Master sommelier Madeline Triffon describes Pinot Noir as 'sex in a glass', while winemaker Randy Ullom calls it 'the ultimate nirvana'. One of the most challenging grapes in the world of vinification, it's also one of the most surprising and rewarding. No wonder Bottle Shop Concepts — the good folk who bring Game of Rhones, Malbec World Day and Vin Diemen our way — are coming back to town with Pinot Palooza, an epic travelling wine festival celebrating all things Pinot Noir. For just one day, Brisbane wine connoisseurs will have the chance to sample more than 100 drops, direct from Australia and New Zealand's best producers. Expect drops from Victoria's Curly Flat (Macedon), Tassie's Josef Chromy, and Ata Rangi and Pegasus Bay from NZ — and that's just the first few leaves on the vine. Whether you're a newbie who wants to start with something light and inviting, or a Pinot pro ready for the biggest, most complex mouthful on the menu, there'll be an abundance of selections at either end — and plenty along the spectrum, too. You'll even be able to vote for your favourite. If, at any point, you need to take a pause in your tasting adventures, you'll be catered for. There'll be food from Epocha and Maker & Monger, beer from Young Henrys and Stone and Wood, frosé and cider. Plus, the epic Burgundy Bar will be back, a kind of Pinot Noir mecca where you'll be able to sample some seriously good (and spenny) bottles at cost price. Expert sommeliers will also be on hand to help you make selections. What's more, those keen to fuel their brains (as well as their tastebuds) can spot $100 for a VIP pass. For that you'll get access to the VIP area, a food voucher, an extra special glass of wine and a one-on-one with one of the event's sommeliers, who will personally curate your Pinot experience for you. Pinot Palooza will hit the Royal Exhibition Building on Saturday, October 7. Tickets are $60, which includes tastings and a take-home crystal Plumm RedB glass.
Doughnut chain Krispy Kreme has had sweet-toothed Aussies in its grip for years now, and it's showing no signs of relenting on our tastebuds. The chain doesn't just pump out its original glazed doughnuts, but also serves up various themed versions that've been getting everyone salivating. Who can forget trying to catch all of the Pokemon-themed doughnuts last year, or coveting those Caramilk doughnuts, too? Now, the doughnut chain has teamed up with fellow iconic US brand Hershey's, whipping up three brand-new American-inspired sweet treats that you might be tempted to travel to New York for. Don't worry — you actually only need to travel to your nearest Krispy Kreme or 7-Eleven stores. The first on the lineup of Hershey's Krispy Kreme deliciousness is the Choc Strawberry doughnut, which comes filled with a special Hershey's choc crème and dipped in strawberry truffle, before being topped with chocolate chips and icing. Or if you're a die-hard chocoholic, you'll probably go for the Ultimate Choc: again filled with the choc crème, this doughnut is then dipped in milk chocolate ganache, before it's finished off with chocolate chips and ganache drizzle. And, only at 7-Eleven stores, you can get S'Mores doughnuts. They take Krispy Kreme's usual ring of deliciousness, swirl it with whipped marshmallow filling, then cover it in chocolate dip — and adds Hershey's semi-sweet choc chips and biscuit crumb on top. Yeah, we'll take one of each, thanks. But, be quick: launching on Tuesday, February 22, these special edition doughnuts are only available for a limited time, so you'll want to hustle. And you won't want to tell your personal trainer. Krispy Kreme's Hershey's doughnuts launch in-store, online and at 7-Elevens on Tuesday, February 22 — and will be available for a limited time.
Summer is in the air, and with it the smell of fresh popcorn, as starlight screenings return to Lido's Rooftop Cinema in Hawthorn. Perched atop the eight-screen picture house overlooking Glenferrie Road, the outdoor screen will once again light up with a selection of new release movies in the open air. The Lido on the Roof season kicks off on Thursday, November 7, with The Irishman. Martin Scorsese's new gangster flick is one of a number of hotly anticipated summer movies on the program, with other highlights including Stephen King's Doctor Sleep, dark revenge film Judy and Punch and the new Charlie's Angels starring Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska. Oh, and it's also screening Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker at midnight with live cantina tunes, Star Wars-inspired cocktails and prizes for best dressed. This one'll sell out, so book a ticket ASAP if you're keen. For the full program, hit the Lido Cinemas website.
The wine world takes itself pretty seriously at the best of times. But one award-winning vineyard dialling down the pretence for something more nonchalant is Innocent Bystander. Born in the Yarra Valley in 2004, the brand hasn't been afraid to go against the grain. And now it's leaning into what makes it different with the launch of a new Mobile Cellar Door — a custom-built Airstream ready to take its vino wares on the road. Before this chrome-covered wonder travels to distant lands, the winery is celebrating its debut with a suitably care-free bash: The Innocent Bystander Born Different Party. Taking over a Flinders Street warehouse on Saturday, November 15, this event goes far beyond your average tasting flight and note cards. Part cellar door, part creative chaos, expect top-notch food and drinks alongside unexpected experiences. Fueling this evening, Collingwood's Slowpoke Lounge & Lookout is on food duties, serving up its contentious honey-drizzled cheeseburger soaked in red wine. How's that for different? Then, Innocent Bystander is pouring its range of wines, from old favourites like pinot gris and pinot noir to fresh takes such as Easy As Shiraz and Watermelon Spritz, made into a refreshing cocktail slushie on the night. Yet the rest of the evening gets even more creative. Think tattoo artists, on-site barbers, tarot card reading, roaming drag artists, and DJs soundtracking the party with groove-driven soul, funk and house tunes. With tickets available for $25, each includes two glasses of wine and a Slowpoke cheeseburger. "At the end of the day, we're all about making seriously good wines that are best paired with great people," says Brand Manager, Georgia McNeil.
Sweet news: beloved Sydney mainstay Chat Thai is celebrating its 16th successful year — and what's a sweeter way to celebrate than with a brand-new range of dedicated desserts? Chat Thai OG Thaitown and Tokyo Lamington have teamed up to create tasty Thai-inspired treats to toast the restaurant's sweet sixteen. The Haymarket staple has continually served up an enticing array of Thai cuisine to Sydneysiders at an affordable price point for years, spanning over six Sydney locales after growing a cult following. Chat Thai OG Thaitown has decided it is time to honour its achievements with an exclusive collaboration birthing an original and unconventional snack range. By partnering with the experimental lamington brand, the much-loved Thai restaurant hopes to recognise achieving its milestone by bringing the iconic flavours of Thailand to Australians in a new and inventive offering. "This collaboration is more than a fusion of flavours; it's a celebration of two culinary worlds coming together," said Pat Laoyont, owner of Chat Thai. From Wednesday, September 20, the limited-edition birthday range will be available across three Sydney locations and Tokyo Lamington's Melbourne flagship outpost. The dedicated range will feature lamingtons inspired by Thai flavours alongside a range of savoury dishes combining a fusion of Chat Thai favourites and Australian classics. "We are honoured to partner with Chat Thai, a name synonymous with authentic Thai cuisine, to create something truly special," said Adds Eddie Stewart, co-founder of Tokyo Lamington. Among the seven lamington flavours on offer, you'll find Thai milk tea, a Khanom buaing (candied egg yolk) option, mango black sticky rice and a take on popular deep-fried pandan-flavoured ice cream. On the other hand, the savoury selection will star Chat Thai's famed Mussamun beef curry in the form of a golden, flakey pie alongside a herbaceous and chilli-forward larpb gai sausage roll and a tom yum mushroom quiche. However, this collaborative effort is only available during September, so you'll want to get in quick to get your hands on one or more exclusive treats. To find the limited-time birthday menu, hit up Chat Thai's flagship location or Boon Cafe in Haymarket or Tokyo Lamington Newtown from Wednesday, September 20 — the exclusive range will launch in Tokyo Lamington's Melbourne location later this month.
Since forming back in 1981, the Beastie Boys have enjoyed quite the career. The New York hip hop outfit has sold more than 50 million records, caused a splash with its music videos and assumedly inspired plenty of folks to dance like robots in Tokyo train stations. In 2012, it also lost one of its three members — Adam "MCA" Yauch — to cancer, then officially disbanded in 2014. The above summary barely scratches the surface, of course; however Apple TV+'s new live documentary is here to fill in the gaps. Based on surviving Beasties Mike "Mike D" Diamond and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz's bestselling Beastie Boys Book, it takes audiences through the group's ups and downs — as guided by Mike D and Ad-Rock themselves. If you're wondering exactly what Beastie Boys Story will focus on, the band's 'Paul Revere' sums it up nicely. Clearly, here's a little story that Apple TV+ has to tell about three bad brothers you know so well. And yes, it started way back in history with Ad Rock, MCA and Mike D. As directed by Being John Malkovich and Her filmmaker Spike Jonze — who also helmed the Beasties' iconic 'Sabotage' music video, as well as clips for 'Time for Livin', 'Ricky's Theme', 'Sure Shot', 'Root Down' and 'Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win' — Beastie Boys Story is drawn not only from MCA and Mike D's book, but from the live performances that followed after it hit shelves. After publication, the duo took to the stage to talk fans through their career, in a show directed by Jonze as well. So mixing the performance with archival clips and turning it into a documentary was the clear next step, really. Originally due to premiere at this year's now-cancelled SXSW, Beastie Boys Story will hit Apple TV+ globally on Friday, April 24. As the just-dropped first trailer shows, it's a wild ride — and its filled with killer tunes. Ch-check out the trailer below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCyqR2RXoQU Beastie Boys Story hits Apple TV+ on Friday, April 24+.
It's little surprise New Year's Eve celebrations are set to look a little different for 2020, thanks to a certain global pandemic. But if you've got a thing for good food, you're sure to be pretty chuffed with the brand-new event helping Melburnians wrap up the year in style. Descending on popular dining precincts across the CBD and beyond on Thursday, December 31 and Friday, January 1, is the inaugural New Year Street Feasts. The event is a collaborative effort between the City of Melbourne, the Victorian Government and Melbourne Food & Wine Festival (MFWF), which was itself postponed and then cancelled this year due to COVID-19. Featuring offerings from dozens of local bars and restaurants, it promises to help you make up for lost time on the wining and dining front. And tickets are on sale now. [caption id="attachment_791281" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Jake Roden[/caption] Eleven outdoor dining precincts will be created for the festival, appearing in top culinary spots like Flinders Lane, Little Bourke Street and Domain Road. Nearby venues from each precinct will be on board, serving up a jam-packed program of special menus and feasting experiences. Pulling inspiration from the famed piazzas of Europe, the pop-up outdoor dining set-ups will see thousands more restaurant seats added to Melbourne's streets for the occasion. You might find yourself tucking into a six-course unauthentic Indian feast at Jessi Singh's Daughter in Law, a Spanish-inspired Bomba dinner complete with heirloom tomato gazpacho and buttermilk-braised lamb shoulder, or perhaps a Bar Margaux soiree featuring champagne cocktails and roast duck. Though, with a wide lineup of venues involved, including everyone from Pellegrini's to Chin Chin and Tipo 00 to Sunda, you might find it hard to pick just one feed. Better clear that calendar, stock up on stretchy pants and dive right in. New Year Street Feasts will run at various locations across the city from Thursday, December 31 to Friday, January 1. To check out the full program and make bookings, head to the MFWF website. Top image: Bar Margaux by Parker Blain
A Noel Coward play, a series of Haydn string quartets, a concert by Clannad – wait , is this Melbourne Festival? It is but it’s the new look Melbourne Festival, now in its first year under new artistic director Josephine Ridge. Ridge’s goal with her first program has been to broaden the festival’s appeal. While there will as always be a range of offerings on the weirder side of wonderful, from an epic dramatisation of a verbatim phone conversation (Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s Life and Times), to an artist who makes playable musical instruments out of disarmed assault weapons (Pedro Reyes), the 2013 program is also aiming to draw in audiences who may normally have seen Melbourne Festival as not their thing. An expanded music program is a big part of that, bringing an eclectic range of acts from pop bands such as British India and Polyphonic Spree, to a celebration of ska, a classical program put together with the help of the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s Richard Tognetti and a concert in the dark by blind artists Amadou and Mariam. This year also sees a greater focus on commissioned works, both from local artists such as Eddie Perfect and Daniel Schlusser and from big international names such as British choreographer Hofesh Shechter. Other guests of note include much-loved Indigenous singer Archie Roach, who will be playing in a grand welcome to country to kick the festival off, Hollywood legend John Landis and celebrated French ballerina Sylvie Guillem. There’s plenty for free and even if you can’t get yourself to a single film screening, gallery exhibit, concert or performance the art will be coming to you anyway, via a series of decorative “art trams”. Ridge has just come from nine years working on the Sydney Festival, an event which she says seems to draw more emotional engagement from its audience, compared to the intellectualised response typical of Melbourne. She’s hoping this year to bring a bit of that passion south, with a program that truly gets into Melbourne’s heart.
A festival with Christina Aguilera doing her first Australian show since 2007 is quite the big deal. The same event spanning 165 artists at 60-plus events — all in Victoria — is positively massive. That's Always Live, which returns for 2023 for 17 days from Friday, November 24–Sunday, December 10. This year's feast of shows also includes Swedish DJ and producer Eric Prydz bringing his HOLO set our way in an Australia–New Zealand exclusive; songwriter and producer Jai Paul also playing his only shows in this neck of the woods; Jessie Ware putting on two intimate evenings outside her Summer Camp headlining stint; and Zach Bryan's first-ever Australian concert. Already on the Meredith bill, Caroline Polachek has added a solo gig at Melbourne's Forum Theatre. Also a huge highlight: BLAKTIVISM at Hamer Hall, with King Stingray, Tasman Keith, Emma Donovan, Uncle Bart Willoughby, Deline Briscoe, Sorong Samarai and Suga Cane Mamas. For Swifties, tribute gig Taylor Made will see Alex The Astronaut, Charley, Clare Bowditch, Emily Wurramurra, Kate Miller-Heidke, Lisa Mitchell and Sophia J Smith shaking off their best Taylor Swift covers. Returning from last year, Emma Donovan and Friends will again hero acoustic tunes from First Nations artists, while purpose-built pop-up studio SOUNDBOX will be back at the Arts Centre Melbourne forecourt. The jam-packed program also boasts the Tones and I-curated Music In the Park in Mornington, featuring The Cat Empire, The Veronicas, Budjerah, KAIIT and The Pierce Brothers; the Gonna Be Good series, with everyone from Holy Holy, Aleksiah, ILLY and The Temper Trap to Northeast Party House, Casey Barnes and Ruby Fields; Summer Camp, as already announced; and SOULTRAINS, which is getting Lee Fields & The Expressions, plus Surprise Chef, playing four venues along four Metro train lines. Still on a railway theme, there's End of the Line, a festival popping ip at the end of the train lines in Sandringham and Williamstown. Clare Bowditch headlines the former, and Alex Lahey the latter. And, music lovers can look forward to the Jamaican Food and Music Festival at Seaworks, the Ballroom Mix Tapes series at Brunswick Ballroom — which will launch brand-new releases — and a regional tour by Amyl and the Sniffers. Throw in Peter Garrett and The Alter Egos hitting Wangarratta Arts Centre, Cosmic Psychos marking their 40th anniversary and A.B. Original headlining a free show at Victoria Park Lake, and clearly the list well and truly goes on. [caption id="attachment_899478" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Raph_PH via Wikimedia Commons.[/caption]
Finally the warmer months are here, and you can make the most of the sunshine and bearable water temps by trying your hand (or feet as it were) at stand-up paddle boarding. A carry-over from ancient Polynesian times, stand-up paddle boarding (SUP) has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years as a brilliant way to sharpen that balance and exercise on the high seas – and the St Kilda shoreline provides the ideal spot to get into the swing of it in Melbourne. Plus, the sport's a whole lot easier to master than its gnarlier cousin surfing — one lesson is usually enough to have you paddling like a pro. Once you're mastered the art of stand-up paddle boarding, head to St Kilda's favourite casual bar and eatery, Pontoon. There are loads of fresh seafood plates to share and some beachside classics to choose from – absolutely perfect after spending your morning carving up the seas.
