of the Flower Moon streams via Apple TV+ from Friday, January 12, and via Google Play, YouTube Movies and Prime Video. Death comes to Killers of the Flower Moon quickly. Death comes to Killers of the Flower Moon often. While Martin Scorsese will later briefly fill the film's frames with a fiery orange vision — with what almost appears to be a lake of flames deep in oil country, as dotted with silhouettes of men — death blazes through his 26th feature from the moment that the picture starts rolling. Adapted from journalist David Grann's 2017 non-fiction novel Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, with the filmmaker himself and Dune's Eric Roth penning the screenplay, this is a masterpiece of a movie about a heartbreakingly horrible spate of deaths sparked by pure and unapologetic greed and persecution a century back. Scorsese's two favourite actors in Leonardo DiCaprio (Don't Look Up) and Robert De Niro (Amsterdam) are its stars, alongside hopefully his next go-to in Lily Gladstone (Reservation Dogs), but murder and genocide are as much at its centre — all in a tale that's devastatingly true. As Mollie Kyle, a member of the Osage Nation in Grey Horse, Oklahoma, incomparable Certain Women standout Gladstone talks through some of the movie's homicides early. Before her character meets DiCaprio's World War I veteran Ernest Burkhart — nephew to De Niro's cattle rancher and self-proclaimed 'king of the Osage' William King Hale — she notes that several Indigenous Americans that have been killed, with Mollie mentioning a mere few to meet untimely ends. There's nothing easy about this list, nor is there meant to be. Some are found dead, others seen laid out for their eternal rest, and each one delivers a difficult image. But a gun fired at a young mother pushing a pram inspires a shock befitting a horror film. The genre fits here, in its way, as do many others: American crime saga, aka the realm that Scorsese has virtually made his own, as well as romance, relationship drama, western, true crime and crime procedural. Although this chapter of history has hardly been splashed across the screen with frequency, its new place among the iconic director's filmography helps him to continue making a statement that he's been beaming at audiences for most of his filmmaking life. The specifics differ from flick to flick, but Scorsese keeps surveying the appallingly corrupt and violent deeds done in the pursuit of power, wealth and influence. He constantly peers into humanity's souls, seeing some of its worst impulses staring back. Indeed, there's no doubting that Killers of the Flower Moon hails from the same person as Goodfellas, Casino and Gangs of New York, or The Wolf of Wall Street and The Irishman, too. It also easily belongs on a filmography with entries as varied as Raging Bull, The Age of Innocence, Kundun, The Departed and Shutter Island. Between them, DiCaprio and De Niro have starred in most of those movies. Now, they combine for the first time in a Scorsese feature to basically rekindle their This Boy's Life dynamic from three decades back, all while plumbing the depths of money-coveting men chasing land rights, aka Osage headrights, through a cruel, brutal and disarmingly patient plan. "The finest, the wealthiest and the most beautiful people on god's earth" is how Hale describes the Osage Nation to Ernest when the latter is freshly back on US soil, off the train in Fairfax and getting reacquainted with his uncle. Those riches stem from being pushed out of Kansas, resettled, then striking black gold in a stroke of good fortune that brings more misfortune. Hale wants a piece and more, and gets seemingly every other white man in Oklahoma joining his pursuit. In an extraordinary performance, De Niro gives Hale quietly formidable potency — the kind that doesn't need raised voices or a weapon to command a room, evoke unease and enforce his might. Scorsese lets the outwardly supportive, not-so-privately manipulative town anchor become the open villain almost instantly. Killers of the Flower Moon isn't a whodunnit, but rather a living-with-knowing-who's-doing-it film. It tells its atrocity-filled tale about evil in plain sight carefully, exactingly and unhurriedly — earning each and every one of its 206 minutes — with narrative inevitably breeding suspense and emotional tension. Sporting an injured gut from combat, Ernest turns to chauffeuring to make a living under Hale's wing. When he begins driving the graceful and stately Mollie, his uncle has already laid out his scheme to get Osage property and wealth gushing their family's way. Still, everything about Ernest and Mollie's romance is genuine. DiCaprio and Gladstone are exquisite, including when their characters are flirting over cab rides and storm-backdropped sips of whiskey, resting their foreheads together in a gesture that gets them saying everything without saying anything, and stealing other silently happy moments. But the bodies keep mounting, with many of Mollie's nearest and dearest — such as her sisters Minnie (Jillian Dion, Alaska Daily), Anna (Cara Jade Myers, Rutherford Falls) and Reta (Janae Collins, Reservation Dogs), plus their mother Lizzie Q (Tantoo Cardinal, Three Pines) — in Hale's way. While the gangster-film label mightn't fit Killers of the Flower Moon as neatly as Mean Streets and company, this is still a gangster film. Scorsese is in his element, not that he's ever been out of it on any feature that isn't a gangster flick — but that's never the only place that he wants to be. As cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (Barbie) lenses both the eye-catching landscape and dark interiors, editor Thelma Schoonmaker (who has done his splicing since Raging Bull) gives the movie its meticulous pacing and the now-late Robbie Robertson (who starred in Scorsese music documentary The Last Waltz as part of The Band) imparts a slinkily propulsive beat amid a pitch-perfectly anxious score, this is also a movie of blistering anger and interrogation. As the saga of Ernest, Mollie, Hale and pervasive death always thrums at its core, so does a reckoning. Killers of the Flower Moon carves into the injustices of America's past, plus their impact upon the present, to stress the blood and bones that the US was built upon. It sees how much about today ties back to its tragedy of oppression and slaughter, how distressingly familiar this situation is around the world and, in a stunner of a coda, how such realities are regularly exploited rather than addressed. Bold and brilliant, epic yet intimate, ambitious and absorbing, as meaningful as it is monumental, a quintessential Martin Scorsese movie: every single one applies to Killers of the Flower Moon. It's also rich and riveting in each touch and instant, from building its lived-in portrait of the 1920s midwest to the magnificent cast that also spans Jesse Plemons (Love & Death) as a federal investigator — even if the Birth of the FBI part of the feature's source material is scaled down — and both John Lithgow (Sharper) and Brendan Fraser (The Whale) as lawyers. Three and a half hours almost doesn't seem long enough to spend revelling in this superbly complicated film, or to confront the many difficult truths explored. It definitely isn't long enough with its three outstanding key players, who each turn in shattering portrayals whether playing it slick, nervy or soulful. Killers of the Flower Moon is steeped in so much heartwrenching death, and unforgettably so, yet it could't have been better brought to on-screen life.
The second season of House of the Dragon might've come to an end, but HBO has plenty more must-sees on the way to fill your viewing schedule until its third round of Targaryen feuds arrives. The Last of Us season two, The White Lotus season three, fellow Game of Thrones prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, IT prequel series Welcome to Derry: they're just some of the shows that'll have you hearing the US network's famous static-filled intro again. Can't wait for another wander through a world infected with Cordyceps? To see a seemingly idyllic holiday prove anything but again? For more time in Westeros? To be creeped out by an evil clown once more, too? Sadly, none of the above series are due to premiere imminently — they're all set for 2025 — but HBO has dropped a new trailer with footage from all of them. The American station does this periodically — back in December 2023, it also unveiled a glimpse at its 2024–25 slate — but this one includes the first new scenes from some of its keenly anticipated hits. With The Last of Us, not just Pedro Pascal (Drive-Away Dolls) and Bella Ramsey (Catherine Called Birdy) but also new cast member Catherine O'Hara (Argylle) make an appearance, for instance. And with The White Lotus — which stars Walton Goggins (Fallout), Carrie Coon (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire), Jason Isaacs (The Crowded Room), Michelle Monaghan (MaXXXine), Leslie Bibb (Palm Royale) and Parker Posey (Mr & Mrs Smith) — in its third season — "what happens in Thailand stays in Thailand", viewers are told. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms comes to the screen from George RR Martin's novella series Tales of Dunk and Egg, and has been talked about for a few years. The story follows knight Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire Egg as they wander Westeros a century before the events of GoT, when the Targaryens remain on the Iron Throne and everyone still remembers dragons. As for Welcome to Derry, it returns to Stephen King's go-to Maine town, stepping through the locale's scares before the terror that viewers have already seen. HBO's new trailer also spans 2024 releases The Penguin, Dune: Prophecy, The Franchise and documentary Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos, alongside the third seasons of Industry and The Sex Lives of College Girls, plus the fourth of My Brilliant Friend. From its 2025 slate, look out for more And Just Like That... and The Gilded Age as well, plus newcomers The Pitt with ER veteran Noah Wylie and Duster with Lost's Josh Holloway. Watch HBO's latest 2024–25 roundup trailer below: The Last of Us season two doesn't yet have a release date, other than sometime in 2025. When it returns, it'll stream via Binge in Australia and on Neon in New Zealand. Read our review of the first season. Images: HBO.
Sometimes really shitty weather has its upside. Pulling a solid Community Chest card, London is about to open its very first board games-centric cafe in Hackney this September. Sure, plenty of eateries, pubs and existing cafes have a smattering of Scattergoric fun times already stashed in the bookshelves, but Draughts intends to bring games to the forefront — already proven successful by Adelaide's Hungry Hippo and Oxford's Thirsty Meeples. Serving up an impressive 500+ range of old school fun inducers, Draughts will stock both your favourite table toppers like Cluedo, Monopoly and Scrabble alongside weird and wonderful niche releases like Hanabi and one apparently called Chicken Cha Cha Cha. Board game purists will be able to engage in intense bots of chess, checkers and (of course) draughts, while the cafe serves as a perfect loud group outing option (if Boggle is your style). Draughts will function as an all-day cafe, counting freshly made coffee, cakes, milkshakes and sandwiches on the menu before fuelling rambunctious rounds of Risk with ciders and lagers in the chilly London evenings. If you're into the Game of Life, you'll appreciate a few pints. Remember that family member who insisted on reading out the rules, one by one, even after everyone had given up and left them flying solo at the table? Chances are they now work at Draughts, ready to help you out with any Monopoly rule rifts, help you set up the painstaking Mouse Trap board or get you started on something you might never have tried — big fingers crossed for 13 Dead End Drive or The White Unicorn. Just trust me. Draughts know their board games so well, they decided to create a London Tube map to help you out when you're picking: Via Guardian. Photo from The Hungry Hippo.
Brisbanites are gifted brag-worthy sunshine and clear skies almost all year around, which makes for perfect outdoor gig and picnic weather. So, as the site has since 2018, the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens is letting everyone make the most of Brissie's ace climate with a Gigs & Picnics series. Taking place on the last Saturday of each month from February — running from 12–4pm on February 25, March 25, April 29 and May 27, in fact — the event will rustle up some of the city's best food trucks, put on some free tunes and invite folks to get cosy on their own blanket all afternoon. Entering through the main gateway at the intersection of Alice and Albert Streets, attendees can expect everything from jazz and modern reggae to dub and gypsy, all in gorgeous greenery-filled surroundings. You can also order a picnic basket in advance, which'll be there for you on the day. Or, if you're bringing your own feast, just remember that the gardens aren't BYO. Images: Gigs & Picnics.
