"If I told you I was going to make a film about a poor black boy raised by a single mother struggling with addiction who has questions about his sexuality, you assume certain things about that film," says Barry Jenkins about Moonlight. He's right. But his second feature isn't the movie you might expect from that description. Watching his applauded and lauded effort — the winner of this year's Golden Globe for best drama, and an eight-time Oscar nominee — proves an experience in witnessing all of those assumptions melt away. Indeed, based on a dramatic work by Tarell Alvin McCraney, and set and shot in the same Florida area where both Jenkins and McCraney grew up, Moonlight is anything but your average coming-of-age movie about dire circumstances. Jumping between three chapters of a young black man's life, it charts the progression of a teased and taunted Miami boy nicknamed Little (Alex Hibbert) into the awkward, still-bullied teen Chiron (Ashton Sanders), and finally into hardened Atlanta drug dealer Black (Trevante Rhodes). As relayed with a commitment to reflecting reality and capturing a rare perspective — and an ability to render its central journey and the accompanying emotions like cinematic poetry — specific moments and interactions shape his growth, worldview and identity. With Moonlight now showing in cinemas, we chatted with Academy Award-nominated writer/director Jenkins about reactions to the film, the importance of representation, making immersive cinema, and more. ON THE REACTION TO THE FILM "The only way I can really sort of reason or rationalise it [the acclaim for the film] is that I remember first falling in love with cinema as a film student. And it wasn't like the big Hollywood cinema. It was mostly foreign cinema. And I remember watching films by Wong Kar-wai or Claire Denis or Jean-Luc Godard, and I remember thinking "wow, this is a world that I'm never going to visit. I'm never going to go to France. I'm never going to go to Hong Kong, and I certainly don't speak these languages." And yet, I could relate to the characters that made the worlds feel extremely small to me. I mean that in the best way — that I wasn't so far removed from these people, these characters. And so it just gives me just such an amazing feeling that now my film is doing the same thing for audiences, because the world this movie takes place in is very small, you know, and these characters are very specific to the time and place Tarell and I grew up in. And yet it's travelling far, far away from Miami and people are seeing themselves in the film, and it is lovely to give back to cinema what cinema, I believe, gave to me." ON THE RESPONSIBILITY OF REPRESENTING CHARACTERS THAT AREN'T OFTEN SEEN ON SCREEN "Here's the thing: there are just certain characters that aren't represented as often as others are in cinema. Or in arts and letters in general, I'll say. And even when those characters are present, they aren't centred. They aren't the focus of the narrative. I think because of that, when you have this kind of lack, when the character is present in the film, is centred, it inherently takes on added importance. Because people, I believe, are very hungry to see themselves represented. And so there was this feeling in the back of my head — I try to keep it in the back of my head — not that what we were doing was important, but that we had to get it right. Because it would do more harm, because of the lack of these centred characters, it would do more harm to finally present the character and get it wrong. You know, I didn't want to do an injustice to people whose stories align with Chiron's." ON CONVEYING CHIRON'S CONSCIOUSNESS — AND BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS — RATHER THAN JUST TELLING HIS TALE "We approached the film as a piece of immersive cinema. And part of that has to do with the structure of the film — because we're not telling a traditional narrative in a traditional format. We felt like it allowed us the space to do certain things that maybe wouldn't fit into a more traditional narrative framework. For us, it was really important to have the audience take the journey with Chiron, and we wanted the visuals to arise from the consciousness of the main character. If I told you I was going to make a film about a poor black boy raised by a single mother struggling with addiction who has questions about his sexuality, you assume certain things abut that film. If I'm working from the idea that I want to make a film that is rooted in the consciousness of the main character — you know, consciousness is a very beautiful, beautiful thing. And this is something I haven't talked about much, but I think the idea of black consciousness or the way black minds work is often not presented. Or not framed in the way that it actually exists. By which I mean, black people dream. We have dreams and we have daydreams and we have dreams when we sleep. And yet, I very rarely see the personification or the presentation of a black person dreaming in a piece of cinema, you know? And that's because we always tie cinema to the conventions of the story form, and not to the consciousness of these characters. But in Moonlight, the visuals, the aesthetic, the craft, arises from the consciousness of the character. So when Chiron is feeling disoriented, you will look directly into his mother's eyes, and her lips are moving but sometimes you can't hear her voice, and then her voice catches up — because the character is being disoriented. You know, we tried to take our cues from moments like that. And it was great, because as a filmmaker, you know that sound and image is the tool that carries both my voice and the character's voices. And that tool should not be beholden to an A, B, C, D, E progression of plot." ON INTERROGATING MASCULINITY AND VULNERABILITY "It was about, you know, reflecting those things in the story of Chiron — and I say reflecting because Tarell and I saw those things living our lives growing up in this place. And this aspect of vulnerability over time is denied to young men, is denied to young boys — and not only boys like Chiron, boys everywhere. What's that saying? 'Boys don't cry.' It was very important to us that this is the currency of this film — it's not a plot-heavy film. I think the story of this film traverses, or travels in, these gestures, quite a bit of these gestures between and amongst men. I've never seen a black man cradle a black boy in a film before. I just haven't. I haven't seen a black man cook for another black man in a film before. I've never seen a black man, I think, cook for anyone in a film before. And these are very simple gestures that, one, are very nurturing, but also, two, are implicitly vulnerable on the part of the person extending the nurturing. They were very important because again, they keyed into this depiction of the full humanity of these characters." ON FINDING THE RIGHT ACTORS TO PLAY CHIRON AT DIFFERENT STAGES "It wasn't this idea of a physical similarity. It was the idea of this sort of spiritual essence that could be viewed in the eyes of the characters. Which is really hitting on this idea of this feeling in their eyes, because of this book by [three-time Oscar-winning editor] Walter Murch that I've always loved called 'In the Blink in an Eye.' And so we just tried to find these guys that had the same feeling. Because, when you look at Trevante Rhodes as Black in the third chapter, it was of the utmost importance to me that you could see that little boy who played him in the first story. You could still see Alex Hibbert. I think we see people that we pass all the time on the subway or the bus or the sidewalk, who look like Trevante Rhodes as Black in the third chapter of this film, and we would never believe that this person would dance in a mirror in his elementary school when he was ten years old. But they're the same person, you know? And when we were casting, it was very important to us that we could see that continuum between the characters." Moonlight is now showing in cinemas. Read our review here.
Step into ancient Rome with this new blockbuster exhibition at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, on loan from the British Museum. Running till February 3 and showing for only the second time internationally (and exclusively in Canberra), Rome: City and Empire presents a rare opportunity to view sculptures, jewellery, wall paintings, mosaics, ceramics and other precious objects from one of the most innovative and creative civilisations in history. Displaying more than 260 of the British Museum's most-admired Roman objects, the exhibition narrates the story of how the empire grew from an informal collection of villages to a great civilisation that once covered present-day Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Obviously, the sheer scale of the exhibition can be overwhelming — so many artefacts, so little time. So to help you out, we've curated a list of our top five must-see objects from the vast array of ancient artefacts on display. Grab your ticket, plan a trip to Canberra and dive headfirst into ancient Rome. COLOSSAL STATUE HEAD OF EMPRESS FAUSTINA I Empress Faustina I was a Princess Diana of ancient Rome, known for her charitable work. This colossal marble sculpture of Faustina the Elder has been one of the British Museum's most prominent pieces since its acquisition in 1936. Uncovered at the Temple of Artemis in Turkey, only a fragment of what must have been a monumental statue (potentially four metres high) remains — it's just the head, and it's a whopping 176 centimetres tall. A well-respected public figure throughout her lifetime, Faustina was the wife of Antoninus Pius, the Roman emperor from 138–161CE. Known for her charity work, she was particularly interested in assisting with the education of Roman orphans, specifically young girls. We know, what a woman. Following Faustina's unexpected death just two years into his reign, her devastated husband never remarried. Instead, the emperor turned her into a goddess and cast her portrait on thousands of gold coins — which are some of the most common coins from ancient Rome still in existence today. [caption id="attachment_690063" align="alignnone" width="1920"] National Museum of Australia.[/caption] MOSAIC PANEL Look for the face of Phobos, god of fear, who may have warned revellers against drinking too much. The affluent Romans took the well-established practice of mosaic making and turned it into an art form as seen in this mosaic panel. Once adorning the floor of an opulent Roman dining room in Turkey, this intricate 4th-century stone mosaic features coloured rosette petals surrounding a medallion depicting Phobos, the god of fear — potentially included as a way to deter over-imbibing. As a status symbol of sorts, the wealthy would decorate the floors of their villas with mosaics to add an ornamental element to their homes, a topic of conversation during dining and a way of keeping homes (and bare feet) cool during the hot summers. PORTRAIT BUST OF HADRIAN Hadrian was the first Roman emperor to sport a beard, and potentially, history's original hipster. Described as one of the 'five good emperors', Hadrian was somewhat of an outsider compared to many of his peers. He liked to travel and spent about half of his reign outside of Rome. He also had a particular interest in Greece, which was considered to be the centre of arts and culture. It was rumoured that he even sported a beard to look like Greek philosophers — or perhaps to cover acne scars. This particular bust of the emperor was found at Hadrian's picturesque villa in Tivoli, which today remains one of the finest ancient Roman sites to visit. Carved from marble, Hadrian appears here as a strong commander-in-chief of the military, but for the most part, Hadrian's reign as emperor of Rome was a peaceful one. BRACELET FROM THE HOXNE TREASURE This intricate bracelet (along with a whole chest of treasures) was discovered by a humble metal detectorist in 1992. Next time you see someone searching for hidden goods with a metal detector, don't judge; you never know what you might find. In 1992, farmer Eric Lawes went in search of a lost hammer but, instead, uncovered something much more valuable — the Hoxne Treasure. Yep, this literal treasure chest buried in Suffolk, England, held thousands of precious objects, including gold and silver coins, jewellery and dining materials. The find has been traced back to the early 5th century, a time when the Roman Empire's rule over current day Britain was beginning to collapse. During excavation, archaeologists discovered that the precious items were still carefully wrapped in their original fabric. Alongside its sizeable wealth, the Hoxne Treasure was also an important discovery because it reflected the universal concern of keeping our material possessions safe during times of uncertainty. FUNERARY RELIEF OF A WOMAN Funerary monuments were commonplace among the wealthy and often told the life stories of the entombed. Taking the shape of Herta, a woman from Palmyra, this limestone funerary relief juxtaposes Palmyrene and Roman cultures. Dressed in fine Syrian garments but shown in a Roman-style sculpture, Herta is prepared for the afterlife, decked out in ornate clothing and jewellery. In Palmyra, the aristocrats had their burial compartments sealed with portrait monuments, such as this, often accompanied with inscriptions about their lives. These tombs — including single-storey house tombs, extravagant multi-storey towers and those buried deep into the underground rock — were commonplace until about 270CE. Rome: City and Empire will run until Sunday, February 3, 2019. Tickets can be purchased via the NMA's website.
Melbourne's Midcity Centre on Bourke Street is home to Tokyo Motto, an eatery offering an enticing experience, transitioning from a casual Japanese restaurant by day to moody izakaya bar by night. The brains behind the operation is Spring Chee, a seasoned pastry chef and restaurateur with more than two decades of experience in Melbourne's hospitality scene at venues such as Le Mille Creperie, Sugar Labo and Sweetie Moustache. With Tokyo Motto, Chee brings everyday Japanese-style dining to Melbourne, with a menu focused on championing locally sourced ingredients. During the day, patrons can expect a mix of traditional and not-so-traditional Japanese dishes. A menu highlight is the Japanese curry made with "Golden" curry sauce infused with a blend of stone fruits and fresh bee honey — a recipe discovered by Chee during her travels in Japan. Other menu highlights include the omurice, showcasing a tornado egg omelette and thick-cut katsu — a take on a recent Japanese trend using a pork loin done sous vide-style for 24 hours. For those looking to have some fun, the Ice Cream Spicy Miso Ramen offers a blend of spicy and sweet, thanks to the literal ice cream cone floating in the middle of the spicy ramen bowl. It's all about balance. As evening approaches, Tokyo Motto transforms. Starting from 9pm, the venue becomes an izakaya bar, offering a range of classic izakaya snacks, including everyone's favourite karaage, alongside a selection of Japanese cocktails, beer and sake.
When TERROR NULLIUS roared across screens in 2018, it remixed, repurposed and recontextualised Australian cinema and television's familiar sights and sounds with the nation's political reality, all to create a pointed portrait of the country today. The ochre-hued terrain, the famous faces, BMX Bandits-era Nicole Kidman, the Mad Max franchise's road warriors, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Olivia Newton-John in her Grease leathers and the Rage intro — that and more was spliced into "a political revenge fable that takes the form of an eco-horror," as artist duo Soda Jerk describes it. Also featured: footage from 1988's bicentennial celebrations, snippets of Tony Abbott's speeches and examples of Mel Gibson at his abhorrent off-screen worst, to name a mere few of the film's melange of clips and sources. The result was not only a stunning piece of political art, but one of Australia's best movies of the past decade. It's also exactly what Soda Jerk do — and spectacularly — in their sample-based brand of filmmaking. Where TERROR NULLIUS traversed home soil, the pair's five-years-later next effort Hello Dankness turns its attention stateside. Co-commissioned by the Adelaide Film Festival and Samstag Museum of Art, it too is an experience that makes its audience see a wealth of recognisable imagery with fresh eyes, surveying glimpses of American suburbia to carve into the carnival that is America's political landscape-slash-hellscape between 2016–21. Ambition clearly isn't a problem for TERROR NULLIUS or Hello Dankness. Using hundreds of sources, with Hello Dankness featuring more than 300 film and TV clips, plus around 250 audio grabs, having an impact isn't a struggle, either. The former was called "unAustralian" by one of its funding bodies, ridiculously so. The latter enjoyed its international premiere at the 2023 Berlinale and just won the Best Narrative Feature Award at this year's Atlanta Film Festival. It "feels like some kind of stoned fever dream," Soda Jerk note of the movie's success so far. Next, Hello Dankness has stops at Dark Mofo and the Sydney Film Festival in June. This time, Soda Jerk have made what they dub "a suburban stoner musical rendered in the form of a cybernetic Greek tragedy". Here, everything from The Burbs and Wayne's World to Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar and The Social Network dance together — plus American Beauty, Friday, Napoleon Dynamite, This Is the End, Euphoria and PEN15 as well — alongside reminders of America's fake news-, conspiracy-, meme-, pandemic and culture war-ravaged society. That's where Donald Trump's Access Hollywood tape and Kendall Jenner's Pepsi ad come in, too. The soundtrack: songs from Cats, Les Misérables, Annie and The Phantom of the Opera, as everyone's favourite movies get the second life that no one other than Soda Jerk could've ever dreamed of to unpack a deeply polarised country and period. "There is no right way to inhabit the film," explains Soda Jerk, chatting with Concrete Playground about the movie's inspirations, ideas and process ahead of Hello Dankness' upcoming Aussie screenings. "There are many lulz to be had, but it's also an unsettling and weirdo ride. We've been genuinely floored by the kind of psyched enthusiasms it has received so far. Some of the screenings have been wild, almost grindhouse vibes," the pair continue. "But we're equally fond of one online hater who wrote that there are some things you should never have to see in your lifetime: one is how chicken nuggets are made and the other is Hello Dankness." ON DECIDING TO MAKE HELLO DANKNESS AFTER TERROR NULLIUS "Hello Dankness emerged in 2016 from a feeling of disbelief at the surrealness of US politics that was palpable at that time. There were Democrats eating babies, pedophiles communicating in pizza code and presidential pee-pee tapes. Conspiracies like these have always existed in the skanky corners of the derp web, but now they were circulating on boomer media sites like Facebook, Fox News and CNN. It was as though all the soberness had been sucked from reality and we had emerged into a stoned new world. So Hello Dankness really evolved as an attempt to document this sense of unreality, the raw feeling of it, and also what it might obscure or reveal about the shifting power contours of this moment. So we began Hello Dankness in 2016 and continued to research it concurrently throughout the two years we were making TERROR NULLIUS. When we wrapped TERROR NULLIUS in early 2018, we shifted to developing Hello Dankness as our sole focus. We spent four years working with ridiculous intensity on Hello Dankness from 2018 to late 2022. The adjacency of the two projects no doubt played a role in shaping their confluences and differences. While each is distinct in tone and genre, they're both national fables that offer a rogue account of political history." ON USING SUBURBIA TO PROBE AND SATIRISE AMERICA'S POLITICAL LANDSCAPE "Initially, we didn't know what form Hello Dankness would take — at one time, it was a cypherpunk political thriller based around Total Recall and 90s anime; at another time, it played out in the dystopian parallel universe of Back to the Future. But these kinds of sci-fi frameworks seemed to betray the sense of perverse ordinariness that also characterised the experience of the period 2016–21. For while so much of the pandemic was deeply upending and unprecedented, it's also true that we mostly experienced it from the numbingly familiar vista of our homes. So, accounting for this domesticity felt important, and this is what initially drew us away from sci-fi world-building and towards the imaginary of American suburbia. But we were also interested in placing the trad mythos of the suburbs under pressure, of thinking about the ways that this collective space has been reconfigured by the internet into increasingly privatised worlds and niche belief systems." ON THE PROCESS BEHIND HELLO DANKNESS — AND FINDING ALL THOSE SAMPLES "We don't work in a linear way; throughout our process we're constantly shifting between scripting, editing and sampling, depending on what's needed at any particular moment. It's a difficult process to untangle, and plays out differently for each project. With Hello Dankness, we had the added challenge that we were attempting to capture the contemporary moment as the ground kept shifting beneath us. From the outset, we knew we wanted to cover the period of the Trump presidency — but as history got sucked into a pandemic sinkhole in 2020 we had to scramble to fold in new events as they unfurled around us. We've been torrent freaks since Pirate Bay was a baby, so we've amassed a formidable archive over the past 20 years of our practice. This personal stash is usually the starting point for our research, and then we begin to target specific trajectories that we want to pursue in more depth. We're high-key obsessive about it, so if we're doing a deep dive into netsploitation flicks, we'll attempt to track down absolutely every source that's available. But sometimes the best samples emerge from happy accidents, so we try to leave room for looseness, too. There is definitely something contingent and compulsive about sampling, like there is with gambling. So much wasted time among sudden staggering windfalls. We're always out there in the trenches, digging for infinitively obscure and unlikely things we might not have seen before. Somehow though, the core samples that end up making their way into the project are usually ones we have a history with. We're like some kind of homing pigeon in that sense, always finding our way back to what we're already intimate with. We just can't seem to fight it." ON MAKING A STONER MUSICAL — AND ALSO A GREEK TRAGEDY "Stoner films and musicals made sense because they are genres that traffic in strange contortions of the everyday. Early iterations of the project also leaned heavily into the janky aesthetics of online culture and led us down many k-holes into YouTube Poop, shitcore music and advanced meme magic. Some of that still remains, but as we progressed the post-internet affectations became less literal and more encrypted. We also had an ongoing fixation with Greek tragedy that ended up shaping our conception of the characters as myths and masks." ON THE ESSENTIAL CLIPS THAT HAD TO BE IN HELLO DANKNESS "Often, the things we fall hardest for are the documentary artefacts. They're really at the centre of the way we work, and what we're trying to do, which is a kind of a contorted historiography in a sense. So with Hello Dankness, these artefacts included things like Alex Jones' InfoWars rants, Trump's Access Hollywood tape and Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard commencement speech. The Pepsi commercial was also very pivotal for us as a kind of muse for the whole project. Then there are the sources that are released while we're working on the film, that can be pretty special too. This was the case with Euphoria and PEN15 — they knocked us over in a good way." ON UNPACKING POLITICS THROUGH POP-CULTURE SAMPLES "What interests us is the idea of politics as a form of memetics, the way political messaging has begun to operate through a logic of virality and contagion. As a reality TV star, Trump's intuition for transforming reality into a compelling spectacle is undeniable. But there is also a quality to Trump that exceeds the image logic of TV. Obama's cool demeanour and deft oration connect him to the era of television, whereas Trump's scattershot presence is more suited to the virology of the internet. Trump is both shitposter and shitpost personified. We think of him as the first meme to hold office in the White House." ON TERROR NULIUS BEING CALLED "UNAUSTRALIAN" — AND THE NEED FOR FILMS LIKE IT AND HELLO DANKNESS "We've been thinking a lot about the kind of cultural shifts that have occurred since all that happened with TERROR NULLIUS. It seems pretty clear that both artists and institutions have become even more risk-averse than they were back in 2018. The spectre of social media retribution hangs like a fearsome cloud over cultural production and we feel that this has had a narrowing effect on the kind of work that's being made. It's also been gutting to witness the hideous creep of political art into content production and corporate brand collaboration. More than ever, we feel that artists need to remain committed to making difficult work, work that is pro-complexity. If political art doesn't make people uncomfortable then it's not a protest, it's a parade." Soda Jerk's Hello Dankness screens at Dark Mofo and Sydney Film Festival in June 2023 — we'll update you with future screenings around Australia and New Zealand when they're announced.