It is a law of the entertainment jungle that everywhere must eventually get into multimedia. This is true even of the zoo, which is about to play host to a truly unusual experience : I, Animal. The show takes the form of an after-hours audio tour of Melbourne Zoo, except instead of dry spoken commentary, the audio tracks incorporate music and performance tailored to the animal exhibits. There will also be live theatrical performances at different points on the tour. It’s the work of Adelaide theatre company The Border Project, who have recently done a similar piece, I Am Not An Animal, in their hometown zoo. There the show involved yodelling at the mountain goat exhibit, sci fi themes for the gibbons and actors in pink gumboots in the flamingo pond. What they’ve come up with for Melbourne remains to be seen but it’s sure to be wild.
The frogs need your help. At least 30 Australian and New Zealand species of frogs are currently considered endangered, a statistic that wasn't helped by the disastrous 2019/20 Australian bushfire season. In response to this dire frog situation, Cadbury has partnered with Taronga Zoo, Zoos Victoria and Conservation Volunteers Australia to raise awareness about at-risk frog species by replacing the iconic Freddo mascot with real amphibians on the front of each packet of Freddo Frogs. Cadbury isn't just raising awareness though, the chocolate brand has also pledged $600,000 across three years to support zoo and conservation experts in Australia and New Zealand and their efforts to save our smiley little friends. These funds are going towards research and breeding programs including a new breeding bunker at Healesville Sanctuary. Taronga is also introducing a new frog exhibit to its beloved Sydney site that centres around educating people on endangered frogs and conservation efforts. The Freddo packets, which are currently available in Australian supermarkets, feature two endangered species: the spotted tree frog and the northern corroboree frog. Both are among Australia's most endangered species. Zoos Victoria has been fighting save the former from extinction through its role in the Spotted Tree Frog Recovery Program, while Taronga Zoo has already released hundreds of corroboree frogs and thousands of eggs into Kosciuszko and Brindabella National Parks through its breeding programs. The Freddo packets are available in 12 packs or as individual Freddos at major Australian supermarkets and independent retailers. You can find out more about the campaign and donate to the conservation projects via Cadbury's website. FYI, this story includes some affiliate links. These don't influence any of our recommendations or content, but they may make us a small commission. For more info, see Concrete Playground's editorial policy.
Think there's just one Hottest 100 in January? Think again. The second important countdown of the month actually goes rather well with the music poll that just proclaimed The Wiggles' cover of Tame Impala's 'Elephant' as the nation's best track of 2021. In fact, while you were listening to the hottest songs of the past year, you might've been sipping some of these other winners. That'd be the great brews in the spotlight on the GABS Hottest 100 Aussie Craft Beers list, which does for yeasty tipples what Triple J's poll does for bangers. And, just like its music counterpart, a worthy victor has come out on top. That'd be Bentspoke Brewing Co, with the Canberra brewery taking out the top spot with its Crankshaft American IPA for the second year in a row. In doing so, it bested 2017 and 2018 winner Balter Brewing Company, which came in second with its Balter XPA; Your Mates Brewing Co, which took third spot with its Larry pale ale; and Stone & Wood's Pacific Ale, the winner of the 2011, 2015, 2016 and 2019 polls, and 2020's second-place getter, which nabbed fourth position this year. As it did in 2020, Bentspoke had five beers in the 2021 top 100 list in total, which is clearly something to toast to — also coming in 12th for its Barley Griffin Australian Pale Ale, 41st for its Sprocket American IPA, 45th for its Cluster 8 Imperial IPA and 91st for its Red Nut Red IPA. Run by GABS — or the annual festival also known as the 'Great Australian Beer SpecTAPular' — the countdown is a people's-choice poll decided by booze-lovers around the country. Now in its 14th year, it saw a huge 2238 beers nominated this time around, hailing from 281 breweries. Still playing the numbers game, 58 beermakers nabbed a spot on the 2021 list — and, states-wise, Queensland emerged victorious with 30 brews on the full rundown of 100 beers, followed by Victoria with 22, New South Wales with 20, the Australian Capital Territory with 12, and South Australia and Western Australia with eight apiece. 2021 was also a big year for new brews, with 37 beers making their GABS Hottest 100 debut. And, low- and no-alcohol tipples also made a splash, including Heaps Normal's Quiet XPA debuting at 20 and Sobah Beverages' zero-alcohol Pepperberry IPA taking 69th place. If you're thinking "less background, more beer", here's what you've been waiting for: the rundown of the best beverages from the past year that just keep tempting tastebuds. Black Hops, Better Beer, Capital (with two showings), Ballistic and Young Henrys round out the top ten, while Coopers, Bridge Road, Pirate Life, Gage Roads, Kaiju!, Heads of Noosa, Brick Lane, Moon Dog, 4 Pines, Philter, Stomping Ground, Grifter, Hawke's and Mountain Goat and are among the other brands featured. Working your way through the whole 100 isn't just a great way to show your appreciation for locally made brews, either — consider it research for the 2022 countdown. GABS HOTTEST 100 AUSSIE CRAFT BEERS OF 2021: BentSpoke Brewing Co — Crankshaft IPA Balter Brewing — Balter XPA Your Mates Brewing Co — Larry Stone & Wood Brewing Co — Pacific Ale Black Hops Brewery — G.O.A.T. Better Beer — Better Beer Zero Carb Capital Brewing Co — Capital XPA Ballistic Beer Co — Hawaiian Haze Capital Brewing Co — Coast Ale Young Henrys — Newtowner Coopers Brewery — Original Pale Ale BentSpoke Brewing Co — Barley Griffin Balter Brewing — Balter Hazy Bridge Road Brewers — Beechworth Pale Ale Beerfarm — Royal Haze Pirate Life Brewing — South Coast Pale Ale Gage Roads Brewing Co — Single Fin KAIJU! Beer — KRUSH! Tropical Pale Ale Black Hops Brewery — East Coast Haze Heaps Normal — Quiet XPA Heads Of Noosa Brewing Co — Japanese Lager Brick Lane Brewing Co — One Love Pale Ale Little Creatures — Little Creatures Pale Ale Moon Dog Craft Brewery — Old Mate Philter Brewing — Philter XPA Mountain Goat Beer — GOAT Very Enjoyable Beer Feral Brewing Co — Biggie Juice Brookvale Union — Ginger Beer 4 Pines Brewing Co — 4 Pines Pacific Ale Big Shed Brewing Concern — Boozy Fruit Hawke's Brewing — Hawke's Patio Pale Bright Brewery — Alpine Lager Grifter Brewing Co — Pale Blackflag Brewing — Rage Juicy Pale Green Beacon Brewing Co — Wayfarer Stomping Ground Brewing Co — Gipps St Pale Ale Akasha Brewing Co — Hopsmith IPA Dainton Beer — Blood Orange NEIPA Revel Brewing Co — Strawberries & Cream Sour Ale Coopers Brewery — Sparkling Ale BentSpoke Brewing Co — Sprocket Capital Brewing Co — Hang Loose Juice Blood Orange NEIPA Coopers Brewery — Coopers XPA Your Mates Brewing Co — Sally BentSpoke Brewing Co — Cluster 8 Black Hops Brewery — Neverland Balter Brewing — Eazy Hazy Ballistic Beer Co — Hawaiian Haze IPA Capital Brewing Co West Coast NEIPA — Mountain Culture Collab Coopers Brewery — Coopers Pacific Pale Ale Bodriggy Brewing Co — Speccy Juice Colonial Brewing Co — Colonial Pale Ale Grifter Brewing Co — Serpents Kiss Sunday Road Brewing — Cryotherapy Deeds Brewing — Juice Train 10 Toes Brewery — Pipeline Pale Burleigh Brewing Co — Bighead No-carb Lager Hop Nation Brewing Co — J-Juice Range Brewing Co — Lights + Music Black Hops Brewery — Hop Swap Black Hops Brewery — Black Hops Pale Ale Your Mates Brewing Co — Macca Balter Brewing — Captain Sensible Capital Brewing Co — Trail Pale Ale Hawke's Brewing — Hawke's Lager Burleigh Brewing Co — Twisted Palm One Drop Brewing Co — Double Vanilla Custard Pancake Imperial Nitro Thickshake IPA Cronulla Beer Co — Next Level XPA Sobah Beverages — Pepperberry IPA Jetty Road Brewery — Jetty Road Pale Ale Brouhaha Brewery — Strawberry Rhubarb Sour Stone & Wood Brewing Co — Cloud Catcher Blackman's Brewery — Juicy Banger 4 Pines Brewing Co — 4 Pines Pale Ale Brick Lane Brewing Co — Sidewinder Hazy Pale Hop Nation Brewing Co — Rattenhund Sunday Road Brewing — Enigma Ale Otherside Brewing Co — Anthem IPA Bad Shepherd Brewing Co — Peanut Butter Porter Ballistic Beer Co — Mexican Hot Chocolate Stout Black Hops Brewery — Hornet Little Creatures — Pacific Ale Your Mates Brewing Co — Eddie Dainton Beer — Jungle Juice Bodriggy Brewing Co — Utropia Pale Ale Young Henrys — The Unifier Hawkers Beer — West Coast IPA Mismatch Brewing Co — Mismatch Session Ale Gage Roads Brewing Co — Side Track All Day XPA Little Bang Brewing Co — Face Inverter BentSpoke Brewing Co — Red Nut Tumut River Brewing Co — Ginja Ninja Eumundi Brewery — Eumundi Alcoholic Ginger Beer Deeds Brewing — Once More Into the Fray Akasha Brewing Co — Mosaic IPA Ballistic Beer Co — Low Ha Capital Brewing Co — Rock Hopper IPA Wayward Brewing Co — Raspberry Berliner Weisse Willie The Boatman — Nectar Of The Hops Balter Brewing — CryoHaze For more information about the GABS Hottest 100 Aussie Craft Beers of 2021, head to the GABS website.
Dread doesn't get enough credit. It's the emotion of worried anticipation and, as unpleasant and unsettling as it may be, it's the backbone of any truly unnerving horror movie. While startling bumps might elicit momentary jumps, spending an entire film in a state of distress is another experience entirely. Unravelling the struggles of a family wrestling with loss, trauma and unexplained events, Hereditary serves up more than a few well-executed shocks — but it's the picture's unrelenting mood of apprehension and anxiety that marks Ari Aster's debut feature as a disturbing, discomforting masterpiece. Hereditary begins with a piece of text that no one likes to read: a funeral notice for the Graham family matriarch. Yet as the deceased's relatives prepare for the service, only 13-year-old Charlie (Milly Shapiro) appears visibly upset. If her mum Annie (Toni Collette) bears any sorrow about the passing of her own mother, it's channelled into the miniature dioramas she's busy handcrafting — recreations of her sprawling forest-adjacent house and events from her everyday life, including the dearly departed's final days. Still, all isn't particularly well in the slowly disintegrating Graham household. There's distance between Annie and her psychiatrist husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne), while teenage son Peter (Alex Wolff) is happier smoking joints between his high school classes than interacting with his family. If the story so far sounds like a routine drama, that's Aster's wheelhouse in a way. In acclaimed short films Munchausen and The Strange Thing About the Johnsons, the writer-director probed the problems that reside behind blood ties — only to take seemingly commonplace scenarios, and then up the ante in a provocative and unexpected manner. In Hereditary, he plagues the movie's protagonists with weird occurrences, including strange words etched into walls, odd flashes of light, upsetting strangers and alarming seances. He is making a horror film, after all. But more than that, Aster doubles down on tragedy, stretches the characters' emotional limits and heightens their psychological strain, trapping the Grahams in a situation devoid of hope, escape or choice. There's a reason that one of the movie's most pivotal scenes, involving Annie unburdening her pain to a support group, expands upon the family's history of mental stress. As we've already mentioned, all of the above mightn't sound overly revolutionary, especially if you've seen Rosemary's Baby, The Shining or The Babadook, three films Hereditary recalls in the best possible fashion. In the same vein as many supernatural spookfests, the involvement of a mysterious woman (Ann Dowd) who tries to help Annie with her grief mightn't sound unusual either. But in a movie that embraces the bleakness of life, and the way that grimness can feel like an unshakeable curse, it's how Hereditary tells its sinister tale that lifts the picture well beyond standard scary territory. If Annie's tiny creations appear painstaking and precise, they've got nothing on Aster's level of meticulousness. Thanks to roaming, grey-hued cinematography, every frame of the film bristles with unease. Courtesy of a score heavy on saxophone and percussion, every sound rattles the nerves. And, with the movie taking the slow-burning approach to an intense and insidious extreme, dwelling in the Grahams' unhappy existence is a fist-clenching, teeth-grinding exercise in deep-seeded tension. One of the year's best flicks — frightening or otherwise —Hereditary has another trick up its sleeve. It's not a huge twist or an especially terrifying moment, although the film contains both. Simply put, the movie wouldn't and couldn't be the powerhouse factory of dread that it is without Collette. The Australian actor played with all things unnerving back in The Sixth Sense, but now haunts this picture like a woman possessed with a lifetime's worth of worry, fear and anger. While Shapiro and Wolff also play their parts to perfection, Collette's expressive face couldn't encapsulate Hereditary's horrors better. When she reacts with fright, pain, anxiety and terror, so does the audience. Keen to know more about this terrifying flick? We went behind the scenes with Hereditary director Ari Aster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3__y-uPwbe8
It's an interesting experience to watch a film when you know exactly how it's going to end. And when that end is tragedy, it's more interesting still. In the case of Fruitvale Station, Ryan Coogler's debut feature film, we're aware from the word go that the film culminates in the fatal shooting of a young man. Don't fret, it's not a spoiler: the movie opens with the camera phone footage of the shooting captured by witnesses. It's an interesting way to open the film, as you become instantly aware of the gravity of the movie. You have just witnessed a man die, and you are about to see why. Twenty-two-year-old Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan) was shot in the back by police officers in the early hours of New Year's Day, 2009, and Fruitvale Station lays out his final hours. The film tracks Grant's relationships with the major players in his life — his mother, his girlfriend, his daughter. The audience is allowed, in a somewhat voyeuristic way, to look into the life of a regular guy. A life that ends up being cut far too short. The film itself is beautifully made. It's filmed entirely with a handheld camera (much like another Sundance Winner, Beasts of the Southern Wild), which adds to the effect of the audience bearing witness to a life, not a story. The camerawork also mimics the actual footage at the start of the film, lending a certain truthfulness to the entire piece. The score is played down and sombre, and so doesn't detract from the dialogue, the plot and the actors at all, while still building a mood of dull dread. The actors are phenomenal, with Jordan (from The Wire and Friday Night Lights) tenaciously capturing the character of a young man yearning for a second chance. In support, The Help's Octavia Spencer is the perfect picture of a concerned and loving mother, and 29-year-old indie star Melonie Diaz is beautifully heartbreaking as Grant's girlfriend, Sophina. The film was produced by screen legend Forest Whitaker and has cleaned up on the awards circuit, including taking out the Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The events that transpired at Fruitvale Station featured heavily in the US headlines, detailing the questionably unsubstantiated murder of a young man by law enforcement officers. Oscar Grant's death was a terrible tragedy, and Fruitvale Station carries that emotion onto the silver screen. A film of unmet redemption, it's a stunningly made, deeply emotional story that will have you glued to your seat and, perhaps, wiping away tears. https://youtube.com/watch?v=ceVVVils8z4
Director Pablo Berger's retelling of the Grimm Brothers' Snow White story is generating a lot of buzz right now. A silent, black-and-white, Spanish reinterpretation of that well-known childhood tale, the film is wowing critics and charming the pants off judges at film festivals worldwide (particularly San Sebastian and Toronto). It well may snaffle the Best Foreign Film Oscar. Macarena García gives a much-applauded performance as Carmen, a young orphan girl who suffers under the tyranny of her wicked stepmother Encarna, played with evil relish by Maribel Verdú. Long story short, she changes her name to Blancanieves (Spanish for Snow White, obvs), teams up with a crew of wily dwarves and becomes a successful bullfighter. There's lots of flamenco music, some fabulous cinematography and a stellar Spanish cast. Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian enthuses, "All I can say is that there's a flash of pure inspiration, unfakeable and unmistakable, in this extraordinarily enjoyable film." If you struggled to sit through 2011's silent black-and-white hit The Artist you might already be ruling this out — but you should know that Blancanieves is a very different film, one that Berger had already been working on for eight years by the time Jean Dujardin's face was first lighting up the screen at Cannes. Blancanieves is in cinemas on October 24, and thanks to Rialto Distribution, we have ten double in-season passes to give away. To be in the running, subscribe to the Concrete Playground newsletter (if you haven't already), then email us with your name and address. Sydney: win.sydney@concreteplayground.com.au Melbourne: win.melbourne@concreteplayground.com.au Brisbane: win.brisbane@concreteplayground.com.au
Get your fill of the best vegan food in town at the Vegan Day Out. Come September 8 and 9, The Cruelty Free Shop is putting together a walking tour of vegan cafes, restaurants and retailers, many of which will be offering discounts, deals and free samples to anyone who stops by. For Saturday and Sunday, socially conscious eaters can stop by The Cruelty Free Shop on Johnston Street, and grab a map outlining their route. From there, it's all about making your way to to plant-based delights aplenty — and making a day (or two) of it. Whether you're a dyed-in-the-wool vegan or just curious to give it a go, you'll find a whole world of retailers catering to animal-free eating, offering meal deals, two-for-ones, coffee, wine tastings and savings on vegan groceries. The Cruelty Free Shop will also be running its own tastings throughout the day, as well as offering discounts on some of its 3000+ products.