"Kylie Minogue in her gold hotpants in 'Spinning Around'. That just came to my mind straight away. That was pretty amazing." Ask Celeste Barber to pick her favourite Australian fashion moment and she goes straight for an icon being an icon. In one of 2023's best trends, Barber has spent the year ushering everyone through the ins and outs of wellness and fashion. First came Wellmania, the comedian and actor's Netflix dramedy series about a 39-year-old journalist who copes with a health crisis by embracing prioritising her wellbeing, aka journeying through everything the self-care industry has to offer. Now arrives The Way We Wore, with Barber hosting the new three-part ABC documentary about a subject that she's been interested in since she was a child donning costumes as a dancer, and then a teenager collecting fashion magazines. Barber is no stranger to obsessing over threads in public — or, to be more accurate, parodying whatever's in vogue in the sartorial and celebrity realms. While her career began with acting, complete with an 87-episode stint on All Saints, her #celestechallengeaccepted social-media spoofs have helped make her a household name. If the internet has become fixated on a celeb look, snap or video, Barber has likely satirised it. Most recently, Kim Kardashian's Skims nipple bra launch has been in her sights, but that's just her latest skewering stint. The tone of The Way We Wore is light, but this docuseries isn't a comedy. Instead, as screening on ABC TV from 8pm on Tuesday, November 21 and streaming in full on ABC iView from the same date, it's a sincere and appreciative step through the history and importance of Aussie fashion. Barber didn't ever dream that her career would bring her here, but given that she's hosted The LA Fashion Awards in 2019, appeared on magazine covers and worked with Tom Ford at 2018's New York Fashion Week, it makes sense to her now. "No, no, never, never," Barber tells Concrete Playground about whether fronting a series like The Way We Wore ever seemed possible when she was starting out. "I've always thought I'd have a place in the entertainment industry, but not being someone to narrate documentary on the history of fashion, and it making sense that I did it. When I approached, I was like 'it makes absolute sense that I do this', but I would never have thought that when I was younger — no way." Unsurprisingly, Barber makes an engaging guide through Australian fashion's evolution. With Nel Minchin (Firestarter — The Story of Bangarra) directing, and everyone from Collette Dinnigan, Catherine Martin and Akira Isogawa to Charlee Fraser and Nakkiah Lui sharing their thoughts and experiences on-screen, she hosts an exploration of a sector that's anything but minor yet doesn't always get the appreciation it deserves. The country's need for something to score approval overseas before it can be embraced at home is something that Barber can relate to — "absolutely, and I have experienced that first hand," she advises — as is a process that she hopes all of The Way We Wore's viewers will experience: learning more about Aussie fashion prowess. The series' first episode filters its examination through Australian fashion media, a perfect topic for Barber as a self-described magazine lover. From there, it devotes its second instalment to the local pioneers taking Aussie threads to great heights, even if Barber didn't realise it as a kid growing up without the internet and thinking that Ken Done was the height of Down Under style. Then, The Way We Wore wraps up by pondering why Australian fashion hasn't been getting its due. Ahead of the show's premiere, we chatted with Barber about getting asked to host a fashion doco, her lifelong fascination with dressing up, becoming aware of Aussie designers, her relatable approach to the industry, what she learned from The Way We Wore and more. ON BEING ASKED TO HOST THE WAY WE WORE "I was approached — it was a while ago now — by Nel. She went to my agent to see if I had any interest in presenting this documentary. I love Nel, so I was like 'yes, I would love to do that'. It kind of just made sense to me that they wanted me to do it because I have such an opinion on the fashion industry. It was actually really interesting: I genuinely have an interest in this history of the fashion industry in Australia, and I think I know everything about everything, but it turns I really don't. So it was cool to discover things during the process of filming — and as I was reading the script, to learn things as well." ON ALWAYS LOVING FASHION "I've just always been aware of it. I've always loved fashion. My mum was quite a stylish person. My friends at school used to even say that about her. She's always been really stylish and that got me interested in it. I love magazines — when I was younger, I used to collect them. So, it's just always been around. I've enjoyed the theatre of it as well, the fun side of it, the expressive part of it. Because I danced when I was young, I used to have a room full of costumes that my dad built. My mum would make costumes and store them in this special little room. I've always dressed up and had fun, and I've always had a big fun imagination, and putting on different clothes helped express that. So, as I said before, it's always been a really fun, expressive experience for me." ON THAT AFFECTION FOR FASHION EVOLVING NOT ONLY ACROSS BARBER'S CHILDHOOD, BUT NOW "When I was older, I used to always get InStyle, and I used to collect them. It was fun to see the glossy side. I'd like pretend that I could possibly wear some of that stuff on them — I remember seeing Miranda Kerr with a cute crop top on, and I was like 'yeah, I can do that'. Turns out I can't. I absolutely cannot do that. But it's evolved for me over the years as I get older, like how the 90s fashions are back now. I'm having so much more fun with 90s fashions now than I did when I was younger. When you're a teenager, you're just scared of it. You're scared of putting that acid-wash jacket on the wrong way and then your friends would never talk to you again. But now I'm like 'I don't care, let's just see how we go'." ON BARBER'S EARLY AWARENESS OF AUSTRALIAN FASHION "There was no internet when I was growing up, so you think Ken Done is the biggest thing in the world. There's no other world out there. We went to America for a family holiday once, and I was rocking Ken Done because that's the only designer in the world, right, when you're a kid and there's no internet to tell you otherwise. I didn't go 'I know Valentino was predominantly in Rome, but you'll find that Tom Ford had started off in…'. I didn't have an understanding of that. It was just mum told me to wear that, so I wore that. I think in my InStyle days, when I was buying InStyles and cutting them all up and making my own little magazines out of them — they'd do features on international designers, and I'd be like 'oh, that's bigger, that's different'. But we always held our own. The Australian fashion industry has always held its own." ON STARTING BARBER'S SOCIAL-MEDIA FASHION PARODIES "Just seeing how social media can be toxic in making women feel that if they don't look a certain way that they don't deserve love — I like pushing against this idea of perfection, so I thought I just wanted to make fun of that idea of perfection. I've always just cut through bullshit. It's always been my thing. No one ever is unsure of where they stand with me. So what I saw that with these new apps, with these devices that we're all holding in our hands, was just a new way for women to hate themselves. I thought that I wanted play around with it a bit and see what happens. Turns out it went very well." ON STRIKING A CHORD BY SATIRISING TRENDS ONLINE, AND THE IMPACT UPON BARBER'S CAREER "I kind of always knew it was funny, and I knew that it would help get eyes on me. That's part of the reason why I did it. I always just thought I'd be okay. I've never ever given up. When it comes to my career, I've just never, ever given up — and I've tried to do as much as I can to work and get in the industry. And now it's happened, I guess it's not lost on me for sure. But people have only really known about me in the past few years — I've been at this for decades, so I really worked at it. Don't get me wrong, when I get a text message from someone super fancy, I'm like 'that's awesome'. Or, you know getting invited to things is still brilliant. I'm just enjoying the wave, enjoying the ride." ON BARBER'S APPROACH TO MAKING FASHION AND WELLNESS RELATABLE "It's just my experience in it. It's just my take on it. I don't really come at it by going 'this is super-relatable, I'm excellent' — and I think that's what makes it relatable. I'm like, well, this is just my experience in it, and if I'm experiencing it and I'm just an average lady, then there's a very good chance that someone else has also experienced it like that. Social media, media as a whole, just in general society, we have a handful of the types of women that we are happy to see. And I don't fall within that handful of women, and majority of women don't fall within that handful of women that are being celebrated publicly. So when you see someone like me who is now public and it's quite unusual for someone like me to be public it makes, I think, people feel more comfortable and more seen. That's always a nice feeling." @abciview 🤩🤩🤩 #TheWayWeWore #CelesteBarber @celestebarber #Fashion #Documentary #ABCiview #AustralianHistory #FashionTikTok #AustralianFashion #FashionDesign ♬ original sound - ABC iview ON WHAT BARBER LEARNED WHILE HOSTING THE WAY WE WORE — AND WHAT SHE HOPES THAT VIEWERS WILL LEARN, TOO "The main thing that stood out for me was how big the fashion industry is in Australia. It's a multi-billion-dollar industry and it actually employs more people than mining. I had no idea of that. I've always thought it was great and awesome, and I'm a contributor to the industry, but I had no idea that on an economic level it was so impactful. I hope that the series will open people's eyes to it because, as I say, I didn't know that. Even when I started, when I was reading through that sort of stuff — we actually do a bit of a joke in the doco where I'm like 'really, are you sure we fact-checked that?'. Because the fashion industry is seen as a female-dominated industry, I don't think it's always taken as seriously, and that has something to do with it. But you can't deny those numbers. So hopefully when people watch it, they realise how big and successful it is." The Way We Wore screens on ABC TV from 8pm on Tuesday, November 21, dropping episodes weekly — and streams in full on ABC iView from the same date. The Way We Wore images: Mark Rogers. Wellmania images: Netflix.
Brisbane's near year-round balmy weather, climbing up high and drinking all go hand-in-hand. That's true in general, and true at Brisbane's next series of sky-high seasonal shindigs: The Society Summer Series. The rooftop fun was such a hit over summer last year, plus autumn and spring this year too, that it's back for yet another run. Every Saturday between December 1 and December 22, Eagle Farm Racecourse's rooftop bar is throwing open its doors and throwing quite the celebration. Think weekend afternoon hangouts, general revelry and enjoying a couple of hours worth of beverages with a view. Plus, it wouldn't be a party without DJs spinning tunes to set the mood. Tickets cost $70 plus booking fee if you're a Brisbane Racecourse member and $75 if you're not, with drinks and food included. Attendees will sip their way through Chandon Sparkling, house beers, red and white wines, and a selection of soft drinks for two hours, and snack at charcuterie stations as well, while eating cured meats, roasted vegetables, dolmades, dips, olives, breads, grissini and cheese. Arrive hankering for a bev, and hungry. If you'd like to kick on after the 2–4pm main event, you can keep the fun going, but a cash bar will then be in effect.
Ask anyone what they like about music festivals, and they're likely to list two things. There's the feast of sounds and array bands all in one place, of course. Plus, there's the fun of hanging out, partying and enjoying a few drinks. Every festival knows this, but Lagerfest really wants to make sure that you know that they know. The name says it all — and the lineup of rockin' metal groups, sideshow alley games and other shenanigans says everything else you could possibly need. Of course, there are other details on offer, should you need to find out more. For those attuned to the tunes side of things, prepare your ears for a sonic smorgasbord. Headliners Lagerstein will be unleashing their latest album, with support across the day from Osaka Punch, Rainbowdragoneyes, Laced in Dust, Flangipanis, Weightless in Orbit, Dragonsmead, Valhalore and Skeleton Quay. Expect the rum to flow freely — and if you want to pretend you're a pirate while you're there, that's completely okay.
Pre-loved fashion is the gift that keeps on giving. One person's sartorial trash really is another's stylish treasure, after all. Hopefully, you'll find the latter at the 2021 Revive Festival — and plenty of other secondhand wares. Yes, it's an event dedicated to all things pre-loved. Yes, it's now in its fifth year, because celebrating all things old never gets old. The 2021 event is broadening its scope, however, with the October-long festival focusing on recycling, reusing, repairing and thrifting in both fashion and beyond. That means Brisbanites have multiple options when it comes to getting involved, including styling sessions that'll show you how to get the most out of secondhand threads, tours of the Salvos' sorting facility and hitting up the Sandgate Repair Cafe. If you're all about grabbing a bargain and garnering a heap of great outfit ideas all at once, you have several markets to choose from, too. Across the weekend of Saturday, October 16–Sunday, October 17, you can head to a Morningside thrifting event held by the folks behind the World's Biggest Garage Sale. And, on Sunday, October 17, the Love Me Again Market is popping up in Paddington. Or, there's also Zillmere's Fab Finds Market on Sunday, October 24 and Salisbury's Upcycle Market on Saturday, October 30. [caption id="attachment_783590" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Brisbane City Council via Flickr[/caption] Images: Brisbane City Council via Flickr.
Pharrell's putting that giant-hatted brain to good use; the multi-Grammy award-winning artist has co-designed and curated the first ever denim collection made with recycled plastic yarn. Fronting the G-Star crew as creative director of Bionic Yarn, Pharrell is spearheading G-Star's eco-friendly collections for men and women, dubbed RAW for Ocean. Sounding like something Iron Man knits mittens with, Bionic Yarn is an eco-thread of fibres made from recycled plastic bottles found littering the ocean. Having already recycled a whopping ten tonnes of plastic waste from the seas, RAW for Ocean is the first ever collection to use Bionic Yarn to create a denim collection. And when three times as much rubbish is dumped into the ocean as the weight of fish caught every year, this is a sustainable initiative we can truly get behind. At the forefront of sustainable fashion, G-Star and Pharrell have teamed up with some pretty kickass initiatives to see the collection come to fruition. The Vortex Project works to retrieve and recycle the millions of kilos of plastic floating in our global oceans, hoping to reduce it and come up with smart awareness campaigns to disrupt the vicious cycle. Parley for the Oceans is another top notch platform which brings together artists, musicians, fashion designers, scientists, engineers and other environmentally-conscious legends to talk about the ocean's massive problem in high-profile events and activations. They've also got Sea Shepherd giving them the thumbs up. So what's in store for the collection? Raw for Ocean will see jeans, t-shirts, sweaters, caps and more created from Bionic Yarn — all featuring different shades of mazarine indigo blue and black. One of the cornerstone pieces for men is a modern trench cut from the Bionic Yarn raw denim, the A-Crotch Trench, while ladies can look forward to a printed denim Fallden Bomber. The RAW for Ocean collection even has a dorky little mascot, Otto the Octopus, whose presence in the collection becomes a quirky take on the classic houndstooth print. Sea Shepherd's Paul Watson said, "Creativity is the key to saving creation from our darker side and the key to a future of ecological harmony between humanity and the diversity of wondrous species we share this planet with." Big ups to G-Star and Pharrell for getting on board. The RAW for Ocean collection drops September 10 in stores and online.