No one likes the middle seat on a plane. Does anyone book flights, select where to sit and genuinely (and willingly) pick being stuck between two other people, with no window to look out and no easy access to the aisle, if there's another option? No, no they don't. Until now, that is, because Virgin Australia has just started throwing some love towards folks who do indeed take everyone's least-favourite spot — via a new Middle Seat Lottery. Running since Monday, October 24, and showering people sitting in the middle with prizes until Sunday, April 23, 2023, the Middle Seat Lottery is as self-explanatory as it sounds. Plonk yourself down in the abhorred seat — with a ticket, of course — and you could score goodies for your trouble. The freebies change each week, but there's more than $230,000 in prizes on offer across the six-month competition — only if you either select the middle seat or you're assigned it. Those prizes include Caribbean cruises with Virgin Voyages, complete with flights to and from the USA; a helicopter pub crawl in Darwin, again with flights there and back included; and a Cairns adventure package, which covers flights, accommodation, bungy jumping, river rafting and other activities There's also flights and tickets to your AFL team's away games in 2023 — and, still on Aussie rules, an AFL Grand Final package, covering a lunch, tickets to the game, being on the boundary line before the match, merch and an after party. One prize will be given out each week, with 26 prizes in total across the competition's duration. And if your week doesn't coincide with a holiday giveaway, platinum Velocity Frequent Flyer status with one million points is also on the freebies list. An hour or so in a seat you wouldn't normally pick for the chance to win holidays, heaps of footy or frequent flyer points to book more holidays? Worth it, probably. To go in the running to win any of the above, you do need to be a Velocity Frequent Flyer member over the age of 18. And, you'll have to fly somewhere within Australia, on a Virgin Australia-operated domestic flight, during the competition period — in a middle seat, obviously. Also, to enter, you then need to use the Virgin Australia app within 48 hours of your flight's scheduled departure time, tapping on the Middle Seat Lottery tile, finding your flight and entering your details. From there, winners will be drawn each week and contacted if they're successful. Virgin Australia's Middle Seat Lottery runs from Monday, October 24, 2022–Sunday, April 23, 2023. For more information, head to the Virgin website. Images: Carly Ravenhall. 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.
Some would say it's a waste of a perfectly good piano, but what Canadian artist Maskull Lasserre does to wood is worth every unused inch. Lassere explores the unexpected potential of the everyday, unassuming wooden object, and with his exceptional carving skills, transforms them into incredible works of art. He reveals strange creatures and skeletons that seems to have been fossilised inside common inanimate objects such as pianos, doors, books or axes. The artist says his work is a demonstration of how once something ceases to be, it becomes something else: "When the remnants of life are imposed on an object, and that’s true especially with the carving work that I do, it infers a past history or a previous life that had been lived, so again where people see my work as macabre, I often see it as hopeful, as the remnants of a life. Despite the fact that the life has ended, at least that life had a beginning and middle as well, so often by imparting these bodily elements to inanimate objects it reclaims or reanimates them in a virtual way." Yes, his name is Maskull Lasserre. What a dude. via Viral Nova explore the unexpected potential of the everyday
Just two years ago, the team behind Dexter and Takeaway Pizza, Adam Goldblatt and brothers Tom and Sam Peasnell, opened an impressive multi-storey venue on Swanston Street. That three-level venue had three different concepts: the meat-focused Cheek and the pink-hued Peaches, which was split into a cocktail bar and a rooftop venue. During the pandemic, the venues were forced to close for ten months, which gave the trio time to think about exactly what they wanted for the well-loved CBD spot. With their ever-popular venues Takeaway Pizza and Dexter thriving up north, they felt it was time to bring some of the Preston neighbourhood essence to the city. The result is Dom's Social Club: an authentic, casual experience that people could return to time and time again. "We wanted the experience of Dom's to be more local, and more social," Sam told Concrete Playground. "It was hard managing three different concepts across the levels, and we wanted to get back to chatting with our customers at the bar and really offering that old-school hospitality vibe." Instead of three separate concepts, the venue focuses on three key elements: classic drinks, handmade pizza and charcuterie to match. And, while Sam agrees it was a big move to shift from the refined meat-focused offering of Cheek to pizzas, the team unanimously agreed it was the right decision. [caption id="attachment_800332" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Julia Sansone[/caption] "Our pizzas are a three-day slow ferment sourdough," Sam explained. "We dimple our pizzas, too, instead of stretching them, so they keep the air and puff up like a focaccia." "Adam was itching to get back to making pizzas after his stint at Homeslice in London, which started out at a market making woodfired pizzas off the back of a trailer and became a phenomenon." The pizza marinara is a favourite on the Dom's menu. It's made with tomato sugo, confit garlic and Alto Robust olive oil from the Great Diving Range in NSW. Pressed like a wine, the olive skin and pips are included for a flavoursome and textural result. With Tom's background in meats, plus a lockdown to perfect his salami making, the restaurant's pizza toppings have no shortage of cured, salty flavours. Choose from the mortadella with fermented honey and thyme, the diavola with hot salami and fefferoni peppers and even the pork cheek and pumpkin number. There's a selection of veggie options, too, including the pea and pecorino pizza with confit garlic, mint, lemon. "Pizza is so easy to cater to everyone," Sam said. "We use all Aussie ingredients, accommodate heaps of dietaries and we'd like to think, now, this is a venue everybody can come to eat, drink a bottle of wine, go upstairs for cocktails and charcuterie on the rooftop, and come back down to play pool later in the evening. We want people to utilise all three levels, and to stay and enjoy." [caption id="attachment_800329" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Julia Sansone[/caption] Moving to the second floor of Dom's, you'll see the dry-aged meats in the fridge, plus a moodier RSL-like space. Stools and a free-to-use pool table fill the room, while glass cabinets packed with spirits surround the bar. Facebook Marketplace and op shop finds decorate the walls, ranging from fishing memorabilia to old beer posters and everything else you might spot in an Aussie dad's work shed. "We're obsessed with old nostalgic things," Sam said. A lot of the renovation was also done by the owners themselves, with the help of their families. "Like our other venues, we thought if we built it we'd be connected to it," Sam said. "So, we had working bees with Mum and Dad, hand-stained the wood that goes across levels, tiled the floor ourselves and fitted out all the decor. It's made the space much more casual and we hope the focus is on the good drinks and good food, not so much about the interior — like what Peaches was before." [caption id="attachment_800321" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Julia Sansone[/caption] With Sam in charge of the drinks at Dom's, the menu is a healthy mix of classic cocktails, local spirits and a dedicated lambrusco page, with the mission to change perspectives on the infamous sparkling red wine. "We've drunk too much bad lambrusco," Sam said. "In the past, it's been sweet, mass produced and not good. But, our lambrusco is seriously good with pizza." "We love Italian grape varieties because they're really good for the climate and use less water," Sam continued. "Plus, everyone has a nostalgic story to tell about lambrusco and I love the idea of that being a conversation starter between one of us and a customer over the bar." On the cocktail menu, Sam recommends Dom's Aperitivo to start the evening. It's made with Italicus (a citrusy, floral liqueur), dry vermouth and Four Pillars olive leaf gin, which is then shaken with citrus and served with a lemon twist or olives. Soon, Sam plans to have a coffee machine up and running for affogato served with home-made ice cream and Australian amaro. "We think genuine, local experiences are really important, especially after lockdown," Sam said. "All of the owners work on the floor, the staff helps develop all the recipes and we hope people will... stick around in our new space we're really proud of." Find Dom's Social Club at 301, Swanston Street, Melbourne from 5pm–1am Wednesday–Saturday. Images: Julia Sansone
The latest venture from The Ascot Lot's Jacob Bettio, Lachlan Taylor and David Bartl, Holmes Hall debuted in November 2020, taking over the sprawling 500-square-metre space once home to Russo's Supermarket. Adjacent to the boys' existing craft bottle shop Fizz & Hop, the historic building has been stripped back to its bones, now featuring plush velvet booths, warm timber accents, terrazzo tabletops, lots of greenery and a touch of neon to complement the original brickwork and concrete flooring. The mess hall and beer garden boasts space to seat 400 punters, while its expansive bar offering ensures none of them will be going thirsty in a hurry. Beer-lovers will find a huge 20-strong tap lineup pouring a diverse rotation of brews, most recently including the likes of Mountain Goat's Botanical IPA and the Petal Head summer ale from Preston's Tallboy & Moose. There's a tight list of wines from both near and far — perhaps the Gilbert skin contact sauv blanc out of Orange — and crafty cocktails ranging from a Nutella-infused espresso martini ($20), to the vegan-friendly Crumbly Cob ($20), which features apple pie moonshine, spiced syrup and Dewar's scotch. Inside, choose from an array of nooks, booths and spaces to settle in and enjoy your sips, or make the most of the summer rays with a table in the sun-drenched beer garden. In the kitchen, chef James Curby is turning out a share-friendly menu of gastropub eats, for both lunch and dinner. Graze your way through plates like the spicy Szechuan-style squid ($12.50), patatas bravas served with olive aioli ($12.50), loaded vegan boards (32) and the Meat Lover's Beer Platter ($45): a hefty assembly of barbecued meats, homemade pretzel and beer jam, with extras like sauerkraut and pickled chilli cauliflower. There's a trio of burgers ($19 each), a verdant summer risotto ($20) and a daily-changing pasta special ($25), while Thai-style chicken ($30) comes tossed in a lemongrass and lime caramel, matched with herby slaw. No one's about to go bored outside of the eating and drinking, either. You can unleash some competitive spirit on the shuffleboard table or rotating pinball machines, and kick back to tunes from resident DJs every Friday and Saturday. Plus, just like its sibling The Ascot Lot, Holmes Hall is set to deliver a jam-packed calendar of weekly happenings and one-off events, promising a different experience every time you step through the doors. Images: Parker Blain.
Australia's film and television industry can't help falling in love with the year's biggest homegrown movie, the director behind it, and the actors bringing to life one of the 20th century's music icons and his wife. At the 2022 Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards, Baz Luhrmann's Elvis Presley biopic said "thank you, thank you very much" to a swag of gongs, winning 11 from 15 nominations. Yes, Elvis was truly in the building, and revelling in a hunk, a hunk of burning love. Back in October when the list of contenders was announced, Elvis was instantly the frontrunner, with the film maintaining Luhrmann's history of making flicks that earn AACTA's affection. Indeed, Australia's biggest movie and TV awards have also given Best Film to Strictly Ballroom and The Great Gatsby in the past, and showered all of the director's features with nominations. It comes as zero astonishment, then, that his take on the king of rock 'n' roll has come out on top this year. As well as Best Film, Elvis earned the Best Actor gong for Austin Butler for playing the man himself, the Best Supporting Actress prize for Olivia DeJonge for her role as Priscilla Presley and Best Director for Luhrmann. Also among its trophies: Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Editing, Best Production Design, Best Hair and Makeup, Best Visual Effects or Animation, and Best Sound. Elvis wasn't the only Aussie hit of the past year to win big, however, with Mystery Road: Origin collecting seven awards from 15 nominations in the television fields: for Best Drama Series, Best Lead Actor in a Drama (for Mark Coles Smith), Best Lead Actress in a Drama (Tuuli Narkle), Best Cinematography in Television, Best Direction in Drama or Comedy, Best Editing in Television and Best Sound in Television. In an impressive night for Australia's Indigenous actors, Coles Smith and Narkle were joined by Leah Purcell, who picked up Best Actress in the film fields for The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson, plus Heartbreak High's Thomas Weatherall, the recipient of the Best Supporting Actor in a Drama gong back in the TV categories. Elsewhere among the contenders, River won best documentary; The Stranger's Sean Harris won Best Supporting Actor and writer/director Thomas M Wright nabbed Best Screenplay; A Stitch In Time won Best Indie Film; and Brooke Satchwell won Best Supporting Actress in a Drama for The Twelve. Across both film and TV, a heap of international names graced the acting nominations — a common AACTAs trend over the years — including Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton for Three Thousand Years of Longing, both Butler and Tom Hanks for Elvis, Harris for The Stranger, Jackie van Beek and Jemaine Clement for Nude Tuesday, Joanna Lumley for Falling for Figaro and Jamie Dornan for The Tourist — but only Butler and Harris emerged victorious. Elvis' domination in the film categories isn't a surprise for another reason: AACTA history. When the Aussie academy loves something, it goes all in, with Nitram 2021's big winner, Babyteeth picking up seven awards in 2020, The Nightingale receiving six the year before, Sweet Country doing the same the year before that and Lion nabbing 12 in 2017. (Thanks to the likes of Hacksaw Ridge, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Dressmaker, The Great Gatsby and The Sapphires before that, the trend goes on.) Here's a rundown of 2022's major AACTA nominations — and you can check out the full list on AACTA's website: AACTA WINNERS AND NOMINEES 2022: FILM AWARDS: BEST FILM Elvis — WINNER Here Out West Sissy The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson The Stranger Three Thousand Years of Longing BEST INDIE FILM A Stitch In Time — WINNER Akoni Darklands Lonesome Pieces Smoke Between Trees BEST DIRECTION Baz Luhrmann, Elvis — WINNER Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes, Sissy Leah Purcell, The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson Thomas M Wright, The Stranger George Miller, Three Thousand Years of Longing BEST LEAD ACTOR Austin Butler, Elvis — WINNER Rob Collins, The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson Joel Edgerton, The Stranger Idris Elba, Three Thousand Years of Longing Damon Herriman, Nude Tuesday BEST LEAD ACTRESS Aisha Dee, Sissy Leah Purcell, The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson — WINNER Julia Savage, Blaze Tilda Swinton, Three Thousand Years of Longing Jackie van Beek, Nude Tuesday BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Simon Baker, Blaze Jemaine Clement, Nude Tuesday Malachi Dower-Roberts, The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson Tom Hanks, Elvis Sean Harris, The Stranger — WINNER BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Jada Alberts, The Stranger Jessica De Gouw, The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson Olivia DeJonge, Elvis — WINNER Joanna Lumley, Falling For Figaro Yael Stone, Blaze BEST SCREENPLAY Baz Luhrmann, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner, Elvis Jackie van Beek, Nude Tuesday Leah Purcell, The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson Thomas M Wright, The Stranger — WINNER George Miller and Augusta Gore, Three Thousand Years of Longing BEST DOCUMENTARY Ablaze Clean Everybody's Oma Franklin Ithaka River — WINNER TELEVISION AWARDS: BEST DRAMA SERIES Bump Heartbreak High Love Me Mystery Road: Origin — WINNER The Tourist Wolf Like Me BEST TELEFEATURE OR MINISERIES Barons Savage River The Twelve — WINNER True Colours Underbelly: Vanishing Act BEST COMEDY PROGRAM Aftertaste Five Bedrooms Hard Quiz Shaun Micallef's Mad as Hell — WINNER Spicks and Specks Summer Love BEST LEAD ACTOR IN A TELEVISION DRAMA Mark Coles Smith, Mystery Road: Origin — WINNER Jamie Dornan, The Tourist James Majoos, Heartbreak High Sam Neill, The Twelve Hugo Weaving, Love Me BEST LEAD ACTRESS IN A TELEVISION DRAMA Isla Fisher, Wolf Like Me Claudia Karvan, Bump Kate Mulvany, The Twelve Tuuli Narkle, Mystery Road: Origin — WINNER Bojana Novakovic, Love Me BEST COMEDY PERFORMER Wayne Blair, Aftertaste Patrick Brammall, Summer Love Harriet Dyer, Summer Love Tom Gleeson, Hard Quiz — WINNER Charlie Pickering, The Weekly with Charlie Pickering Doris Younane, Five Bedrooms BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A TELEVISION DRAMA Hayley McElhinney, Mystery Road: Origin Jacqueline McKenzie, Savage River Heather Mitchell, Love Me Brooke Satchwell, The Twelve — WINNER Magda Szubanski, After the Verdict BEST GUEST OR SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A TELEVISION DRAMA Steve Bisley, Mystery Road: Origin Brendan Cowell, The Twelve Daniel Henshall, Mystery Road: Origin Damon Herriman, The Tourist Thomas Weatherall, Heartbreak High — WINNER
If you're keen to glam things up a little this New Year's Eve, nab yourself a table at Melbourne's opulent 1930s-inspired cocktail bar, Nick & Nora's. Yes, the same haunt that celebrated with a big, late-night party the very second lockdown restrictions lifted at 11.59pm on October 27. Now, it wants to help you kick off 2021 in style, too, with a luxurious evening of bubbly, canapes and cocktails. It's a sit-down affair, with a range of seating options to choose from — an early two-hour sitting will set you back $100 per person and see you in and out before midnight, while the four-hour sittings (either 8.30pm–12.30am, or 11pm–3am) will have you ringing in the new year for $250 per person. Whichever package you opt for, the ticket price is redeemable against your total food and drink bill for the evening, with the venue set to serve up its regular menu on the night. Get excited for oysters, caviar, champagne and swanky cocktails like the French Cannon — a blend of Hendricks, Cocchi Americano, bay leaf, yuzu, elderflower, French white wine and passionfruit pearls.
There were some pretty happy snow bunnies across Victoria and NSW this weekend, as many of the states' ski fields scored record-breaking snow falls, just two weeks after the official start of this year's ski season. The powder bucketed down across the weekend, with Sunday morning seeing Victoria's Mt Buller reporting its fifth deepest snow at this point in the season for the past 40 years. Fellow Victorian ski resort Mt Hotham this morning reported an extra 16cm of snow, beefing up its base to 80cm — the biggest its seen for the second week of the ski season in decades. The mountain has had 95cm of snow altogether this season, with 90cm of that falling in the last seven days. Further north, NSW's Perisher scored another 10cm of fresh snow overnight, bringing the total from the weekend's snow storms there to 82cm. And Thredbo is also covered in a hefty blanket of white, with 20cm of fresh snow in the past 24 hours, pulling its season total to 85cm. https://twitter.com/BOM_Vic/status/1007411165943730177 According to the Bureau of Meteorology, Victoria's alpine areas have only seen the start of it, with a further 25cm to 50cm expected to drop over the next three days. Meanwhile, conditions in NSW are set to clear right up, as the storm there reaches its end before the middle of the week. Top image: Thredbo
Australia's leading streetball tournament is back again for 2025, taking over St Kilda's Peanut Farm Reserve from Friday, February 7–Sunday, February 9. Now in its 13th year, Summer Jam has grown from humble beginnings into a globally recognised community event, attracting top players from across Australia and international teams from Japan and New Zealand. With the coveted Streetball Champions title and a $20,000 prize on the line once again this year, this high-stakes tournament has firmly established itself as one of the world's marquee streetball events. The day will include five-on-five championships, a wheelchair championship and a slam dunk competition. But it's not only about watching these games. For spectators, there's plenty more in store — think live music and DJ sets, food trucks, streetwear pop-up shops, openair bars, a barbershop and tattoo parlour, and a few NBA 2K gaming stations.