Winter is coming, as Game of Thrones has been telling us for years — but the show's final season is coming first. Before the weather turns cold again in the southern hemisphere, fans of the epic HBO series will be able to discover how the popular series wraps up, so mark your calendars accordingly. After leaving everyone hanging for the entirety of 2018, HBO has announced that Game of Thrones' eighth and final season will hit the small screen in April 2019, nearly two years after season seven premiered in July 2017. The US network hasn't announced an exact premiere date as yet, but even knowing which month to look forward to is good news. If you're eager to get your fix of the series' staples — that is, battles, bloodshed, betrayal, bare chests, family bickering, Jon Snow knowing nothing (including about his long-lost aunt) and plenty of dragons — then you can almost start counting down the days. HBO revealed the month in a fairly generic video on the Game of Thrones Facebook page, and you can probably expect a precise date and even a trailer to follow soon enough. If you're looking for clues from past seasons, seasons one to six all premiered between March 31 and April 24, so really any Sunday in April, US time — so Monday in Australia — is possible. Of course, we all know that this isn't really the end of the world created by author George RR Martin — and no, we're not talking about the now seven-year wait for his next book in the literary franchise, The Winds of Winter. A prequel TV series to Game of Thrones is in the works, set thousands of years before the events we've all be watching since 2011, with Naomi Watts set to star. Come next year, you'll also be able to tour original GoT filming locations in Northern Ireland. https://www.facebook.com/GameOfThrones/videos/734669123560089/ Game of Thrones season eight will arrive on HBO in April, 2019.
It has been more than three months since wearing a face mask was made compulsory in metropolitan Melbourne. And, although many of the city's strict COVID-19 requirements are slowly easing — including allowing Melburnians to leave the house for any reason, and the reopening of hospitality venues for dine-in service — the need to cover your face isn't changing any time soon anywhere in Victoria. After tightening the rules around wearing a mask at the end of September, with fitted face masks now required, Premier Daniel Andrews has confirmed that Victorians will be donning them for at least the rest of 2020. "Masks need to be with us across the whole state for some time to come," he advised. "We'll be wearing masks, I think, at least until the end of the year. And we could be wearing masks into next year," Premier Andrews noted. "It is a very low price to pay for potentially a very significant benefit," he said, while also stating that the mask requirement will remain in place for "as long as it serves a useful purpose". Premier Andrews made the announcement about masks as part of his daily press conference on Tuesday, October 27, when he outlined the changes to in-home visiting rules — allowing every household to visit another household, or host another household, once a day. As has been the case since late September, the only face coverings that are currently acceptable are fitted face masks that cover the nose and mouth. Although bandanas, scarves and face shields were previously allowed, that's no longer the case. If you're now wondering where to grab a fitted mask, we've put together a rundown of local companies making and selling them. For more information about the status of COVID-19 and the current restrictions, head over to the Department of Health and Human Services website.
UPDATE, December 11, 2020: The Prom is screening in select cinemas in Melbourne, and is available to stream via Netflix. A word of warning to filmmakers eager to make the next big on-screen musical: cast James Corden at your peril. It may now seem like a lifetime ago that Cats proved a gobsmacking catastrophe, but that 2019 movie's horrors are impossible to shake — and while Corden's latest, The Prom, thankfully doesn't resort to repeating the word 'jellicle' over and over again to try to convince the world that it means something, it still follows in the feline-focused flick's paw prints as this year's all-singing, all-dancing misfire. The two films' common star is grating and relies upon gratuitous overacting in both features. He's hardly alone in bombing and flailing, though. In The Prom's case, a 2018 Broadway success with an important message about acceptance and being true to one's self has been transformed into an over-long star vehicle, as well as a movie that can't see past its sequin-studded pageantry and smug attitude to actually practise what it preaches. Miscast from the get-go, Corden plays Barry, a Broadway veteran playing second fiddle to multi-Tony-winning drama diva Dee Dee (Meryl Streep, Little Women) in Eleanor!, a new production about former US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Initially, the pair is on top of the world after the show's opening night — but then the reviews start piling in and piling on. Distraught from the critical savaging as they drown their sorrows with perennial chorus girl Angie (Nicole Kidman, The Undoing) and Juilliard-trained actor-turned-sitcom lead-turned bartender Trent (Andrew Rannells, The Boys in the Band), they concoct a plan to get back in the showbiz industry's good graces. Scrolling through Twitter, Angie spies a news story about Indiana teenager Emma (feature debutant Jo Ellen Pellman), whose high school has just completely cancelled the prom because she wanted to bring her girlfriend. As quick as a burst of confetti, Barry, Dee Dee, Trent and Angie are on a Godspell tour bus to America's midwest to rally against this injustice and whip themselves up some flattering publicity. In the screenplay written by Bob Martin and Chad Beguelin, both of whom worked on the original stage production, this is all meant to be a joke: that fading, has-been and never-were celebrities shallowly and calculatingly try to use one young woman's horrific plight for their own gain, that is. But The Prom likes the gag so much that it misguidedly decides that favouring stars over substance is the best approach in general. No one is disparaging Streep, Kidman, Rannells or Corden's fame or status, or that of their fellow well-known costars Keegan-Michael Key (Playing with Fire) and Kerry Washington (Little Fires Everywhere). While Corden is terrible, some of his high-profile colleagues have their moments — a flame-haired Streep eats the often neon-hued scenery and loves every bite, for example. When there's a tale to be told about an ostracised queer teen who is cruelly rejected by her school's Parents and Teachers' Association and her peers, and who sees her quest to simply be treated like everyone else become a national scandal, though, that story is far more interesting than the arrival of a self-centred quartet of blow-ins from New York. Perhaps balancing the two parts of The Prom's narrative works on the stage; on the screen, Emma seems as much of an afterthought to director Ryan Murphy (Eat Pray Love, plus TV's Pose and American Horror Story) as she is to Dee Dee and company. Both the movie and the characters it chooses to focus on have their own senses of worth pumped up by even feigning to care about something else, but the fact that the film and its main players can all convince themselves they're great doesn't mean they can do the same with those watching. Again, this terrain is designed to fuel the feature's main gags. Case in point: we're supposed to laugh heartily and knowingly when Dee Dee interrupts the latest PTA meeting — where Key, as a caring principal, is battling Washington, who plays the conservative parent leading the charge against Emma — with a song called 'It's Not About Me'. Alas, almost everything about The Prom constantly falls so flat that its attempt at self-referential humour is as hackneyed as the concept that a bunch of celebs can solve homophobia with a few ditties, a splash of dancing, and some fabulous outfits and decor. When Rannells' Trent heads to the local mall and attempts to do just that on one occasion — pointing out that Emma's schoolmates are picking and choosing which parts of the bible they're faithful about upholding, all via singing and breaking out fancy footwork on an escalator — it does give The Prom one of its best moments. The scene in question also emphasises how far the film is from many better, smarter, savvier-executed musicals on-screen and on-stage, however. Rannells has sung about faith and its contradictions before as an original Broadway cast member in the brutally clever The Book of Mormon, a comparison The Prom really shouldn't be trying to conjure up in viewers' heads. With Glee, Murphy made an entire teen-centric TV show that nodded to pop culture influences it could never live up to, so The Prom really just sees the filmmaker do more of the same but worse. That said, when the film actually spends time with Emma, her secret girlfriend Alyssa (Hamilton's Ariana DeBose) and even their anti-LGBTQIA+ classmates — following in Glee's footsteps in another way — it's a better movie. But the temptation to value flash over meaning, and to think that simply saying 'discrimination is bad, here's some glitter', never subsidies. Although it's shot by the acclaimed Matthew Libatique (an Oscar-nominee for Black Swan and A Star Is Born), the film's continually, needlessly and irritatingly circling cinematography captures The Prom's struggles perfectly, because it's too caught up in shiny things, recognisable faces and disposable songs to let everything that should matter, including its message, have any real impact. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ0jBNa6JUQ
Next time you fly domestically, you might notice something missing during your time in the air. Virgin Australia has announced an overhaul of its menus, effective immediately, with one big change bound to hit economy passengers' stomachs: the scrapping of free snacks. Those small bites to eat that helped stop your hunger pangs while zipping around the country have been axed, in favour of a new lineup of snacks to purchase. The airline says that it "has found that travellers would prefer to choose their own food and beverage in a buy onboard model on domestic flights, instead of receiving a predetermined snack." It also advises that the price of the snack has been taken out of the company's economy ticket prices, making them slightly cheaper. So, unless you stock up on food in the airport, you'll be forking out some cash while you're in the air — on cheese and crackers, muffins, chips, chocolate, lollies and two types of noodles. The drinks list includes soft drinks, hot chocolates, wine, beer, spirits and premixed gin and sodas, but you will still get complimentary tea, coffee and water. Virgin plans to expand its economy menu down the line, too, once the demand for flights gets back to near pre-pandemic levels. For those travelling in business class, the airline has dropped a bigger range of hot meals and salads, including smashed avocado on sourdough for breakfast, haloumi and quinoa salad for lunch, and lamb and rosemary pie for dinner, all of which is being served on crockery and glassware — and with proper cutlery as well. For more information about Virgin Australia's menu changes — which are in effect now — head to the airline's website.
Fancy a Tassie wine tasting extravaganza, but can't find the time (or cash) to make the trip? How about a quick hop over to North Melbourne instead? If you can get there on Sunday, August 13, you'll be living the Apple Isle dream. That's because one-day wine festival Vin Diemen is coming back to Melbourne for a third year. Your ticket will get you a take-home wine glass and access to the creations of a whole slew of Tasmanian winemakers, who are crossing the strait to show us what their island is made of. Expect to sample some of the best Pinot Noir in the nation, alongside top-shelf Chardonnay, Riesling and sparkling — cold climate varieties get a better go in Tassie than nearly anywhere else in Oz. And giving the wines the respect they deserve will be a bunch of tasty Tasmanian morsels, including cheeses from Bruny Island Cheese. To top it off, you'll also be able to sample some Tassie spirits and Willie Smith's Organic Cider. Tickets are $50 early bird and $60 general admission, and go on sale on June 13.
Beers? Check. Burgers? Check. Unlimited arcade games? That's what we're talking about. Forgotten Worlds in Collingwood is teaming up with five different local breweries for five late-night tap takeovers aimed at gamers and beer nerds alike as part of this year's Good Beer Week. A $35 ticket gets you two free pots on arrival and access to all the vintage games your thumbs will be able to take. Will the beer improve your reaction time? No, probably not. And neither will playing one-handed while shovelling BurgerTime burgers into your gob with the other. Y'know what though? We reckon it just might be worth it.