Each and every year, Sydney Film Festival spends its June run doing exactly what it loves, and letting the Harbour City's movie buffs enjoy the same thing. But even the Harbour City's major annual celebration of cinema only turns 70 once, which means putting together a massive 200-plus-movie program to mark the occasion — starting with these 12 just-announced flicks. SFF's full lineup will arrive in May, ready to treat film fans of Sydney — and Australia — to Festival Director Nashen Moodley's latest selections from Wednesday, June 7–Sunday, June 18. If the first round of titles is anything to go by, and it usually is, there'll be no shortage of highlights. Penélope Cruz, Haruki Murakami, a documentary about documentaries and their impact upon the folks featured in their frames: they're all covered so far. Parallel Mothers star Cruz joins the lineup courtesy of L'immensità, playing a mum again. This time, she's in 70s-era Rome and navigating struggles in her marriage, while also supporting her 12-year-old when they begin to identify as a boy — with director Emanuele Crialese drawing upon his own experiences. Murakami fans, the animated Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman adapts the Japanese author's short story collection of the same name, complete with a quest to save Tokyo. And lovers of docos The Staircase, Capturing the Friedmans, The Wolfpack, Hoop Dreams and The Square should instantly add Subject to their must-see list — it spends time with subjects from all five works, diving into what it means to be the focus of a film, plus the duty of care that documentarians owe the people in their frames. SFF will also screen the latest features by acclaimed filmmakers Jafar Panahi and Christian Petzold, with the former winning a Venice Special Jury Prize for No Bears and the latter nabbing a Berlinale Silver Bear for Afire. Iranian great Panahi directs and stars, playing a fictionalised version of himself as he's fond of doing (see also: Tehran Taxi), and blending truth and fiction to examine how artists can too easily become scapegoats. Undine and Transit's Petzold once again puts actor Paula Beer in front of his lens, with the German director this time helming a tragicomedy about a seaside holiday surrounded by forest fires. On the local front, actor and director Rachel Ward returns to SFF after 2019 opening-night pick Palm Beach, this time with Rachel's Farm, a doco about bringing sustainable farming practices to her northern NSW beef farm. And, in The Last Daughter, Wiradjuri woman Brenda Matthews charts her experience being taken from her family as a toddler, growing up with a white foster family, then being returned to her parents. Taika Waititi graces the SFF lineup as an executive producer, with New Zealand comedy Red, White & Brass telling the true tale of Tongan rugby fans who volunteered to become a marching band for the Rugby World Cup — with no relevant background — just to attend the event. And, still with impressive cinema names, documentarian Frederick Wiseman's A Couple steps into the relationship between Leo and Sophia Tolstoy, while Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz ruminates upon power in When the Waves Are Gone, which is about two policemen. Rounding of the initial dozen flicks: Bobi Wine: The People's President, about the Ugandan musician getting political and battling his homeland's dictatorship; and While We Watched, focusing on Indian journalist Ravish Kumar's quest to champion independent reporting. As for what else is in store, Moodley advises that 2023's full lineup will "continue a 70-year strong tradition of presenting exceptional cinema from across Australia and around the world to Sydney audiences". "Since 1954, Sydney Film Festival has brought more than 10,000 films to Australian audiences. Year after year, the Festival continues to be a pioneer in the world of cinema, screening bold and inspiring works that provoke thought and push boundaries." "The 2023 program will expand on this legacy, promising to ignite stimulating dialogues and present powerful ideas that will broaden audience perspectives." Sydney Film Festival 2023 runs from Wednesday, June 7–Sunday, June 18, with the full lineup announced on Wednesday, May 10 — check back here then for all the details, and hit up the festival website for further information in the interim.
So you might remember that the Keystone Group — the sprawling empire behind Australia's Jamie's Italian restaurants, Sydney's The Winery, Gazebo, Manly Wine, Cargo Bar, Bungalow 8, alongside multi-city venues Kingsley's and Chophouse — got into a real jam recently after being unable to settle on their financial structure with lenders of their multi (multiiii) million dollar hospitality empire and went into receivership. Then, earlier this week, Melbourne-based Dixon Hospitality swooped in and bought up a bunch of their properties. Well, even if you don't (it can be hard to keep up with the wheelings and dealings of hospo hotshots), that's about where we were all up to. But in the latest twist in the story, Jamie's Italian (which was one of the venues not saved by Dixon), has been bought by the man himself: Jamie Oliver. Yep, he has bought back his own restaurant chain, which includes six restaurants across Australia, including Sydney, Perth, Canberra, Brisbane, Adelaide and Parramatta. He'll manage the Australian venues under his Jamie Oliver Group, which are, despite the receivership, reportedly going quite well. So, it's okay everyone: Jamie's back to set it all right and cook us a nice, creamy pasta. Via The Sydney Morning Herald.
Before the pandemic, when a new-release movie started playing in cinemas, audiences couldn't watch it on streaming, video on demand, DVD or blu-ray for a few months. But with the past few years forcing film industry to make quite a few changes — widespread movie theatre closures and plenty of people staying home in iso will do that — that's no longer always the case. Maybe you've been under the weather. Perhaps you haven't had time to make it to your local cinema lately. Given the hefty amount of films now releasing each week, maybe you simply missed something. Film distributors have been fast-tracking some of their new releases from cinemas to streaming recently — movies that might still be playing in theatres in some parts of the country, too. In preparation for your next couch session, here are 20 that you can watch right now at home. MOONAGE DAYDREAM Ground control to major masterpiece: Moonage Daydream, Brett Morgen's kaleidoscopic collage-style documentary about the one and only David Bowie, really makes the grade. Its protein pills? A dazzling dream of archival materials, each piece as essential and energising as the next, woven into an electrifying experience that eclipses the standard music doco format. Its helmet? The soothing-yet-mischievous tones of Ziggy Stardust/Aladdin Sane/The Thin White Duke/Jareth the Goblin King himself, the only protective presence a film about Bowie could and should ever need and want. The songs that bop through viewers heads? An immense playlist covering the obvious — early hit 'Space Oddity', the hooky glam-rock titular track, Berlin-penned anthem 'Heroes', the seductive 80s sounds of 'Let's Dance' and the Pet Shop Boys-remixed 90s industrial gem 'Hallo Spaceboy', to name a few — as well as deeper cuts. The end result? Floating through a cinematic reverie in a most spectacular way. When Bowie came to fame in the 60s, then kept reinventing himself from the 70s until his gone-too-soon death in 2016, the stars did look very different — he did, constantly. How do you capture that persistent shapeshifting, gender-bending, personal and creative experimentation, and all-round boundary-pushing in a single feature? How do you distill a chameleonic icon and musical pioneer into any one piece of art, even a movie that cherishes each of its 135 minutes? In the first film officially sanctioned by Bowie's family and estate, Morgen knows what everyone that's fallen under the legend's spell knows: that the man born David Jones, who'd be 75 as this doco hits screens if he was still alive, can, must and always has spoken for himself. The task, then, is the same as the director had with the also-excellent Cobain: Montage of Heck and Jane Goodall-focused Jane: getting to the essence of his subject and conveying what made him such a wonder by using the figure himself as a template. Moonage Daydream is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies and Prime Video. Read our full review. BODIES BODIES BODIES The internet couldn't have stacked Bodies Bodies Bodies better if it tried, not that that's how the slasher-whodunnit-comedy came about. Pete Davidson (The Suicide Squad) waves a machete around, and his big dick energy, while literally boasting about how he looks like he fucks. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan Oscar-nominee Maria Bakalova plays the cautious outsider among rich-kid college grads, who plan to ride out a big storm with drinks and drugs (and drama) in one of their parents' mansions. The Hunger Games and The Hate U Give alum Amandla Stenberg leads the show as the gang's black sheep, turning up unannounced to zero fanfare from her supposed besties, while the rest of the cast spans Shiva Baby's Rachel Sennott, Generation's Chase Sui Wonders and Industry's Myha'la Herrold, plus Pushing Daisies and The Hobbit favourite Lee Pace as a two-decades-older interloper. And the Agatha Christie-but-Gen Z screenplay? It's drawn from a spec script by Kristen Roupenian, the writer of 2017 viral New Yorker short story Cat Person. All of the above is a lot. Bodies Bodies Bodies is a lot — 100-percent on purpose. It's a puzzle about a party game, as savage a hangout film as they come, and a satire about Gen Z, for starters. It carves into toxic friendships, ignored class clashes, self-obsessed obliviousness, passive aggression and playing the victim. It skewers today's always-online world and the fact that everyone has a podcast — and lets psychological warfare and paranoia simmer, fester and explode. Want more? It serves up another reminder after The Resort, Palm Springs and co that kicking back isn't always cocktails and carefree days. It's an eat-the-rich affair alongside Squid Game and The White Lotus. Swirling that all together like its characters' self-medicating diets, this wildly entertaining horror flick is a phenomenal calling card for debut screenwriter Sarah DeLappe and Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn (Instinct), too — and it's hilarious, ridiculous, brutal and satisfying. Forgetting how it ends is also utterly impossible. Bodies Bodies Bodies is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. FIRE OF LOVE What a delight it would be to trawl through Katia and Maurice Krafft's archives, sift through every video that features the French volcanologists and their work, and witness them doing their highly risky jobs against spectacular surroundings. That's the task that filmmaker Sara Dosa (The Seer and the Unseen) took up to make this superb documentary about the couple's lives — although, as magnificent as this incredibly thoughtful, informative and moving film is, it makes you wonder what a sci-fi flick made from the same footage would look like. There's a particular sequence that cements that idea, set to the also-otherworldly sounds of Air, and featuring the Kraffts walking around against red lava in their futuristic-looking protective silver suits. The entire enchanting score springs from Air's Nicolas Godin, and it couldn't better set the mood; that said, these visuals and this story would prove entrancing if nary a sound was heard, let alone a note or a word. For newcomers to the Kraffts, their lives make quite the tale — one of two volcano-obsessed souls who instantly felt like they were destined to meet, then dedicated their days afterwards to understanding the natural geological formations. More than that, they were passionate about analysing what they dubbed 'grey volcanos', which produce masses of ash when they erupt, and often a body count. Attempting to educate towns and cities in the vicinity of volcanoes, so that they could react appropriately and in a timely way to avoid casualties, became a key part of their mission. This isn't the only doco about them — in fact, German director Werner Herzog is making his own, called The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft — but Fire of Love is a gorgeous, sensitive, fascinating and affecting ode to two remarkable people, their love, their passion and their impact. It also benefits from pitch-perfect narration, too, courtesy of actor and Kajillionaire filmmaker Miranda July. Fire of Love is available to stream via Disney+. Read our full review. THE STRANGER No emotion or sensation ripples through two or more people in the exact same way, and never will. The Stranger has much to convey, but it expresses that truth with piercing precision. The crime-thriller is the sophomore feature from actor-turned-filmmaker Thomas M Wright — following 2018's stunning Adam Cullen biopic Acute Misfortune, another movie that shook everyone who watched it and proved hard to shake — and it's as deep, disquieting and resonant a dance with intensity as its genre can deliver. To look into Joel Edgerton's (Thirteen Lives) eyes as Mark, an undercover cop with a traumatic but pivotal assignment, is to spy torment and duty colliding. To peer at Sean Harris (Spencer) as the slippery Henry Teague is to see a cold, chilling and complex brand of shiftiness. Sitting behind these two performances in screentime but not impact is Jada Alberts' (Mystery Road) efforts as dedicated, determined and drained detective Kate Rylett — and it may be the portrayal that sums up The Stranger best. Writing as well as directing, Wright has made a film that is indeed dedicated, determined and draining. At every moment, including in sweeping yet shadowy imagery and an on-edge score, those feelings radiate from the screen as they do from Alberts. Sharing the latter's emotional exhaustion comes with the territory; sharing their sense of purpose does as well. In the quest to capture a man who abducted and murdered a child, Rylett can't escape the case's horrors — and, although the specific details aren't used, there's been no evading the reality driving this feature. The Stranger doesn't depict the crime that sparked Kate Kyriacou's