The site at 20 Bourke Street has spawned its fair share of incarnations over the decades, from cinema to nightclub to gig space. But this year has seen it spin full circle, reborn as a hotel — the same kind of venue it was first built as back in the 1850s. The top-end address is now home to Le Méridien Melbourne — a 12-storey beauty from Marriott Bonvoy that's kitted out with 235 rooms and dressed in a modernised nod to mid-century glamour. Textures abound and neutral hues are celebrated throughout, balanced with refined pops of jewel-toned colour. In the rooms, you'll find the hotel brand's signature beds, Marshall speakers, bath products by Malin + Goetz, bottled cocktails from The Everleigh Bottling Co and even Le Méridien's own exclusive room scent. Art lovers will be impressed by pieces like Wendy Yu's video projection work and a sculptural installation by Marta Figueiredo. Guests can also look forward to gaining access to Le Méridien's Unlock Art program, including a self-guided walking tour and free entry to some of the city's leading cultural attractions. Venture up to the rooftop to find the openair pool and deck, dubbed Le Splash, which overlooks Parliament House. It's got a cocktail bar, a menu of hand-crafted gelati, and an adjoining gym and sauna. A pop-up outdoor cinema will also be debuting on the deck later in the year. More culinary goodness awaits you in the lobby's cafe-meets-wine-bar, Intermission, which is serving Axil coffee and open sandwiches for the daytime crowd, moving into snacks, small plates and vino after dark. Slink down the curved staircase one more level and into the elegant embrace of Dolly — a dinner destination with a 1930's-inspired look and a Euro edge to the menu. The restaurant is named after the zoom camera technique used by Hitchcock in his 1958 thriller Vertigo, while its glossy fit out pays homage to the golden age of cinema. Expect velvet, fluted glass and polished accents. Victorian produce shines through the menu, as does Executive Chef Christian Graebner's classical European training. Artful plates might include oysters finished with a champagne sorbet, smoked venison loin teamed with Davidson plum and a spiced macadamia cream, and salt-baked beetroot featuring caramelised walnut mousse and goats curd. King George whiting is done 'en papillote' with saffron-braised fennel and a mussel broth, while a reworked bombe alaska for two comes jazzed up with popcorn and salted caramel ice cream. And the prix-fixe pre-theatre menu feeds two for $120. Renowned importer Cellarhand has taken over vinous curatorial duties, showcasing lots of local options — think, Dal Zotto and Giant Steps — alongside a strong lineup of champagne. Meanwhile, cocktails are the result of a collaboration with the Everleigh Bottling Co, named after and inspired by music and theatre icons from across the ages. Find Le Méridien Melbourne at 20 Bourke Street, Melbourne. 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.
IPAs, or India Pale Ales, have enjoyed a huge surge in popularity over the past couple of years. Lately, however, a new sub-style has spawned and enjoyed immense popularity — enter, the New England IPA. Named after a style that originated from the six northeastern USA states of New England, NEIPAs have a cloudy appearance and low carbonation, and feature jammy, juicy flavours of apricot, peach and pineapple alongside the heavy citrusy notes that IPA fans crave. More delicate flavours of hops are embraced here, too, rather than the piney, resiny bitterness favoured by their clear-bodied cousins. The beers characteristically pour a murky, mango colour reminiscent of cloudy fruit juice, and feature similar flavours in a beer context. Here follows this beer snob's top picks of the trending NEIPAs, that'll get your head into the clouds as the last warmth of autumn begins to fade. Jedi Juice is Hop Nation's brilliantly titled take on a beer it brewed for GABS (the Great Australian Beer Spectapular). It was originally a specialty brew, but enjoyed such popularity it was reignited as part of the Footscray brewery's core range. Jedi Juice features a gentle citrus aroma and the palate reveals juicy notes of passionfruit, pineapple, nectarine and grapefruit, with a smooth carbonation and a tangy kiss of bitter hops that punch through at the end. At 7.1 percent ABV, and with a white can packaging featuring a tattoo-sportin', blaster-totin' Princess Leia, the force is certainly strong with this one. Best consumed as fresh as possible. SHOPPING LIST Hop Nation Jedi Juice, 375ml can, $7.50 each (available from various stockists across the country) Sauce Brewing Co Bubble and Squeak, 500ml can, $10 each or $35 for four This beer is typically hazy, smooth and creamy with big citrus and tropical fruit notes (think mango and passionfruit) and a low bitterness. Rounding out at 6.5 percent ABV, it's a supremely well-balanced beer that offers new dynamics with each sip. Feral Brewing Co Biggie Juice, 330ml bottle, $7 each or $23 for four (available from various stockists across the country) This beer represents the popularity of NEIPAs in the mainstream beer scene. Under Amatil ownership, Feral is still brewing its Biggie Juice East Coast IPA. Sitting at six percent ABV, Biggie offers a rich bouquet of floral and tropical fruit aromas that follow through with a juicy punch onto the palate. The finish is smooth, with just a hint of bitterness, and a smooth carbonation that makes for an incredibly moreish drop. Hop Topics is our new bi-weekly beer column keeping you up-to-date with the latest beer trends happening around the country. Dominic Gruenewald is a Sydney based actor, writer and self-proclaimed beer snob. Between gigs, he has pulled pints at all the right venues and currently hosts Sydney's longest running beer appreciation society Alestars at the Taphouse, Darlinghurst.
Starring Sydney Sweeney as a virginal American nun in Italy whose new life as a bride of Christ finds her in the family way, Immaculate is the kind of movie that horror fans pray for. In the realm of religious-themed frightfests, which is as packed as Catholic mass at Easter or Christmas, the nunsploitation flick is as unholy as cinema gets. It's eerie and unsettling from the outset, when a fellow sister (Simona Tabasco, giving the film not one but two The White Lotus alumni) tries to escape the My Lady of Sorrows convent, only to be chased by cloaked figures, then buried alive. It ripples with unease from the moment that Sweeney's Cecilia arrives from the US to leering comments. From there, Immaculate spans everything from controlling priests and envious nuns through to winding catacombs, secret laboratories and a crucifixion nail (yes, from that crucifixion). Then there's the unforgettable ending. Immaculate is the type of film that Michael Mohan prays for, too. Chatting with Concrete Playground about directing one of the horror movies of 2024 — and being asked to by Euphoria's Sweeney, who he previously helmed on TV series Everything Sucks! and erotic thriller The Voyeurs — he calls the feature's final two minutes the highlight of his career. "It's such a visceral experience, and the way that people sort of slowly catch on to what's happening in the audience is just so fun to discover," he advises. "Really, the last two minutes are my favourite part of the movie. My favourite thing I've ever directed is the last two minutes of this movie, and it's just something to behold." For Mohan, all hail the reaction that Immaculate is garnering as well, starting with the response when it premiered at SXSW 2024 (the US version, not the Australian fest) in March. "It's made it so that I can't watch the movie with any other crowds, because it was like a drug," he jokes. "To a filmmaker, the experience of watching the movie at SXSW was like the cinematic equivalent of heroin — just because people were screaming, people were yelling, people were making fun of each other for screaming, people were standing up and cheering. It is everything a filmmaker could ever want out of an audience reaction. It was amazing." Immaculate almost didn't happen, however. The tale behind the flick making it to the screen takes almost as wild a ride as the picture itself. It was a decade back, before she was in everything-everywhere-all-at-once mode — this is her third movie since December 2023 to reach cinemas, slotting in alongside Anyone But You and Madame Web — that Sweeney initially auditioned for the picture. Now, she's a producer on it, handpicking both the script as her ideal horror effort, plus Mohan to guide it. A text asking "interested in directing a horror film?" is how she started bringing the filmmaker onboard. Barely 18 months later, Immaculate has moviegoers worshipping. Mohan's path to here doesn't just involve getting Sweeney in front of his lens, then turning her into a helluva scream queen. Short films — both writing and directing them — began gracing his resume in 2003. 2010 coming-of-age comedy One Too Many Mornings marked his first feature, followed by Alison Brie (Apples Never Fall)- and Lizzy Caplan (Fatal Attraction)-led rom-com Save the Date. After that came the 90s-set Everything Sucks!, which he co-created, but it only lasted one season. If it wasn't for that show, though, he mightn't have crossed paths with Sweeney. Call it divine intervention? Notably, Mohan wasn't new to the picture's Catholicism, growing up in it ("I grew up super Catholic, so it was in my bones. I was the leader of the youth group. I'm since a lapsed Catholic," he tells us.) With Immaculate now in Australian and New Zealand cinemas, we chatted with Mohan about that first text message about the movie, working with Sweeney as a producer as well as a star, his initial vision for the film, taking inspiration from 70s horror and the feature's take on religion. Also part of our conversation: Sweeney's versatility, how to get the perfect movie scream — of which she contributes plenty — and the picture's unshakeable imagery, plus more. On Receiving a Text from Sydney Sweeney Asking "Interested in Directing a Horror Film?" "I was just scared because I needed to love the script. I want to make as many movies with her as I can, but I also need to feel like I can bring myself to it and that I'll elevate it. So thankfully when I read the script, I realised there's so much potential here, there are twists and turns that I did not see coming. When I pitched my ideas for where I wanted to take the story to Sydney, she was thankfully very receptive. Even though we didn't have a whole lot of time to massage the script, we just went for it. She sent me the script in August of 2022, and I was then on the ground in Rome basically three months later prepping the movie." On Working with Sydney Sweeney Not Just as an Actor, But as One of Immaculate's Producers "It's interesting. At the start, I took an approach like I was a director for hire, to some degree; however, my stipulation in doing the film is that I wanted her to buy into what my vision of the film was. So I put together a lookbook, like as if I wasn't her friend. And I was like 'here, this is what I would do if I didn't know you. This is what I would do if I were trying to win this job'. And the imagery that I sent her and the things that she responded to were exactly in line with how she saw the movie, too. So going into it, we were both on the same page. At the same time, she's the producer, I'm the director, so we had a push and pull in terms of in terms of what we were doing creatively. Anytime I came to her with a new idea, her first response was always like 'but is it scary? Because it needs to be scary'. Luckily our dynamic is such in that my approach to anything in terms of creative is that if you have the same end goal in mind, there's no right or wrong in the journey going there — there's only who feels the most passionate about something. So if you get into a creative disagreement, if it's something that really matters, I can say to her 'this matters to me more than it matters to you' and she can go 'okay' and let go. For instance, there was a scene I cut out of the movie. She was like 'I really want you to put that scene back in'. And I was like 'I really don't think it needs it'. She was like 'no, this is important. This is important to me'. I'm able to look at her and go 'this is more important to her than it is to me, I'm putting it back in the movie' — and that's how you have such a great give and take in terms of collaboration, where it doesn't feel like there's too many cooks in the kitchen." On Mohan's Initial Vision for Immaculate "The initial vision was just to make something that would hopefully traumatise people. We wanted to really go hard. But we wanted to do it smartly. When the film starts, it kind of feels like a traditional horror movie. Yeah, there are all of these horrific images, there are these great jump-scares and it's bumping along, but then it starts to get a little bit more disturbing. Then it starts to get a little bit more disturbing, until at the end of the movie you're seeing something that is actually a lot more similar to French extremist horror than The Conjuring. And so to be able to craft that arc for the audience, where they feel more and more in peril as they're watching the film, was part of the design." On the Importance of Sydney Sweeney's Versatility in Taking Audiences on the Film's Journey "I love when a movie takes a character from point A to point Z. So, to start her off as this sort of meek and quiet, mild-mannered nun, into what becomes like this insane feral creature covered in blood, screaming at the top of her lungs — that's just dramatics. That's just creating a wider arc. And it's very easy for me to conceive of such a wide arc when I know that the person playing it will be able to knock it out of the park. Sydney's ability to go to completely unhinged places is her superpower as an actor. It is incredible to see because I don't know how she does it. And so for me as a director, just my job is to make sure she stays out of her head, and to gently nudge her this way or that way to shape the performance and find the deeper levels. But it's a like driving a Rolls-Royce when you're directing her — she takes direction perfectly. And we just have this history. It's just really easy for the two of us to work together." On Making a Movie That Feels Like a Blend of Both 70s-Era Horror and Contemporary Horror "That's just what I watch. If you look at my Letterboxd, it's a balance of absolute trash and The Criterion Collection — and I think this film is perfectly in the middle. I just love the horror films of the early 70s. I think that there's something a little bit more fearless about them. If you look at The Exorcist — I mean, everybody has talked about The Exorcist until the end of time, because that scene where she has the crucifix and she's stabbing herself and she's bloody, it is so disturbing. Yet that is a mainstream film. That was a studio movie. And it's almost more scary, the fact that it's really well-photographed, than seeing the grimy independent version of that. So to me, it's bringing that level of elegance, coupled with the lurid — that's just where my voice happens to live." On Immaculate's Unholy Imagery "Similar to Sydney, my cinematographer [Elisha Christian, The Night House] and I have worked together forever. He was my roommate senior year of college. And so something that we're always trying to do is bring a sense of beauty to everything we do, whether it's a horror or whether it's an erotic thriller, or some of the earlier comedies that we were working on. I'm just a huge fan of his work. I love what Elisha has done. Here, it goes back to what I was talking about with The Exorcist — when you take something that is absolutely horrific and you film it with a formalism and a beauty, that's a type of cinema that I feel like is lacking. And so for us to be able to do that, it's really just our natural voice is how we shot this film. All of our inspiration poured into it in a way, and this is how it turned out. Also, the name of the movie is Immaculate, and so we wanted to have it immaculate — and so it could also just be as simple as that." On How to Get the Perfect Horror-Movie Scream "Every actor is different. I can tell you that for Simona, at the beginning of the film, Simona Tabasco, there's a scream that she has to let out — and she brought me aside and she was like 'I'm scared of screaming'. So I was like 'okay, come with me'. We went out into the middle of the field and I was like 'I'm just going to scream with you'. And so I just started screaming, and then she started screaming. And then I started screaming back at her, and then she started screaming back at me, and you lose your inhibitions with it. I think that's the most important part, just making sure that the actors aren't self-censoring themselves. Because when you scream, it's an unnatural thing, especially if you're not actually in pain. So it's just all about letting go, and allowing allowing them to let go. Then in the case of Sydney, she's got a set of pipes and she uses them." On Finding Inspiration in the Production's Italian Location — and in Giallo "With religion, I was trying to bring that sense of majesty to it and that sense of power, because this is a movie that doesn't have a whole lot of backstory for the characters. I wanted to keep it to a tight 88 minutes, and I needed the audience to understand from her perspective why she was so swept up in this world. So we were able to do that visually by finding these locations that were absolutely majestic. At the same time, I'm in Italy making a horror film. The responsible thing to do is to at least honour the elders that came before me. So I did watch a ton of giallo films, not to bite off the aesthetic in the way that like Edgar Wright did in Last Night in Soho, but more to have a little bit of a deeper understanding of some of the more-nuanced aspects of the genre. So, for instance, there's this great film What Have You Done to to Solange?. What I love about that film is how they visually capture the patriarchal dynamics between the men and the women. So there's a scene in ours that's an interrogation scene where Sydney's at one end of the table, and she's framed with the flames behind her, almost like she's coming from hell. Then the men are on the other side of the table, and they're all standing, looking down on her. And you see that throughout the course of the film, this playing with heights. The same with in the ceremony at the beginning, she is kneeling in front of the men who are towering above her. And then at the end of the movie, obviously those paradigms are completely shifted, when she gets the upper hand and she is the one who's the powerful one in the frame. So some of that comes from those giallos that are a little bit more naturalistic. Additionally, there's this great film called The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, and I listened to the score of that film non-stop. I loved it. It helped put me in the vibe of that type of cinema, and I loved it so much that I actually used a cue from that in a key montage about half an hour into the film as well." On Why the Combination of Religion and Horror Keeps Appealing to Audiences "I think especially in Catholicism, it's so dark. Part of the ceremony of a mass is eating the body of Jesus, and it's not a representation — it's the literal body, it's transforming when you pop it in your mouth. It's wild that that's what we believe. It's wild that we take a sip of wine and believe it to be his blood. So Catholicism is metal, and so it lends itself to horror just very, very naturally." Immaculate released in cinemas Down Under on Thursday, March 21. Read our review. Images: Fabia Lavino, courtesy of NEON.