UPDATE, June 2, 2023: Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is available to stream via Netflix, Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. When Anthony Bourdain strode around the world, and across our screens, in food-meets-travel series A Cook's Tour, No Reservations, The Layover and Parts Unknown, he was as animated as he was acerbic and enigmatic. Beneath his shock of greying hair, the lanky New Yorker was relatable, engaging to a seemingly effortless degree and radiated a larger-than-life air, too. The latter didn't just apply because he was a face on TV, where plenty gets that bigger-than-reality sheen, but because he appeared to truly embrace all that life entailed in that hectic whirlwind of travelling, eating and waxing lyrical about both. Arriving three years after his suicide in 2018, documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain captures that. It's so filled with Bourdain thanks to all that time he'd spent in front of the camera, it'd be near-impossible for it not to. But it also lurks under a shadow due to its now-infamous choice to use artificial intelligence to add dialogue that its subject didn't speak. Watching the film, there's no way of knowing which words Bourdain merely penned but didn't utter; the technology truly is that seamless. It still resounds as an unnecessary move, though, especially when such lines might've been incorporated in ways that wouldn't sit at stark odds with his visible liveliness. Roadrunner delves behind the facade that Bourdain presented to the world, of course. It notes his death immediately and goes in search of the sorrow and pain that might've led to it, as mulled over by friends such fellow chefs David Chang and Éric Ripert, and artist David Choe; crew members on his shows; and his second wife Ottavia Busia. Still, once you know about the AI, there's a sense of disconnection that echoes through the doco — because it surveys all that Bourdain was, compiles all of this stellar material and still resorted to digital resurrection. Thankfully, the passion and curiosity that always made Bourdain appear so spirited — yes, so alive, as compared to being vocally recreated by AI after his death — still makes Roadrunner worth watching. That's true for Bourdain fans and newcomers alike, although director Morgan Neville (Oscar-winner 20 Feet From Stardom) doesn't use his two-hour-long film as a birth-to-life primer for the uninitiated. Crucially, as also proved the case with his 2018 Mr Rogers documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?, Neville jumps through the details of Bourdain's life in a way that also muses on what his success and popularity said about the world. Why he struck such a chord is as essential an ingredient in Roadrunner as how he went from cook to celebrity chef, TV host, best-selling author and travel documentarian. The footage of Bourdain — from his shows, obviously, as well as from a plethora of TV interviews, behind-the-scenes clips and home videos — is edited together with the same restlessness that the man himself always exuded. You don't spend most of your year travelling if you can be easily pinned down, after all. It's a wise choice on Neville and editors Eileen Meyer (Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution) and Aaron Wickenden's (Feels Good Man) parts, but Neville has long had a knack for making his films feel like his subjects. Talking-head chats are spliced throughout, offering further details and grappling with how Bourdain's story ends; however, Roadrunner is repeatedly at its finest when it's peering at him and showing how his work encouraged us all not just to watch, but to eat, travel, think, talk and live. That said, those interviews aren't merely filler. With Chang and Choe in particular, they show Bourdain's friends confronting the type of grief that doesn't ever fade. Biographical documentaries about famous figures who are no longer with us inherently offer the same kind experience to the masses — giving viewers the opportunity to reflect upon their central figures, all while gifting us with more time in their presence — and seeing Chang and Choe struggle so openly cements that parallel. If only Roadrunner was as sensitive when covering Bourdain's relationship with actor Asia Argento, his girlfriend before his death. Argento isn't interviewed but, in the film's second poor choice, its search for a reason behind Bourdain's suicide makes an uncomfortable and overt swerve in her direction. Whether made now or after more time had elapsed since his passing, a film about Bourdain was always going to be complicated. The big, obvious, easy draw — spending longer with him on-screen — is there for all to see, and delightfully so. It's bittersweet, naturally, because there's no divorcing all those images and soundbites from the reason that this movie even exists. It's heartwrenching as well, a sensation heightened every time his upset, angry, frustrated pals make appearances. It's thoughtful in pondering what Bourdain gave the world, and what it took from him in return. It's also messy because there are no answers to much that it contemplates, and also because it sits under a cloud sparked by that superfluous AI. As its title plainly states, Roadrunner is indeed a film about Anthony Bourdain, though — and, even with its missteps, it recognises the complexity of that task. It really didn't need to put his words back into his mouth to make you wish his tale, and his life, was still simmering; that's what it was always going to plate up regardless.
With a certain mid-November leaders' summit coming up ever sooner, you'd be forgiven for succumbing to some of the niggling public confusion that's abounding in Brisbane. Common questions are "What even is the G20?" and, more importantly, "Do I get a public holiday?" While we can't answer those ones for you, we can tell you that reigning Brisbane burger empire Burger Urge is crafting a special, G20-exclusive burger that'll give meaning and purpose to those coming three days of inevitable road closures, military-level security, and jokes about presidents with a penchant for macho publicity stunts involving doing equestrian sports in the (semi) nude. It's called The Big Bad Vlad, it's billed as the "taste of G20," and it's only available when the G20's happening — November 14, 15 and 16. Burger Urge say they're not naming names, and that "The Big Bad Vlad in no way singles out any individual leader." But with the timely tagline "Shirtfront one today!", picking up one of these babies is basically the same as giving a big fat up yours to a certain oppressive leader of an unnamed ex-Soviet megastate, a la this. (The cringe level on that one is high, click at your own discretion.) The Big Bad Vlad comes from a long tradition of continually rotating Burger Urge specials. Recently they've cooked up Fat Elvis burgers with lashings of bacon and three types of sauce, made magic of a plain ol' bun with pork and fried noodles and called it The Genghis Khan, and gone all US of A with ranch sauce and cheddar for The Manhattan Project. Now, while world leaders and delegates are discussing Important Stuff like the future of world economies and labour mobility, you can do your bit for sticking it to the shirtless horse-riding man. So what, according to Burger Urge, does that undoubtedly highly satisfactory feeling taste like? Although the burger contains their much-loved thick-cut fries, the Vlad is far from being your regular old chip butty — this is a megalithic stack of two chicken breasts, two rashers of bacon, two slices of cheese, lettuce 'n' tomato, and a dollop of sweet chilli mayo that you'll be hard pressed not to slop all down your own shirtfront. Yeah. Shirtfront that one, Mr. President-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. Image by Ria Novosti.
Get stuck in to a New Year's Eve feast at Nieuw Amsterdam in the CBD. The multilevel, New York-inspired cocktail bar and restaurant is throwing an end of year banquet, and damn does it look tasty. Dine on three courses, including chilli corn fritters, lobster tail, fried potato salad and oyster with shallots, followed by peanut butter and chocolate pie and cheesecake with strawberries. Not too shabby for $75 a head. They'll also have DJs playing until 5am, in case you feel like dropping in after the fireworks. But if you want to attend the banquet, bookings are essential. To book a table, contact Nieuw Amsterdam on (03) 9602 2111.
Streaming services overflow with TV series to watch, with new titles added daily, but the best of them achieve a particular feat. We all have our favourite television show that it feels like we live inside; however, that isn't a sensation that any old program can manage. From 2023's new TV offerings so far, only the best of the best can make that claim. If you've already started planning a move to Tasmania thanks to an Australian murder-mystery comedy, you understand this. If you feel in your bones like you know how you'd react to the apocalypse, or having Pedro Pascal as your surrogate dad, you do as well. And if you just want to hang out in a coffee cafe with Aussie comedians, you're definitely ticking that box. They're some of 2023's best new TV shows so far — the series that, no matter how little couch time you have or how easy it is to just revisit Parks and Recreation again, you need to see. After hours and hours of viewing, we've chosen 15 of them now that 2023 is halfway through. Play catchup and you won't be able to say that you don't have anything to watch before the year is through. DEADLOCH Trust Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan, Australia's favourite Kates and funniest double act, to make a killer TV show about chasing a killer that's the perfect sum of two excellent halves. Given their individual and shared backgrounds, including creating and starring in cooking show sendup The Katering Show and morning television spoof Get Krack!n, the pair unsurprisingly add another reason to get chuckling to their resumes; however, with Deadloch, they also turn their attention to crime procedurals. The Kates already know how to make viewers laugh. They've established their talents as brilliant satirists and lovers of the absurd in the process. Now, splashing around those skills in Deadloch's exceptional eight-episode first season lead by Kate Box (Stateless) and Madeleine Sami (The Breaker Upperers), they've also crafted a dead-set stellar murder-mystery series. Taking place in a sleepy small town, commencing with a body on a beach, and following both the local cop trying to solve the case and the gung-ho blow-in from a big city leading the enquiries, Deadloch has all the crime genre basics covered from the get-go. The spot scandalised by the death is a sitcom-esque quirky community, another television staple that McCartney and McLennan nail. Parody requires deep knowledge and understanding; you can't comically rip into and riff on something if you aren't familiar with its every in and out. That said, Deadloch isn't in the business of simply mining well-worn TV setups and their myriad of conventions for giggles, although it does that expertly. With whip-smart writing, the Australian series is intelligent, hilarious, and all-round cracking as a whodunnit-style noir drama and as a comedy alike — and one of the streaming highlights of the year. Deadloch streams via Prime Video. Read our full review. I'M A VIRGO No one makes social satires like Boots Riley. Late in I'm a Virgo, when a character proclaims that "all art is propaganda", these words may as well be coming from The Coup frontman-turned-filmmaker's very own lips. In only his second screen project after the equally impassioned, intelligent, energetic, anarchic and exceptional 2018 film Sorry to Bother You, Riley doesn't have his latest struggling and striving hero utter this sentiment, however. Rather, it springs from the billionaire technology mogul also known as The Hero (Walton Goggins, George & Tammy), who's gleefully made himself the nemesis of 13-foot-tall series protagonist Cootie (Jharrel Jerome, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse). Knowing that all stories make a statement isn't just the domain of activists fighting for better futures for the masses, as Riley is, and he wants to ensure that his audience knows it. Indeed, I'm a Virgo is a show with something to say, and forcefully. Its creator is angry again, too, and wants everyone giving him their time to be bothered — and he still isn't sorry for a second. With Jerome as well-cast a lead as Atlanta's Lakeith Stanfield was, I'm a Virgo also hinges upon a surreal central detail: instead of a Black telemarketer discovering the impact of his "white voice", it hones in on the oversized Cootie. When it comes to assimilation, consider this series Sorry to Bother You's flipside, because there's no way that a young Black man that's more than double the tallest average height is passing for anyone but himself. Riley knows that Black men are too often seen as threats and targets regardless of their stature anyway. He's read the research showing that white folks can perceive Black boys as older and less innocent. As Cootie wades through these experiences himself, there isn't a single aspect of I'm a Virgo that doesn't convey Riley's ire at the state of the world — that doesn't virtually scream about it, actually — with this series going big and bold over and over. I'm a Virgo streams via Prime Video. Read our full review. DEAD RINGERS Twin gynaecologists at the top of their game. Blood-red costuming and bodily fluids. The kind of perturbing mood that seeing flesh as a source of horror does and must bring. A stunning eye for stylish yet unsettling imagery. Utterly impeccable lead casting. When 1988's Dead Ringers hit cinemas, it was with this exact combination, all in the hands of David Cronenberg following Shivers, The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome and The Fly. He took inspiration from real-life siblings Stewart and Cyril Marcus, whose existence was fictionalised in 1977 novel Twins by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland, and turned it into something spectacularly haunting. Attempting to stitch together those parts again, this time without the Crimes of the Future filmmaker at the helm — and as a miniseries, too — on paper seems as wild a feat as some of modern medicine's biggest advancements. This time starring a phenomenal Rachel Weisz as both Beverly and Elliot Mantle, and birthed by Lady Macbeth and The Wonder screenwriter Alice Birch, Dead Ringers 2.0 is indeed an achievement. It's also another masterpiece. Playing the gender-swapped roles that Jeremy Irons (House of Gucci) inhabited so commandingly 35 years back, Weisz (Black Widow) is quiet, calm, dutiful, sensible and yearning as Beverly, then volatile, outspoken, blunt, reckless and rebellious as Elliot. Her performance as each is that distinct — that fleshed-out as well — that it leaves viewers thinking they're seeing double. Of course, technical trickery is also behind the duplicate portrayals, with directors Sean Durkin (The Nest), Karena Evans (Snowfall), Lauren Wolkstein (The Strange Ones) and Karyn Kusama's (Destroyer) behind the show's lens; however, Weisz is devastatingly convincing. Beverly is also the patient-facing doctor of the two, helping usher women into motherhood, while Elliot prefers tinkering in a state-of-the-art lab trying to push the boundaries of fertility. Still, the pair are forever together or, with unwitting patients and dates alike, swapping places and pretending to be each other. Most folks in their company don't know what hit them, which includes actor Genevieve (Britne Oldford, The Umbrella Academy), who segues from a patient to Beverly's girlfriend — and big-pharma billionaire Rebecca (Jennifer Ehle, She Said), who Dead Ringers' weird sisters court to fund their dream birthing centre. Dead Ringers streams via Prime Video. Read our full review. THE LAST OF US If the end of the world comes, or a parasitic fungus evolves via climate change, spreads globally, infests brains en masse and almost wipes out humanity, spectacular video game-to-TV adaptation The Last of Us will have you wanting Pedro Pascal in your corner. Already a standout in Game of Thrones, then Narcos, then The Mandalorian, he's perfectly cast in HBO's latest blockbuster series — a character-driven show that ruminates on what it means to not just survive but to want to live and thrive after the apocalypse. In this smart and gripping show (one that's thankfully already been renewed for season two, too), he plays Joel. Dad to teenager Sarah (Nico Parker, The Third Day), he's consumed by grief and loss after what starts as a normal day, and his birthday, changes everything for everyone. Twenty years later, he's a smuggler tasked with tapping into his paternal instincts to accompany a different young girl, the headstrong Ellie (Bella Ramsey, Catherine Called Birdy), on a perilous but potentially existence-saving trip across the US. Starting to watch The Last of Us, or even merely describing it, is an instant exercise in déjà vu. Whether or not you've played the hit game since it first arrived in 2013, or its 2014 expansion pack, 2020 sequel or 2022 remake, its nine-part TV iteration ventures where plenty of on-screen fare including The Road and The Walking Dead has previously trodden. The best example that springs to mind during The Last of Us is Station Eleven, however, which is the heartiest of compliments given how thoughtful, empathetic and textured that 2021–22 series proved. As everything about pandemics, contagions and diseases that upend the world order now does, The Last of Us feels steeped in stone-cold reality as well, as spearheaded by a co-creator, executive producer, writer and director who has already turned an IRL doomsday into stunning television with Chernobyl. That creative force is Craig Mazin, teaming up with Neil Druckmann from Naughty Dog, who also wrote and directed The Last of Us games. The Last of Us streams via Binge. Read our full review. THE MAKANAI: COOKING FOR THE MAIKO HOUSE At the beginning of The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House, 16-year-old best friends Kiyo (Nana Mori, Liar x Liar) and Sumire (Natsuki Deguchi, Silent Parade) leave home for the first time with smiles as wide as their hearts are open. Departing the rural Aomari for Kyoto in the thick of winter, they have internships as maiko lined up — apprentice geiko, as geishas are called in the Kyoto dialect. Their path to their dearest wishes isn't all sunshine and cherry blossoms from there, of course, but this is a series that lingers on the details, on slices of life, and on everyday events rather than big dramatic developments. Watch, for instance, how lovingly Kiyo and Sumire's last meal is lensed before they set out for their new future, and how devotedly the camera surveys the humble act of sitting down to share a dumpling soup, legs tucked beneath blankets under the table, while having an ordinary conversation. Soothing, tender, compassionate, bubbling with warmth: that's The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House from the outset. There's a key reason that this cosy and comforting new treasure overflows with such affection and understanding — for its characters, their lives and just the act of living. Prolific writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda simply isn't capable of anything else. Yes, Netflix has been in the auteur game of late, and The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House is unmistakably the work of its rightly applauded creative force. One of the biggest names in Japanese cinema today, and the winner of the received Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or back in 2018 for the sublime Shoplifters, Kore-eda makes empathetic, rich and deeply emotional works. His movies, including the France-set The Truth and South Korea-set Broker, truly see the people within their frames. On the small screen, and hailing from manga, the nine-episode The Makanai is no different. It's also as calming as a show about friendships, chasing dreams and devouring ample dumplings can and should be. The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House streams via Netflix. RAIN DOGS In 2019's Skint Estate, Cash Carraway told all; A memoir of poverty, motherhood and survival completes the book's full title. Penned about working-class Britain from within working-class Britain, Carraway's written jaunt through her own life steps through the reality of being a single mum without a permanent place to live, of struggling to get by at every second, and of being around the system since she was a teenager. It examines alcoholism, loneliness, mental illness and domestic violence, too, plus refuges, working at peep shows, getting groceries from food banks and hopping between whatever temporary accommodation is available. Rain Dogs isn't a direct adaptation. It doesn't purport to bring Carraway's experiences to the screen exactly as they happened, or with slavish fidelity to the specific details. But