non-fiction book The Sting: The Undercover Operation That Caught Daniel Morcombe's Killer, or any violence. It doesn't use the Queensland schoolboy's name, or have actors portray him or his family. This was always going to be an inherently discomforting and distressing movie, though, but it's also an unwaveringly intelligent and impressive examination of trauma. The Stranger is available to stream via Netflix. Read our full review. THE QUIET GIRL When Normal People became the streaming sensation of the pandemic's early days, it made stars out of leads Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones, and swiftly sparked another Sally Rooney adaptation from much of the same behind-the-scenes team. It wouldn't have been the hit it was if it hadn't proven an exercise in peering deeply, thoughtfully, lovingly and carefully, though, with that sensation stemming as much from its look as its emotion-swelling story. It should come as no surprise, then, that cinematographer Kate McCullough works the same magic on The Quiet Girl, a Gaelic-language coming-of-age film that sees the world as only a lonely, innocent, often-ignored child can. This devastatingly moving and beautiful movie also spies the pain and hardship that shapes its titular figure's world — and yes, it does so softly and with restraint, just like its titular figure, but that doesn't make the feelings it swirls up any less immense. McCullough is just one of The Quiet Girl's key names; filmmaker Colm Bairéad, a feature first-timer who directs and adapts Claire Keegan's novella Foster, is another. His movie wouldn't be the deeply affecting affair it is without its vivid and painterly imagery — but it also wouldn't be the same without the helmer and scribe's delicate touch, which the 1981-set tale he's telling not only needs but demands. His focus: that soft-spoken nine-year-old, Cáit (newcomer Catherine Clinch), who has spent her life so far as no one's priority. With her mother (Kate Nic Chonaonaigh, Shadow Dancer) pregnant again, her father (Michael Patric, Smother) happiest drinking, gambling and womanising, and her siblings boisterously bouncing around their rural Irish home, she's accustomed to blending in and even hiding out. Then, for the summer, she's sent to her mum's older cousin Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley, Extra Ordinary) and her dairy farmer husband Seán (Andrew Bennett, Dating Amber). Now the only child among doting guardians, she's no less hushed, but she's also loved and cared for as she's never been before. The Quiet Girl is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. DON'T WORRY DARLING Conformity rarely bodes well in cinema. Whenever everyone's dressing the same, little boxes litter the landscape or identical white-picket fences stretch as far as the eye can see, that perception of perfection tends to possess a dark underbelly. The Stepford Wives demonstrated that. Pleasantville, Blue Velvet and Vivarium all did as well. Yes, there's a touch of conformity in movies about the evils of and heralded by conformity; of course there is. That remains true when Florence Pugh (Black Widow) and Harry Styles (Eternals) navigate an ostensibly idyllic vision of retro suburbia in a desert-encased enclave — one that was always going to unravel when the movie they're in is called Don't Worry Darling. Don't go thinking that this handsome and intriguing film doesn't know all of this, though. Don't go thinking that it's worried about the similarities with other flicks, including after its secrets are spilled, either. It'd be revealing too much to mention a couple of other movies that Don't Worry Darling blatantly recalls, so here's a spoiler-free version: this is a fascinating female-focused take on a pair of highlights from two decades-plus back that are still loved, watched and discussed now. That's never all that Olivia Wilde's second feature as a filmmaker after 2019's Booksmart is, but it feels fitting that when it conforms in a new direction, it finds a way to make that space its own. That's actually what Pugh's Alice thinks she wants when Don't Worry Darling begins. The film's idealised 1950s-style setting comes with old-fashioned gender roles firmly in place, cocktails in hand as soon Styles' Jack walks in the door come quittin' time and elaborate multi-course dinners cooked up each night, with its protagonist going along with it all. But she's also far from keen on having a baby, the done thing in the company town that is Victory. It'd curtail the noisy sex that gets the neighbours talking, for starters. Don't Worry Darling is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video . Read our full review. AMSTERDAM There's only one Wes Anderson, but there's a litany of wannabes. Why can't David O Russell be among them? Take the first filmmaker's The Grand Budapest Hotel, mix in the second's American Hustle and that's as good a way as any to start describing Amsterdam, Russell's return to the big screen after a seven-year gap following 2015's Joy — and a starry period comedy, crime caper and history lesson all in one. Swap pastels for earthier hues, still with a love of detail, and there's the unmistakably Anderson-esque look of the film. Amsterdam is a murder-mystery, too, set largely in the 1930s against a backdrop of increasing fascism, and filled with more famous faces than most movies can dream of. The American Hustle of it all springs from the "a lot of this actually happened" plot, this time drawing upon a political conspiracy called the White House/Wall Street Putsch, and again unfurling a wild true tale. A Russell returnee sits at the centre, too: Christian Bale (Thor: Love and Thunder) in his third film for the writer/director. The former did help guide the latter to an Oscar for The Fighter, then a nomination for American Hustle — but while Bale is welcomely and entertainingly loose and freewheeling, and given ample opportunity to show his comic chops in his expressive face and physicality alone, Amsterdam is unlikely to complete the trifecta of Academy Awards recognition. The lively movie's cast is its strongest asset, though, including the convincing camaraderie between Bale, John David Washington (Malcolm & Marie) and Margot Robbie (The Suicide Squad). They play pals forged in friendship during World War I, then thanks to a stint in the titular Dutch city. A doctor, a lawyer and a nurse — at least at some point in the narrative — they revel in love and art during their uninhabited stay, then get caught in chaos 15 years later. Amsterdam is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies and Prime Video. Read our full review. THE WONDER "We are nothing without stories, so we invite you to believe in this one." So goes The Wonder's opening narration, as voiced by Niamh Algar (Wrath of Man) and aimed by filmmaker Sebastián Lelio in two directions. For the Chilean writer/director's latest rich and resonant feature about his favourite topic, aka formidable women — see also: Gloria, its English-language remake Gloria Bell, Oscar-winner A Fantastic Woman and Disobedience — he asks his audience to buy into a tale that genuinely is a tale. In bringing Emma Donoghue's (Room) book to the screen, he even shows the thoroughly modern-day studio and its sets where the movie was shot. But trusting in a story is also a task that's given The Wonder's protagonist, Florence Pugh's nurse Lib Wright, who is en route via ship to an Irish Midlands village when this magnetic, haunting and captivating 19th century-set picture initially sees her. For the second time in as many movies — and in as many months Down Under as well — Pugh's gotta have faith. Playing George Michael would be anachronistic in The Wonder, just as it would've been in Don't Worry Darling's gleaming 1950s-esque supposed suburban dream, but that sentiment is what keeps being asked of the British actor, including in what's also her second fearless performance in consecutive flicks. Here, it's 1862, and 11-year-old Anna O'Donnell (Kíla Lord Cassidy, Viewpoint) has seemingly subsisted for four months now without eating. Ireland's 1840s famine still casts shadows across the land and its survivors, but this beatific child says she's simply feeding on manna from heaven. Lib's well-paid job is to watch the healthy-seeming girl in her family home, where her mother (A Discovery of Witches' Elaine Cassidy, Kila's actual mum) and father (Caolan Byrne, Nowhere Special) dote, to confirm that she isn't secretly sneaking bites to eat. The Wonder is available to stream via Netflix. Read our full review. YOU WON'T BE ALONE Sometimes, a comparison is so obvious that it simply has to be uttered and acknowledged. That's the case with You Won't Be Alone, the first feature from Macedonian Australian writer/director Goran Stolevski, who also helmed MIFF's 2022 opening-night pick Of an Age. His debut film's lyrical visuals, especially of nature, instantly bringing the famously poetic aesthetics favoured by Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life, A Hidden Life) to mind. Its musings on the nature of life, and human nature as well, easily do the same. Set centuries back, lingering in villages wracked by superstition and exploring a myth about a witch, You Won't Be Alone conjures up thoughts of Robert Eggers' The Witch as well. Indeed, if Malick had directed that recent favourite, the end product might've come close to this entrancing effort. Consider Stolevski's feature the result of dreams conjured up with those two touchstones in his head, though, rather than an imitator. The place: Macedonia. The time: the 19th century. The focus: a baby chosen by the Wolf-Eateress (Anamaria Marinca, The Old Guard) to be her offsider. The feared figure has the ability to select and transform one protege, but she agrees to let her pick reach the age of 16 first. Nevena (Sara Klimoska, Black Sun) lives those formative years in a cave, in an attempt to stave off her fate. When the Wolf-Eateress comes calling, her initiation into the world — the world of humans, and of her physically and emotionally scarred mentor — is jarring. With Noomi Rapace (Lamb), Alice Englert (The Power of the Dog) and Carloto Cotta (The Tsugua Diaries) also among the cast, You Won't Be Alone turns Nevena's experiences of life, love, loss, desire, pain, envy and power into a haunting and thoughtful gothic horror fable. To say that it's bewitching is obvious, too, but also accurate. You Won't Be Alone is available to stream via Google Play and YouTube Movies. Read our full review. SEE HOW THEY RUN As every murder-mystery does, See How They Run asks a specific question: whodunnit? This 1950s-set flick also solves another query, one that's lingered over Hollywood for seven decades now thanks to Agatha Christie. If this movie's moniker has you thinking about mouse-focused nursery rhymes, that's by design — and characters do scurry around chaotically — however, it could also have you pondering the famed author's play The Mousetrap. The latter first hit theatres in London's West End in 1952 and has stayed there ever since, other than an enforced pandemic-era shutdown in COVID-19's early days. The show operates under a set stipulation regarding the big-screen rights, too, meaning that it can't be turned into a film until the original production has stopped treading the boards for at least six months. As that's never happened, how do you get it into cinemas anyway? Make a movie about trying to make The Mousetrap into a movie, aka See How They Run. Was it actor Richard Attenborough (Harris Dickinson, Where the Crawdads Sing), his fellow-thespian wife Sheila Sim (Pearl Chanda, War of the Worlds), big-time movie producer John Woolf (Reece Shearsmith, Venom: Let There Be Carnage) or his spouse Edana Romney (Sian Clifford, The Duke) getting murderous in the costume shop at the backstage party celebrating The Mousetrap's 100th show? (And yes, they're all real-life figures.) Or, was it the play's producer Petula Spencer (Ruth Wilson, His Dark Materials), the proposed feature adaptation's screenwriter Mervyn Cocker-Norris (David Oyelowo, Chaos Walking) or his Italian lover Gio (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, The Queen's Gambit)? They're among See How They Run's other enquiries, which Scotland Yard's Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell, Richard Jewell) and Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan, The French Dispatch) try to answer. After the death that kicks off filmmaker Tom George (This Country) and screenwriter Mark Chappell's (Flaked) mostly entertaining game of on-screen Cluedo, the two cops are on the case, working through their odd-couple vibe as they sleuth. See How They Run is available to stream via Disney+, Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. THE GOOD NURSE It isn't called CULLEN — Monster: The Charles Cullen Story. It doesn't chart the murders of a serial killer who's already a household name. And, it doesn't unfurl over multiple episodes. Still, Netflix-distributed true-crime film The Good Nurse covers homicides, and the person behind them, that are every bit as grim and horrendous as the events dramatised in DAHMER — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Such based-on-reality tales that face such evil are always nightmare fodder, but this Eddie Redmayne (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore)- and Jessica Chastain (The Forgiven)-starring one, as brought to the screen by Danish filmmaker Tobias Lindholm (A War, A Hijacking), taps into a particularly terrifying realm. The culprit clearly isn't the good nurse of the movie's moniker, but he is a nurse, working in intensive care units no less — and for anyone who has needed to put their trust in the health system or may in the future (aka all of us), his acts are gut-wrenchingly chilling. Hospitals are meant to be places that heal, even in America's cash-driven setup where free medical care for all isn't considered a basic right and a societal must. Hospitals are meant to care for the unwell and injured, as are the doctors, nurses and other staff who race through their halls. There is one such person in The Good Nurse, Amy Loughren, who Chastain plays based on a real person. In 2003, in New Jersey, she's weathering her own struggles: she's a single mother to two young girls, she suffers from cardiomyopathy to the point of needing a heart transplant, and she can't tell her job