Not all that long ago, the idea of getting cosy on your couch, clicking a few buttons, and having thousands of films and television shows at your fingertips seemed like something out of science fiction. Now, it's just an ordinary night — whether you're virtually gathering the gang to text along, cuddling up to your significant other or shutting the world out for some much needed me-time. Of course, given the wealth of options to choose from, there's nothing ordinary about making a date with your chosen streaming platform. The question isn't "should I watch something?" — it's "what on earth should I choose?". Hundreds of titles are added to Australia's online viewing services each and every month, all vying for a spot on your must-see list. And, so you don't spend 45 minutes scrolling and then being too tired to actually commit to watching anything, we're here to help. From the latest and greatest to old favourites, here are our picks for your streaming queue from July's haul of newbies. (Yes, we're assuming you've watched Black Widow already.) BRAND NEW STUFF YOU CAN WATCH IN FULL RIGHT NOW I THINK YOU SHOULD LEAVE WITH TIM ROBINSON Coffin flops, sloppy steaks and babies that know you used to be a piece of shit: they're just some of the absurdist and hilarious gems that the second season of I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson serves up. Also making an appearance: a secret excuse to help men explain away pee stains on their pants, quite the loud and lurid shirt, and a daggy hat. Back in 2019, the sketch comedy's first season was Netflix's best new show of the year, and easily. History is repeating itself with the series' next batch of episodes, with all of the above inclusions resulting in side-splitting chuckles. To put it simply, absolutely no one excavates, explores and satirises social awkwardness with the gusto, commitment and left-of-centre viewpoint of Robinson. His skits dive headfirst into uncomfortable and excruciating situations, dwell there, and let them fester. He's a mastermind at ensuring that gags go for exactly as long as they need to — whether they're brief or prolonged — and the only criticism that can be found with I Think You Should Leave is that its short 15–17-minute episodes zoom by, so you'll probably watch all six new instalments in one 90-minute sitting. That's perhaps the best hour and a half you could spend staring at the TV right now. Robinson's flexible face is a constant source of surprises, and humour, and his outlook upon the world is both savage and brutally relatable. Binge his gags, then binge them again; that's how savvy this show is, and how addictive. If we can't have more Detroiters, the sublime sitcom that Robinson made after his time on Saturday Night Live, thank goodness we now have this. The second season of I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson is available to stream via Netflix. THE PURSUIT OF LOVE Bolters and stickers. They're the two labels given to women in The Pursuit of Love, a lavish, effervescent and also impeccably shrewd new three-part miniseries adaptation of Nancy Milford's 1945 novel of the same name. Befitting its source material's timing, the storyline leads into the Second World War, all as chalk-and-cheese cousins Linda Radlett (Lily James, The Dig) and Fanny Logan (Emily Beecham, Little Joe) grow from teens into women — and the former, the impulsive and passionate daughter of a Lord (Dominic West, Stateless) who doesn't believe in educating girls and hates foreigners, chases romance at all costs. Fanny narrates the story, detailing Linda's ups and downs alongside her own. Her own mother (Emily Mortimer, Relic) is purely known as "the Bolter", having left Fanny with her sister (Annabel Mullion, Patrick Melrose) as she too sought love again and again. It's a label that Linda despises when it's applied to her, though. Whether having her eyes opened to the world by her bohemian neighbour (Andrew Scott, His Dark Materials), falling for the first arrogant boy (Freddie Fox, Fanny Lye Deliver'd) she spends any real time with, or later crossing paths with a motivated Communist (James Frecheville, The Dry) and a French duke (Assaad Bouab, Call My Agent!), she does keep leaping forward, however. In contrast, Fanny literally bumps into Oxford academic (Shazad Latif, Profile) and settles into domestic bliss, all while worrying about her cousin. Mortimer also makes her directorial debut with this swiftly engaging look at well-to-do lives, and unpacking of the way women are perceived — and it's the latter, the vivid staging and cinematography, and the vibrant performances that make this a must-see. The Pursuit of Love is available to stream via Amazon Prime Video. THIS WAY UP Another month, another season of stellar comedy This Way Up. That's not how it aired in Britain, but it's basically how it has panned out for Australian viewers. And, that's a great thing — not only because this smartly written, astute, insightful and delightfully acerbic series about London-based Irish siblings Áine (Aisling Bea, Living With Yourself) and Shona (Sharon Horgan, Catastrophe) keeps viewers hooked episode after episode, but because binging your way through it immerses you wholeheartedly in their chaotic lives and headspace. As the first season established, English teacher Áine is riding the ups and downs of a mental health journey that saw her spend some time receiving in-patient treatment, and has left Shona, the high-powered overachiever of the pair, perennially worried. Even as COVID-19 approaches and begins to affect their lives, that dynamic is still in place. But Áine is now embarking upon a relationship with Richard (Tobias Menzies, The Crown), the father of a French boy (Dorian Grover, The White Princess) she tutors, all while trying to hide it from her bosses and said kid. Shona is the least-fussed bride-to-be there is as she prepares to get married to her long-term boyfriend and ex-colleague Vish (Aasif Mandvi, Evil), and also navigates more than a little awkwardness with her friend and new business partner Charlotte (Indira Varma, Official Secrets). The heart of this series is the push and pull between this sisters, and how they try to weather everything that life throws their way — and it remains firmly intact this time around. The second season of This Way Up is available to stream via Stan. FEAR STREET Maya Hawke. A mall. Retro clothes and tunes aplenty. Combine the three, and that's how Fear Street Part 1: 1994 opens. Yes, that's familiar, because all of the above played a significant part in the third season of Stranger Things, too. But while Hawke is still popping up on Netflix here, she isn't in Hawkins, Indiana anymore. Instead, her character Heather is working at a mall in Shadyside, Ohio. The year is obviously 1994, Heather is doing the closing shift at a book store, and viewers first see her gushing over an eerie title, only for the customer that's buying it to proclaim: "it's trash; lowbrow horror". Fear Street Part 1: 1994 might begin with a wink to its RL Stine-penned source material, but that isn't the only nod it serves up. Directed and co-written by Leigh Janiak (Honeymoon), this slasher flick splashes its debts to everything from Halloween to Scream across every frame. That's part of the package, as is plenty of blood, gore, bumps and jumps. The end result is unmistakably formulaic, but aptly so; every novel in Stine's series also earned the same description, as did every Goosebumps book as well. From this scene-setting opening, there's a masked killer on the loose, more deaths and chaos follows, and a witch's curse pops up. Then, two more movies keep spinning the story. Fear Street Part 2: 1978 takes its cues from Friday the 13th by heading to a summer camp in its titular year, and Fear Street Part 3: 1666 ponders the origins of Shadyside's curse in the 1600s — and binging all three at once is immensely easy. All three Fear Street movies are available to stream via Netflix. Read our full review of Fear Street Part 1: 1994. DR DEATH Cliffhangers aren't a new creation, but Dr Death deploys the tactic masterfully. When each episode of this true-crime series ends, you want more. That's a product of the show's structure as it jumps between different years in neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch's life, and also a result of the stressful story itself. As played by Joshua Jackson (Little Fires Everywhere), Duntsch is full of charm when he's trying to encourage folks with spinal pain and neck injuries into his operating theatre — or when he's attempting to convince hospitals, particularly in Texas, to hire him. But again and again, those surgeries end horrendously. And if he's not endeavouring to sweet talk someone to get what he wants, and maintain the reputation and lifestyle he demands, his charisma melts into pure arrogance, including when he's dealing with his patients post-surgery and/or their loved ones. That's the narrative that Dr Death charts, all based on Duntsch's real-life tale, with the series following The Case Against Adnan Syed and the first and second seasons of Dirty John in jumping to the small screen from podcasts. If you've heard the Wondery release that shares Dr Death's name, you'll know that this tale is pure nightmare fuel, and the well-acted, well-shot and rightly angry drama plays that way on the screen. The longer he's allowed to operate, the bleaker Duntsch's story gets, all while fellow Texas surgeons Randall Kirby (Christian Slater, Dirty John) and Robert Henderson (Alec Baldwin, Pixie) do whatever they can to bring his misdeeds to light. Dr Death is available to stream via Stan. Read our full review. NEW AND RETURNING SHOWS TO CHECK OUT WEEK BY WEEK THE WHITE LOTUS With Enlightened, his excellent two-season Laura Dern-starring comedy-drama from 2011–13, writer/director Mike White (Brad's Status) followed an executive who broke down at work. When she stepped back into her life, she found herself wanting something completely different not just for herself, but for and from the world. It isn't linked, narrative-wise, to White's latest TV miniseries The White Lotus. Here, wealthy Americans holiday at a luxe Hawaiian resort, which is managed by Australian Armond (Murray Bartlett, Tales of the City) — folks like business star Nicole (Connie Britton, Bombshell), her husband Mark (Steve Zahn, Where'd You Go, Bernadette), and the teenage trio of Olivia (Sydney Sweeney, Euphoria), Paula (Brittany O'Grady, Little Voice) and Quinn (Fred Hechinger, Fear Street); newlyweds Rachel (Alexandra Daddario, Songbird) and Shane (Jake Lacy, Mrs America); and the recently bereaved Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge, Promising Young Woman). From the outset, when the opening scene shows Shane accompanying a body on the way home, viewers know this'll end with a death; however, as each episode unfurls, it's clear that these characters are reassessing what they want out of life as well. Here, a glam and glossy getaway becomes a hellish trap, magnifying glass and mirror, with everyone's issues and problems only augmented by their time at the eponymous location. In terms of sinking its claws into the affluent, eat the rich-style, this perceptive, alluring and excellently cast drama also pairs nicely with the White-penned Beatriz at Dinner, especially as it examines the differences between the resort's guests and staff. The first three episodes of The White Lotus are available to stream via Binge, with new episodes dropping weekly. TED LASSO A sports-centric sitcom that's like a big warm hug, Ted Lasso belongs in the camp of comedies that focus on nice and caring people doing nice and caring things. Parks and Recreation is the ultimate recent example of this subgenre, as well as fellow Michael Schur-created favourite Brooklyn Nine-Nine — shows that celebrate people supporting and being there for each other, and the bonds that spring between them, to not just an entertaining but to a soul-replenishing degree. As played by Jason Sudeikis (Booksmart), the series' namesake is all positivity, all the time. A small-time US college football coach, he scored an unlikely job as manager of British soccer team AFC Richmond in the show's first season, a job that came with struggles. The ravenous media wrote him off instantly, the club was hardly doing its best, owner Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham, Sex Education) had just taken over the organisation as part of her divorce settlement, and veteran champion Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein, Uncle) and current hotshot Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster, Judy) refused to get along. Ted's upbeat attitude does wonders, though. In the second season, however, he finds new team psychologist Dr Sharon Fieldstone (Sarah Niles, I May Destroy You) an unsettling presence. You definitely don't need to love soccer or even sport to fall for this show's ongoing charms, to adore its heartwarming determination to value banding together and looking on the bright side, and to love its depiction of both male tenderness and supportive female friendships (which is where Maleficent: Mistress of Evil's Juno Temple comes in). In fact, this is the best sitcom currently in production. The first two episodes of Ted Lasso's second season are available to stream via Apple TV+, with new episodes dropping weekly. MONSTERS AT WORK Some of the best films leave you pondering a simple question: what happened next? Sequels don't always answer that query, though, because often you're wondering what literally followed mere moments after the exact events you've just watched — which isn't necessarily where follow-ups head. Cue Monsters at Work, Pixar's latest addition to its Monsters, Inc franchise. That smart and sweet 2001 movie saw seasoned scarer Sulley (John Goodman, The Righteous Gemstones) and his offsider Mike (Billy Crystal, Untogether) upend their titular employer's setup, their city of Monstropolis and their whole monster-filled world, all by realising that the children they're tasked with frightening would be much happier laughing. 2013 prequel Monsters University then joined them back at that eponymous spot; however, if you've always wanted to know what happened after Sulley and Mike switched to eliciting giggles, that's where this new Disney+ TV series comes in. The pair everyone already knows and loves is adjusting to the new status quo, because the ten-part animated show picks up the very next day after the film that started it all. Also thrown askew: Tylor Tuskmon (Ben Feldman, Mad Men) a horned scarer who just graduated, is all set to spook kids, but finds himself working in maintenance instead. Even as it explores the fallout of Pixar's beloved 20-year-old delight, this series doesn't really need to exist, but it nonetheless delivers an enjoyable extended stint in this creature-filled world. Also entertaining: voice work from Mindy Kaling (Locked Down) and Henry Winkler (Barry) as Tylor's new colleagues. The first five episodes of Monsters at Work are available to stream via Disney+, with new episodes dropping weekly. MIRACLE WORKERS: THE OREGON TRAIL In the first season of Miracle Workers, which hit screens back in 2019, the one and only, always-great Steve Buscemi (The King of Staten Island) played god. It was a stroke-of-genius piece of exceptional casting in an eccentric comedy about heavenly bureaucrats subjected to the supposed Almighty's whims while still trying to keep earth running — and attempting to save it from the deity's destructive tendencies — but the storyline wrapped up in one season. Thankfully, the series still returned in 2020; however, this time it went back to the Dark Ages. Buscemi's role: Eddie Shitshoveler. Yes, that name does indeed describe the character's occupation, and many hilarious hijinks ensued in that addition to this ongoing anthology. Again, the tale ran for a single season, but that wasn't the end of the show either. Now that Miracle Workers has returned once more, it has the subtitle The Oregon Trail. Buscemi is Benny the Teen, an outlaw in pioneer era-America who ends up leading townsfolk from a fading rural locale along the titular track and hopefully to a better life. All of his now three-time co-stars are back as well, with Daniel Radcliffe (Guns Akimbo) playing a priest, Geraldine Viswanathan (The Broken Hearts Gallery) as the unhappy wife of Jon Bass' (Baywatch) snobbish villager, and Karan Soni (Superintelligence) as another gunslinger. Like its predecessors, this season is delightfully absurd, filled with intriguing characters and benefits from committed comic performances, all while parodying its new setting. The first three episodes of Miracle Workers: The Oregon Trail are available to stream via Stan, with new episodes dropping weekly. CLASSICS TO WATCH AND REWATCH THE SPY KIDS FRANCHISE Here's the thing about the best family-friendly movies: if they're great and they truly live up to their genre, then they really are not just suitable for but entertaining to audiences of all ages. Most films that overtly endeavour to entice children's eyeballs do also attempt to keep adults engaged as well — but oh-so-many fail. Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids franchise is one of the rare examples that works for everyone. It's goofy enough to play as an espionage comedy for viewers young and old, and even its flatter moments are better and have more personality than the bulk of its genre cohorts. Given the cast, which includes Antonio Banderas (Pain and Glory), Carla Gugino (Gunpowder Milkshake), Alan Cumming (Battle of the Sexes), Cheech Marin (The War with Grandpa), Danny Trejo (The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run), Steve Buscemi (Miracle Workers: The Oregon Trail; see above) and Salma Hayek (The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard), as well as Daryl Sabara (The Green Inferno) and Alexa Vega (Nashville) as the central kids, there was always going to be plenty to love here. Nostalgia might keep drawing you back to this series, but that's not the only thing that'll keep you interested. The frenetic and kinetic pace, the candy-coloured visuals and the all-round offbeat approach all filter through not only the first three flicks in the franchise, aka 2001's Spy Kids, 2002's Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams, and 2003's Spy Kids 3: Game Over, but also 2011's Spy Kids: All the Time in the World as well. Spy Kids, Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams and Spy Kids 3: Game Over are available to stream via Binge, and all four films are also available on Stan. Need a few more streaming recommendations? Check out our picks from January, February, March, April, May and June this year — and our top straight-to-streaming movies and specials from 2021 so far, and our list of the best new TV shows released this year so far as well.
In an unassuming shopfront on High St in Northcote, Melbourne, sits one of Australia's most low-key Indian restaurants. Owned and run by Michael Vass, who took over the family business in 2013 after opening its doors back in 1995, Curry Cafe is the type of place to lounge back over three or four dishes with a group of mates while swilling tap beer in a vain attempt to ward off the spice. Curry Cafe is unique in that the team roasts their own spices here, rather than buying them in bulk from wholesalers. They then grind them using a grinder imported from India and add them to their curries, which is fortunate — for a place named Curry House, it's probably best your curries are world class. And they certainly are. The range of curries feature crowd-pleasers such as butter chicken, lamb rogan josh and fish masala. For the more adventurous, there's the lamb pasanda (slow-cooked lamb in a creamy sauce of cloves, cardamom, cashews and raisins) and beef rogan, cooked overnight in a creamy cardamom and fennel-infused sauce. Vegetarians need not be afraid, nor vegans, as its menu caters to all. Try dal mushroom, eggplant curry and pumpkin masala with mustard seeds, curry leaves and coconut milk. And if it doesn't have what you're looking for, ask the chef. It's likely they'll be able to make what you'd like. You won't find this in many other restaurants in Melbourne. Wash it down with the house red or white or a local pet-nat. But for those who are in for the long haul, a pint of lager or three is perfect with their mild, medium and hot concoctions.
Every time you sing along to The Little Mermaid, you nod to Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. If you grew up reading The Little Match Girl, Thumbelina, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Princess and the Pea and The Ugly Duckling, you've been familiar with his work on the page, too. And, when Frozen became a huge cinema hit, it took inspiration from the writer's 1844 fairytale The Snow Queen. Basically, Andersen's stories have been a big part of everyone's childhoods — in recent decades and, in written form, for nearly two centuries. So, you've already spent plenty of time escaping into the author's narratives. Once the middle of 2021 rolls around (and once international travel starts returning to normal, of course), you can also wander through a brand new museum inspired by his fairytale world. Set to open in Odense in Denmark, which is where Anderson was born, HC Andersen's House has a hefty aim: to make visitors feel as if they've stepped right into his tales. That's the immersive dream at these types of venues, after all, as also seen in Disney's theme parks, the new Super Mario-themed amusement parks and Studio Ghibli's upcoming site as well. "We have to dive into the fairytales as the very first thing, because they are what everyone knows. The idea is not to retell the stories, but rather to communicate their familiarity and inspire further reading of Andersen," says Torben Grøngaard Jeppesen, the head of Odense City Museums. Accordingly, HC Andersen's House will reflect its inspiration however it can — in its architecture, in the imagery and sounds it puts on display, in the way it uses light throughout the venue, and in the experiences visitors can dive into while they're there. Across a 5600-square-metre site, that'll include a children's house and an underground museum, as well as a sprawling garden that, from the concept images, resembles a labyrinth. And, in a nod to The Little Mermaid, attendees will also be able to look up through a pool of water and peer at the people in the grounds above them. Japanese architect Kengo Kuma leads the design, fresh from his work on the Japan National Stadium for the Tokyo Olympics. For HC Andersen's House, "the idea behind the architectural design resembled Andersen's method, where a small world suddenly expands to a bigger universe," he explains. Odense is already home to a smaller site dedicated to Andersen, which'll be included in the new venue. When HC Andersen's House opens, it'll also incorporate the building where the author was born. HC Andersen's House will open at HC Andersen Haven 1, DK-5000, Odense sometime in the middle of 2021. For further details, head to the venue's website. Images: Kengo Kuma & Associates, Cornelius Vöge, MASU planning.
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.
When we were kids, spending time with our favourite people — our mates — was a regular occurrence. Nowadays, with different schedules and responsibilities, catching up is trickier to coordinate. And organising a group trip? Even harder. Trust us when we say the slog — juggling competing preferences and calculating budgets — is worth it once you're all together. The sense of belonging you'll experience when surrounded by people with shared passions or history is simply unmatched. To minimise holiday admin and finally get your gang on the road, we've investigated destinations around New South Wales that are ideal for a getaway with friends. Whether you're part of an outdoorsy circle or you hang with folks who prefer to spend their leisure time at a constant recline, there's something here to satisfy every taste in vacay.
If you've been keeping an eye on the NGV's programming, you'll know that the gallery's currently playing host to Terracotta Warriors: Guardians of Immortality: a major collection of ancient Chinese statues crafted between 221–206 BCE. And the figures are such a big deal, they've even inspired an unlikely themed high tea, happening at the Sofitel Melbourne in collaboration with the team at Dulux. Here, you can have a crack at painting (and eating) your own mini terracotta warriors, bringing chocolate figurines to life with some artistic flair, a paintbrush and a rainbow of edible Dulux paints. There'll be fountains of the stuff, pouring vibrant colours including Midas Touch, Mint Twist, Symphony Red and China White. To match, Sofitel pastry chef David Hann is whipping up an Asian-accented high tea buffet of sweet and savoury bites, from steamed pork buns to crispy wontons with chocolate, ginger and pineapple. The arty high tea will set you back $99, including a glass of bubbly and unlimited tea and coffee. An extra $19 will get you free-flowing sparkling wine. The Sofitel x Dulux Terracotta Warrior High Tea is happening in Sofi's Lounge every Saturday and Sunday at 2.30pm between May 25–October 13. The NGV International's Terracotta Warriors: Guardians of Immortality exhibition runs from May 24–October 13.
To promote season four of The Walking Dead, FOX Portugal came up with the simplest of concepts: if you want blood, folks, then you gotta give it. That's right, they opened a pop-up store in which blood serves as currency. It's the first of its kind in the world. All you have to do is walk in and bare your forearm. The attendant produces a needle, fills a vial and sends it to the Portugese National Blood Bank Institute. You walk away with brand new, uber-gory merch and someone, somewhere, gets a much-needed transfusion. The more blood you give, the more goods you score. The store attracted customers at the rate of a World War Z zombie swarm. Blood donations reportedly increased by 571 percent in comparison with last year, and 67 percent of those giving the needle the green light were first-time donors. At the same time, The Walking Dead enjoyed a 17 percent boost in ratings. Given such overwhelmingly successful statistics, additional incarnations of the store are now set to pop-up in nations all over the world, including The Netherlands, Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, Columbia and the United States. The Walking Dead Blood Store was created in conjunction with creative agency Torke + CC, whose motto reads "handcrafted ideas to rule the world." https://youtube.com/watch?v=Wf6ZXq71ujw Via PSFK.
Right at the end of 2024, Hotel Esplanade (The Espy) opened a new sun-drenched venue in the former Ichi Ni site, which closed back in February 2024. Walk into the new Espy Sunroom this summer, and you'll see how the 252-person space has been totally transformed. Gone are the bright red drapes, dark wood panelling and Japanese paintings that once adorned Ichi Ni. In their place, there's a far more open and brighter restaurant and bar with a lot less going on — simply decorated with hanging plants, lightly painted concrete walls, and a smattering of high and low tile-topped tables. The interior will certainly get packed in summer, but its openair terrace will have the most sought-after seats — boasting its own retractable roof for when Melbourne's weather isn't behaving. Here, you'll be sipping on spritzes and signature cocktails while eating crowd-pleasing eats that you'll recognise from the neighbouring pub's menu. Get around a huge seafood platter (packed with scallop ceviche, kingfish crudo, king prawns and oysters), pizzas, grilled barramundi, potato cakes with salt and vinegar and a classic chicken parma. As this is part of The Espy, you can also expect a banging live music and entertainment lineup throughout the week. Wednesdays are for trivia run by local Smarty Pints Co, Fridays nights are when live bands and DJs play late into the night, Saturdays see the house DJs accompanied by live musicians, and Sundays are all about funk, house and soul music. The Esoy Sunroom isn't reinventing the wheel in any way, but it is hitting all the right spots for a popular seaside bar and restaurant — serving up summery bevs, crowd-pleasing eats and plenty of good vibes. You'll find the new Espy Sunroom at 11-12 The Esplanade, St Kilda, open every day of the week from midday until late. For more information and to book a spot, you can visit the venue's website.
Christmas markets are always excellent for those of us who tend to leave gift purchasing until the last minute — and, thankfully, Etsy is setting up their markets all over Australia in the final weekend of November. Etsy Made Local is a grassroots initiative that celebrates crafters, collectors and artisans in local communities, and provides them with the opportunity to sell their creations both online and in a physical space. So whether you're on the hunt for handmade wares or vintage goods, these guys have got you covered. The markets will be held in Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. Because each market focuses on the best local talent, each market will be filled with different stallholders and unique creations. Supporting creative small businesses and scoring a killer Christmas gift is a win for everyone involved, so head to Collingwood's Rupert on Rupert on Saturday, November 28 and get your festive shopping done early, for once.