this HBO and BBC eight-parter remains not only raw, rich, honest and authentic but lived in, as it tells the same story with candour, humour, warmth and poignancy. Slipping into Carraway's fictionalised shoes is Daisy May Cooper — and she's outstanding. Her on-screen resume includes Avenue 5 and Am I Being Unreasonable?, as well as being a team captain on the latest iteration of Britain's Spicks and Specks-inspiring Never Mind the Buzzcocks, but she's a force to be reckoned with as aspiring writer and mum (to Iris, played by debutant Fleur Tashjian) Costello Jones. When Rain Dogs begins, it's with an eviction. Cooper lives and breathes determination as Costello then scrambles to find somewhere for her and Iris to stay next. But this isn't just their tale, with the pair's lives intersecting with the privileged but self-destructive Selby (Jack Farthing, Spencer), who completes their unconventional and dysfunctional family but tussles with his mental health. Including Costello's best friend Gloria (Ronke Adekoluejo, Alex Rider), plus ailing artist Lenny (The Young Ones legend Adrian Edmondson), this is a clear-eyed look at chasing a place to belong — and it's stunning. Rain Dogs streams via Binge. Read our full review. SILO Rebecca Ferguson will never be mistaken for Daveed Diggs, but the Dune, Mission: Impossible franchise and Doctor Sleep star now follows in the Hamilton Tony-winner's footsteps. While he has spent multiple seasons navigating dystopian class clashes on a globe-circling train in the TV version of Snowpiercer, battling his way up and down the titular locomotive, she just started ascending and descending the stairs in the underground chamber that gives Silo its moniker. Ferguson's character is also among humanity's last remnants. Attempting to endure in post-apocalyptic times, she hails from her abode's lowliest depths as well. And, when there's a murder in this instantly engrossing new ten-part series — which leaps to the screen from Hugh Howey's novels, and shares a few basic parts with Metropolis, Blade Runner and The Platform, as well as corrupt world orders at the core of The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner flicks — she's soon playing detective. Silo captivates from the outset, when its focus is the structure's sheriff Holston (David Oyelowo, See How They Run) and his wife Allison (Rashida Jones, On the Rocks). Both know the cardinal rule of the buried tower, as does deputy Marnes (Will Patton, Outer Range), mayor Ruth (Geraldine James, Benediction), security head Sims (Common, The Hate U Give), IT top brass Bernard (Tim Robbins, Dark Waters) and the other 10,000 souls they live with: if you make the request to go outside, it's irrevocable and you'll be sent there as punishment. No matter who you are, and from which level, anyone posing such a plea becomes a public spectacle. Their ask is framed as "cleaning", referring to wiping down the camera that beams the desolate planet around them onto window-sized screens in their cafeterias. No one has ever come back, or survived for more than minutes. Why? Add that to the questions piling up not just for Silo's viewers, but for the silo's residents. For more than 140 years, the latter have dwelled across their 144 floors in safety from the bleak wasteland that earth has become — but what caused that destruction and who built their cavernous home are among the other queries. Silo streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. AUNTY DONNA'S COFFEE CAFE If comedy is all about timing, then Aunty Donna have it — not just onstage. In 2020, Aunty Donna's Big Ol' House of Fun was the hysterical sketch-comedy series that the world needed, with the six-episode show satirising sharehouse living dropping at the ideal moment. While the Australian jokesters' Netflix hit wasn't just hilarious because it arrived when everyone had been spending more time than anyone dreamed at home thanks to the early days of the pandemic, the ridiculousness it found in domesticity was as inspired as it was sidesplittingly absurd. Three years later, heading out is well and truly back, as are Aunty Donna on-screen. Their target in Aunty Donna's Coffee Cafe: cafe culture, with Mark Samual Bonanno, Broden Kelly and Zachary Ruane returning to make fun of one of the simplest reasons to go out that there is. Grabbing a cuppa is such an ordinary and everyday task, so much so that it was taken for granted until it was no longer an easy part of our routines. Unsurprisingly, now that caffeine fixes are back and brewing, Aunty Donna finds much to parody. With fellow group members Sam Lingham (a co-writer here), Max Miller (the show's director) and Tom Zahariou (its composer), Aunty Donna's well-known trio of faces set their new six-parter in the most obvious place they can: a Melbourne cafe called 'Morning Brown'. The track itself doesn't get a spin, however, with the show's central piece of naming is its most expected move. As demonstrated in episodes that turn the cafe into a courtroom, ponder whether Broden might still be a child and riff on Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt's 1967 disappearance, nothing else about Aunty Donna's Coffee Cafe earns that description. Pinballing in any and every direction possible has always been one of the Aussie comedy troupe's biggest talents, with their latest series deeply steeped — riotously, eclectically and entertainingly, too — in that approach. Think: Richard Roxburgh (Elvis) playing Rake, even though that's not his Rake character's name; Looking for Alibrandi's Pia Miranda making tomato day jokes;. stanning Gardening Australia and skewering unreliable streaming services, complete with jokes at ABC iView's expense; and relentlessly giggling at the hospitality industry again and again. Aunty Donna's Coffee Cafe streams via ABC iView. Read our full review. BEEF As plenty does (see also: Rye Lane above), Beef starts with two strangers meeting, but there's absolutely nothing cute about it. Sparks don't fly and hearts don't flutter; instead, this pair grinds each other's gears. In a case of deep and passionate hate at first sight, Danny Cho (Steven Yeun, Nope) and Amy Lau (Ali Wong, Paper Girls) give their respective vehicles' gearboxes a workout, in fact, after he begins to pull out of a hardware store carpark, she honks behind him, and lewd hand signals and terse words are exchanged. Food is thrown, streets are angrily raced down, gardens are ruined, accidents are barely avoided, and the name of Vin Diesel's famous car franchise springs to mind, aptly describing how bitterly these two strangers feel about each other — and how quickly. Created by Lee Sung Jin, who has It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Dave and Silicon Valley on his resume before this ten-part Netflix and A24 collaboration, Beef also commences with a simple, indisputable and deeply relatable fact. Whether you're a struggling contractor hardly making ends meet, as he is, or a store-owning entrepreneur trying to secure a big deal, as she is — or, if you're both, neither or anywhere in-between — pettiness reigning supreme is basic human nature. Danny could've just let Amy beep as much as she liked, then waved, apologised and driven away. Amy could've been more courteous about sounding her horn, and afterwards. But each feels immediately slighted by the other, isn't willing to stand for such an indignity and becomes consumed by their trivial spat. Neither takes the high road, not once — and if you've ever gotten irrationally irate about a minor incident, this new standout understands. Episode by episode, it sees that annoyance fester and exasperation grow, too. Beef spends its run with two people who can't let go of their instant rage, keep trying to get the other back, get even more incensed in response, and just add more fuel to the fire again and again until their whole existence is a blaze of revenge. If you've ever taken a small thing and blown it wildly out of proportion, Beef is also on the same wavelength. And if any of the above has ever made you question your entire life — or just the daily grind of endeavouring to get by, having everything go wrong, feeling unappreciated and constantly working — Beef might just feel like it was made for you. Beef streams via Netflix. Read our full review. POKER FACE Cards on the table: thanks to Russian Doll and the Knives Out franchise, Natasha Lyonne and Rian Johnson are both on a helluva streak. In their most recent projects before now, each has enjoyed a hot run not once but twice. Lyonne made time trickery one of the best new shows of 2019, plus a returning standout in 2022 as well, while Johnson's first Benoit Blanc whodunnit and followup Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery were gems of the exact same years. The latter also saw the pair team up briefly — Lyonne and Johnson, that is, although getting a Russian Doll-meets-Knives Out crossover from the universe, or just the Netflix algorithm, would be a dream. Until that wish comes true, there's Poker Face. It's no one's stopgap or consolation prize, however. This new mystery-of-the-week series is an all-out must-see in its own right, and one of 2023's gleaming streaming aces already. Given its components and concept, turning out otherwise would've been the biggest head-scratcher. Beneath aviator shades, a trucker cap and her recognisable locks, Lyonne plays detective again, as she did in Russian Doll — because investigating why you're looping through the same day over and over, or jumping through time, is still investigating. Johnson gives the world another sleuth, too, after offering up his own spin on Agatha Christie-style gumshoes with the ongoing Knives Out saga. This time, he's dancing with 1968–2003 television series Columbo, right down to Poker Face's title font. Lyonne isn't one for playing conventional detectives, though. Here, she's Charlie Cale, who starts poking around in sudden deaths thanks to an unusual gift and a personal tragedy. As outlined in the show's ten-part first season, Charlie is a human lie detector. She can always tell if someone is being untruthful, a knack she first used in gambling before getting on the wrong side of the wrong people. Then, when a friend and colleague at the far-from-flashy Las Vegas casino where Charlie works winds up dead, that talent couldn't be handier. Poker Face streams via Stan. Read our full review. MRS DAVIS It was back in March 2022 that the world first learned of Mrs Davis, who would star in it and which creatives were behind it. Apart from its central faith-versus-technology battle, the show's concept was kept under wraps, but the series itself was announced to the world. The key involvement of three-time GLOW Emmy-nominee Betty Gilpin, Lost and The Leftovers creator Damon Lindelof, and The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon writer and executive producer Tara Hernandez was championed, plus the fact that Black Mirror: San Junipero director Owen Harris would helm multiple episodes. Accordingly, although no one knew exactly what it was about, Mrs Davis existed months before ChatGPT was released — but this puzzle-box drama, which is equally a sci-fi thriller, zany comedy and action-adventure odyssey, now follows the artificial intelligence-driven chatbot in reaching audiences. Indeed, don't even bother trying not to think about the similarities as you're viewing this delightfully wild and gleefully ridiculous series. There's also no point dismissing any musings that slip into your head about social media, ever-present tech, digital surveillance and the many ways that algorithms dictate our lives, either. Mrs Davis accepts that such innovations are a mere fact of life in 2023, then imagines what might happen if AI promised to solve the worlds ills and make everyone's existence better and happier. It explores how users could go a-flocking, eager to obey every instruction and even sacrifice themselves to the cause. In other words, it's about ChatGPT-like technology starting a religion in everything but name. To tell that tale, it's also about nun Simone (Gilpin, Gaslit), who was raised by magicians (Love & Death's Elizabeth Marvel and Scream's David Arquette), and enjoys sabbaticals from her convent to do whatever is necessary to bring down folks who practise her parents' vocation and the show's titular technology. She also enjoys quite the literal nuptials to Jesus Christ, is divinely bestowed names to chase in her quest and has an ex-boyfriend, Wiley (Jake McDorman, Dopesick), who's a former bullrider-turned-Fight Club-style resistance leader. And, she's tasked with a mission by the algorithm itself: hunting down the Holy Grail. Mrs Davis streams via Binge. Read our full review. SWARM Becky with the good hair gets a shoutout in Swarm. Facial bites do as well, complete with a Love & Basketball reference when the culprit flees. This seven-part series about a global pop sensation and her buzzing fans and stans also has its music icon unexpectedly drop a stunner of a visual album, ride a white horse, be married to a well-known rapper, become a mum to twins and see said husband fight with her sister in an elevator. Her sibling is also a singer, and plenty of folks contend she's the more interesting of the two. Still, Swarm's object of fascination — protagonist Dre's (Dominique Fishback, Judas and the Black Messiah) undying obsession — sells out tours, breaks Ticketmaster and headlines one of the biggest music festivals there is. And, while they call themselves the titular term rather than a hive, her devotees are zealous and then some, especially humming around on social media. Donald Glover and Janine Nabers, the show's creators and past colleagues on Glover's exceptional, now-finished Atlanta — Nabers also worked on Watchmen, too — couldn't be more upfront about who they're referring to. No one says Beyoncé's name, however, but Swarm's Houston-born music megastar is the former Destiny's Child singer in everything except moniker. In case anyone watching thinks that this series is trading in coincidences and déjà vu, or just failing to be subtle when it comes to Ni'Jah (Nirine S Brown, Ruthless), the Prime Video newcomer keeps making an overt opening declaration. "This is not a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or events, is intentional," it announces before each episode. From there, it dives into Dre's journey as a twentysomething in 2016 who still adores her childhood idol with the same passion she did as a teen and, instalment by instalment, shows how far she's willing to go to prove it. Swarm streams via Prime Video. Read our full review. CUNK ON EARTH If you've ever watched a David Attenborough documentary about the planet and wished it was sillier and stupider, to the point of being entertainingly ridiculous and ridiculously entertaining alike, then Netflix comes bearing wonderful news. Actually, the BBC got there first, airing history-of-the-world mockumentary Cunk on Earth back in September 2022. Glorious things come to waiting viewers Down Under now, however — and this gleefully, delightfully absurd take on human civilisation from its earliest days till now, spanning cave paintings, Roman empires, Star Wars' empire, 1989 Belgian techno anthem 'Pump Up the Jam' and more, is one of the best shows to hit Australia in 2023 so far. This series is a comedy masterclass, in fact, featuring everything from a Black Mirror-leaning skit about Beethoven resurrected inside a smart speaker to a recreation of a Dark Ages fray purely through sound also thrown in. It's flat-out masterful, too, and tremendously funny. This sometimes Technotronic-soundtracked five-part show's beat? Surveying how humanity came to its present state, stretching back through species' origins and evolution, and pondering everything from whether the Egyptian pyramids were built from the top down to the Cold War bringing about the "Soviet onion". The audience's guide across this condensed and comic history is the tweed-wearing Philomena Cunk, who has the steady voice of seasoned doco presenter down pat, plus the solemn gaze, but is firmly a fictional — and satirical — character. Comedian Diane Morgan first started playing the misinformed interviewer in 2013, in Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe, with Black Mirror creator Brooker behind Cunk on Earth as well. Over the past decade, Cunk has also brought her odd questions to 2016's one-off Cunk on Shakespeare and Cunk on Christmas, and 2018's also five-instalment Cunk on Britain. After you're done with the character's latest spin, you'll want to devour the rest ASAP. Cunk on Earth streams via Netflix. Read our full review. SHRINKING Viewers mightn't have realised they'd been lacking something crucial until now, but Shrinking serves it up anyway: a delightfully gruff Harrison Ford co-starring in a kind-hearted sitcom. Creating this therapist-focused series for Apple TV+, Bill Lawrence, Brett Goldstein and Jason Segel didn't miss this new gem's immediate potential. Lawrence and Goldstein add the show to their roster alongside Ted Lasso, which the former also co-created, and the latter stars in as the also wonderfully gruff Roy Kent to Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning effect. It too bathes in warmth amid chaos, all while understanding, exploring and accepting its characters as the flawed folks we all are. As for Segel, he's no stranger to playing the type of super-enthusiastic and super-earnest figure he inhabits again here, as seen in Freaks and Geeks and How I Met Your Mother. If Ted Lasso downplayed the soccer, instead emphasising the psychologist chats that were a pivotal part of season two, Shrinking would be the end result. Also, if Scrubs, another of Lawrence's sitcoms, followed doctors specialising in mental health rather than working in a hospital, Shrinking would also be the outcome. Round up those familiar elements and details brought over from elsewhere, and Shrinking turns them into a series that's supremely entertaining, well-cast and well-crafted — and an engaging and easy watch. The focus: Segel (Windfall) as Jimmy Laird, a shrink grieving for his wife Tia (Lilan Bowden, Murderville), making bad decisions and leaving parenting his teen daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell, Generation) to his empty-nester neighbour Liz (Christa Miller, a Scrubs alum and also Lawrence's wife). When he decides to start checking back in, and to also give his patients like young war veteran Sean (Luke Tennie, CSI: Vegas) some tough love, it causes ripples, including for his boss Paul (Ford, The Call of the Wild) and colleague Gaby (Jessica Williams, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore). Shrinking streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. PLATONIC Sometime in the near future, Rose Byrne, Seth Rogen and filmmaker Nicholas Stoller could easily join forces on a new rom-com. In fact, they should. Until then, buddy comedy Platonic makes a hilarious, engagingly written and directed, and perfectly cast addition to each's respective resumes. Reuniting the trio after 2014's Bad Neighbours and its 2016 sequel Bad Neighbours 2, this new series pairs Australia's comedy queen and America's go-to stoner as longterm pals who are never anything but mates — and haven't been in touch at all for years — but navigate a friendship that's as chaotic and complicated as any movie romance. That's an easy setup; however, watching the show's stars bicker, banter and face the fact that life doesn't always turn out as planned together proves as charming as it was always going to. Also, Platonic smartly doesn't try to be a romantic comedy, or to follow in When Harry Met Sally's footsteps. Instead, Platonic explores what happens when two former besties have gone their own ways, then come back together. The show knows that reconnecting with old pals is always tinged with nostalgia for the person you were when they were initially in your life. And, it's well-aware that reckoning with where you've ended up since is an immediate side effect. Enter Sylvia (Byrne, Seriously Red), who reaches out to Will (Rogen, The Super Mario Bros Movie) after hearing that he's no longer with the wife (Alisha Wainwright, Raising Dion) she didn't like. She's also a suburban-dwelling former lawyer who put work on hold to become a mother of three, and can't help feeling envious of her husband Charlie's (Luke Macfarlane, Bros) flourishing legal career. Her old BFF co-owns and runs an LA brewpub, is obsessive about his beer and hipster/slacker image, and hasn't been taking his breakup well. They couldn't be in more different places in their lives. When they meet up again, they couldn't appear more dissimilar, too. "You look like you live at Ann Taylor Loft," is Will's assessment. Sylvia calls him "a '90s grunge clown." Neither is wrong. Platonic streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. Looking for more viewing highlights? Check out our list of film and TV streaming recommendations, which is updated monthly. We also keep a running list of must-stream TV from across the year so far, complete with full reviews.