about her health condition because she needs to remain employed for four more months to qualify for insurance to treat it. Then enters Cullen (Redmayne), the newcomer on Loughren's night shifts, a veteran of nine past hospitals, an instant friend who offers to help her cope with her potentially lethal ailment and also the reason that their patients start dying suddenly. The Good Nurse is available to stream via Netflix. Read our full review. GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE People have orgasms every day, but for decades spent closing her eyes and thinking of England in a sexually perfunctory marriage, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande's lead character wasn't among them. Forget la petite mort, the French term for climaxing; Nancy Stokes' (Emma Thompson, Cruella) big wrestling match with mortality, the one we all undertake, has long been devoid of erotic pleasure. Moments that feel like a little death? Unheard of. That's where this wonderfully candid, intimate, generous and joyous sex comedy starts, although not literally. Flashbacks to Nancy enduring getting it over with beneath her now-deceased spouse, missionary style, aren't Australian filmmaker Sophie Hyde (Animals) or British comedian-turned-screenwriter Katy Brand's (Glued) concern. Instead, their film begins with the religious education teacher waiting in a hotel room, about to take the biggest gamble of her life: meeting the eponymous sex worker (Daryl McCormack, Peaky Blinders). For anyone well-versed in Thompson's prolific on-screen history, and of Brand's work before the camera as well, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande inspires an easy wish: if only Nancy had a different job. Back in 2010, the pair co-starred in Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, a title that'd also fit their latest collaboration if its protagonist cared for kids rather than taught them. Jokes aside, the instantly charming Leo is used to hearing that sentiment about his own professional choices. Indeed, Nancy expresses it during their pre- and post-coital discussions, enquiring about the events that might've led him to his career. "Maybe you're an orphan!" she says. "Perhaps you grew up in care, and you've got very low self-esteem," she offers. "You could have been trafficked against your will — you can't tell just by looking at somebody!" she continues. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. BLAZE In the name of its protagonist, and the pain and fury that threatens to parch her 12-year-old existence, Del Kathryn Barton's first feature scorches and sears. It burns in its own moniker, too, and in the blistering alarm it sounds against an appalling status quo: that experiencing, witnessing and living with the aftermath of violence against women is all too common, heartbreakingly so, including in Australia where one woman a week on average is killed by her current or former partner. Blaze has a perfect title, with the two-time Archibald Prize-winning artist behind it crafting a movie that's alight with anger, that flares with sorrow, and that's so astutely and empathetically observed, styled and acted that it chars. Indeed, it's frequently hard to pick which aspect of the film singes more: the story about surviving what should be unknown horrors for a girl who isn't even yet a teen, the wondrously tactile and immersive way in which Blaze brings its namesake's inner world to the screen, or the stunning performance by young actor Julia Savage (Mr Inbetween) in its central part. There are imagined dragons in Blaze, but Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon, this isn't — although Jake (Josh Lawson, Mortal Kombat), who Blaze spots in an alleyway with Hannah (Yael Stone, Blacklight), has his lawyer (Heather Mitchell, Bosch & Rockit) claim that his accuser knows nothing. With the attack occurring mere minutes into the movie, Barton dedicates the feature's bulk to how her lead character copes, or doesn't. Being questioned about what she saw in court is just one way that the world tries to reduce her to ashes, but the embers of her hurt and determination don't and won't die. Blaze's father Luke (Simon Baker, High Ground), a single parent, understandably worries about the impact of everything blasting his daughter's way. As she retreats then acts out, cycling between both and bobbing in-between, those fears are well-founded. Blaze is a coming-age-film — a robbing-of-innocence movie as well — but it's also a firm message that there's no easy or ideal response to something as awful as its titular figure observes. Blaze is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. HIT THE ROAD How fitting it is that a film about family — about the ties that bind, and when those links are threatened not by choice but via unwanted circumstances — hails from an impressive lineage itself. How apt it is that Hit the Road explores the extent that ordinary Iranians find themselves going to escape the nation's oppressive authorities, too, given that the filmmaker behind it is Panah Panahi, son of acclaimed auteur Jafar Panahi. The latter's run-ins with the country's regime have been well-documented. The elder Panahi, director of Closed Curtain, Tehran Taxi and more, has been both imprisoned and banned from making movies over the past two decades, and was detained again in July 2022 for enquiring about the legal situation surrounding There Is No Evil helmer Mohammad Rasoulof. None of that directly comes through in Hit the Road's story, not for a moment, but the younger Panahi's directorial debut is firmly made with a clear shadow lingering over it. As penned by the fledgling filmmaker as well, Hit the Road's narrative is simple and also devastatingly layered; in its frames, two starkly different views of life in Iran are apparent. What frames they are, as lensed by Ballad of a White Cow cinematographer Amin Jafari — with every sequence a stunner, but three in particular, late in the piece and involving fraught exchanges, nighttime stories and heartbreaking goodbyes, among the most mesmerising images committed to celluloid in recent years. Those pictures tell of a mother (Pantea Panahiha, Rhino), a father (Mohammad Hassan Madjooni, Pig), their adult son (first-timer Amin Simiar) and their six-year-old boy (scene-stealer Rayan Sarlak, Gol be khodi), all unnamed, who say they're en route to take their eldest to get married. But the journey is a tense one, even as the youngest among them chatters, sings, does ordinary childhood things and finds magic in his cross-country road trip, all with zero knowledge of what eats at the rest of his family. Hit the Road is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. FLUX GOURMET Flickering across a cinema screen, even the greatest of movies only engage two senses: sight and hearing. We can't touch, taste or smell films, even if adding scratch-and-sniff aromas to the experience has become a cult-favourite gimmick. British director Peter Strickland hasn't attempted that — but his features make you feel like you're running your fingers over an alluring dress (In Fabric), feeling the flutter of insect wings (The Duke of Burgundy) or, in his latest, enjoying the smells and tastes whipped up by a culinary collective that turns cooking and eating into performance art. Yes, if you've seen any of his movies before, Flux Gourmet instantly sounds like something only Strickland could make. While it's spinning that tale, it literally sounds like only something he could come up with as well, given that his audioscapes are always a thing of wonder (see also: the sound-focused Berberian Sound Studio). And, unsurprisingly due to his strong and distinctive sense of style and mood, everything about Flux Gourmet looks and feels like pure Strickland, too. The setting: a culinary institute overseen by Jan Stevens (Gwendoline Christie, Game of Thrones), that regularly welcomes in different creative groups to undertake residencies. Her guests collaborate, percolate and come up with eye-catching blends of food, bodies and art — hosting OTT dinners, role-playing a trip to the supermarket, getting scatalogical and turning a live colonoscopy into a show, for instance. Watching and chronicling the latest stint by a 'sonic catering' troupe is journalist Stones (Makis Papadimitriou, Beckett), who also has gastrointestinal struggles, is constantly trying not to fart and somehow manages to keep a straight face as everything gets farcical around him. Asa Butterfield (Sex Education), Ariane Labed (The Souvenir: Part II) and Strickland regular Fatma Mohamed play the three bickering artists, and their time at the institute get messy and heated, fast — but this is a film that's as warm as it is wild, and stands out even among Strickland's inimitable work. Also crucial: riffing on This Is Spinal Tap. Flux Gourmet is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. TICKET TO PARADISE Here we go again indeed: with the George Clooney- and Julia Roberts-starring Ticket to Paradise, a heavy been-there-done-that air sweeps through, thick with the Queensland-standing-in-for-Bali breeze. The film's big-name stars have bounced off each other in Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve and Money Monster before now. Director Ol Parker has already sent multiple groups of famous faces to far-flung places — far-flung from the UK or the US, that is — as the writer of the Best Exotic Marigold flicks and helmer of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Enough destination wedding rom-coms exist that one of the undersung better ones, with Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder, is even called Destination Wedding. And, there's plenty of romantic comedies about trying to foil nuptials, too, with My Best Friend's Wedding and Runaway Bride on Roberts' resume since the 90s. Hurriedly throw all of the above into a suitcase — because your twentysomething daughter Kaitlyn Dever, Dopesick) has suddenly announced she's marrying a seaweed farmer (Maxime Bouttier, Unknown) she just met in Indonesia, if you're Clooney (The Midnight Sky) and Roberts' (Gaslit) long-divorced couple here — and that's firmly Ticket to Paradise. As The Lost City already was earlier in 2022, it too is a star-driven throwback, endeavouring to make the kind of easy, glossy, screwball banter-filled popcorn fare that doesn't reach screens with frequency lately. It isn't as entertaining as that flick, and it certainly isn't winking, nodding and having fun with its formula; sticking dispiritingly to the basics is all that's on Parker's itinerary with his first-timer co-scribe Daniel Pipski. But alongside picturesque vistas, Ticket to Paradise shares something crucial with The Lost City: it gets a whole lot of mileage out of its stars' charisma. Ticket to Paradise is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. CLEAN "It's a shock to the system. It's a change to the everyday, regular routine. It's where the unhappy gene comes out — and it's a sign of the times today." That's the gloriously candid and empathetic Sandra Pankhurst on trauma, a topic she has literally made her business. Later in Clean, the documentary that tells her tale, she describes herself as a "busy nose and a voyeur"; however, that's not what saw her set up Melbourne's Specialised Trauma Cleaning. For three decades now, her company has assisted with "all the shitty jobs that no one really wants to do," as she characterises it: crime-scene cleanups, including after homicides, suicides and overdoses; deceased estates, such as bodies found some time after their passing; and homes in squalor, to name a few examples. As she explains in the film, Pankhurst is eager to provide such cleaning services because everyone deserves that help — and because we're all just a couple of unfortunate turns away from needing it. The 2008 movie Sunshine Cleaning starring Amy Adams (Dear Evan Hansen) and Emily Blunt (Jungle Cruise) fictionalised the trauma-cleaning realm; if that's your touchstone at the outset of Clean, prepare for far less gloss, for starters. Prepare for much more than a look at a fascinating but largely ignored industry, too, because filmmaker Lachlan Mcleod (Big in Japan) is as rightly interested in Pankhurst as he is in her line of work. Everything she says hangs in the air with meaning, even as it all bounces lightly from her lips ("life can be very fragile", "every dog has its day, and a mongrel has two" and "life dishes you out a good story and then life dishes you out a shit one" are some such utterances). Everything feels matter of fact and yet also immensely caring through her eyes, regardless of the situation that her Frankston-headquartered employees are attending to. Clean is available to stream via SBS On Demand. Read our full review. SMILE If high-concept horror nasties get you grinning even when you're squirming, recoiling or peeking through your fingers, then expect Smile to live up to its name — in its first half, at least. A The Ring-meets-It Follows type of scarefest with nods to the Joker thrown in — even though it springs from debut feature writer/director Parker Finn's own 2020 short film Laura Hasn't Slept — it takes its titular term seriously, sporting one helluva creepy smirk again and again. The actual face doing the ghoulish beaming can change, and does, but the evil Cheshire Cat-esque look on each dial doesn't. Where 2011's not-at-all spooky The Muppets had a maniacal laugh, Smile does indeed possess a maniacal, skin-crawling, nightmare-inducing leer. In the film, the first character to chat about it, PhD student Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey, Bridge and Tunnel), explains it as "the worst smile I have ever seen in my life". She's in a hospital, telling psychiatrist Rose Cotter (Mare of Easttown's Sosie Bacon, daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick), who clearly thinks she's hallucinating. But when the doctor sees that grin herself, she immediately knows that Laura's description couldn't be more accurate. Toothy, deranged, preternaturally stretched and also frozen in place, the smile at the heart of Smile isn't easily forgotten — not that Rose need worry about that. Soon, it's haunting her days and nights by interrupting her work, and seeing her act erratically with patients to the concern of her boss (Kal Penn, Clarice). Rose upsets a whole party at her nephew's birthday, too, and makes her fiancé