Charles and Ray Eames had a bit of a backwards Lannister twins problem. Everyone thought they were siblings. Both were famous for their innovative design work, but people who hadn't met them would just go on ahead and assume they were brothers. They weren't. They were husband and wife. Nowadays they're often best remembered for designing chairs. They did, for sure, make some wonderful chairs. But it wasn't just furniture where they excelled. The Eames office designed almost everything. The Eameses' work was so either ahead of its time or so timeless that lots of its products are familiar objects today. The Eameses' grandson, Eames Demetrios, is about to make a brief visit to Sydney at both the Sydney Film Festival and for Vivid Ideas to talk about both his grandparents' work and his own. To help you get your head around the breadth of their combined output, we've assembled just a few examples of the family's pioneering work. Chairs The Eameses spent over a decade experimenting with shaping wood. They'd invented a surprisingly striking splint out of moulded plywood for the US army during the Second World War. When they'd moved into their new apartment in 1941, their idea of fun was to squeeze a plywood moulding machine into their spare bedroom. They'd made it themselves out of scrap wood and a bicycle-driven pump and called it 'Kazam!'. They took turns riding the bike. After the war they moved to a real studio at 901 Abbot Kinney Boulevard in LA and stayed there for the rest of their working lives, still working with plywood. One of the products of their iterative wood obsession, in 1956, was the Lounge Chair and Ottoman. The lounge was designed for furniture company Herman Miller. While the lounge chair still looks pretty space age, their Molded Plywood Chairs (below) are much more familiar. The Eameses' work in chairs went on to be so successful that today these pieces just seem, well, normal. The SFF Hub plans to have a bunch of these Herman Miller chairs on display over the duration of the festival. The Eames' Lounge Chair and Ottoman will be there, as will the Moulded Plywoods and a new version of the classic Shell Chair. You can place an order for a chair online, though, it should be noted that the price is usually where these chairs' similarity to school chairs suddenly ends. https://youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0 The Long Zoom The beginning of Contact does it, as does the end of Men in Black: the almost-infinite, long zoom across the universe has been a movie staple since the '90s. The shot was pioneered by the Eameses in their 1977 film Powers of Ten, which ostensibly explored the geographic power of adding and subtracting a zero to long numbers. As the film whips out from the Chicago lakeside into the depths of space, and back again, its effortless play with scale and relentless zoom whip you into a exponential sense of pleasant disbelief. Charles Eames had done some film work, though Hollywood didn't end up being his thing. But, about the time George Lucas had the predecessor to ILM filming their Death Star in a parking lot — and well before computer-based special effects — the Eameses were polishing off a nine-minute tracking shot that traversed the known universe. Eames Demetrios will be presenting Powers of Ten alongside a selection of his grandparents' extensive corpus of short films at Eames on Eames, including Design Q&A ("known to specialists") and Music of the Fifties ("just never seen" and "fascinating because it is, in many ways, the beginning of the music video"), not to mention a restored version of the multiscreen Glimpses of the USA. Multiscreen In an age where lining up multiple screens is about as hard as putting two phones side by side, it's hard to imagine how big a deal it was to see a multiscreen image. During the cold war, the USA put on an American trade exhibition in a Moscow park, which would later become famous for the 1959 Kitchen Debate between then Vice-President Nixon and the Soviet leader, Premier Khrushchev. Not too far away from this culinary power centre, the Eameses had been commissioned to make "a major propaganda exercise designed to inject the elixir of consumerism into the heart of the Soviet empire". So they made a film. Glimpses of the USA was a massive array of seven screens designed to overwhelm Muscovites with the breadth of experience in American life. Seven landscapes, seven cityscapes or seven people popped across the screen, in quick succession. It was designed to dazzle: and it worked. Apparently, the final sequence was so powerful it brought tears to even Nikita Khrushchev's hardened eyes. Interactive Museum Exhibitions Interactivity doesn't give you bragging rights at museums these days. But in 1975, though computers had come a long way since the President of IBM ostensibly said "I think there is a world market for about five computers," they were still pretty much unheard of for the museum experience. Ray and Charles Eames put together a concept film for a makeover of New York's gargantuan Metropolitan Museum. They laid out a vision of a connected experience, where visitors could call up their favourite artwork on a computer and its display would automatically show them related items from the collection. Back then, this vision didn't wash. Reports from 1977 talk about electronic controversy: "concerns about an art museum weakening its raison d'etre by activities not concerned with the experience of original art but, instead, films, facsimiles and electronic gadgetry." The funding was withdrawn, and the touted makeover never happened. Nowadays, this 'electronic gadgetry' is just called the Metropolitan's 'website'. Innovator in the Centre Reviewing the recent documentary, Eames: The Architect and the Painter, New York Times film critic A.O. Scott compared the Eameses' influence to Steve Jobs' for the sheer breadth of the influence their design work on our everyday lives. Scott took this comparison further, saying they were also happy to be the centre of the credit: "Like Walt Disney — and like Steve Jobs — Charles Eames did not share credit. His name alone went on the studio's products." Eames Demetrios disagrees. His counterpoint to Scott easily works through the details of his grandparents' crediting history, with the opinion that a story like Charles' alleged surprise that Deborah Sussman wanted credit for Day of the Dead is "demonstrably untrue". But he adds, "I don't think it was told in malice, because it represents an emotional truth, which is that it is a very hard to feel you are getting your due when you are living/working inside someone else's worldview — especially a powerful one like the Eameses." In the absence of space for his full reply here, Demetrios points to the chapter '901 Culture' in his book An Eames Primer for more detail. A Virtual World Eames Demetrios' films started out relatively tame. Common Knowledge presaged the production method of local film 52 Tuesdays, by giving a documentary portrait of dozens of people every few weeks for a year in 1988, but he "kept thinking it would be really amazing to be able to visit a story physically. To create a parallel world that people could visit." Demetrios created the virtual world of Kcymaerxthaere, a story whose locations have leeched across out of fiction and into the physical world. "It is kind of like a novel with every page in a different place," he says. "Most of the installations are markers (in bronze or stone) that tell a piece of the story." Since 2003, the project has installed 99 sites across 22 countries. There are ten in Australia. He has aspirations to install one in the Red Centre but is open to suggestions from Sydneysiders about a site closer to home. "The key is that we need permission to install the marker permanently (or for at least 99 years)," he adds. Sydneysiders can take a turn at interpreting this world at Storytelling to Generate Fresh Perspectives at Vivid on Sunday, June 7. Eames will be telling some stories from Kcymaerxthaere, after which participants will be invited to make their own "disputed likenesses" (images based on the stories) on postcards to be sent off to previous participants. Local participants will get postcards from other workshops before too long. Melburnians can check out a Kcymaerxthaere exhibition opening at Pure and General from June 11. Good design is good hosting is good grandparenting Charles Eames saw the designer as a host, focused on getting the details right for the recipient of whatever thing he was designing. This need to design "to the need" is pervasive in the Eameses' work and its cultural spread is echoed in modern tech firms' ambitions to sweat the details. It's the same sort of obsession with details at the heart of the story of Steve Jobs anxiously calling Vic Gundotura to tweak the yellow in a Google logo. "Charles and Ray are far more famous today than they were in their lifetimes," says Demetrios. "The notion of a rockstar designer did not exist then." Their legacy is only now getting some of the mainstream attention it deserves, three years after the release of the documentary Eames: The Architect and the Painter. But it wasn't just their design skills that lasted. Their parenting and grandparenting skills kept two generations of children interested in working to preserve their legacy. Demetrios also sees time with his grandparents as the roots of his design education. "My theory is that we learned about design backwards when we were growing up — we learned all the lessons about life that we now realise were lessons about design too. Things like the fact that Charles and Ray were excellent hosts. Picnics were important; presentation was important; experience was important. "As we are older, we understand that they were teaching by example one of their key ideas: 'The role of the designer is essentially that of a good host, anticipating the needs of the guest.'" 'Interactive display' image, actually a multitouch sequencer, by Daniel Williams. The couple's grandson Eames Demetrios will be guiding audiences through a screening of some of his grandparents' short films during the Sydney Film Festival at Eames on Eames and getting a few thoughts off his chest at Vivid Ideas.
Sunny summer days and the new year are (unfortunately) still a fair while away, but you don't need the clichéd calendar date to set some new goals. In fact, if the global pandemic has thrown a bit of a spanner in your routine, now may be just time to get back into gear. As they say, there's no time like the present — there you go, another cliché to follow instead. But rather than focusing on a singular aspect like diet or exercise, why not look at your health holistically? Yep, we're talking 'healthy living' and, no, it's not just for Byron Bay dwellers and yoga lovers (not that we're jealous or anything). Simply put, it's about balance — from what you eat right down to getting enough sleep. To help you kick-start — or restart — your health resolutions, we've teamed up with the folks at nutritious ready-made meal delivery service Macros to bring you six simple lifestyle changes. Because we all know healthy habits don't happen overnight. SIGN UP TO A SUBSCRIPTION-STYLE MEAL DELIVERY SERVICE First things first: food. No one's saying all those takeaway dishes and baked treats over lockdown weren't delicious, but, by now, you may be craving something more nourishing. Food is what fuels us, so changing your diet is one of the biggest hacks to the so-called healthy life. It may be obvious, but there's a reason it can be tricky. Not all of us have MasterChef-like skills and meal prepping takes time. Not to mention how pricey clean eating can be if you don't know where to begin. One way to cut out the guesswork and set yourself up with a fridge full of dietitian-designed and super-tasty dishes is by signing up to a meal delivery service. Macros, for example, ensures every meal is prepared by chefs and delivered fresh, not frozen, so you can simply pop it in the microwave when you're ready to eat. Think the likes of massaman beef curry, cottage pie, spaghetti bolognese and herb-crusted salmon, ready in a matter of minutes. Macros has seven different plans to cater to your goals, too. If you don't live at the gym, then Macros' 'Weight Loss' plan, with low-carb meals that have less than 350 calories (if you're counting), is a solid option. Otherwise, the 'Balanced' plan is great for those looking to switch to a cleaner diet, without shedding kilos. You can also tailor your plan to suit your dietary needs, be it plant-based, dairy-free, low-carb or paleo. And, to top it off, it's a pretty affordable option, with meals starting from $8.70. Right now, you can also nab $50 off your first order, too — just sign up here. GIVE MINDFULNESS A GO If you consider mindfulness a bogus pastime, think again. From simply soaking in the tub to daily meditation, taking time to clear your head and reduce stress is a solid base for a healthier lifestyle. Think of it like this: if food is your body's fuel, then mindfulness is your mind's tonic. And, to really achieve a healthy lifestyle, you need both, on top of physical exercise, of course. Plus, amid COVID-19, we're increasingly realising what it means to keep calm during a crisis. So, where to start? Mindfulness and meditation apps are both beginner-friendly and convenient — and these days there are plenty to pick from. Headspace is one of the better-known ones and for good reason; it makes mediation accessible, even if you're a bit of a novice. Or, you can be guided by neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris with his app Waking Up. If getting enough shut-eye is an issue, try Calm, which includes meditation sessions, audio snippets of Bob Ross's The Joy of Painting and stories narrated by none other than Matthew McConaughey. Practices such as tai chi and yoga can help improve mental clarity, too, by combining meditation with movement — so, if you find sitting still hard, maybe give these a try. You can even add adorable animals into the equation and get bendy with baby goats, or your pooch as you downward dog in your living room, both of which are a surefire way to get a quick serotonin hit. GET PICKLING Feel bloated or sluggish? It could be your gut telling you something — literally. While everyone's body is different, fermented foods can be great for most people's gut health and keeping everything regular. The age-old preserving technique naturally ferments food, creating healthy probiotics that help strengthen your gut microbiome. It's a good way of extending food's shelf life, too. Instead of raiding the health food store and splashing some serious cash, you can make your own with everyday fridge and pantry items. Beets, beans, cucumbers, onion, fennel, cabbage, zucchini, carrots... you get the idea. Most pickling involves vinegar (white or apple cider), salt, a bit of sugar, spices and the veg of your choosing. Alternatively, get yourself a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) and some black tea and try making your own kombucha. If you'd rather learn from the pickling pros, Sydney-based cafe and picklery Cornersmith runs a bunch of hands-on and, at the moment, live Zoom classes, where you can pick up tips on how to ferment, pickle and preserve pretty much anything. HAVE FUN WITH YOUR WORKOUT ROUTINE No one said exercise had to be boring. You may have your go-to activity, but, sometimes, getting out of the bed in the morning or hitting up the gym after work can be a struggle. We get it, life gets in the way. However, to avoid fitness fatigue, why not inject some fun into your routine? Feel like a big kid again and bounce non-stop at an indoor trampoline park, or scale to new heights at a rock climbing gym. For the latter, you'll need a partner in crime, so you can socialise while you sweat, otherwise, for a more solitary climb, try bouldering. Martial arts is another great way to train, from karate to jiu-jitsu, taekwondo and krav maga, all of which have become increasingly popular over recent years. Keen to improve your rhythm? Dancing is a great way to get your heart pumping, as well as tone muscle, whether it's ballet, salsa, ballroom or hip-hop dancing. You can even get your groove on in your living room with 80s-style aerobics by way of Retrosweat or Aerobics Oz Style. And, if you're lucky enough to live near the ocean, stand-up paddle boarding is great for your core, or you could give surfing lessons a crack. Basically, there's no end to the fun you can have while also training and conditioning your body. GET OUTDOORS AND HIT THE TRAILS It's hard to beat a vigorous bushwalk or long-distance run along the coastline, with the sun shining, the wind in your hair and stunning surrounds to distract from your own panting. Plus, it leaves you feeling pretty rejuvenated. While, yes, the physical exercise plays a massive part, being outdoors is undeniably good for the soul. And, after spending more time indoors this year, many of us have a new appreciation for being surrounded by nature. So, next time you're thinking of jumping on the treadmill, why not run in your local park? Or, if you can, take a hike in a national park, do laps in an ocean pool, kayak down a river or head out on a scenic bike ride. If you're after something a bit more restorative, forest bathing or shinrin-yoku (nature therapy) is another way to get a dose of vitamin D, just with less cardio. You simply spend time in nature, whether it's taking a stroll in any natural environment or finding a lush and peaceful spot in which to meditate. The physiological and psychological activity has benefits such as improving your immune and nervous systems, reducing blood pressure and heart rate, and improving mental health, energy levels and sleep patterns. Combining mindfulness with nature, the Japanese practice is the perfect antidote to our tech-filled and often sedentary lifestyles. TREAT YOURSELF While pampering may seem a tad extra, giving your body a little TLC is also called self care. So, treat your body like the temple it is and give it a rest every now and again. From beauty therapies to relaxing remedies, there are plenty of ways you can look after your body — outside and in. Feeling a bit lacklustre? Mani-pedis, haircuts and facials are sure to give you a boost. Then there are massages, of course, with benefits including reduced blood pressure, easing migraines and headaches, aiding pain relief and stiffness, and lowering stress levels. But, different styles address different issues, so it's important to listen to your body. Swedish and aromatherapy massages, for example, are great if you're stressed out; whereas lymphatic ones help rid your body of toxins by draining your lymphs. If you've been upping your exercise or have muscular pain, then consider deep tissue, sports, reflexology or Thai-style massages, which will help alleviate aches, increase flexibility and reduce recovery time. A healthy lifestyle starts with the food that fuels you. To help make that part easy and fuss-free, Macros delivers nutrition-packed meals straight to your door. And, if you need to, you can also pause or skip a week of your subscription at no extra cost. Better yet, Macros is currently offering $50 off your first four deliveries. So, start your health kick ASAP and sign up here.
Keanu Reeves is one of cinema's treasures, and should never be far away from our screens. Since the mid-1980s, across a career that's spanned everything from the Bill & Ted movies and stone-cold masterpiece Point Break through to The Neon Demon and Always Be My Maybe, he thankfully rarely has been. And, seeing him in lean, slick, no-nonsense action-star mode, dispensing with whatever troubles and struggles come his way via impressively choreographed displays, is one of the biggest movie-watching pleasures there is. But only two film franchises have served up just that again and again: The Matrix and John Wick. In the film saga where Keanu knows kung fu, viewers have already been treated to four instalments. In the movies where he plays the hitman that other hitmen fear, the fourth flick is on its way. During San Diego Comic-Con, John Wick: Chapter 4 just dropped its first trailer, in fact. Yes, we're thinking that the assassin is back — again. As all John Wick movies have so far — the first in 2014, John Wick: Chapter 2 in 2017 and John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum all included — this one will follow the formidable killer as he takes on his ever-growing list of adversaries. There's still a huge bounty on his head, and plenty of foes want to collect. That hasn't stopped Wick yet, though, after he got dragged back into the assassin life when a past batch of enemies messed with his dog. If you're thinking that Wick's luck might run out at some point, the new film — which is set to hit cinemas Down Under in March 2023 — understands. "No one, not even you, can kill everyone," Wick is told. But proving that wrong has always been at the heart of this stunt-filled saga. Well, that and increasingly upping the ante on all those action scenes, with Reeves' former stunt double-turned-filmmaker Chad Stahelski at the helm. In the first sneak peek at John Wick: Chapter 4, both Reeves and Stahelski keep doing what they do best, and spectacularly so. That includes hopping around the globe, with Wick seen walking through Paris in winter with the Eiffel Tower looming large, and also getting into sword fights in Japan — and the film also heading to New York and Berlin. On-screen, Reeves is joined by a roster of returning and new John Wick faces. Fellow franchise mainstays Ian McShane (American Gods) and Lance Reddick (Godzilla vs Kong) are back, and so is Reeves' The Matrix co-star Laurence Fishburne after appearing in the past two movies. And, Donnie Yen (Mulan), Bill Skarsgård (Eternals), Hiroyuki Sanada (Mortal Kombat), Shamier Anderson (Son of the South), Rina Sawayama (Turn Up Charlie) and Scott Adkins (Triple Threat) are all set to feature as well. In also excellent news, a fifth John Wick movie is already in the works, because more ass-kicking Keanu is always a great thing. Check out the first trailer for John Wick: Chapter 4 below: John Wick: Chapter 4 will release Down Under on March 23, 2023.
Prepare for a serious rainbow chalk shortage in Sydney: DIY chalk rainbows are popping up across the city in Newtown, Paddington and Redfern following the State Government's removal of the rainbow crossing on Oxford Street. The movement started with a Facebook photo of radio presenter James 'Breko' Brechney colouring in a chalk rainbow outside his home. The photo soon led to Brechney creating the Facebook group DIY Rainbow Crossings and the #DIYRainbowCrossings hashtag going viral on Twitter. "I was pretty down like a lot of people when the Rainbow Crossing was ripped up," said Brechney. "The DIY chalk crossing idea really just came to me overnight ... I got my sister and housemate in on the act and when we finished our one in Surry Hills we took a few photos for Facebook and the whole thing went crazy. Everyone's now doing their own DIY Rainbow Crossings all over Sydney and I love that because it's less work for me!" The Oxford Street crossing was initially created by the City of Sydney Council as part of the 2013 Mardi Gras celebrations, and soon became a much-loved attraction, with people posing for photos while walking across it. Despite calls to make the crossing permanent from the community and local politicians such as Lord Mayor Clover Moore and State Member for Sydney Alex Greenwich, NSW Roads Minister Duncan Gay made the decision to remove the crossing. Community radio station FBI Radio has decided to get in on the action as well, chalking up their own rainbow outside the front door of their station in Redfern. "It's just a fun, little nice thing, a sign of how Sydney people are joined together when they think a wrong has been done," said program director Caroline Gates, who was inspired to join Brechney's 'chalk revolution' after seeing his Facebook photo. "We've got a volunteer group, and I just said 'Hey, anyone want to make a rainbow?'" she says. "I think a nice thing about people getting out a bit of chalk and making their own is just saying 'Screw the government, this is what we feel and what our community is'." The removal of the crossing took many Sydneysiders by surprise after road workers in Ultimo were redirected to Oxford Street to perform 'emergency road works' late on Wednesday night, as passers by booed and shared photos of the disappearing rainbow on social media. "I think people really connected with some vibrancy in our city," said Brechney. "I think the State Government has really got themselves pigheaded about removing it when it was clear, even to people initially opposed, that it was truly a fabulous addition to Oxford Street." DIY rainbow crossing behind the Newtown Hotel. DIY rainbow crossing behind the Newtown Hotel. DIY rainbow crossing in front of FBi Radio. Photography by Anita Senaratna and Rima Sabina Aouf.