We're about to slide speedily into winter — and if that's put you in the mood for a wardrobe shakeup, well, you're in luck. The treasure trove of vintage threads that is the Round She Goes Fashion Market is returning to Melbourne, taking over Coburg Town Hall on Sunday, May 5, from 10am–3pm. Once again, the ever-popular market is treating shoppers to around 60 stalls heaving with quality pre-loved designer fashion, vintage pieces, retro accessories and handmade goodies. And, as always, there'll be a whole stack of affordable items in the mix. Get your stylish self along from 10am to score covetable finds from big-name labels that ranging from Prada to Phillip Lim, and Miu Miu to Chloe. Grab yourself a bit of Gucci, score some YSL and splash out on threads from Romance Was Born, Mulberry, Missoni or Isabel Marant.
Port Macquarie's Festival of the Sun has been running for nearly two decades, and the boutique summer music festival is still bringing the goods. The lineup for May has just been released and it looks like it'll be another doozy. Hermitude, Skeggs, Middle Kids and San Cisco lead the three-day fest's bill, with Ruby Fields, A Swayze and The Ghosts, The Buoys, Caitlin Harnett and the Pony Boys, Concrete Surfers and First Beige lending their voices too. The list goes on, so get ready for a big couple of days of music. Running between Thursday, May 19—Saturday, May 21, the camping festival is also — excitingly — BYO, so you don't need to spend your hard-earned cash on overpriced UDLs. Alongside the lineup of live music, there will also be a heap of food trucks (serving everything from burgers to vegan fare), silent discos and silent comedy. Tickets go on sale at 10am on Thursday, April 15. FESTIVAL OF THE SUN 2022 LINEUP Hermitude Skeggs San Cisco Ruby Fields Middle Kids A Swayze and The Ghosts The Buoys Caitlin Harnett and the Pony Boys Concrete Surfers First Beige Hayley Mary Jelly Oshen Kim Churchill Lazywax Liyah Knight The Rions Romero Pink Matter The Oogars Saint Lane Radolescent Boycott Fungas Palomino Updated Tuesday, May 3.
We have a quick chat with the people behind new theatre company Arthur about their new play Dirtyland, and their novel approach to funding the project. If you want to score some tickets to the play, and support new Australian theatre in the future, head to their funding page, but be quick, there's only one day left! Tell us a little about yourselves? We are Arthur and we are a brand new independent theatre company in Sydney. Our motto — well one of them — is organised chaos. This means, amongst other things, that we're pretty interested in having fun in making our work — and in delivering a fair amount of heart and a wallop of surprise to our audience. To split Arthur into personalities, we are Paige Rattray (director), Elise Hearst (writer) and Belinda Kelly (producer). You can meet Paige and Elise here, as they spruik for Arthur's first production, Dirtyland on the Pozible crowdfunding website. The Arthur people have a common link with the mighty Griffin Theatre Co in Kings Cross. Paige, a recent NIDA directing graduate, is a current resident director there. Elise, who has had residencies further afield including at The Royal Court, was resident writer in 2009, and Belinda is the company's Artistic Associate. Tell us a little about your project? We will be bringing the world premiere of Dirtyland to Sydney audiences in April as part of the inaugural Spare Room season at the New Theatre. This eight-character play is set in an unspecified village following the massacre of one half of the residents by the other. Nice. However, it's not just your standard post-apocolyptic tale. What should audiences expect? A play that is rowdy, entertaining, and, for those who fear an interval, pretty short. With live sound, epic atmospheres and striking visuals, the show is also pretty funny and very involving as you desperately barrack for our anti-heroes; willing them on to escape their dirty, dystopian world. Phew, that sounds full on, but fun no? What's the inspiration behind Arthur? We are setting up a new company because we want to make work that wouldn't otherwise see the light of day. Paige our director first came across Elise's writing while reading a stack of plays for a playwriting award. This was the beginning of Arthur. We didn't know it at the time, but we realized that this was the kind of work we needed to see and the only way it was going to happen was if we made it ourselves. Dirtyland is a cracking play that has generated a fair bit of industry interest, but the commercial reality is that a new play by a new writer with a cast of eight is never going to be a likely project to back for the main stage in Australia. What are your ambitions for the company in the future? We would like to stage 2-3 plays per year, and work on the development of a further 2 plays for future production. Arthur is very much interested in new Australian work, but also in creating devised work and text/performance/musical fusions. We plan to stay true to the company's touchstones of serious fun and organised chaos. Why have you taken the crowd-funding route? Because we only had three weeks' notice that we had secured a spot in the Spare Room season until rehearsals kicked off — yikes! The short lead time meant that we did not have access to more established forms of funding, such as government and foundation grants, nor the time to source company sponsorship. We decided to think laterally. I think we were actually drinking some beers at the pub and thinking of different models and really very much talking about old subscription models for publishing of books and so forth. The next day a few friends sent some links to crowdfunding websites, and we were off. It feels very much of the zeitgeist. How is it going? So far, so good. But — argh! We are 80% funded with a day left. Our target is $8000, so we have $1600 to go. Our target is high considering the amount of time until our project cuts off. In this all-or-nothing model, if you don't reach the target, the project receives none of the pledged funds. You also can't change the target or time limit once the project is away — so very nerve racking and we are obsessed with checking twenty times a day (give or take) to see if any more pledges have come in. It's going down to the wire!
Calling all Melburnians: a new immersive show is set to arrive in the city next month at the Queen Victoria Women's Centre. Dubbed 'Cloudland', the experience will take your imagination to new heights as you're transported through a kaleidoscope of sound and light. Conceptualised by social worker and visual artist Chi-uh Star, the upcoming exhibit reimagines the journey of cloud gazing and invites guests to actually lie on the floor to properly experience it. In collaboration with sound artist and music therapist Katerina Stathis, Cloudland exists as a therapeutic experience that offers guests a space to de-stress and reflect. Float through the clouds and have all your five senses engaged like never before. As per the event description on website, the sound and light show is 'suitable for your inner child, and children aged 10 and up', so book in your ticket and get reunited with your inner child. Cloudland will take over Queen Victoria Women's Centre from Saturday, November 5–Friday, November 18. For more details and to purchase tickets, head to Cloudland website. Top image: Cloudland
Shattering the silly myth that it's only blokes who enjoy a good brew, this free afternoon at Collingwood's Fox Hotel will celebrate female talent both on-tap and on-stage. Enjoy nine different cold ones made by some of the best lady brewers in town while dancing your arse off to the tunes of Rosie Burgess, Kerryn Fields, Emma Walls & the Urban Folk, and more. It's just one of a number events the venue will be hosting as part of Good Beer Week, including the GBW Scavenger Hunt and the Brewer's Brains Pub Quiz.
UPDATE, October 29, 2020: Paterson is available to stream via SBS On Demand, Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Amazon Video. Who knew that watching the ebb and flow of an ordinary life could be so illuminating and soothing? Jim Jarmusch, that's who. If ever there was a movie that's destined to become contemplative comfort viewing, it's the new effort from the director of Dead Man, Coffee and Cigarettes and Only Lovers Left Alive. In Paterson, the daily grind of waking, working, talking with friends and loved ones, walking the dog and hanging out in a bar offers plenty of food for thought, particularly for anyone keen to peer beyond the surface of seemingly average, expected occurrences. In one of the movie's numerous instances of mirroring and symmetry, the film's title refers to many things. It's the name of a bus driver (Adam Driver) in New Jersey, as well as the name of the town where he was born, raised and still lives. It adorns the vehicle he steers from Monday to Friday, and the weighty tome by one of his favourite poets that sits on his desk. Paterson has a way with lyrical turns of phrase, too, which he jots down as he follows his usual schedule. Sometimes he takes inspiration from snippets of chatter he overhears between bus passengers, or interactions with strangers as he walks home from work. Sometimes he reflects upon his modest but happy relationship with his enthusiastic wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), who styles their house in black and white patterns, bakes cupcakes and decides to learn the guitar. Jarmusch's features have always flirted with the poetic, preferred minimalism and intimacy, and frequently found beauty in the commonplace. In that way, Paterson is the latest example of the writer-director doing what he's done best for more than three decades. However it's also an astute, insightful ode to everyday creativity and contentment. Over the course of eight days, Paterson's waking hours appear to repeat the same cycle and yet also reveal crucial slivers of difference. While many movies try to paint their protagonist as an everyman, this one goes a step further. Even when he's noticing twins all around him, trading verse with children or chatting with strangers about great writers, everything feels purposefully warm and familiar. Indeed, Paterson proves the kind of movie that overflows with recognisable details, and immediately resonates for that very reason, while also gazing deeper into existential matters. It brims with grace, affection and solace, but avoids sugarcoating the reality it depicts. Oozing gentle emotion, the work of Driver, outstanding Iranian actress Farahani, and scene-stealing Cannes Palm Dog-winning canine Nellie is pivotal in perfecting that balance. Often ranging from soulful yet commanding, energetic yet yearning, and cute yet probing in turn, the trio offer an engaging glimpse of the colour and quiet contrasts inherent in an ordinary life. Add Jarmusch's fondness for evoking the literary art form at the film's centre wherever he can — in the visual harmony evident in every image, in the rhythm of the movie's pacing, and including text on screen — and Paterson couldn't be more meditative or more moving. The film is a revealing character study, a reminder to recognise the small stuff that comprises much of our existence, and an appreciation of the ups and downs of living, all in one.
Summer has settled in for the long haul and a sultry season of day-tripping, beach sessions and poolside hangs awaits. It can be hard to keep your cool when the temperatures are soaring. So, we've teamed up with the skin and beauty experts at M.A.C Cosmetics to share our list of summer essentials. Stock up on these must-haves and be ready for anything summer throws your way. FIX+, M.A.C COSMETICS ($39) Sticky, sweaty faces are a classic summer curse, but they needn't be. M.A.C's cult favourite Fix+ facial mist works as both a hydrating setting spray and a cooling skin spritz, so it's a must-have item for when those temperatures start climbing. It's free from alcohol and packed with nourishing ingredients like cucumber and camomile. It's even infused with caffeine to help pep up tired, post-party-season skin. Use it before, during or after makeup application to help stop wayward foundation from slipping down your face in a sweaty mess. Or, simply spritz some on whenever you need to counter the sweats with a little facial refresh. Hot tip: pop it in your fridge or esky so it's nice and cool when you spray away. WATER-RESISTANT SPEAKER, BOSE ($199.95) Beach, backyard, park or pool — any good summer session needs a decent soundtrack. And with a nifty waterside speaker like this one from Bose, you can keep the music kicking on no matter where the party takes you. It's poolside-friendly, so you can have those tunes pumping right alongside you while you swim, soak or sunbake. What's more, a nine-metre bluetooth connectivity range means your whole crew can take turns playing DJ, without any pesky sound dropouts. And with an impressive eight-hour battery life, this little noise machine will keep partying as long as you do. BEACH UMBRELLA, BASIL BANGS ($289) The Aussie sun can be savage, no matter how heavily you slather on the sunscreen. But with an umbrella in tow, you'll always have some sweet, shady relief from its rays, whether you're kicking back in the park or battling scorching hot sand at the beach. Amp up the summer vibes with a lively, feel-good print, like this special edition umbrella, designed by Basil Bangs in collaboration with legendary artist Ken Done. It boasts a hefty 1.8-metre diameter — so, no squishing in like sardines — with UPF50+ sun protection. Plus, it comes with a matching carry case that transforms into a sandbag weight should things get blustery. PICNIC CUTLERY WALLET SET, LAZY DAYZ ($34.95) Long days and balmy temperatures mean picnic season is in full swing, so you'll want to be prepared to make the most of it. Just because you're dining on a rug on the ground doesn't mean you have to slum it. Elevate any al fresco feast with the help of a proper picnic set, like this fun design from Lazy Dayz. Available in two vibrant prints, it has plastic plates, stainless steel forks, knives and spoons for two, all zipped up neatly into one compact carry case. Keep it by the front door and you'll always be picnic-ready in a snap. [caption id="attachment_799130" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Abbas Malek Hosseini[/caption] UNDERWATER CAMERA, KASBAH ($21.56) Here in Australia, summer and water go hand-in-hand, whether it's a backyard pool or your local stretch of beach. And while you might be partial to a splash and a dip, your phone probably isn't. So, for the sake of those summer happy snaps, hook yourself up with a camera that was made to get wet. This lightweight underwater version from Kasbah features a fun, tropical get-up and a detachable waterproof casing, so you can take it just about anywhere. Just stock up on 35-millimetre film and you're all set to capture even the soggiest memories this summer. To learn more about M.A.C Cosmetic's Fix+ facial mist, head this way.