Trevor (Jessie T Usher, The Boys) have doubts about their future. There's a backstory: Rose's mother experienced mental illness, which is why she's so passionate about her work and her sister Holly (Gillian Zinser, The Guilty) is so dismissive. There's a backstory to the diabolical frown turned upside down also, which she's quickly trying to unravel with the help of her cop ex Joel (Kyle Gallner, Scream). She has to; Laura came to the hospital for assistance after her professor saw the smile first, then started beaming it, then took his own life in front of her — and now Rose is in the same situation Smile is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. ON THE COUNT OF THREE What happens outside an upstate New York strip club at 10am on an ordinary weekday? Nothing — nothing good, or that anyone pays attention to, at least — deduces the unhappy Val (Jerrod Carmichael, Rothaniel) in On the Count of Three. So, he's hatched a plan: with his lifelong best friend Kevin (Christopher Abbott, The Forgiven), they'll carry out a suicide pact, with that empty car park as their final earthly destination. Under the harsh morning light and against a drably grey sky, Carmichael's feature directorial debut initially meets its central duo standing in that exact spot, guns pointed at each other's heads and pulling the trigger mere moments away. Yes, they start counting. Yes, exhaustion and desperation beam from their eyes. No, this thorny yet soulful film isn't over and done with then and there. There are many ways to experience weariness, frustration, malaise and despair, and to convey them — and On the Count of Three surveys plenty, as an unflinchingly black comedy about two lifelong best friends deciding to end it all should. Those dispiriting feelings can weigh you down, making every second of every day an effort. They can fester, agitate, linger and percolate, simmering behind every word and deed before spewing out as fury. They can spark drastic actions, including the type that Val and Kevin have picked as their only option after the latter breaks the former out of a mental health hospital mere days after his last self-harming incident. Or, they can inspire a wholesale rejection of the milestones, such as the promotion that Val is offered hours earlier, that everyone is told they're supposed to covet, embrace and celebrate. On the Count of Three is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies and Prime Video. Read our full review. THE HUMANS If you're the kind of cinephile who likes to theme their viewing around the relevant time of year — holiday-related, primarily — then you're clearly always spoiled for choice. Christmas movies, horror flicks at Halloween, Easter-relevant films: you can build a binge session out of all of them (several in fact, depending on the occasion). The same applies to Thanksgiving, all courtesy of the US, and The Humans is the latest addition to the November-appropriate list. But while it ticks a few easy boxes, including bringing a family together to celebrate the date, steeping their get-together in awkwardness, and having big revelations spill out over the course of the gathering, this A24-distributed release is far creepier and more haunting than your usual movie about America's turkey-eating time of year. Based on Stephen Karam's Tony-winning play, and adapted and directed for the screen by Karam himself, it's downright unsettling, in fact, and for a few reasons. There's the tension zipping back and forth between everyone in attendance, of course; the bleak, claustrophobic, rundown setting, in a New York apartment close to ground zero; and the strange sounds emanating from other units. As a result, seasonal cheer is few and far between in this corner of Manhattan, where the Blake family congregates in Brigid (Beanie Feldstein, Booksmart) and her boyfriend Richard's (Steven Yeun, Nope) new abode. Also making an appearance: parents Deirdre (Jayne Houdyshell, Only Murders in the Building) and Erik (Richard Jenkins, Nightmare Alley), Brigid's older sister Aimee (Amy Schumer, Life & Beth), and their grandmother Momo (June Squibb, Palmer), who has dementia. No one is happy, and everyone seems to have something that needs airing — but there's always the feeling that, in any other location, this might've truly been a joyful affair. Discussions about dreams and nightmares prove revealing, but The Humans points out the thin line between both, whether we're slumbering or waking, several times over in its talky frames. The Humans is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies and Prime Video. Read our full review. Looking for more at-home viewing options? Take a look at our monthly streaming recommendations across new straight-to-digital films and TV shows — and our best new TV shows, returning TV shows and straight-to-streaming movies from the first half of 2022.
Just like a picture is worth a thousand words, a good gift can speak volumes. And when it comes to your nearest and dearest, it's worth forking out the big bucks to make them feel suitably special. Socks and undies simply will not do, you need to up the ante and pick out a present that is nuanced, thoughtful and unequivocally them. We know it can be tough; you may feel as though you've exhausted all your options. There's only so many times you can buy their favourite necklace, after all. To give you some fresh gift ideas, we've partnered with Australia Post and pulled together some real humdingers for the super important people in your life. From retro turntables to limited edition RMs, these pressies keep your key peeps smiling. Moreover, they can all be ordered online and conveniently delivered to your nearby Parcel Locker so you don't even have to go to the shops. Let your fingers do the walking, forgo the crazy Christmas crowds and rest easy knowing your parcel is stored securely till you're ready to collect. Happy shopping, Santas. PORD WINE BARREL If you've got a legit wine lover on your list, go beyond a bottle of primo vino or even a stylish decanter, and blow their socks off with one of these mini wine barrel masterpieces. The three-litre barrels are covered in art by three eclectic artists — Filippa Edghill, Hannah Nowlan and Evi O. — and filled with top-notch Mitchelton drops from the 2017 and 2018 vintages. Choose the design and the wine — pinot grigio, shiraz or rose — and get ready to be praised for your awesome gift. Each barrel holds a neat four bottles' worth of wine and will keep it fresh for up to six weeks. They can also be repurposed once empty. Cheers to that. How much? $160 CUSTOM HABBOT SHOES There's nothing better than a pair of comfy shoes. Wait, we take that back, there's nothing better than a pair of comfy and stylish shoes. Treat your special someone to a pair of custom Habbot shoes — they're super chic but have Hush Puppies-level comfort. The Aussie-designed and Italian-made footwear company has a great online customisation tool that lets you pick and choose everything, from the shoe type — classic derby, micro-sole derby, point pump or mid-heel sandal — to the material, colour and laces. So, you can design one-of-a-kind kicks for your numero uno that'll stand out from the crowd. How much? From $405 EVERY EDITION OF TRUTH, LOVE & CLEAN CUTLERY If your nearest and dearest is both an eco-warrior and a food lover — congrats, they sound awesome — surprise them with every edition of Truth, Love & Clean Cutlery. Basically the A to Z of sustainable eating, these guidebooks feature more than 1300 organic, ethical and sustainable restaurants from around the world. To take the gift up a notch, let your loved one pick out a few of their favourite restaurants and treat them to a night of ethical fare. Hey, it's a present for you, too. How much? $145 for all four books RM WILLIAMS EXCLUSIVE BOOTS These boots were made for walking and showing off, the limited edition metallic RMs are the shoe of the season and the perfect gift for any Carrie Bradshaw-status shoe fiends. At $545 a pop, they're not cheap — but the RM brand is renowned for its rock-solid craftsmanship and the kicks will last a lifetime. Luckily, silver is seldom out of style and goes perfectly with tinsel. But if silver is a bit too flash for your giftee, there's also the more subdued limited edition high-shine black boot. No matter your choice, each pair is crafted out of a single piece of leather and is made to order, so expect a two-week delivery timeframe. They're worth the wait, trust us. How much? $545 GOOGLE HOME HUB Hey, Google. Tell us how many hugs we're going to get for this kick-ass gift? Forget it, we already know it's going to be a heap. Yep, anyone who receives a Google Home Hub for Christmas is going to be over the moon. They're basically getting their very own assistant to set alarms, turn off lights, read out cooking instructions, organise daily routines, play music, take photos... the list goes on. They might even get a new lover if they're anything like Joaquin Phoenix's character in Her. Now that's a gift. How much? $219 FUJIFILM INSTAX SQUARE SQ6 INSTANT CAMERA Remember when Polaroid cameras were so big and bulky they basically required their own carry bag? While the promise of pretty photos (in an instant) was enticing, nobody wanted to lug around a brick. Thankfully, those days are long gone and you can now gift a nice, compact FujiFilm Instant Camera to your number one. The clever square format means your pal won't waste time choosing between portrait or landscape, they can just pick up the camera and take the snap. It's kind of like Instagram in real life. Plus, its small size means it can be carried around with ease. How much? $199 RETRO-LOOKING TURNTABLE If you've got a bigtime muso in your inner circle, there's a good chance you've heard them rabbiting on about the beauty of vinyl before — how records sound so much better than CDs or MP3. Something about audio data and lossy formats? Anyway, treat them to this Thomson 3 Speed Retro Look Turntable with built-in speakers and get them spinning their favourite tracks. The turntable's sleek, vintage design makes it a nice addition to any home — even a muso's dark and dingy lair. If you want to add a personalised touch, pick out a vinyl to gift with the turntable — it's a combo that's guaranteed to make their head spin like, well, a record. How much? $99 NOKIA STEEL HR WATCH This one's for the fitness fanatics in your life who also appreciate a bit of style. The Nokia Steel HR Watch is a watch-activity tracker hybrid that's both aesthetically pleasing and hella practical. The watch monitors your heart rate during workouts and can assess your overall performance, then deliver a personalised in-app report directly to your smartphone. The intuitive gadget makes your fitness goals that little bit easier to achieve, which means it's also a thoughtful gift for somebody you know is keen to get fit in the new year. How much? From $299 MODERNIST BREAD BOOK SET Bread, glorious bread. You'd be hard pressed to find a person who doesn't love it. But if you've got a special person who's particularly fond of baked goods, this is the book set for them. Modernist Bread: The Art and Science is a deep-dive into one of the most important staples of the human diet; it's the most in-depth look at bread to date. The five-volume set, housed in a sleek stainless steel case, contains more than 1500 recipes and breadmaking techniques. The best part? You can sample all their tasty dough-based creations. Forget cake, let them eat bread. How much? $700 HP SPROCKET PHOTO PRINTER A gift for the selfie enthusiasts, the HP Sprocket Photo Printer allows you to instantly print photos straight from your smartphone quicker than you can say 'duck face'. The printer has an ultracompact design — it's small enough to carry on the go — so it's also a great gift for budding photographers or designers as they can quickly print their snaps. The printer uses Bluetooth technology, which means there are no annoying cords and each photograph can be edited (hello, filters) before printing via the HP Sprocket app. Also, the special adhesive photo paper means you can easily stick your photos into albums or journals. How much? $159 Christmas shopping has never been so simple — order online, ship to a Parcel Locker and avoid the hectic shops with Australia Post.
Dust off your best bling bling and scour your wardrobe for something Anna Wintour would approve of, because James Street's RESORT kicks of this week. Rivalling last year's program — headlined by Man Repeller aka Leandra Medine — this year brings some of the worlds biggest designers, fashion gurus and trendsetters to Brisbane, including the queen of them all, Margaret Zhang. For three days, James Street will transformed into a desert oasis and shopping mirage, with exclusive collections and presentations by the local boutiques on the strip. In the lineup of talks, workshops, drinking and eating that form the street-wide celebration, Zhang will be joined by fellow guests Lisa Gorman and Holly Ryan on the panel RESORT Trailblazers: Australia is the Future of Fashion. In addition, expect early exercise meets with Lorna Jane, morning raves with Blonde Venus, mojitos at Scrumptious Reads and the highlight of the three-day party, RESORT After Dark, as part of the bustling program. Regardless of how many Hadids you follow on Instagram or how big your wardrobe is, this is the event of events for anyone interested in the contemporary and future states of Australian fashion. Splash out on an outfit you can't afford and enjoy!
Brisbane, it's official. As a city, we clearly have an art and alcohol obsession. Boozy creative sessions keep popping up all over the place, with Pastels & Plonk the latest. At this rate, you could almost spend every night of the week picking up a brush, pencil or crayon over a wine or beer — and no, we're not complaining. Work-Shop Brisbane's newest beverage-fuelled class mixture get your hands dirty, but in a brightly hued manner, while also giving you some liquid inspiration. Delicious Art's Jeanne Cotter will teach you to everything you need to know, including the fact that you can both paint and draw with pastels. The session joins the likes of Cork & Chroma, Boozy Board Art, Botanical Drawing with Drinks and Pub Painting when it comes to unleashing your inner plonk-loving Picasso (and serving up a dose of alliteration as well). Tickets cost $60, and include supplies and drinks.