Not content with winning an Emmy, two Golden Globes and a pair of Screen Actors Guild Awards for playing Shiv Roy on Succession, Australian actor Sarah Snook has just added a 2024 Laurence Olivier Award to her mantle for her starring role in the West End season of stage sensation The Picture of Dorian Gray. Or roles, to be precise. The production, which hails from Sydney Theatre Company, tasks its lead with playing all 26 characters in the adaptation of Oscar Wilde's gothic-literature masterpiece. For her current stage date, which started earlier in 2024 and runs until May, Snook has stepped into a tale about a sinister portrait that lets its subject stay young and beautiful. This take on Wilde's work was first staged Down Under with Eryn Jean Norvill doing the honours, premiering in Sydney 2020, and also hitting theatres in Melbourne and Adelaide. "It's an incredible honour to be on the stage in the West End and this is not something that I thought would come along with that. It's billed as a one-woman show but it's not. It's the crew who are on stage with me all the time every night, and they are a vital and constant support and inspirational," said Snook when she received her award, with the ceremony taking place on Sunday, April 14 in the UK — so in the early hours of Monday, April 15 Down Under. "So thank you to the crew for being there in this show with me. A huge immeasurable thank you to Kip Williams and your very big brain, and your specificity and precision and your inspiration — and I just thank my lucky stars I get to play inside that mad world you've created every night," Snook continued. The Picture of Dorian Gray also won Marg Horwell an Olivier for Best Costume Design. Among the rest of the night's winners, Stranger Things: The First Shadow took home Best New Entertainment or Comedy Play, Sunset Boulevard nabbed Best Musical Revival, Dear England scored the award for Best New Play and Operation Mincemeat did the same for Best New Musical. On the page, The Picture of Dorian Gray is exceptional, as well as astute and unnerving, as it follows the selling of its namesake's soul in order to keep indulging every corporeal whim, urge and desire. There's a reason that it just keeps getting adapted for the screen and in theatres, after all. But there's never been a version like Sydney Theatre Company's, with the London run at The Theatre Royal Haymarket marking Snook's return to West End after debuting in the 2016 production of The Master Builder. This version of the story uses video and theatre to help its star play so may characters. Williams, who adapted Wilde's text into the phenomenal production and also directs, has travelled to the UK with the new season as well. Taking the show to London is part of a partnership between STC and Michael Cassel Group, which is all about sharing the former's works around the globe. A similar path — from Australia to the UK, but originating from the Griffin Theatre Company — worked out spectacularly for Prima Facie, too, with the British production starring Killing Eve's Jodie Comer winning Best New Play and Best Actress at the 2023 Laurence Olivier Awards. Check out a trailer for the West End season of The Picture of Dorian Gray below: The Picture of Dorian Gray is playing The Theatre Royal Haymarket, 18 Suffolk Street, London until Saturday, May 11, 2024 — for more information and tickets, head to the play's website. Images: Marc Brenner.
Come October 2025 in Melbourne, Tomato Day will be back on the big screen, all thanks to Looking for Alibrandi's inclusion in this year's Italian Film Festival lineup. A quarter of a century has passed since the Pia Miranda (Invisible Boys)-starring Australian page-to-screen classic reached cinemas, so the nation's annual celebration of Italian movies has programmed the beloved picture based on Melina Marchetta's 1992 book in its closing-night slot. Audiences will get a particular filmic treat, too, given that the 4K restoration of the film will be gracing the screen. So, as well as surveying the latest in Italian cinema — as IFF does every year, 2025 being no exception — there's an Aussie flavour to the festival this time around. Another example: the Greta Scacchi (Darby and Joan)-narrated Signorinella: Little Miss, with the team responsible for Lygon St — Si Parla Italiano turning their attention to Italian women who helped make the Italian Australian community what it is. 2025's Italian Film Festival kicks off in mid-September, running across Friday, September 19–Thursday, October 16 at The Astor Theatre, Palace Balwyn, Palace Brighton Bay, Palace Church St, Palace Cinema Como, Palace Penny Lane, Palace Westgarth, The Kino, Pentridge Cinema and Cinema Nova in Melbourne. While Looking for Alibrandi is on closing duties, romantic comedy Somebody to Love will get IFF 2024 started, as hailing from Perfect Strangers filmmaker Paolo Genovese. In the festival's centrepiece slot is La Grazia, the latest from Paolo Sorrentino (Parthenope) — and, like The Hand of God, Loro and The Great Beauty, starring Toni Servillo. Its inclusion is quite the get for IFF, given that the movie will head to Australia direct from having its world premiere opening the 2025 Venice International Film Festival. Servillo is a significant feature of IFF's lineup this year, too, thanks to also appearing in Sicilian Letters and The Illusion, with the first focusing on Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro's time as a fugitive and the second heading back to Giuseppe Garibaldi's efforts in 1860 to unify Italy. In another highlight, Napoli — New York sees Gabriele Salvatores (Cassanova's Return) chart the path of two Neapolitan children to New York in 1949 — and continue, as also evident courtesy of Looking for Alibrandi and Signorinella: Little Miss, the festival's celebration of migrant stories. The must-sees keep coming from there, with IFF also screening 2024 Venice Film Festival Grand Jury Prize-winner The Mountain Bride — Vermiglio; Diamonds by Ferzan Özpetek; The Great Ambition, which won Elio Germano (Trust) the Best Actor Award at the David di Donatello Awards for portraying former Italian Communist Party leader Enrico Berlinguer; Italian box-office hit The Boy with the Pink Trousers; and the Valeria Golino (Maria)-led Fuori, a biopic about Italian feminist writer Goliarda Sapienza. Or, attendees can catch post-WWII-set drama My Place Is Here, as based on the novel by Daniela Porto; The Life Apart, which sports Vicenza as a backdrop; and Gianni Versace — Emperor of Dreams, as focused on the fashion icon. And, for its blast from the pasts for 2025, the fest is embracing giallo, to the delight of horror and thriller fans. Think: a new 4K restoration of Dario Argento's Deep Red, alongside Lucio Fulci's A Lizard in a Woman's Skin, Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace, Pupi Avati's The House with Laughing Windows and Sergio Martino's All the Colours of the Dark.
In recent times, this fine country has seen Harry Potter-inspired rooftops, brunches and train rides. And that's not to mention the Cursed Child mania that's been going down in Melbourne. But are you sick of it? No chance. If there's one thing we know, it's that the demand for Harry Potter will never die — and this latest pop-up, along with the fact that there is a seemingly endless stream of Harry Potter events to come, proves that. The next piece of mainstream Harry Potter fandom to hit Melbourne this summer will be the Wizard's Cauldron. Inspired by the experiences that the gang had in potions class — and hopefully avoiding the botched polyjuice potion episode — the pop-up bar will mix magic and mixology. That's to say, there will be cocktails. Probably with some dry ice and bubbling substances. It'll be sort of like a science class, except you'll wear robes and mix your drinks with a wand. And drink what you mix, of course. The 'experience' will take 90 minutes and will cost you $55. For that, you'll get a hot mug o' mead and help from a (probably) greasy-haired Potions Master to mix a potion or two for yourself. You may or may not have to take your O.W.L exam after. Either way, there'll be a cash bar so you can celebrate or commiserate your results for further drinks and snacks. The Wizard's Cauldron will run evening sessions Wednesday to Sunday (as well as daytime classes on weekends) between January 9 and April 12, 2020.
Already a go-to for budget-friendly groceries, snow gear and whatever other specials that it can rustle up, ALDI is now bringing its discounted prices to your wardrobe. Selling clothes isn't new for the chain, as everyone who regularly trawls its middle aisles will be well-aware; however, for the first time ever, the brand is releasing its own ALDI streetwear collection. And yes, everything comes cheap — under $20 cheap, in fact. We all know someone that's bought a fridge, bed or TV at ALDI. You might even be that person. Now, everyone can know folks — or be them — that rock an ALDI-branded hoodie, track pants, slides, sneakers, socks or beanie. The list of items on offer in the new collection, which is called ALDImania, also includes sweatshirts, t-shirts, bucket hats and caps. For some pieces, there's also multiple colours available, with grey, navy and white the range's base hues. In total, there's 23 items made from sustainably sourced or recycled materials, with compact umbrellas and double-walled insulated mugs helping round out the collection. The socks have the lowest price, coming in at $4.99 no matter which of four styles you choose from. And the dearest item is the sneakers, which cost $19.99. In-between those maximums and minimums, fleecy hoodies will set you back $14.99, slides and beanies $7.99 each, and tees $8.99. From top to bottom — excluding underwear — you could deck yourself out in ALDI gear for less than $50. You'll only find the ALDImania collection in ALDI stores from Saturday, April 13. Given how popular the chain's usual specials are, expect the range to get snapped up quickly. "We have been offering our shoppers high-quality, affordable loungewear for years, but this is the first time we've brought our own brand of leisurewear to the middle aisles," said Belinda Grice, ALDI Australia's Buying Director for ALDImania. ALDI's streetwear range will hit the chain's supermarkets around Australia from Saturday, April 13. Visit the ALDI website for more details.
When Respect first breaks out its titular track, it's the original Otis Redding version that echoes in the background. The song plays in the Franklin household as Aretha (Jennifer Hudson, Cats) and her family listen, and the scene bubbles with anticipation for the thing everyone watching knows will come. Shortly afterwards, the Queen of Soul tinkers at the piano in the deep of night, her excitement buoyant after hearing her first big hit 'I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)' on the radio. Her sisters Erma (Saycon Sengbloh, Scandal) and Carolyn (Hailey Kilgore, Amazing Stories) join in, and they're all soon rearranging Redding's tune into the single that cements Aretha's status as a music superstar. For the entire film up to this point, viewers have also heard the Franklins, including patriarch and preacher CL (Forest Whitaker, City of Lies), refer to Aretha using a nickname. "Ree" they call her again and again, and soon "ree, ree, ree" is exactly what Erma and Carolyn sing on backing vocals. It's a neat and also exuberant moment. Respect quickly segues to Aretha and her sisters crooning 'Respect' at Madison Square Garden to a rapturous crowd, but watching the track come together has already proven electric. Something can be orderly and expected and potent and rousing all at once, as this movie happily demonstrates regarding its namesake — but for most of its 2.5-hour running time, Respect is content to careen between inescapably formulaic and occasionally powerful. In other words, Respect is a standard music biopic. The genre will never stop expanding — films about Elvis, Madonna, Boy George, Bob Marley, Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston are currently in various stages of development — but flicks about famous musicians have peppered cinemas with frequency recently. Thankfully, Aretha's stint in the cinematic spotlight doesn't merely shuffle through a greatest hits album like Bohemian Rhapsody. All her well-known songs are accounted for, though, and it definitely doesn't strive to shake up the template as Rocketman managed so vividly. And with Judy and The United States vs Billie Holiday still fresh in filmgoing music-lovers' memories, Respect can't help feeling like it's striking the same beats. The faces and tunes change, but the overall journey remains undeniably similar. The fact that so many iconic female singers' stories navigate comparable paths is a horrible indictment of the way women have long been treated in the music industry; however, the fact that the movies telling their tales can't completely shake that air of familiarity can never quite do them justice. Respect begins with young Aretha (lively debutant Skye Dakota Turner) being roused from sleep by her father to sing at one of his well-attended house parties. It's 1952, and to an audience that includes Dinah Washington, Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, she breaks out a rendition of the latter's 'My Baby Likes to Be-Bop' — and "she's 10 but her voice is going on 30" is the shared reaction. This obviously isn't the last time that Aretha unleashes her astonishing voice in Respect, and that everyone in earshot reacts accordingly. When she's accosted by an unnamed man in her bedroom afterwards, it isn't the last time the film veers between highs and lows, either. First-time feature director Liesl Tommy and screenwriter Tracey Scott Wilson (Fosse/Verdon) repeat that pattern, embracing it as comfortably as their key figure croons any song she chooses. But where their subject transcends every ditty she trills, Respect can't be said to do the same. Even viewers unaware of the ups and downs of Aretha's life will still know where each second of the film is headed. The choice to end with 2016 footage of the real-life singer piping '(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman' is a classic biopic touch, of course, but it's preceded by far more predictable choices again and again. Accordingly, as a child Aretha wrestles with her mother's (Audra McDonald, Beauty and the Beast) untimely death, and her own abuse, to evolve from singing in church for her father and family friend Martin Luther King (Gilbert Glenn Brown, Stargirl) to starting her career under her dad's ferocious guidance. From there, she struggles to turn her early Columbia Records releases into successes, yearns to make music that means something to her and defies her father by marrying small-time producer Ted White (Marlon Wayans, On the Rocks). The children she has as a teenager remain with her family as her path leads to Atlantic Records, veteran record producer Jerry Wexler (Marc Maron, Joker) and recording with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section in Alabama, which is where early hits like 'Respect' and 'Ain't No Way' come to life. But her marriage to Ted isn't happy, and coping with his violence takes its toll. So does touring, recording and working non-stop, including when she weds her tour manager Ken Cunningham (Albert Jones, Mindhunter), and later decides to make her best-selling gospel album Amazing Grace. It's never a smart idea to remind your audience that a better movie exists on the same topic, so the decision to recreate parts of Aretha's Amazing Grace performance — as also seen in the magnificent documentary of the same name that only reached cinemas in 2019 — is misjudged. This section of Respect does let Hudson shine, and Aretha's music do the same, though. Alongside the dazzling costuming, they're the film's biggest assets the whole way through. While the script sticks to well-worn territory, cramming its subject's story to fit the usual music biopic mould and giving the entire affair a handsome period sheen, Hudson injects power and presence into her portrayal. The Dreamgirls Oscar-winner has the talent to do Aretha's songs proud, too. But she also makes viewers wish that everything around her performance, the tunes she's singing and the clothes she's wearing didn't fall victim to the usual cliches. This film has ample respect for the woman at its centre, but it also approaches the act of bringing her life to the screen like it's simply taking care of business.
Gelatissimo brought us ice cream for dogs, a Weet-Bix flavour and a 100-percent vegan range and, now, for Easter it's getting suitably paschal. It's not only releasing a new flavour, but it's giving it away for free. The gelato chain has just launched a new Choc Cross Bun flavour, which, like its name suggests, combines traditional hot cross bun spices, chocolate gelato and chunks of actual chocolate hot cross buns. You can pick this up from one the gelato chain's 37 Aussie stores nationwide, or get it delivered to your door via UberEats, Deliveroo or DoorDash (yes, it's almost as omnipresent as God himself). It's giving away free tubs of this new flavour, too. In a new initiative called Scoop It Forward, Gelatissimo is inviting you to nominate someone who deserves some free dessert. So, if you've got a friend or family member who is working as a health professional, had to cancel their holidays or has just had a tough week, now may be the time to brighten up their month with a little bit of sweetness. You just need to head on over to the Gelatissimo website between now and midnight on Monday, April 13, add in some details about the person you think deserves free Choc Cross Bun gelato and the company will deliver as many boxes as they can to deserving folk across the country. It'll also be kicking off its Easter giving by donating some tubs to the nurses at the Prince of Wales Hospital. To nominate someone for free Choc Cross Bun gelato, head over to the Gelatissimo website before midnight on Monday, April 13. You can buy some for yourself over here.
When the conversation turns to acquired tastes, the oyster is a natural example; our first oyster is typically offered up by an uncle-type (who probably introduced you to beer a few years later) getting his Christmas kicks from watching the next generation squirm, and then we hit 25 and suddenly we're knocking them back. But whether mum's reassurance that you'll like them you're older came true or not, many of us are still in the dark when it comes to this most lauded of mollusks. So we sat down with The Morrison Bar and Oyster Room's chef Sean Connolly to take the guesswork out of oyster culture. Oyster basics Let's start with some introductions: there are three different types of oysters grown in Australia: Sydney rock (or estuary), Pacific and Angasi. The last one, a rare goliath, is an Australian native that is attracting a lot of attention for its fleshy consistency — so oyster beginners should work up to this one. It can also command some pretty steep price tags, but according to Sean that isn't putting off the punters. "When you have Angasis [on the menu] they fly out the door." These days most restaurants will at least offer you a choice between Sydney rock or Pacific oysters. Now the simplest way to think of these two is tastier versus creamier. That doesn’t quite cover the full spectrum of differences between them, but it’s a nice launching pad for developing your pallet. If you can, split your order between the two—it gives you an edge of sophistication, and will help you learn the differences. Do you count as an oyster lover if you like toppings? No. Just kidding, the oyster community welcomes one and all, but maybe whisper your Kilpatrick (that's with cheese, Worcester sauce and bacon) requests. In Sean's mind it is simply about respecting the oyster, although he does seem pretty perturbed by oyster mornay (basically grilled cheese oysters). "That is the worst — haven't cooked one in years." What should you be embarrassed to order? Oyster lovers are undoubtedly a touch purist, but Sean insists "to a certain degree it's all good". If you are not quite ready to talk about the taste of the sea and how fresh shucking is paramount to good eating, just have a bit of fun. Order some of them deep-fried, use the juice for a dirty martini or pop an oyster in your shot glass. But remember, never the mornay. For the beer lovers amongst you, it could be time to head over to Young Henry’s Brewery in Newtown and check out their limited release oyster stout — Mother Shucka. The do's and don'ts of oyster shucking Nothing says host with the most like some freshly shucked oysters, so if you are ready to take home entertaining to the next level, buy yourself an oyster knife and get ready for a few cuts along the way. First off, make sure you have a good base (read bread board) and do not attempt doing this in the air, in your hand, or anywhere else that momentarily seems logical. Make sure that the curved side is on the bottom, and hold it down with a tea towel-clad hand. Now, edge your oyster knife into the side of the oyster, then prize it open by running the knife along the join. Once you have traced the entire edge simply flex the knife sideways to move the shells apart. "There is sort of like a 75 percent chance that you will hurt yourself," warns Sean. "Even I hurt myself shucking oysters at Christmas." I would probably add buy some protective gloves and download a how-to-guide. How to eat an oyster Discounting my childhood trauma theory, Sean doesn't see there being any real reason why people wouldn't like oysters — unless you're not eating them properly. So, here is his final word on how to eat an oyster: swirl it around your mouth, chew it twice and swallow. It sounds like something Lauren Bacall would purr in To Have and Have Not ("You know how to eat an oyster, don't you Steve?"), so it is a handy piece of trivia for your next dinner date, and it means you are getting all of the flavour you can out of your oyster. What to wash them down with There is good reason that people are known to enjoy the finer things in life, not the finer thing; well-paired delicacies have a habit of making evenings memorable and this brings us to the wine match. Take your time with the wine list, you do not want to lose all that freshly shucked deliciousness in the depths of a juicy shiraz. When matching wine to oysters some key words are minerality, acidity and flinty. I wouldn’t look further than something white and from Burgundy, but Sean points to a good savvy-b or dry riesling. Remember, if this is all new to you, grabbing the attention of your sommelier is always a good move and chucking in the word 'flinty' is sure to earn you bonus points. The best places in Melbourne to enjoy oysters Just recently, over 18,000 oysters were consumed within a few hours at the Albert Park Hotel's Oyster Frenzy. You may have your doubts about the shells from the sea, but you can’t deny the numbers — Melburnians love to knock back an oyster. Classic seafood venues such as the Albert Park Hotel's Oyster Bar and Grill and The Atlantic go through thousands of them every week, but many smaller venues are shucking oysters around the city, such as Fitzroy’s Panama Dining Room and the newly opened Saint Crispin. Or, why not head down to Oyster Bar at South Melbourne Market and slurp them straight from the sea — standing up, sitting down, or as you order another round. Do they really have an aphrodisiac effect? The standard response to this question is a smirk and some nod to personal experience — the more erudite might even referenceCasanova’s breakfast — but a little research shows this theory has real legs. First of all the high zinc content keeps all of us generally strong and virile, plus it staves off herpes (pop that in the good-to-know basket). But, the science really heats up when you start talking amino acids. These little critters actually house two pretty unusual ones (D-aspartic acid and N-methyl-D-aspartate) that have been shown to boost testosterone in men and women's oestrogen levels. Who knew? The Italians were right all along. Do I need to know where they come from? Waters are to oysters as soil is to wine, so regions can say a lot about what an oyster is going to look and taste like before it gets to the table. It's all a little too involved for this article, but oyster masterclasses are held regularly all around Sydney if you are keen to learn more. But we can give you a few cheats: names to look out for include Coffin Bay (SA), Clyde River (NSW) and St Helens (TAS). Don’t be alarmed if your favourite restaurant starts offering you oysters from different regions; like most produce, the best oyster-producing region depends on the season. Ultimately, as Sean notes, it is about having "trust in the chef, trust in the establishment and then the proof is in the eating". How do Aussie oyster lovers rate internationally? We've had Europe lording it over us for years with their tails of natural sophistication, but Sean disagrees. "It's part of our culture," he insists in a broad Yorkshire accent — stopping to note that after 20 years in the country he has earned the right to say 'our'. It's marginally more than my years of life so I don’t fight him. Plus, he has a point; we have got some of the cleanest waters in the world for growing the things. “When I opened Astra [his first restaurant], about 17 years ago," Sean goes on, "we were shucking oysters to order and the clientele were sending them back because they were salty … But now everyone recognises a good oyster and everyone is look for that taste of the sea."