"An audio-visual maelstrom of light and sound." That's how the Melbourne Festival program describes this intriguing free installation at the Contemporary Centre for Photography in Fitzroy. Torrent is the latest in an ongoing series of multiscreen animations from moving image artist Martine Corompt concerning water. Using vivid black-and-white imagery accompanied by a harp score from composer Philip Brophy, the artist depicts water flowing down the walls before collecting in a whirlpool on the floor. Just try not to get swept away by the current. This event is one of our top ten picks of the Melbourne Festival. Check out the other nine.
Outdoor clothing brand Merrell wants your photos to stitch together the world's largest panoramic photo. You can be a part of it by uploading your geo-tagged shots of the outdoors to the Add Your Own Scenery website where they are pinned to a virtual globe, or you can just browse others' photos and see what things look like in their neck of the woods. As well as inspiring people to get and share their love of the outdoors with others, the project has a philanthropic purpose: for every photo uploaded Merrell will donate $1 to a range of conservation groups, up to their target total of $250,000. Unfortunately only residents of the US, UK and Canada are eligible for the prizes on offer, but sharing your favourite part of nature with the rest of the world to help conserve it should be reward enough! [via PSFK]
Back in 2012, when Daniel Radcliffe was initially trying to shake a certain boy wizard from his system — before everything from Swiss Army Man and The Lost City to Miracle Workers and Weird: The Al Yankovic Story firmly helped — he stepped into a different kind of supernatural thrills. His first post-Harry Potter role saw him take on The Woman in Black, a gothic-horror tale that pitted him against a curse and a ghost. And yes, the latter did have quite the fondness for wearing dark clothing. The film adapted the 1983 novella of the same name for the second time. But before The Woman in Black made it to the screen, it spooked out the theatre. Because hauntings often keep coming back, it's doing so again, this time in a new Australian production starring John Waters (Blaze) and Daniel MacPherson (Foundation). If you don't like scary tales about sinister spirits seeking revenge for past ills, then you might want to sit this one out. If you love them, then prepare to put your nerves to the test. We're betting that the QPAC Playhouse in Brisbane, Adelaide's Dunstan Playhouse, His Majesty's Theatre in Perth, Melbourne's Athenaeum Theatre, the Canberra Theatre Centre and Newcastle's Civic Theatre will all be at their unsettling best for the occasion — it's not every day that you host a show that ranks among West End's longest-running productions, second only to Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, after all. The Woman in Black is set in Eel Marsh House in England's north, which sits at the heart of a story that Arthur Kipps recounts about his stint as a young solicitor overseeing Mrs Alice Drablow's funeral. The place isn't just filled with secrets, thanks to the titular figure. Waters plays the elder Kipps, with MacPherson plays an actor who agrees to perform the role of his younger guise. Kicking off its Aussie tour in late April, the stage version of The Woman in Black was first adapted for the theatre by Stephen Mallatratt back in 1987. "I first saw The Woman in Black in 2020 and knew I had to bring it back to Australia. It's such an incrediblem gripping show that is so spellbinding, it has you on the edge of your seat for two hours," said the current season's producer Alex Woodward. "When it came to casting we knew it was perfect to ask theatre royalty John Waters to reprise his role he debuted in Australia more than 15 years ago. Daniel was also a natural choice for his incredible ability, charm and charisma." THE WOMAN IN BLACK 2024 AUSTRALIAN DATES: Tuesday, April 30–Saturday, May 11 — QPAC Playhouse, Brisbane Wednesday, May 15–Sunday, May 26 — Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre, Adelaide Thursday, May 30–Sunday, June 9 — His Majesty's Theatre, Perth From Sunday, June 23 — Athenaeum Theatre, Melbourne Tuesday, July 9–Sunday, July 14 — Canberra Theatre Centre, Canberra Tuesday, July 23–Saturday, July 27 — Venue Civic Theatre, Newcastle The Woman in Black hits stages around Australia from April 2024, with tickets on sale from staggered dates starting on Wednesday, January 24. Head to the production's website for more information. Top image: James Reiser.
Richmond is getting a brand new food and cultural centre, set to open its doors in the next couple of weeks. Operating out of the old State Bank at 214-216 Swan Street, and named in honour of the building’s former tenants, the Swan Street Chamber of Commerce will be home to the likes of Will & Co. coffee, Rustica Sourdough and My Two Mums ice cream, as well as a 42-seat repertory cinema. The venue is the brainchild of pop-up specialists Pop Union and hospitality consultant Adam Del Mastro. With the building set to be transformed into a pub in 2016, Del Mastro and Pop Union set about reinventing the space's image. He describes the result as "an ambitious version of a pop-up," one that will operate over a 12-month period and combine food, drink, retail, art and entertainment. "It came together really quickly," says Del Mastro. "Most of the operators who came on board signed up in the last four or five weeks... we're at the very pointy end of finishing up the council stuff, and aiming to launch very, very soon." Other vendors who'll operate out of the location include Storm in a Teacup, Pressed Juices and Hoy Pinoy Filipino BBQ. "We’ve also reserved a few key spaces for short term operators," says Del Mastro. "We’ve got a pop-up record store on the first floor that will be an interesting proposition. Then on the food front, we've been discussing with a company called Autumn Harvest, who are basically mushroom foragers, about doing a wild mushroom market. So that’s going to be a really interesting seasonal thing." The Chamber of Commerce will also be looking to partner with local artists and creatives. "We've already had a few approaches about people doing interesting stuff in the space," says Del Mastro. Central to the hub's creative ambitions is a partnership with Jose Maturana, the proprietor of Valhalla Social Cinema. A devotee of Richmond’s long-defunct Valhalla Theatre, Maturana has previously run cult film screenings at various venues around town, and will bring his programming savvy to the Swan Street cinema four nights out of every week. "I think spaces like the Valhalla, which are ambitious pop-ups that take advantage of opportunities and spaces, are kind of the future of smaller repertory cinemas," says Del Mastro. Swan Street Chamber of Commerce is set to launch in the next couple of weeks, as far as they've revealed. Stay tuned to their Facebook page for more details.
With the recent program launches of the Lido's rooftop cinema, Moonlight Cinema, Rooftop Cinema, Sunset Cinema et al, it's clear Melbourne's furiously enthusiastic love for cinema under the stars isn't waning anytime soon. And now QV Cinema has announced it too will be returning for the 2016-17 season. Usually the realm of hectic shopping sprees, QV Melbourne last year launched its own openair cinema, and it will return with summer screenings running every Thursday to Sunday night from November to February. It's an intimate 80-seat deckchair cinema on the astroturf outside the Queen Victoria Women's Centre, and the whole program is curated by Melbourne filmmaker and film programmer Gus Berger, who runs Red Hot Shorts at ACMI. Expect festive films in December (think Bad Santa, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Elf), an Australian film on Australia Day (The Sapphires), a focus on Melbourne independent films, alongside '80s favourites and selected special event films. There'll also be three dog-friendly Doggie + Deckchair screenings, starting with a doggy red carpet before Lady and the Tramp on December 10. All proceeds from ticket sales going to non-profit animal charity Lort Smith. With tickets at $12 (and $14 for the dog screenings) each, it's a pretty budget-friendly date option for the summer. Opening night is happening on Wednesday, November 30, and it's pretty fittingly fashion-themed with the Sex and the City movie (the first one, of course). Best bit? Opening night is completely free, you just have to register on the QV Cinema website. Then you can spend your pennies on a sea salt soft serve cone from Aqua S.
For a summer sonic treat as refreshing as it is sweet, you can't go past Sorbaes — the family-friendly openair club session born from the mind of DJ and designer Soju Gang. It's back for its third annual outing on Sunday, February 26, helping to wrap up summer with an arvo of dance-friendly tunes as part of Live at the Bowl. Kicking off at 4pm, it'll see Sidney Myer Music Bowl play host to a handpicked lineup of Melbourne music talent. Dance fiends of all ages are invited to bust moves to sounds from artists like Akosia, Brown Suga Princess, DJ Nay Nay, 1300, OJ KUSH and more. [caption id="attachment_890157" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Ian Laidlaw[/caption] The Cypher Culture crew will be joining in the fun this time around, popping up with a fresh edition of their freestyle dance battle showcase City Sessions — so expect to see some impressive hip hop moves paired with those live tunes. What's more, $2 from every $20 general admission ticket sold will be donated to the Dhadjowa Foundation, aiding its work supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families whose loved ones have died in custody.
The phrase 'sleeper hit' was coined for movies like Silver Linings Playbook. It looks like your run-of-the-mill wacky family holiday movie, but it's an important film and a great one that deserves to sweep the Academy, SAG and copious other awards it's nominated for. Because while Silver Linings Playbook obeys the conventions of a crazy family comedy — hilarity, personalities clashing under one roof, people yelling over the top of each other, the gradual acceptance of family legacies — it really hones in on the 'crazy' part. In films, craziness usually peaks at extreme quirkiness. But in our real-life households we know the source of irrational behaviour often lies with mental illness, and that's much more complex. Based on the novel by Matthew Quick, Silver Linings Playbook acknowledges and honours this common human experience with its story of Pat (Bradley Cooper), a bipolar former history teacher returning to the house of his mother (Australia's inimitable Jacki Weaver) and father (Robert De Niro) after a court-mandated nine months in a mental health facility. He remains fixated on his estranged wife, Nikki (Brea Bee), even though she has a restraining order against him, and he feels his new positive philosophy is the way to win her back. What he's not sure is help or hindrance, however, is the appearance in his life of recent widow Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), whose existing depression has been wildly exacerbated by her husband's death. These are not characters we've seen on screen before, and they're extraordinarily well drawn. The film positions you in Pat's corner, to the point where you can fully understand his not-always-logical way of thinking and not only sympathise but make the leap with him. To outsiders, he's unreliable, tactless, and even violent, but to viewers, he's just Pat. Silver Linings Playbook is technically excellent, with charming performances and firm plotting, but there are a lot of technically excellent movies. It's rare to see one that will mean so much to so many people. Director David O. Russell has spoken about how important making the film was to him as the parent of a child with mental illness. He didn't want his film to be all doom and gloom; he wanted it to be full of hope, humour, and compassion, as even burdened lives are. His connection to the subject shines through to create a special and authentic-feeling film. Perhaps most vitally, Silver Linings Playbook isn't about sectioning off people's experiences via a medical label; it incorporates the full spectrum of what Pat calls the "craziness within myself and everybody else", and nearly everyone is likely to see something within it that resonates. It may be January, but this is certainly one of my films of the year. https://youtube.com/watch?v=2MP7A1k8Jr0
Due to its location, Tasmania stands apart from the bulk of Australia. It's an island at the bottom of the continent, so of course it's separate from the rest of the country. But, for much of 2020, the Apple Isle has been shut off from the nation in another way — with Tassie enacting strict border restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, just as many other states on the mainland did as well. Thankfully, while most Aussies couldn't head to the country's southern-most state for much of this year without seeking permission and then going into quarantine, border restrictions don't have any dominion over our tastebuds. You mightn't have been able to spend time in Tassie for big stretches of 2020, but drinking beverages by Tasmanian producers has always remained on the menu. Obviously, it still does — letting everyone nationwide do what Tassie residents have always done and show their love for the Apple Isle's top drops. Whether you prefer a refreshing cider, a hearty vodka or gin, or a nice vino, that's great news. Tasmania has all of the above covered. Indeed, when BWS asked the state's drinkers to name their favourite local picks as part of the bottle retailer's Local Luvvas initiative, those aforementioned beverages from Plenty Cider, Hellfire Bluff Distillery and Pepik Wines topped the poll. All three brands will now receive an extra helping hand with getting their products stocked in more BWS stores — and we spoke with the teams at each about loving their jobs, showcasing homegrown produce, garnering local support and making it through 2020. APPLE CIDER FROM THE APPLE ISLE Of course Tasmania makes great apple cider. When tasked with picking their favourite brewed beverage, including beer, of course Tassie residents went with apple cider, too. That kind of local support no longer comes as a surprise to Plenty Cider co-owner Grace D'Arcy, but it is always heartily and eagerly appreciated. "People really resonate with where we are from, and love the fact they know where it is — and they understand the quality of the produce that comes from the area," she says. "Without local support, Plenty wouldn't exist, so we can't thank Tasmanians enough for what they have done for us and for many small businesses across the state throughout COVID-19". Plenty Cider is not only a celebrated homegrown brand, but is also beloved for its use of 100-percent southern Tasmanian-grown apples. And yet, the company's journey actually started with a different kind of alcohol and type of fruit. It wasn't hard to make the switch, though, D'Arcy explains. "The transition from wine to cider ten years ago was an easy choice to make, as cider was an emerging sector with so much hope and potential." Cider is also an easy field to be passionate about. That might sound self-evident — who wouldn't want to spend their days turning fruit into a sweet and delicious drink? — but D'Arcy's enthusiasm shines through. "There is also plenty of room for innovation and creativity. This is what keeps me passionate, along with striving to continuously improve and craft delicious ciders," she says. "When a cider is fruit-driven and you get that fresh full flavour on the palate, nothing is better." GIN AND VODKA MADE ABOVE A ROCKY COASTAL OUTCROP Potatoes might not be as synonymous with Tasmania as apples, but they're the reason that one of the state's other much-loved drinks producers exists. The site that Hellfire Bluff Distillery calls home is actually a potato farm on a cliff above Marion Bay that dates back more than 30 years. "We were looking for a way to value-add to the potatoes we grow," advises marketing coordinator Kyla Flanagan. "We wanted to bring something unique to the well-respected Tasmanian spirits market and, after investing a significant amount of time and research, in 2017 we launched Hellfire Bluff Distillery with our premium potato vodka." Clearly, local fresh produce is crucial here. "The distillery was built out of our love for premium Tasmanian ingredients, driven by our passion for farming sustainably, and influenced by our beautiful wild and remote region," Flanagan says. Hellfire now not only makes vodka, but also three styles of gin, a selection of small-batch liqueurs, and other limited-edition releases — using rainwater sourced from the farm, locally sourced lemons in its limoncello, and other "quintessentially Tasmanian ingredients," she explains. "When we say our products are handcrafted, we really mean it." Given how pivotal all things local are to Hellfire, it's hardly surprising that the distillery has proven a big hit in the community. "Product provenance has always been important to our customers, and local support has been integral to our brand from the very beginning," says Flanagan. And that homegrown love is a source of inspiration, too. "It's important to us that people feel connected to where their purchase comes from, and gain an understanding and insight into the business they are supporting," she notes. TURNING 61-HECTARES OF LAUNCESTON-GROWN GRAPES INTO VINO It was back in 2004 that Josef Chromy launched the wine brand that bears his name, setting up shop just south of Launceston on a scenic and sprawling 61-hectare vineyard. Pepik is one of its labels, and its moniker also has a close connection to its founder — because 'Pepik' is Josef's nickname, as given to him by his mother. Chromy handpicked Tasmanian winemaker Jeremy Dineen to lead the business, a role that the latter still holds today. As Pepik sales and export manager David Milne explains, making wine isn't just a job here — it's a passion, an obsession and a puzzle all in one. "It's the challenge of crafting the best wines from whatever the vintage throws at you that keeps things interesting," he says, with Pepik favouring "a minimal intervention style of winemaking to allow beautiful, aromatic Tasmanian fruit to achieve full expression in the glass". The resulting tipples, especially Pepik's pinot noir, have proven popular locally. But in 2020, the true level of community support has actually surprised Milne. "As a small wine producer in Tasmania, we probably didn't realise just how strong our following was until this year," he says. "People have made a concerted effort to support the local brands that they love and want to see come out the other side of this pandemic… In a year like no other, we've never been so honoured to be carried on the shoulders of our tribe." To find these or other Tasmanian drinks as part of the BWS Local Luvva initiative, head to your nearest BWS store.