The latest big-screen gems aren't the only movies on offer at a heap of Australian film festivals in 2024. When Europa! Europa returned in February and March, it also featured a retrospective dedicated to Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos. On this year's German Film Festival lineup: a spotlight on The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft's Werner Herzog. And, when the Spanish Film Festival hits picture palaces around the country in June and July, it'll pay tribute to the one and only Salvador Dalí. 2024 marks 120 years since the Spanish artist's birth, so this annual showcase of films from Spain and Latin America is including an ode to the surrealist great through cinema. Documentary Salvador Dalí: In Search of Immortality is filled with archival footage, 1929 short film Un Chien Andalou is a collaboration between Dalí and filmmaker Luis Buñuel, and 1930's L'Age d'Or is penned by the pair. Also featured: Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, in which Dalí was responsible for the dream sequence. When you're not celebrating Dalí at this year's Spanish Film Festival, there's plenty more to see — including opening night's Chile-set The Movie Teller from director Lone Scherfig (The Kindness of Strangers) and co-writer Walter Salles (Central Station), as starring the Buenos Aires-born Bérénice Bejo (Final Cut) and Barcelona-born Daniel Brühl (All Quiet on the Western Front). It'll kick off the fest in each of its stops in Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Byron Bay and Ballina, with the event's full tour running from Tuesday, June 11 (when it launches in the Australian Capital Territory) to Wednesday, July 10 (when every leg around the nation wraps up). When Un Amor, the latest from Elisa & Marcela director Isabel Coixet, pops up on the lineup, it's part of a focus on the filmmaker. Elegy, which stars Ben Kingsley (The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar) and Penélope Cruz (Ferrari), is also on the spotlight bill — as is 2013's Yesterday Never Ends and the Monica Bellucci (Mafia Mamma)-led Those Who Love from 1998. Other highlights span drama The Girls at the Station, a coming-of-age tale about three girls who grow up at a juvenile detention centre; Something Is About to Happen, focusing on a woman who loses her job, which won Malena Alterio (Strangers) a Goya; Jokes & Cigarettes, a biopic of comedian Eugenio; and vino-focused documentary Rioja: The Land of a Thousand Wines. Or, there's Checkmates, which rocketed up the Spanish box office with an underdog story about kids trying to win the Spanish Chess Championship — and Saturn Return, which takes inspiration from Spanish band Los Planetas. The timely Artificial Justice follows a judge assessing if AI can be used in the justice system, and Vera and the Pleasures of Others focuses on a 17-year-old girl who likes listening to exactly what the title spells out. Then there's the roster of titles from Latin America, such as Totem, which takes place across one day in a Mexican household; Bad Actor, which tells a post-#MeToo era tale; sci-fi thriller Aire: Just Breathe; and wellness dark comedy The Practice. There's more where they came from, including one helluva closing-night pick: Alejandro Jodorowsky's iconic The Holy Mountain, adding more surrealism beyond Dalí to the program. Spanish Film Festival 2024 Dates: Tuesday, June 11–Wednesday, July 10: Palace Electric Cinema, Canberra Wednesday, June 12–Wednesday, July 10: Palace Nova Eastend Cinemas, Adelaide Thursday, June 13–Wednesday, July 10: Palace James Street and Palace Barracks, Brisbane Thursday, June 13–Wednesday, July 10: Palace Raine Square Cinemas, Luna Leederville and Luna on SX, Perth Friday, June 14–Wednesday, July 10: The Astor Theatre, Palace Cinema Como, Palace Brighton Bay, Palace Penny Lane, Palace Westgarth, The Kino, Palace Balwyn and Pentridge Cinema, Melbourne Wednesday, June 19–Wednesday, July 10: Palace Norton Street, Palace Moore Park, Palace Central and Chauvel Cinema, Sydney Friday, June 21–Wednesday, July 10: Palace Byron Bay, Byron Bay Friday, June 21–Wednesday, July 10: Ballina Fair Cinemas, Ballina The 2024 Spanish Film Festival tours Australia in June and July. For more information or to buy tickets, visit the festival's website.
There's no need to sugarcoat Brisbane's newest event — you'll find plenty of sweetness on offer regardless. After all, that's what you'd expect at the city's first-ever dedicated dessert festival. It's called The Sugar Market for a good reason. Taking over the Alden Street laneway behind The Wickham in Fortitude Valley from 11am to 5pm on Saturday, October 29, The Sugar Market promises the kind of wonderland Homer Simpson couldn't even dream of. Specific details are still being kept under wraps, but The Wickham and Lucid Sweets are involved, with the event currently seeking expressions of interest from other dessert masters. Regardless of the final lineup of vendors, sweet treats will be available for brekkie, brunch, lunch, dinner, dessert and every excuse in-between. The festival explicitly promises "more brownies, cupcakes, macarons, meringues and doughnuts than you ever thought could fit in once space". That sound you can hear? It's your stomach grumbling.
UPDATE, December 23, 2021: The Lost Daughter released in select Australian cinemas on Thursday, December 16, and will be available to stream via Netflix on Friday, December 31. Watching Olivia Colman play a complicated woman is like staring at the ocean: it's never the same twice, even just for a second; it couldn't be more unpredictable, no matter how comfortable it appears; and all that surface texture bobs, floats, swells, gleams and glides atop leagues of unseen complexity. That's always been true of the British actor's absolute best performances, which could fill any body of water with their power and resonance. It's there in her acidic work in The Favourite, which won her an Oscar, and also in The Crown's more reserved turn as a different English monarch. It flowed through the devastating Tyrannosaur, which perhaps first truly showed the world exactly what Colman could do — and has marked her Academy Award-nominated supporting part in The Father, plus TV standouts Peep Show, Broadchurch, The Night Manager and Fleabag. It's fitting, then, that The Lost Daughter tasks Colman with glaring at the sea, and doing so both intently and often. A necessity of the narrative, as penned on the page by My Brilliant Friend's Elena Ferrante and adapted for the screen by actor-turned-filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal, it's a touch that washes through the movie with extra force due to its star. Colman plays comparative literature professor Leda, who fills much of her time peering at the ocean as she summers on a Greek island — and also people-watching thanks to the loud, entitled Queens family that keep invading her chosen patch of sand. While both gazing at the waves and taking in the onshore domestic dramas, Leda sees her own ebbs, flows, thorns and flaws reflected back. Vacationing alone, Leda isn't on a getaway as much as she's escaping — not actively, but because that's her default mode. She's never willing to stray far from her work, shuffling through papers as she sunbathes and flirtatious young resort manager Will (Paul Mescal, Normal People) moves her lounger to keep her in the shade; however, as flashbacks show, the urge to flee all markers of apparent normalcy has long gushed in her veins. Leda tells anyone who asks that she has two daughters (Bianca is 25 and Martha is 23, she frequently offers), but they're heard via phone calls rather than seen as adults. She's prickly when mum-to-be Callie (Dagmara Domińczyk, Succession), of those noisy interlopers, asks if her extended group can take over Leda's beach umbrella. But in Nina (Dakota Johnson, The Nowhere Inn), the raven-haired mother of frequently screaming toddler Elena (debutant Athena Martin Anderson), she spies more of herself than she's been willing to confront for decades. The Lost Daughter's title references an incident one sunny day when Elena disappears as Callie, Nina and company — the latter's shady husband Toni (Oliver Jackson-Cohen, The Invisible Man) as well — idle by the water's edge. The Americans react with distress, but Leda calmly strides forth amid the chaos, all while battling memories of being a young mum (Jessie Buckley, I'm Thinking of Ending Things) searching for her own absent child. Indeed, loss and escape are serpentine concepts here, winding through Leda's past, her affinity for the clearly unhappy Nina and the second wave of mayhem that erupts when Elena's beloved doll also goes missing. The concept of trouble in paradise proves just as layered, infecting idylls scenic and, in pondering the supposed bliss that we're all told motherhood brings, societally enforced. The idea that bringing life into the world isn't the existence-defining triumph of femininity it's sugar-coated as doesn't simply sit at the heart of Ferrante's novel and Gyllenhaal's debut stint behind the lens — from the instant that Colman is seen collapsing on the pebble-strewn shoreline in the picture's opening, it laps over The Lost Daughter's every moment. Leda is a woman haunted by everything having kids has brought, as well as guilt-stricken by all that's followed, and this bold and affecting movie confronts that rocky truth. It's the filmic antithesis to keeping calm and carrying on, or relishing the rewards while disregarding the sacrifices, whether Leda is trying to retain a sense of self in the feature's journeys backwards, grappling with the gnawing consequences of her choices and the parallels in Nina's exasperation, or obsessing over dolls, those symbols of maternity routinely given to girls at birth. For any director, this is audacious and intricate terrain, but Gyllenhaal is as exceptional and daring a filmmaker as she is a performer. As her own impressive acting career demonstrates, complete with knotty and slippery turns in Secretary, Sherrybaby, The Kindergarten Teacher and The Deuce, she could've played Leda and just as phenomenal a film would've likely resulted. Her decision to enlist Colman doesn't only spring from humility, though, but from spying what we all notice whenever the star graces any screen. One of Colman's extraordinary skills is her knack for ensuring that her characters could swim in any direction and, whatever swings and lurches they take, it always feels like the most natural development there is. She's a master not just of complicated women, but of conveying the innate and relentless state of being complicated. Daughters get lost, mothers struggle, prickly exchanges pepper the picturesque setting — Leda isn't afraid to voice her displeasure to Callie and her relatives, or to teens ruining a trip to the local cinema, and she's positively awkward with Lyle (Ed Harris, Westworld), the caretaker of her holiday apartment — but so much of The Lost Daughter's tension rushes from Colman's performance. From Buckley's, too, with the movie's two Ledas echoing each other — the woman she once was and the one she becomes — with precision and synergy that's too shrewd and naturalistic to resemble mere mimicry. It's also telling that Gyllenhaal has cinematographer Hélène Louvart (Never Rarely Sometimes Always) lens the film like a volatile memory, probing closeups, lingering details and slight but inescapable jitteriness all included, while the jazzy score by Dickon Hinchliffe (The Third Day) skews towards the melodic. Everything about Leda's experiences has been stressful rather than peaceful, but the prevailing view of being a mum keeps trying to tell the world otherwise — and both the character and the film refuse to accept those false platitudes. The Lost Daughter releases in select Brisbane cinemas on Thursday, December 16, and will be available to stream via Netflix on Friday, December 31.
Eye. Aperture. Descender. Spine. A weird collection of words, but for a typographer (or a publication nerd like me) they make perfect sense together. Every letter of the alphabet can be split into components which can be moulded and shaped, cut and stretched to create unique typefaces. Having been exposed to so many for so long, we don't actually realise how much of an impact fonts have on our perception of the world around us. For those of us too busy to enrol in a graphic design course but still passionate about learning more there is Typography Insight. The iPad application allows you to get up close and personal, and thereby understand the amazing cratsmanship that goes into making ordinary letters into extraordinary fonts. The resource is encyclopedic in depth, You can be guided through font terminology, compare fonts, or just admire the intricacies that only a super close-up can offer. The designer Dong Yoon Park ask: "How can the cold and rigid design approach of many top-notch technologies be turned into warmer and friendlier interfaces?" https://youtube.com/watch?v=wkoX0pEwSCw [via Gizmodo]
Things just got a whole lot easier for cyclists. At long last, you can now carry your two-wheelers on peak hour trains and long-haul flights without enraging fellow commuters, paying excess baggage fees and (most importantly) compromising on dimensions. A 30-year-old Italian designer by the name of Gianluca Sada has come up with a bicycle that folds down to the size of an umbrella yet boasts full-size 26-inch hubless, spokeless wheels. So, not only does it go faster than your average foldable, it’s also more stable. And it looks significantly sexier. Sada has been cooking up the eponymous bike for six years. He registered the patent on March 5, 2010 and by December 2011 had developed an aluminum alloy prototype with the help of precision engineering company Palmec SNC. Right now, he’s looking for investors. "The project may pave the way for a new system of mobility outside the classical schemes, widely accessible and easily transportable," he says. "Personal style and extreme versatility give dynamism to the traditional bicycle... increasingly required in this environmentally friendly age." Sada studied at the Politecnico di Torino, completing a degree in Automotive Engineering in 2010. His thesis, which focused on the development of the foldable bicycle, was awarded First Prize in IDEA-TO’s “most innovative thesis of 2010”, conducted by the Order of Engineers of Turin. In November 2010, Italian Minister for Youth, Giorgia Meloni, listed Sada among the "200 Top Talents of Italy". Via Gizmag.