Since 1987, if you've wanted to hit up South by Southwest, then you've needed to visit Austin in Texas. In October 2023, however, that'll no longer be the case. In what was perhaps Australia's biggest cultural news of 2022, the acclaimed tech, innovation, music, gaming, screen and culture festival and conference announced that it'll stage its first-ever non-US event in Sydney this year — and it's just added a bunch more musicians and speakers to its lineup. Headlining the latest announcement is a new featured speaker, who will be talking at the event's music-industry conference. Chris Lee (also known as Lee Sung-Su) is the Chief A&R Officer and former CEO of SM Entertainment, a K-pop powerhouse. Lee and the label have played a part in popularising breakout K-pop stars like aespa (who recently dropped a Sydney-heavy promo for their new album), SHINee, EXO, Red Velvet and NCT. Two of the biggest annual parties from SXSW Austin have also joined the program. Dr Martens and Vans slide in alongside local legends Young Henrys as major sponsors, bringing their respective music hubs — Dr Martens Presents and House of Vans — to the debut Australian festival. Both showcases are regular occurrences over in Texas, pulling big-name guests to perform, with past lineups including the likes of The Stooges, Denzel Curry, ODESZA and Wolf Alice. More artists have been added to the live music lineup, which already boasts previously announced acts Redveil, Connie Constance, Otoboke Beaver, Ekkstacy and Los Bitchos. The majority of the new announcement is dedicated to the first local Australian acts to join the program, with Teenage Joans, Phoebe Go, MALI JO$E, Ashli, Andrew Guruwiwi Band, Alter Boy, Mi-Kaisha, VV Pete, Rum Jungle and Golden Vessel's side project 1tbsp among the 18 Aussie additions. There are also seven fresh international names, including New Zealand's Soaked Oats, Japan's Chameleon Lime Whoopiepie, South Korean's HYPNOSIS THERAPY and American indie-pop star Wallice — who recently supported The 1975 on their Australian tour. [caption id="attachment_899225" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Chameleon Lime Whoopiepie[/caption] "The lineup features an essential array of styles, ranging from post-punk, jazz and experimental pop to club-tinged hip hop, R&B and indie folk," says Claire Collins, SXSW Sydney's Head of Music. "It is a vibrant snapshot of the undeniably exciting next wave of talent from across the globe, from Western Sydney to the Top End, South Korea to the UK, and beyond. We can't wait to reveal more in the coming weeks and months." The first lineup announcement back in February included American futurist, The Genesis Machine author, and Future Today Institute founder and CEO Amy Webb as the festival's first-ever keynote speaker. Webb will be joined by other featured speakers like Ben Lamm and Andrew Pask, who'll discuss their work on the de-extinction of the woolly mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger; Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist of Canva and former Apple Chief Evangelist, who'll talk evolving tech; lawyer, writer and filmmaker Larissa Behrendt, fresh from helming Richard Bell-focused documentary You Can Go Now; and Saudi women's rights activist Manal al-Sharif. [caption id="attachment_899226" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Teenage Joans[/caption] SXSW Sydney will all take place between Sunday, October 15–Sunday, October 22 within a walkable precinct within the Sydney CBD, Haymarket, Darling Harbour, Ultimo, Chippendale and more. Think of the fest's footprint as a huge hub, with festivals within the bigger fest, exhibitions, talks, networking opportunities and streetside activations popping up everywhere. So far, venues named include Powerhouse Museum, ICC Sydney, UTS, Central Park Mall, the Goods Line Walk, The Abercrombie and Lansdowne Hotel. Attendees can hit up the SXSW Sydney Conference, which is where those keynotes, presentations, panels, workshops and mentor sessions come in — more than 400 of them. And, there's the SXSW Sydney Technology & Innovation Exhibitions, which is all about innovative and emerging tech and entertainment companies from across the Asia-Pacific region. Plus, at the Startup Village, up-and-comers from all industries and sectors will have space to meet, present and chat. SXSW's arts fests will span the SXSW Sydney 2023 Music Festival, which will be focused on live music venues in central Sydney — and the SXSW Sydney Gaming Festival, complete with more than 100 local and international independent games to play at venues (alongside demonstrations, launches performances, exhibitions and social gatherings). Movie and TV lovers, get excited — because the SXSW Sydney Screen Festival isn't just a film fest. There'll be flicks to see, including at red-carpet premieres; episodic content; and digital, XR and social content. Expect Q&As and panel discussions with the folks behind them as well. Can't wait, whether you're a Sydney local or planning to head along from elsewhere in Australia — or New Zealand? Platinum and industry badges are already available at early-bird prices, with more ticketing to come. SXSW SYDNEY 2023 — SECOND LINEUP ANNOUNCEMENT: FEATURED SPEAKERS: Chris Lee (aka Sung-Su Lee) SXSW SYDNEY MUSIC FESTIVAL: 1tbsp Alter Boy Andrew Guruwiwi Band Ashli Dean Brady DICE dust Elle Shimada MALI JO$E Mi-Kaisha Mikayla Pasterfield Milku Phoebe Go Teenage Joans Vv Pete PANIA GO-JO Rum Jungle Hans. hanbee Soaked Oats Nuha Ruby Ra Wallice HYPNOSIS THERAPY Chameleon Lime Whoopiepie Joining: KEYNOTES: Amy Webb FEATURED SPEAKERS: Andrew Pask Ben Lamm Guy Kawasaki Jack Reis Kyas Hepworth Larissa Behrendt Manal Al-Sharif Michael J Biercuk Per Sundin Que Minh Luu Robyn Denholm Rohit Bhargava Sam Barlow Sean Miyashiro Sheila Nguyen Sung-Eun Youn Tom Verrilli Yiying Lu Yoomin Yang SXSW SYDNEY MUSIC FESTIVAL: Connie Constance Ekkstacy Los Bitchos Otoboke Beaver Redveil SXSW Sydney will run from Sunday, October 15–Sunday, October 22 at various Sydney venues — head to the festival's website for further details. If you're keen to make the most of Australia's first SXSW, take advantage of our special reader offer. Purchase your SXSW Sydney 2023 Official Badge via Concrete Playground Trips and you'll score a $150 credit to use on your choice of Sydney accommodation. Book now via the website.
Opened in mid 2021, the Melbourne Marriott Hotel Docklands is the suburb's only five-star hotel, featuring a whole swag of onsite hospitality venues, including a swanky rooftop bar and pool. The site boasts 189 luxury rooms kitted out with features like 'retail-inspired wardrobes' and 55-inch LCD TVs. The whole design aesthetic of the petal-shaped building is inspired by the contours of a yacht, so expect sleek curves aplenty, backed by plenty of curated art installations and sculptured statement pieces. It's no wonder why this new addition to the luxury accommodation scene is one of Melbourne's top hotels. Then, there's the hefty collection of food and drink offerings presented in collaboration with the Peter Rowland Group, including one adjacent to the hotel's crowning glory — the stunning infinity pool, complemented by sweeping views to the west. Up here, you'll be swimming in a 28-metre wet-edge pool — or lounging on a day bed enjoying cocktails and high-end panoramas. Rooftop bar Sunset House is a buzzy Palm Springs-inspired destination where punters can lounge while grazing on chic snacks, signature cocktails and a range of Everleigh's bottled spritzes. Think, katsu sandos, duck jaffles, Moreton Bay bug rolls, and tuna sashimi teamed with a green chilli sambal and sesame tofu. Plus, a program of nighttime DJ sets to match. Meanwhile, elegant all-day restaurant Archer's is championing local ingredients and producers through a menu of bold, technique-driven plates. It's got two standout breakfast offerings, while lunch and dinner might feature the likes of ricotta and parmesan gnocchi with wild mushrooms and broad beans, and roast spring chicken with radicchio and sweetcorn. A considered drinks program pours plenty of sips starring local spirits, too. Casual all-day haunt Corsia serves primo St Ali coffee alongside Euro-leaning lunch dishes, pastries and Italian-style desserts. And sophisticated cocktail lounge Ada's is slinging chic bar snacks, revamped classic cocktails and an impressive range of non-alcoholic creations. [caption id="attachment_837297" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Dining at Archer's[/caption] Images: Dianna Snape and Peter Rowland Group Appears in: The Best Hotels in Melbourne
In a provocative move usually found in the realms of contemporary art, Austrian men's magazine Vangardist has just printed 3000 copies of their latest edition with blood-infused ink from people with HIV. A new project with Saatchi & Saatchi Switzerland, Vangardist's #HIVHeroes issue aims to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS, trigger discussion around the attached social stigmas and raise funds — all profits from this edition go to charity foundations fighting the stigma of HIV/AIDS. The blood-infused ink comes from three HIV-positive donors: a wife and mother, a heterosexual man and a homosexual man. The #HIVHeroes issue comes sealed in plastic, encouraging readers to face their HIV contact fears when physically opening the magazine. According to Dezeen, Vangardist followed Harvard and Innsbruck-produced guidelines to ensure handling of the magazine had no risk of infection. Vangardist describes the plastic-sealed issue as "100% safe", a provocative nod to the prevailing social fear attached to HIV/AIDS and the people who live with it every day. "Although people with HIV can live a normal life in countries with good medical care, they are still faced with a hard social stigma of exclusion," says the Vangardist team. "Most conceal their illness for fear of losing their friends, their job or their partners or even to find a partner. Because still there are still too many people who are afraid to touch a person with HIV, to embrace or kiss. "No matter how one learns of the issue, whether one hears about in the news or reading the newspaper about it, everyone is wondering: "Would I attack this magazine? In any case, anyone who buys one of the limited edition of 3000 pieces is inevitably faced, when opening the special packaging, with its own fears and discomfort. If these are overcome, the next contact with an HIV positive person is very natural run." Vangardist's blood-printed issue is being launched to coincide with Vienna's Life Ball, one of the globe's biggest AIDS charity events. The magazine is only distributed in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, although you can contact their customer service if you want to get your hands on a copy. Via Dezeen. Images: Julian Behrenbeck.
Much about this last week of March has felt like history repeating itself — initially for Brisbanites, and now for anyone with an Easter date with Bluesfest. For the second year in a row, the Byron Bay festival won't be going ahead, with NSW Health announcing that a public health order has been signed that cancels the 2021 event. The long-running festival was set to return to Byron Events Farm (formerly Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm) just outside Byron Bay from Thursday, April 1 — for the Easter long weekend, headlined by Jimmy Barnes, Tash Sultana, Ocean Alley, Ziggy Alberts and The Teskey Brothers. But, as happened last year, COVID-19 has gotten in the way. NSW Health has advised that the move has been made "to minimise the risk of the highly infectious COVID-19 variant of concern being transmitted in the local area, as well as across states and territories." Over the past weekend, between Friday, March 26–Sunday, March 28, Byron Bay was visited by two people who later tested positive to COVID-19 as part of Greater Brisbane's current cluster. Today, Wednesday, March 31, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced that one person in Byron Bay has since tested positive as well. And, the Premier also advised that from 5pm AEDT today until at least 11.59pm on Monday, April 5, the Byron, Ballina, Tweed and Lismore shires will reinstate a number of social distancing restrictions. So, they'll be in effect exactly when Bluesfest was due to run. The north coast regions will revert back to 30-person caps for at-home gatherings, and will reintroduce the one person per four-square-metres rule at all indoor public settings, including hospitality venues. Folks in the area will also have to sit, not stand, while having a drink. And, masks will be compulsory on public transport, in retail settings and indoors in public places. [caption id="attachment_800519" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Andy Fraser[/caption] "Infectious Queensland travellers attended a number of venues in the Byron Bay area and the new locally acquired case was infected at one of these venues," said NSW Health in its statement. "NSW Health acknowledges that the cancellation of Bluesfest is disappointing for ticket holders and event organisers; however, while urgent investigations and contact tracing are ongoing, NSW Health is adopting a cautious approach to keep everyone safe." Minister for Health Brad Hazzard noted that "while the cancellation of Bluesfest is disappointing for music lovers and the local community, I hope that ticket holders would support Bluesfest and hold on to their tickets as I understand Bluesfest will be working on a new date as soon as possible." At the time of writing, Bluesfest hasn't made a statement about the cancellation. Via the festival's last social media posts earlier today, event organisers said that an update was coming soon. NSW Health advised that it wished "to acknowledge the outstanding cooperation of Mr Peter Noble and his organising team, who were working hard to ensure Bluesfest would be conducted in a COVID-safe manner." For more information about the status of COVID-19 in NSW, head to the NSW Health website. Top image: Joseph Mayers
You've heard of farmers markets, Christmas markets, street markets and second-hand markets. But have you ever heard of a distillers market? Melburnians who enjoy a hearty sip of a strong spirit may want to make their way to Preston, and to the former shoe factory, the Northside Food Hall on Saturday, December 3, when it'll be the home of the first-ever Northside Craft Distillers Market. You read that right – an entire market dedicated to craft distilleries from around Australia. Melbourne spirit-seekers may already be familiar with the flavours of local faves like Saintlier, Naught, Loaded Barrel and Hillmartin distilleries. But it's less likely you've sampled the work of Tan Lines distilling, coming from tropical Townsville, Fossey's distillery from far-north Mildura, Mates Gin distillery in Wonthaggi or Noble Bootleggers from Bendigo. You'll be able to sample the products of these distillers and more in a seated tasting event. Once you've enjoyed your samples, distillers will be selling their products and merchandise in person, so you can hear about each drink from the maestro that brewed it and load up on gin, whiskey and vodka alike. And to help absorb the sips of spirits, the Northside Food Hall has foods for all moods. Fried chicken, pizza, salads and pub feeds await to pair with your spirits of choice. What better way to welcome in the summer than with a strong drink and a hearty feed? The Northside Craft Distillers Market will be open from 12pm to 3pm on Saturday, December 3. For more information and to buy tickets, visit the website.
Declan Greene’s I Am a Miracle is a searing assault on injustice throughout the ages. It’s a risky and at-times unwieldy combination of three separate strands of story: the impending execution of African-American inmate Marvin Lee Wilson, the 18th century Dutch colony of Suriname, and the claustrophobic world of a modern home. It’s a small ensemble cast, with actors Bert LaBonté and Melita Jurisic joined onstage by singer Hana Lee Crisp. Once Labonte addresses the death-row inmate Wilson only minutes before his death the focus quickly shifts towards Jurisic, who performs the story of a young Dutch soldier on a doomed expedition upriver to subdue rebel slaves. This long stretch of the play could easily stagnate in the hands of a lesser performer but Jurisic is in utter control as she navigates the extended, prosaic narrative. Director Matt Lutton’s program notes indicate that Jurisic’s character is “rehearsing” this story but any aspect of that intriguing metatheatrical interpretation is unsupported in performance, beyond the upturned chairs and tables on the set, which could resemble the broken furniture of an abandoned rehearsal room. One obvious question is why use this story – are Australian audiences so inured to the horrors of their own colonial history that they need to apprehend them fresh, through the exotic lens of the brutal occupation of Suriname? I don’t think so: the choice provokes us into seeing these acts of brutality as part of a systemic constellation, not as isolated incidents. Later in a surprising shift towards naturalism, the characters inhabit a time and place that could easily be modern Melbourne. Greene’s writing lets out measured revelations until the full horror of the couple’s situation becomes clear. This feels like the most compelling part of the play – it’s so gripping that it risks making the rest of the work feel like a less interesting carapace by contrast, even if it’s one that holds it in place. Jung wrote of the Roman Empire’s embrace of Christianity that “whenever some social or psychological monstrosity is created, a compensation comes along in defiance of all legislation and all expectation.” Where I Am a Miracle succeeds most is as an expression of enduring desire for the same kind of rebooted society, and in its interrogation of the cyclical, enduring nature of systemic oppression. It’s not the role of theatre to lay out blueprints and solutions; instead, plays like this give a voice to our need for enduring hope if those changes are going to succeed. Image by Pia Johnson.
Produce-driven menus aren't necessarily a rarity in Melbourne's restaurant scene. What is rare, however, is a venue so visibly devoted to the terroir of the produce it serves — from furniture constructed from recycled materials, to a specials menu displayed on a piece of reclaimed timber. As much as possible, everything in this venue is made either from or for the natural environment that surrounds it. Though one wouldn't necessarily describe From Here by Mike as a fine diner — elevated but grounded is more accurate — that is true of head chef Mike McEnearney's culinary pedigree. Having worked at Michelin-starred venues in London and as executive chef at Sydney's iconic Rockpool, McEnearney is no stranger to a technically complex menu. What makes his perspective unique, however, is his interest in low-waste, sustainable cheffery — his 2017 Real Food By Mike cookbook was explicitly divided into seasons, for instance. [caption id="attachment_1013609" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Chef Mike McEnearney[/caption] Though this ethos means the From Here by Mike menu is subject to seasonal change, there are thematic consistencies; the offering would be best described as fusion, spanning European to Asian culinary influences and always ethically and hyperlocally sourced. There's woodfired flatbread with a surprising almond ricotta and shiitake XO twist, a luxurious twice-baked Meredith Dairy Goat's Cheese souffle with baked shallot, and rosemary cream, and roasted porchetta filled with raisin and hazelnut agrodolce. It's a choose-your-own-adventure of culinary influence kind of experience, designed to be mixed, matched and ultimately, shared. Dessert brings an element of nostalgia. In addition to a French-leaning selection of refined sweets, you'll find a little part of McEnearney's heart in recipe form: his grandmother's vanilla rice cream — a vanilla rice pudding topped with a brulee (to add a flourish). [caption id="attachment_1013611" align="alignnone" width="1920"] The Meredith Dairy Goat's Cheese soufflé at From Here by Mike[/caption] The From Here by Mike drinks list is similarly curated. You'll find bottles from over 40 Victorian winemakers, in addition to overseas producers. The specifics of how each is produced are so important to McEnearney that the lineup comes with a detailed glossary — "MS" for minimal sulphites, "SP" for sustainable practices, "RM" for Recoltant-Manipulant. The (impressive) list goes on. Organic, grounded and generous are how you'd describe the overall experience. Most importantly, the legitimacy of McEnearney's (and indeed 1 Hotel's) dedication to sustainability is apparent. It's refreshing and authentic — and delicious.