If you missed seeing Hamilton during its Australian runs in Sydney in 2021, Melbourne in 2022 and Brisbane in 2023, you didn't throw away your shot to catch Lin-Manuel Miranda's smash-hit musical Down Under. The Aussie production of the show went to New Zealand after its Brissie season, and has trips to Manila, Abu Dhabi and Singapore slated next. Then, come July 2024, it'll return to the Harbour City. If you're a fan of the biggest thing in musical theatre in the 21st century — and a game-changing, award-winning, rightly raved-about sensation — then you'll be excited whether you've already been in the room where it happens or not. Hamilton's homegrown production will hit Sydney Lyric Theatre next year, opening at the venue on Tuesday, July 30, 2024. In its local run so far, the Broadway blockbuster's Aussie production has boasted a cast that includes Jason Arrow as Alexander Hamilton, Chloé Zuel as Eliza Hamilton, Lyndon Watts as Aaron Burr, Akina Edmonds as Angelica Schuyler, Matu Ngaropo as George Washington, and Victory Ndukwe as Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson — plus Shaka Cook as Hercules Mulligan and James Madison, Marty Alix as John Laurens and Philip Hamilton, Elandrah Eramiha as Peggy Schuyler and Maria Reynolds, and Brent Hill as King George III. Who'll return to Sydney in 2024 hasn't yet been revealed, with the cast for next year's season to be revealed at a later date. Still new to this song-and-dance take on 18th-century American politics? Not quite sure why it has been the most-talked about theatre show of the past decade? The critically acclaimed hip hop musical, for which Miranda wrote the music, lyrics and the book, is about the life of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, as well as inclusion and politics in current-day America. In addition to its swag of Tony Awards — 11 in fact, which includes Best Musical — it has nabbed a Grammy Award and even a Pulitzer Prize. Until 2021, Australians eager to see the show had to be content watching the filmed version of its Broadway production, which started streaming via Disney+ in 2020 (and yes, it's as phenomenal as you've heard). If you're not feeling financial enough to nab a seat, cross your fingers that the $10 ticket lottery, which offers Hamilton tickets for less than the cost of lunch, will return as well. There's no word yet whether Hamilton will also play new seasons in Melbourne or Brisbane, so cross your fingers for that, too. In March 2023, Miranda came to Australia to see the local production, calling the cast "so fantastic". "I remember seeing Jason Arrow's audition — it had to have been April or May of 2020, and it was around the time that we were watching and editing Hamilton for [the Disney+] release. So they were really stacking up against the originals in a very tangible way, and so we were really proud of the incredible company that we were able to put together from there locally," he said at a press conference in Brisbane "Every original cast is like a four-minute mile," Miranda continued. "They said scientists proved you couldn't run the mile in under four minutes, and then someone did it, and then suddenly everybody's running it — and I feel like original casts are like that. It's impossible to find that first cast, and then it attracts the people who know they can do it." Hamilton's 2024 Sydney season will play Sydney Lyric Theatre from Tuesday, July 30, 2024. Head to the musical's website for further details, or to sign up for the waitlist for tickets when they go on sale — with pre sales from Monday, November 27 and general sales from Monday, December 4. Production images: Daniel Boud.
Sydney ambient electro darlings Seekae dropped news of their third album and a national August tour earlier this year. Luckily they didn't do it so silently. They've also gifted us with a new single, 'Test & Recognise'. Picking up the tempo and embracing the power of the synth, it could signal a new direction for the group — from classic chillout sessions to the dancefloor. With past releases, The Sounds of Trees Falling on People and +DOME, Seekae have made a name for themselves in the past few years, playing local festivals like Harvest and Golden Plains. Known for hypnotic electro-pop such as 'Void', 'Crooks' and 'Blood Bank', their name is synonymous with late night drives through the city or relaxed midnight hangs with friends. In the bigger picture, their debut was named one of the albums of the decade by FBi Radio, and their follow-up earned them four nominations at the Australian Independent Music Awards. Since then they've been touring internationally and even took to the stage at this year's SxSW. Seekae's third album, The Worry, is openly described as their most ambitious work to date. Bringing vocals to the fore and losing some of that distinctive ambient haze, it definitely marks a departure from their past sound that may not win over all fans. However, the shift will make for an entertaining live gig. Caught somewhere between blissful oblivion and classic electro these new tracks are sure to get people awkwardly shuffling around the dance floor nationwide. https://youtube.com/watch?v=S78pfy37SN8
Montreal-based artist, Shelley Miller, has turned graffiti into a tasty artform. Her sugary designs have covered city walls in ornate scrolls and decorative motifs. She takes the conventional approach to graffiti, and turns it completely upside-down. Her designs are beautiful, intricate and look straight out the Victorian era. Miller's latest installation titled Throw-Up was part of the Nuit Blanche ("white night") project in September at the Metro Hall in Toronto, Canada. You could call her a sugar graffiti veteran. Having worked with cake icing for several years, Miller has exhibited works around the world including Canada, India and Brazil. And, she is even cooler than you think. Not only does she make amazing art, but it often represents more serious and important global issues. Her work has represented consumer culture and the historical links between sugar and slavery. Miller's pieces have been acquired by The City of Montreal, The Museum of Modern Art of Bahia, Reliance Industries and the Just for Laughs Museum (Montreal). Check out some of her unique street-art below and her website, here.
Victorians, it's holiday time. After a year largely spent staring at your own four walls, you probably don't need much motivation to head out of town, but the State Government is giving you some anyway. In an effort to encourage everyone to take a getaway within the state, it's handing out $200 vouchers for regional travel. This isn't new news. The move was first announced back in mid-November — as part of a $465 million Victorian Tourism Recovery Package — and this past week, on Thursday, December 10, the exact details of what you can spend the money on, when you can spend it and exactly how you can get your hands on the vouchers have been unveiled. Also, on Friday, December 11, the first batch of 40,000 vouchers was made available. To the surprise of no one, that initial release proved mighty popular. In fact, there was such heavy demand for the initiative that, when the first vouchers were put up for grabs, there were long delays and the Business Victoria voucher registration page had to go offline for extended periods. All 40,000 vouchers released were still snapped up across the day, though, but not without plenty of frustration for plenty of folks. So, in response, the Victorian Government has announced that it is extending the scheme and adding another 30,000 vouchers. They're in addition to the 120,000 already planned — those already given out, plus two other 40,000 batches — and will be available from midday on Monday, December 14 for trips up until January 22. [caption id="attachment_772433" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Otway Fly Treetop Adventures[/caption] The scheme has two obvious aims: enticing Victorian residents to go venturing throughout the state, and helping support regional pubs, hotels, wineries and small businesses. As for when the rest of the vouchers will be handed out, there'll be two more rounds on Wednesday, January 20 and Tuesday, March 30 — for travel between January 27–April 1 and April 6–May 31, respectively. The vouchers can be spent on accommodation, tourism attractions and tours in regional Victoria, the Yarra Ranges and the Mornington Peninsula. But, there's a hefty list of things you can't spend them on, including gaming, alcohol, fuel, food and drinks (unless it's part of a winery tour, for example), groceries, personal items (such as clothing) and transport (such as rental cars and public transport). So, you can't just use the voucher to road trip to a pub, but you can use it to book accommodation at the pub, then spend your own money on food and drinks — which will still make your trip away significantly cheaper. There are some additional caveats, too: the vouchers are limited to one per household (not per person) across the entire scheme; you must first provide evidence of spending $400 on accommodation, attractions or tours before getting your $200; and you must pay for a minimum of two nights accommodation in regional Victoria. Which means, at most, half of your expenses will be covered — but, that's $200 that you won't have to fork out yourself. Yes, it's a little complicated — but the Vic Government has broken it down in more detail over here. It has also given some more examples of what you can use the vouchers on, including holiday parks, camping sites, cottages, farm stays, private holiday rentals, houseboats (yes, houseboats), winery tours, adventure tours and entry fees to regional attractions, such as. museums, water parks and adventure parks. You can apply for the bonus round of 30,000 $200 travel vouchers from midday on Monday, December 14 at business.vic.gov.au/travelvouchers. Subsequent rounds will open on Wednesday, January 20 and on Tuesday, March 30. Top image: Peninsula Hot Springs via Visit Victoria
Looking for fancy accommodation in the heart of Cairns, but still within stone's throwing distance to the water? The Pullman Cairns International provides. It's right in the middle of the CBD but still provides harbour views and tropical pools. It's in the perfect place for maximum exploration of the surrounding region – the Great Barrier Reef, waterfalls, Fitzroy and Green Islands and northern beaches are all your oysters. It's easy to hop on a day tour from here, don a snorkel or scuba mask and find yourself getting acquainted with the sealife of one of the world's largest coral reefs. But by staying in far north Queensland's biggest city, you'll also have access to the wealth of bars, clubs, cafes and restaurants that add an epicurean dimension to your holiday by night. Another perk: you're close to Cairns airport, so you can minimise the transit time and maximise hours logged on sunloungers and sundowners. The Pullman Cairns International is the largest 5-star hotel in Cairns' CBD, and it isn't just its colonial era architecture which make it so luxurious. All rooms have a balcony and a view, and the Cairns International also has a gym, the Vie Spa, and a pool with attached sundeck and jacuzzi. You may never want to be dry and clothed again. Make sure you eat at the hotel restaurant Coco's – all we need say is "seafood buffet" and "share plates". If you're hungry in daylight hours, the Lobby Bar also does a decadent high tea. Once you've eaten, head over to the award-winning Vie Spa for a cheeky massage or three. Try to come up here between April and October — not only you escape the winter drudgery of Australia's southern cities, you'll enjoy the more comfortable conditions of far north Queensland's dry season.
By now, Bryony Kimmings should be well-known to Melbourne audiences. Last year, the daring British performance artist simultaneously toured two critical smash-hits to the city: Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model at the Festival of Live Art, and Sex Idiot at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. In some ways, Fake it 'Til You Make It is a kind of dark sequel to the achingly funny Sex Idiot, in which Kimmings traced her sexual chronology back through time. Now her real-life partner Tim Grayburn has become her co-star and collaborator, as the pair craft a narrative that intertwines his experience of chronic depression with hers as the woman who loves him. More than one moment in the show makes obvious references to the other; at one point the pair spell out an exhaustive, staggering list of the symptoms of depression on cuecards, a moment with traces of Kimmings’ crowdpleasing 'Fanny Song' from Sex Idiot (a song which made its own nod towards Bob Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'). Here, the artist’s approach to music and sound design is just as eclectic and often surprising, with the 'Love Theme' from Cinema Paradiso taking pride of place alongside infectious earworm 'Let’s Talk About Gender, Baby'. Throughout the show, there are some brilliant scenes that stand as defiant reminders of what theatre alone can do — where the arrangement of competing voices, music and live bodies in space align. In one hugely affecting moment of this kind, a masked Grayburn is delivering a routine speech to colleagues at his advertising firm before he is first interrupted then overwhelmed by burst fragments of his own verbatim recordings with Kimmings. Overall, the combination of all these different elements — the recordings, songs, heartfelt confessions exposed to an audience and spotlight — occasionally risks overbalancing, feeling jumpy and disjointed. But that’s the paradox of representing trauma onstage; it’s a ruptured, messy form that marries content with style, and its messiness ultimately says a lot more about its subject than any conventionally polished play ever could.
Take one of popular culture's biggest supervillains, throw in one of today's very best actors and add the director of The Hangover trilogy. Only a few years ago, the above sentence might've seemed like a joke. Today, it's the reality we're living in — the reality that sees a standalone Joker movie cackling its way towards cinema screens, starring Joaquin Phoenix in the titular role. Move over Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger and Jared Leto — it's Phoenix's time to don exaggerated clown makeup, wield a killer smile and wreak havoc on Gotham City. The just-released final trailer for Joker promises plenty of all three, as failed standup comedian Arthur Fleck turns to a life of facepaint-wearing crime (and eventually obsessing over Batman, we're guessing). As directed and co-written by Todd Phillips (Old School, Starsky & Hutch, Due Date), Joker also comes with a suitably unhinged vibe, as if Phoenix's You Were Never Really Here character stumbled into Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy. (Fittingly, the latter film plus Taxi Driver and Raging Bull have been cited as inspirations for the new DC Comics flick, and Scorsese is one of Joker's executive producers.) It also looks certain to help everyone forget that the last take on the famous villain only arrived three years ago, because who wants to remember Leto's green-haired turn in Suicide Squad? If the first and second trailers are anything to go by, it looks like Phoenix will — thankfully — follow in the footsteps of Nicholson and Oscar-winner Ledger instead, as he plays alongside his nemesis (and talk show host) Robert De Niro, his love interest Atlanta's Zazie Beetz and his mother Frances Conroy, as well as Marc Maron and Brett Cullen. But we'll have to wait till October to know for sure. If you'd like a dose of terrifying clown cinema before then, IT: Chapter Two drops next week. In the meantime, check out the final trailer below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAGVQLHvwOY Joker releases in Australian cinemas on October 3, 2019.