What's the deal with trivia nights based on pop culture commodities? They're here to stay, and once again it's Seinfeld's turn. The show about nothing has inspired an evening about everything that made its nine-season, 180-episode run so great. The fun unravels at The Flying Cock from 6pm on Saturday, October 13, and while entry isn't free (sorry, George Costanza), your $30 ticket covers a Seinfeld-themed food and drinks menu — likely including some pretzels that'll make you thirsty. Plus, you should consider These Questions Are Making Me Thirsty a show as much as a trivia night. Or, think of it as Festivus coming early for those who think they know every conceivable detail about the hit '90s sitcom. Prepare to have your affection put to the test, potentially covering everything from soup to sponges to Pez dispensers, and even the parade of famous faces that played Jerry's girlfriends. Yada, yada, yada — you get the picture. Wear your best puffy shirt, too, because there are prizes on offer for best costume.
When the French city of Toulouse gets its first skyscraper in 2022, it won't just see 40 floors of of shining glass, concrete and steel join its skyline. It'll also gain its tallest garden — and one of the world's as well. A "continuous vertical landscape" will spiral around the outside of the building like a ribbon of greenery, lined with trees and reaching all of the way up to the top level. Called the Occitanie Tower after the administrative region of France that Toulouse falls within, the structure will measure 150 metres in height and boast 11,000 square metres of offices, as well as a Hilton hotel, up to 120 apartments, plus space for retail and hospitality outlets. The latter will feature a restaurant with panoramic views, including towards the Pyrenees mountain range less than 100 kilometres away; however there's no mistaking it's eye-catching vertical garden that'll be the centre of attention. Designed by the New York and Zurich-based Studio Liebskind — aka the folks behind everything from Berlin's zigzag-shaped Jewish Museum to the World Trade Centre Master Plan development to a Swarovski chess set modelled after iconic buildings — the Occitanie Tower is slated to start construction in 2018. While it'll certainly give the area a new landmark, and weave in nicely with the vertical garden trend that just keeps growing, it won't be quite as tall as Australia's addition to the lofty fold. That'd be 166-metre-high, 250-species-filled One Central Park in Sydney's Chippendale. Via dezeen. Images via Morph / Luxigon.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was hardly a shortage of streaming platforms and online viewing services, all offering up plenty of movies for avid cinephiles to watch from the comfort of their couches. Since cinemas closed a few months back to help stop the spread of to the coronavirus, even more digital options have hit the market, including FanForce TV, Quibi and the Amazon Prime Video Store — as well as the latest newcomer, At Home. A video-on-demand service, At Home has a major point of difference: it's run by the team behind four Australian cinemas. Offering up recent and retro pay-per-view films for online rental, it's the new venture from the folks at Sydney's Ritz and Melbourne's Lido, Classic and Cameo cinemas. Launching today, Thursday, May 14, At Home's range spans movies from well-known distributors like Madman, Umbrella, Roadshow and StudioCanal — as well films that mightn't have received much attention in Australia otherwise, such as classic genre movies from sources like the American Genre Film Archive. New titles are added weekly, with the lineup curated by the teams from the four cinemas. Prices start at $4.99, with movies available for viewing over a 48-hour window. That means that film buffs can currently check out the straight-to-streaming movies like Hugo Weaving-starring Aussie drama Hearts and Bones and sci-fi mind-bender Vivarium; see recent cinema releases such as Parasite, For Sama, Color Out of Space and Portrait of a Lady on Fire; and look back at flicks from the past few years, including God's Own Country, Aquarius and Shoplifters. Themed strands focus on female filmmakers, LGBTQI+ cinema, and Jewish and Israeli films, as well as Australian flicks, music and fashion documentaries, and weird and wonderful genre fare. If the idea of cinemas jumping into the streaming game sounds a little out of character, that's understandable. As the battle between the big-screen experience and streaming at home has heated up in recent few years, cinemas and online platforms haven't always gotten along. Case in point: the number of Australian picture palaces that have been reluctant to screen films such as Roma, The Irishman, Marriage Story, Brittany Runs a Marathon and True History of the Kelly Gang, which all released in theatres just a few weeks before they made their way to streaming services such as Netflix, Stan and Amazon Prime Video. That makes At Home an interesting move, with Ritz, Lido, Classic and Cameo owner Eddie Tamir seeing the VOD service as complementing watching a movie in cinemas — when they reopen. "We are thrilled that our new At Home platform allows us to present great films of the recent and distant past alongside our cinema experience," he said in a statement. "Our At Home platform allows us to place the new releases in our cinemas in context of what came before them." For more information about At Home, visit the Ritz, Lido, Classic and Cameo At Home sites.
Even the most seasoned traveller can get a little homesick from time to time, particularly if you're bunking down in the great outdoors without the usual creature comforts. Enter the Bank luggage range by Marc Sadler, as designed for Fabbrica Pelletterie Milano. As well as spanning the usual array of suitcases, it also features three trunks that turn into your own office, bed and kitchen away from home. Encased in shiny aluminium exteriors, jet-setters will find fold-out mini rooms that take care of our basic needs: sleeping, cooking and, sadly, working. The 'bedstation' includes a wooden base with a thin folding mattress, while the 'workstation' contains a table, chair, storage draws and charging ports. As for the 'cookstation', which isn't yet available, it'll boast a hot plate, chopping table, storage for kitchenware, its own power and even a mini fridge. Unsurprisingly, nothing in the range comes cheap — expect to pay nearly AU$11,000 for the bed, around AU$7500 for the office and an estimated AU$10,000 for the kitchen. Still, if you're keen on taking a piece of home with you on your next trip, or close enough to it, it's an option. For more information, visit Marc Sadler's website or the Fabbrica Pelletterie Milano website. Via Travel + Leisure.
Once, heading to Nambour was all about gawking at over-sized tropical fruit. Actually, that's still the case. Back in 2013, however, the giant pineapple-owning powers that be added another reason to head to the Sunshine Coast's biggest tourist attraction: an annual music festival with an ace lineup. Well, it's usually annual. The 2020 event has understandably changed its dates a few time in this COVID-19-afflicted year, and now it's moving the whole shebang to 2021. So, you can once again expect some top-notch entertainment across four stages, plus a ferris wheel, food stalls aplenty, arts, crafts and other activities, and camping, all when The Big Pineapple Music Festival returns on Saturday, May 22, 2021. It's enough to make you block out a weekend and start planning a few days spent in the shadow of one of the country's favourite big things. The 2021 lineup hasn't been announced yet, because it isn't as logistically simple as just sticking with 2020's bill — so watch this space regarding who you'll be dancing to. And, ticket-wise, all 2020 purchases are still valid. If you can't attend the new date, you can request a refund between September 9–October 12. If you don't have a ticket yet, fingers crossed that you'll be able to pick one up once the event has processed any returned tickets. [caption id="attachment_760926" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Charlie Hardy[/caption] The Big Pineapple Music Festival will take place on Saturday, May 22, 2021. For further details about the date change, ticketing and refunds, visit the event's website. Images: Charlie Hardie / Claudia Ciapocaa.
Browsing for arts and crafts, stopping for a bite to eat, checking out live performances, catching a fashion show and then watching a film — sounds like quite the itinerary, doesn't it? Forget running around town to fit everything in, however, with this lengthy list of activities all on offer at this year's BrisAsia Festival Markets. A one-day market within the broader BrisAsia Festival program, the event includes everything from handicraft stalls to dance displays to plenty of food — and workshops, a showcase of threads and a big screen to feast your eyes upon. That's what Brisbanites will find at the Seven Hills Hub on Tallowwood Street from 12–6pm on Saturday, February 24. While the stall lineup is yet to be revealed, this fest doesn't do anything in a small way, so consider your afternoon plans sorted. Entry is free, although you'll want to bring your wallet so that you can fill your shopping bags (and your stomach).
In years to come, when music critics reflect on this time period of Australian music, one song will ring loud – Bad//Dreems’ 'Hoping For'. And such critics will say, how was this not on Triple’s J’s 2013 Hottest 100? Or 2014? Or of all time? How was there no push for this tune to replace our current national anthem? Bad//Dreems are a perfect encapsulation of modern Oz-rock and, as of late, have been stomping, screaming and strumming their way out of pubs and onto bigger stages. There’s something richly unique about Bad//Dreems’ sound – imagine Sid Vicious, Bon Scott and Farny sitting around a campfire, and stringing tunes together. There are traces of punk amongst riff-heavy rock, matched with knock-about lyrics and rasped vocals of lead singer Ben Marwe. They’ve just released new single 'Dumb Ideas', but before that was 'Caroline', 'Chills', 'Too Old' and of course Hoping For. If you haven’t heard of Bad//Dreems that’s okay - like all great pub rock, they’ve kept on the down low, confining their performances to hotels, RSLs and taverns, with the occasional hip dance-club in there for good measure. Now they’re branching out further, performing this Saturday at Rocking Horse Records in the city. Our local legends Tempura Nights will be supporting at this all ages show – that means no tallies, okay. You can grab a ticket for a blue swimmer ($10) and the afternoon will kick off at 1pm.
It hasn't served up meals for more than a decade, but El Bulli will always be a famous culinary name. Until 2011, when the spot in the town of Roses in Catalonia, Spain was operating as a restaurant, it was the pinnacle of fine-dining. It boasted three Michelin stars to prove it. Documentary El Bulli: Cooking in Progress also told its story. Head Chef Ferran Adrià didn't just oversee one of the world's best eateries, either — he's one of the world's best chefs, too. Didn't get the chance to enjoy a dish there, for all manner of reasons? How about sleeping at El Bulli for a night instead. That's the latest money-can't-buy experience on offer via Airbnb, and for one evening only. Slumbering at elBulli1846, the museum that's now onsite, is also free — for two people, but you are responsible of getting yourself to Roses, including paying your own way from Down Under if you score the booking. Airbnb loves opening up places that you wouldn't normally be able to kip in, as seen in the past with Shrek's swamp, Barbie's Malibu DreamHouse, the Ted Lasso pub, the Moulin Rouge! windmill and Hobbiton, for starters. It has also listed the Bluey house, the Paris theatre that inspired The Phantom of the Opera, the Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine, The Godfather mansion, the South Korean estate where BTS filmed In the Soop, the Sanderson sisters' Hocus Pocus cottage and Santa's festive cabin in Finland. Earlier in 2024, Christina Aguilera hosted a two-night Las Vegas stay. Adrià does the honours at elBulli1846 — which, as you'd expect, goes all in on El Bulli's history. As you spend the night in the venue at Cala Montjoi, within the Cap de Creus Natural Park, he's hoping that you'll get inspired by its gastronomic innovation while soaking in the Mediterranean sea views. The museum is named after the 1846 dishes that El Bulli created in its restaurant days, after all. "The mission of elBullirestaurante was about pushing limits. We had reached what we felt was the limits of what can be done in a gastronomic experience at the maximum level," said Adrià. "Now I'm excited to push new creative boundaries, to share this way of seeing the world with the guests who stay here and to introduce them to our latest chapter as elBulli1846." This is the first time that El Bulli has allowed anything like this within its famed culinary halls. Whoever nabs the reservation will meet Adrià, and hear all about the restaurant from him; eat at one of his favourite restaurants in Roses; and get overnight access to El Bulli, including its private rooms. You'll also have dinner the next day at Enigma in Barcelona, where Adrià's brother Albert is the chef. And, in-between all of that, you'll be sleeping in a bed designed to look like a plate, which takes its cues from El Bulli's spherical olive. To enjoy all of the above, you'll need to be free to stay across Wednesday, October 16–Thursday, October 17 — and you'll be getting booking at 2am AEST / 4am NZST on Thursday, April 18. Again, while you won't pay a cent for accommodation or the two dinners while you're at elBulli1846, you will need to fork out to get there and back. For more information about the elBulli1846 Airbnb stay, or to book at 2am AEST / 4am NZST on Thursday, April 18 for a stay across Wednesday, October 16–Thursday, October 17, 2024, head to the Airbnb website. Images: Marc Ensenyat. Feeling inspired to book a getaway? You can now book your next dream holiday through Concrete Playground Trips with deals on flights, stays and experiences at destinations all around the world.