Muggle, rejoice: if you've been hanging out to flex your 'wizarding skills' in the new Harry Potter augmented reality game, your time to shine has arrived. Tapping into the same style of virtual smartphone experience made hugely popular by Pokémon Go, WB Games and Niantic have launched the beta version of their Harry Potter: Wizards Unite game — but only in New Zealand and Australia. Locals with a smartphone can now download the app and start their own Harry Potter adventure, as part of a testing phase that'll help developers shape the final product. It means users might have to put up with a few bugs and off-kilter graphics, but that's a small price to pay for getting to play the game before the rest of the world. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite works a whole lot like Pokémon Go, swapping out the animated monsters and gyms for content and characters from the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts franchises. They're featured in an augmented reality 'Wizarding World', which is mysteriously appearing in the muggle world due to some unforeseen calamity. As a player, you'll kick start your adventure as a newbie in the Statute of Secrecy Task Force. You'll be called on to whip up potions, cast spells and use your wand to overcome the traces of magic appearing through your smartphone, popping up in front of real-world locations. You'll collect potion ingredients along the way, and earn special rewards for finding 'Foundables' and returning them to the wizarding world. Scattered through the game, you'll also discover virtual 'inns' where you can recharge your 'spell energy', multi-player wizarding challenges taking place in 'fortresses', and 'portkeys' that can whisk you away into an immersive 360-degree, augmented reality experience, in settings like Ollivanders Wand Shop. The beta version of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is now available to download for free to iOS (via the App Store) and Android devices (via Google Play) if you're in Australia or New Zealand.
We're guessing Jerome Borazio has a bit of a soft spot for Melbourne's inner west. His famed St Jerome's Laneway Festival has called Footscray home for close to a decade, and the nearby warehouse that holds his bar Back Alley Sally's and his pizza joint Slice Girls West has become one of the area's favourite destinations. And in almost the same week as announcing plans to transform the Melbourne Central rooftop into a pool and leisure club, Borazio has lifted the lid on yet another Footscray venture, with the opening of new-school general store Harry and Larry's. Also making its home in the aforementioned well-loved warehouse on Yewers Street, this little charmer is a one-stop pantry shop for the discerning westsider, showcasing local produce and ingredients beneath a glittering, oversized disco ball. It's rocking a cosy fitout of reclaimed timber, similar to its neighbours, the shelves stocked with goodies either sourced from the west or from down on the Mornington Peninsula. The selection features the likes of local fruit and veggies, Meredith Cheese, Remedy kombucha, milk from St David Dairy (inner Melbourne's only micro-dairy), fresh pasta, vegan Jonny condoms and even toilet paper supplies from Who Gives A Crap. Plastic has been given the boot in favour of complimentary brown paper bags, and there are plans in the works to team up with Boomerang Bags — a group that makes reusable bags out of recycled, donated fabric. While you're at Harry & Larry's, you can also grab an Allpress coffee and one of the toasted focaccias and sandwiches named in honour of legendary Footscray folk — maybe the Franco Cozzo, the Captain Katie (named after the Western Bulldogs' captain) or the Julia Gillard. Find Harry and Larry's General Store at 4 Yewers Street, Footscray. It's open daily from 11am–9.30pm. Images: Brendan Coghlan
Tony Nicolini continues his mission to create delicious Italian cuisine — not reinventing pizza, but doing it better. The former part-owner of DOC brings decades of experience to his latest Albert Park venture, Italian Artisans, which has taken over the spot of the old DOC Albert Park. Nicolini's Dad opened his first pizzeria way back in 1969 and this latest restaurant aims to continue the family's passion for the craft of pizza making, with fresh, organic ingredients from, as the name suggests, celebrated Italian artisans. Family producers from Italy and Australia provide the tomatoes, olive oil, mozzarella and more, while the pizza bases are made using traditional methods with alternative grain flours thrown in to make it all easier to digest. The menu is simple — a bunch of traditional pizzas ranging from the classic margherita to tiger prawns, anchovies and the cornuto, with tomato, provolone, soppressa, roasted red pepper and 'nduja ($24). The selection is rounded out with salumi and mozza bars, antipasto, meatballs, lasagne and salads. For those craving something sweet, there is a hazelnut gelato collaboration between Italian Artisans and Pidapipo, dessert pizzas and calzones, and modern takes on the traditional cannoli and tiramisu.
After beginning the year with a devastating bushfire season, then following it up with a global pandemic that rid the area of tourism, the Blue Mountains, it's fair to say, has has a tough 12 months. In response, Mount Tomah's Blue Mountains Botanic Garden has turned to an unlikely partner on its road towards bushfire recovery: gin. In collaboration with Sydney-based gin brand Grown Spirits, the Botanic Garden has released the Blue Mountains Grown Gin in a limited run of just 1000 bottles. All profits from the gin go to supporting the garden's horticultural and scientific staff in their efforts to restore hundreds of specimens and areas of the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden destroyed in the bushfires earlier this year. The Blue Mountains Grown Gin was created by Grown Spirits and Master Distiller Philip Moore at Distillery Botanica in Erina. It combines local eucalypt plant the silver-leaved mountain gum with juniper, valencia orange and liquorice root for a textural gin with a hint of spice. "In creating a gin homage to the Blue Mountains and the Garden, there was one botanical I was immediately drawn to, eucalyptus pulverulenta, or "Baby Blue" as some people call it," Moore said in a statement. "It brings fresh, cooling qualities to the gin much like the mountains themselves." The team recommends serving it in a G&T or a martini with a lime zest. You can also try it at Dead Ringer in Surry Hills, shaken into a cocktail called Evergreen. If you're looking for ethical holiday gifts this time of year, the Blue Mountains Grown Gin fits snuggly into a Christmas stocking. Not a gin enthusiast, but still keen to support the area? You can take a trip to the Blue Mountains — and the Garden — and spend liberally on local businesses. To start planning your adventure, check out our guide to the upper Blue Mountains and these enchanting local stays. The Blue Mountains Grown Gin is now available now for $129 at the Garden Grown Gin website or at select bottle shops across Australia.
When warm weather arrives, the Snowy Mountains transform into an adventurer's playground. Lakes you wouldn't dip a toe into during winter become dazzling, sun-kissed visions, perfect for windsurfing, sailing and fishing. Walking, cycling and horse riding trails buried in snow thaw out, allowing you to wander through twisted snow gum forests, across wildflower meadows and along majestic mountain ridges, surrounded by incredible panoramas. Here are ten ways to spend time in the Snowies during the warmer months — from paddling the legendary Snowy River to catching trout in Lake Eucumbene to camping by tranquil Thredbo River. [caption id="attachment_659671" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Destination NSW.[/caption] WINDSURFING AND SAILING ON LAKE JINDABYNE Whether you're completely new to windsurfing or a seasoned expert, peaceful Lake Jindabyne, one of the highest lakes in Australia, offers escapades a-plenty. Winds are pretty steady (yet gentle) and there's not too much traffic, so you don't have to continually stress about bumping into someone else. What's more, the mountainous scenery is stunning. There's a bunch of windsurfer hire spots about, including Sacred Ride and Snowy Mountains Holidays. Alternatively, you could consider a sailboat. If you're looking for fellow sailors, check out Lake Jindabyne Sailing Club, which runs a busy program from November to March. [caption id="attachment_659673" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Jon Armstrong / Destination NSW.[/caption] PADDLING THE SNOWY RIVER Starting on Mount Kosciuszko's slopes and flowing into the Bass Strait in Victoria, the Snowy River's 352 kilometres provide ample opportunities for paddling. That said, there are rapids and tight spots a-plenty, so, unless you're experienced, it could be a good idea to find a guide. Alpine River Adventures runs adventurous, yet suitable for newbies day trips and multi-day expeditions through the ancient Byadbo Wilderness. Expect to meet platypuses and brumbies, to journey through steep gorges and to rush down grade-three rapids. [caption id="attachment_661863" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Destination NSW[/caption] HORSE RIDING IN THREDBO VALLEY Unencumbered by snow, Thredbo Valley is a picturesque garden of pretty snow gums, towering mountain gums and open plains, with the wild Thredbo River running through. To find out what The Man from Snowy River was all about, experience it from a horse's back. Thredbo Valley Horse Riding has been running trail rides since 1993. For a taster, book a one or two-hour ride, or to spend a bit longer in the saddle, go for a half-day adventure. All rides include gear and basic instruction. If you're interested in a multi-day trip, get in touch with Cochran Horse Treks. CAMPING ON THREDBO RIVER It is, of course, possible to camp in the snow, but you've got to be tough and well-prepared. In the warmer months, pitching a tent is a lot more comfortable. There are stacks of stunning campgrounds in the Snowies and one of the loveliest is Thredbo Diggings. Perched right on Thredbo River, this gorgeous spot surrounds you with snow gums, backdropped by mountain ranges. Spend your days lazing about, going for dips, trying your luck at fly fishing and strolling or cycling on the Thredbo Valley Track. If you're in need of a nightcap, Wild Brumby distillery's warming schnapps, made with local fruit, are just up the road. Another camping option along Thredbo River is Ngargio Campground. [caption id="attachment_661864" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Destination NSW[/caption] TROUT FISHING AT LAKE EUCUMBENE You won't have any trouble finding a spot to throw in a line at Lake Eucumbene; it's the biggest lake of the many created by the Snowy Hydro scheme. At full capacity, it's nine times the size of Sydney Harbour and 30 metres deep on average. Plus, a total of 145 kilometres of shoreline gives you lots of room to explore. Before getting started, be sure to pick up a NSW Recreational Fishing Licence, usually available at servos and caravan parks. If you don't feel confident fishing on your own, then consider a visit to Eucumbene Trout Farm, where gear and guidance are provided, as is a barbecue for a post-fishing feast. VISITING A WATERFALL There are several waterfalls in the Snowies that'll capture your imagination. One of the easiest to access is found along a walking track that leaves from Kosciuszko Education Centre, about 12 kilometres west of Jindabyne. The six-kilometre loop passes through an impressive diversity of scenery, from heathland dotted with wildflowers to giant granite boulders to mature gum trees. Keep an eye out for echidnas, wallabies and kangaroos along the way. When you reach the waterfall, be sure to wander onto the viewing platform for some beautiful sights. [caption id="attachment_659669" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Paul Sinclair / Destination NSW.[/caption] CYCLING COOMA TRAILS On the outskirts of Cooma lie 80 hectares of land known as North Ridge Reserve. Speckled with granite boulders, basket grass and bright wildflowers, including native bluebells, everlasting daisies and black anther flax lilies, it's a great spot for mountain bike riding. There's a variety of trails, offering something for everyone, from beginners to pros. And, if you're not keen on cycling, you can always walk. Whichever way you travel, the views are breathtaking — over Cooma, east towards the coast and west towards the Snowy Mountains. If you're looking for a coffee or a bite to eat in Cooma afterwards, head to The Lott Food Store. [caption id="attachment_659675" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Destination NSW.[/caption] WALKING THROUGH YARRANGOBILLY CAVES The oldest of these limestone spectacles, found in the northern section of Kosciuszko National Park, was formed millions of years ago. Several are accessible by self-guided tour, including the biggest, South Glory, where a 500-metre trail passes vast chambers like the dazzling white Ice Age Chamber, stunning rock formations and a natural skylight 55 metres above the ground. Other caves to check out include Jillabenan, covered in delicate cave coral, stalactites and helictites, as well as Jersey Cave, whose extraordinary grey and black flowstone was created by bushfires thousands of years ago. Round out your visit with a swim in Yarrangobilly thermal pool, which is a toasty 27 degree celsius all year round. [caption id="attachment_658614" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Facebook / Heli Fun.[/caption] TAKING A SCENIC FLIGHT IN A HELICOPTER Regardless of whether you've skied, snowboarded, hiked, cycled or paddled the Snowy Mountains, a scenic flight will give you a whole new perspective. Heli Fun will take you soaring above Australia's highest peaks, including Mount Kosciuszko, Mount Townsend and the Ramshead Ranges — make sure you look out for wild brumbies and familiar landmarks, such as Thredbo ski fields as you're flying high. Choose between 30-minute and 60-minute trips or a speedy ten-minute swoop over Lake Jindabyne. For an even more exciting adventure, book a wilderness picnic. Your pilot will take you on a one-hour jaunt, before leaving you in the middle of nowhere with a gourmet picnic and bottle of sparkling. [caption id="attachment_659674" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Destination NSW.[/caption] GOING WINE (AND BEER AND SCHNAPPS) TASTING The Snowies' wines might not be as well known as those of the Yarra Valley or McLaren Vale, but there's no shortage of decent drops to try. If you're into beer, get started at Kosciuszko Brewery at the Banjo Paterson Inn in Jindabyne. From there, head to Snowy Vineyard Estate in Dalgety, where Dalgety Brewing Company serves up a variety of ales, including pale, golden and red, as well as a selection of wines. On the other side of the mountain lies Tumbarumba cool climate wine region, which specialises in chardonnay and pinot noir. It's easy to spend an afternoon in the lush, Italy-inspired grounds of Tumbarumba Wine Escape and Courabyra is worth a visit, too. Discover all that the Snowy Mountains has to offer outside of winter months, from jam-packed adventures to culinary excursions and so much more.
Transforming Docklands into a glowing after-dark haven, Firelight Festival returns this winter from Friday, July 4–Sunday, July 6. Radiating with a family-friendly program, each of the festival's three jam-packed nights is filled with dazzling flames, immersive art, show-stopping music and warming winter bites. Presented in Melbourne for the first time, internationally renowned Tasmanian artist Amanda Parer will debut her large-scale inflatable sculptures, Man and Fantastic Planet. In another first, the festival will extend onto the Yarra River, with the 'Light the Night Boat Display' inviting boat owners to decorate their vessels with twinkling lights and compete for the Firelight Festival People's Choice Award. Throughout the weekend, almost 50 fire artists, dancers, musicians and roving performers will keep this free festival's vibe burning bright. Plus, 40 or so food trucks will help stave off winter's chill, dishing up a soul-stirring selection of winter treats, from sizzling street food to seasonal favourites like s'mores and hot chocolate. "Firelight Festival is the blazing hearth of Melbourne's winter events calendar — the perfect way to spend a night out with friends or family," says Lord Mayor Nick Reece. "Alongside fiery favourites like fire pits and flame jets, this festival will shine even brighter with Amanda Parer's luminous, larger-than-life art installations."
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch did it. Kimmy vs The Reverend, You vs Wild and Cat Burglar, too. With these four titles and more, Netflix has actively embraced interactive content in recent years. Choose Your Own Adventure books have a lot to answer for, clearly, with being able to select your way through streaming picks — making choices about what happens next within a movie or show, that is, rather than simply deciding what to watch — popping up often enough that it's now just another viewing option. But only the streaming platform's new heist thriller series Kaleidoscope boasts 40,320 different ways to dive in. Here, that vast array of choices is indeed a gimmick, giving a familiar robbery narrative shiny packaging. Picking a route through Kaleidoscope's eight instalments is also automated, at least if you do what Netflix tells you. When each subscriber presses play on the series for the first time, they're given one of seven colour-coded instalments at random. From there, viewers move onto one of six chapters, any of which could roll next, and so on. The only inbuilt rule: White: The Heist, as the episode that shows the heist itself is called, always screens last. That whittles down the options to 5040, which is still a hefty number. Created by author and screenwriter Eric Garcia, whose novel Matchstick Men previously slipped him into the world of grifters — and was turned into a Nicolas Cage-starring film — Kaleidoscope also allows Netflix customers to make their episode choices manually. Whether you stick to the random order the platform throws your way or genuinely choose your own adventure, however, the result is identical. One narrative, eight chapters, thousands of outcomes: that's the show from a storytelling standpoint, with the plot itself remaining unchanged. Does one's interpretation of Kaleidoscope and perspective on its characters differ depending on which order you see its instalments? That's the aim, but the playful series proves ridiculously easy to binge no matter how you move through its Green, Blue, Violet, Red, Pink, Orange and Yellow chapters. Wherever viewers hop in, a crew of thieves awaits, all attempting to bust into an underground vault packed with $7 billion in bonds in the middle of a massive hurricane. Doing the pilfering: veteran criminal Leo Pap (Giancarlo Esposito, Better Call Saul), his lawyer and longtime friend Ava Mercer (Paz Vega, 13 Minutes) and smuggler Stan Loomis (Peter Mark Kendall, Top Gun: Maverick), plus chemistry wiz Judy Goodwin (Rosaline Elbay, Ramy), her safe-cracker husband Bob (Jai Courtney, The Suicide Squad) and driver RJ Acosta Jr (Jordan Mendoza, ZIWE). Their target: SLS, a New York corporate security outfit run by Roger Salas (Rufus Sewell, Old). Kaleidoscope also throws SLS employee Hannah Kim (Tati Gabrielle, Uncharted), her sister and roommate Liz (Soojeong Son, Servant), and FBI agents Nazan Abbasi (Niousha Noor, The Accidental Wolf) and Samuel Toby (Bubba Weiler, Dopesick) into the mix — because family ties and law enforcement are heist genre staples. Anyone who has ever seen a film or show about stealing a big score already knows the drill, and Garcia and his team of fellow writers know it. Accordingly, of course the safe is ultra-secure, and extremely difficult to both get to and break into. Of course the job is also tied to an act of revenge, too. Also, of course Kaleidoscope slots into the eat-the-rich fold that Netflix also worked so well with Squid Game. And, while he doesn't play a fast-food shop owner who's secretly a drug kingpin, of course thinking about Esposito's time on both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul comes quickly as well. Past secrets, new rivalries, love triangles, close calls with pursuing cops, everything that can go wrong definitely going wrong: they all have a part, predictably so even amid all the shuffling. The just-keep-pressing-play hook comes from the overall puzzle, though, which is what Kaleidoscope's delivery gimmick serves up. Non-linear storytelling always involves sleuthing for clues and putting together pieces, which is why the heist genre loves it. It's also why, in these whodunnit-saturated times — Netflix did just gift the world Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, after all, and has another on its way) — this series goes all in. Consequently, Kaleidoscope's audience is instantly keen to know how everything fits together, sifting through each episode for clues and details alike as the show flits between timeframes. With the entire narrative spanning a quarter-century, chapters jump between 24 years, seven years, six weeks, three weeks and five days before the heist, plus the morning after and six months later. Although each instalment is tied to a hue, only Green — which perhaps makes the best entry point — lets its eponymous colour shine visually. That's disappointing albeit unsurprising; Kaleidoscope is slickly shot, but happy sticking to an aesthetic formula. The scrambled storytelling and Esposito do plenty of heavy lifting, and overtly; thankfully, the latter alone always makes for engaging viewing. Playing determined, authoritative but also vulnerable, it's hardly astonishing that the five-time Emmy-nominee is the standout among the cast. Similarly expected: that Courtney comes across as gratingly cartoonish. That said, that's just how one of Kaleidoscope's rotations pans out. Perhaps the other 40,319 (or 5039) treat the bluster-fuelled Bob more kindly — shifting perceptions on heroes and villains, and mysteries and revelations, is all part of the gimmick. That makes an interesting thought experiment, but maybe don't go thinking about how Netflix's algorithm is dictating each viewing path through Kaleidoscope, likely to keep everyone hooked based on their past watchlist, even if it works. Check out the trailer for Kaleidoscope below: Kaleidoscope streams via Netflix. Images: Courtesy of Netflix © 2022.
Maybe the vinyl collectors had it right all along, maybe music does sound better in the physical form. Whether you agree with that or if you're curious to find out, there'll be a gathering of audiophiles, collectors and musicians at Solace Bar to celebrate all things vinyl across an all-day event. This Saturday, October 18, doors will swing open at 1pm for Hotplate, starting with a market of all things vinyl. Stalls from respected selectors, record stores and label heads will be selling thousands of records to eager collectors and listeners. You'll also be able to pick up some limited edition merch. Downstairs, DJs will be on rotation spinning classic funk, disco and house tracks throughout the fair, but at 5pm the vibe will switch gears for full on party mode. Expect a busy lineup of local and interstate heavyweights, label heads, collective founders, record store curators and touring artists all united by a connection to Australia's underground music and vinyl record scenes. There'll be equal opportunity for you to get your groove on once you've picked up your share of goodies. Come early, stay late, and enjoy everything that the good old fashioned style of listening does for your favourite tunes. Hotplate DJ Lineup: Reptant Emelyne Aroma Collette Dawn Again Gracey Hotplate DJs Makoyana Pool Sharks Hotplate Vinyl Fair will run from 1–5pm on Saturday, October 18, with the party from 5pm until late. For more information or to get tickets, visit the website.
