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.
What do you get when you cross three fine dining heroes with decades of combined experience that spans pretty much the entire world? Although this sounds a lot like a punchline that would force you to unfollow a close friend, the real answer is Etta, the new home for Hayden McMillan, Hannah Green, and Dominique Fourie McMillan. The trio, who have an insane resume that includes Cutler & Co, The Roving Marrow (which won a hat under Hayden's charge), Attica and Neil Perry's Rosetta, will open up their new joint tonight — Thursday, March 23 — at the Brunswick East end of Lygon Street. With restaurants all over the place trending towards a more healthy-meets-delicious selection of dishes, it's no surprise to see the trio's newest venture taking up the mantle of the balanced yet tasty diet. When we met Hayden back in 2013, when he was killing it in the kitchen at Auckland's TriBeCa, he told us that his dish of choice at home was a "massive bowl of vegetables and sweetcorn with sliced almonds and butter". Whether or not that's still the case, this focus on vegetables is key to the menu at Etta. It's not a case of a strictly vegetarian joint, but he says to expect "a heavy representation of produce over protein". While it's easy to give in to our inner child and assume that everything that is good for you tastes rubbish, Hayden is aiming to blast that notion back into the past — where it belongs. "It's the kind of eating that makes people feel good," he says. "And it's delicious." So expect dishes like mozzarella pasta with peas and broccoli, King George whiting with lentils and lemon, and a rich charcoal lamb dish with goats' cheese. The 80-seat restaurant will be a 'contemporary neighbourhood bistro', and the wine list, curated by Hannah, will share that focus on locality, too, championing small producers and family-owned operations from both at home and abroad. The fit-out has been crafted by IF Architecture (the folks responsible for Gertrude Street's Marion), and will feature a botanical mural by local artist Robert Bowers. As well as lending the bistro her name, blues legend Etta James once said that "the two things you can't fake are good food and good music". With a track record like the one belonging to the trio behind Etta, you'd best believe that they ain't faking. Etta will open on Thursday, March 23 at 60 Lygon Street, Brunswick East. It will open Wednesday to Saturday from 4pm and Sundays from 12pm. For more info, visit ettadining.com.au.
If Melbourne town's end-of-year weather is getting you down — sweltering one day, streaming from the skies the next — here is some small solace for you. Melbourne's Boho Luxe Market (their words, not ours) is determined to make you remember those times when you could dip your toes in the ocean without needing an umbrella, and take you to a sun-dappled place of dreamcatchers and flower crowns. Because these things are apparently synonymous with Byron Bay, the market's goal is to bring "that Byron Bay vibe to Melbourne" — so expect all of the above except for the beach bit. For their festive run, they'll be in town on Sunday, December 10, when you can treat yourself to a day of Christmas wanderlust in the Atrium at Federation Square. There'll be heaps of stalls featuring bohemian fashion, jewellery, homewares, pet products and kids stuff for tiny people too. There are even some complimentary tote bags on offer for the first 100 shoppers; the likes of cupcakes, doughnuts, vegan chocolate and Vietnamese dishes to eat, and live music amping up the relaxed vibes as well.
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.
In repentance for all the times you've ordered take away and slumped on the couch feeling like the worst, you can now do the exact same thing while feeling like the best. On Friday, July 15 Uber is teaming up with OzHarvest and a horde of celebrity chefs to design and deliver a range of gourmet ice creams for a good cause (sorry Gelato Messina, you're out of the gang). The guys at OzHarvest hope to deliver 100,000 meals for vulnerable Aussies to help them get through the harsh winter season. The profits from a $15 half-litre tub of ice cream will provide five square meals to struggling Aussies — and one indulgent meal to yourself. George Calombaris, Matt Moran and Neil Perry have all signed up, and each has designed a custom ice cream flavour. There are no prizes for guessing that George's has an amazing Greek twist — it's called Caramel and Walnut Baklava Smash. Matt Moran has wisely gone with the deliciousness of banana with his Banoffee Crunch and Neil Perry will be scooping Spiced Cookie and Caramel Swirl. They all sound bonkers, which is a good thing because distribution is randomised. All you have to do is jump on the app between 11am and 5pm on Friday and press the ice cream button for ice cream delivered straight to your door. If only all things in life were that simple. Check out their service areas on their website. Like all of Uber's extracurricular pursuits, demand will be high. But if you miss out, just buy an ice cream and donate to OzHarvest directly over here.
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.
Maybe you're reading this while wearing your warmest jacket. You could be scanning the page beneath all the blankets you own. Or, you might be perusing while shivering through record-breaking cold temperatures. Whichever fits, winter isn't just coming to Australia for 2023 — in many parts of the country, it feels like it has already arrived. Enter Aldi with perfect timing, announcing that it's bringing back its popular snow gear sale after taking a year off in 2022. Most years — except 2020 due to the pandemic, and then 2022 — Aldi puts a heap of snowfield-ready wardrobe items up for grabs, including everything from jackets and boots to face masks and beanies. Thankfully, 2023 is now one of those year, which is welcome news if you have a ski trip, snowboarding session of a stint building snowmen in your future, or you're simply keen to rug up at home. Mark Saturday, May 20 in your diary, make a date with your nearest Aldi supermarket, and prepare to have ample company. Every time this sale happens, it draws quite a crowd — and 2023's run includes more than 70 products, with prices starting from $4.99. Available at stores across the nation, and made to withstand extreme weather conditions, the latest range of gear includes ski jackets for $59.99, ski pants for $49.99, thermal underwear sets for $29.99, long-sleeved Merino wool tops for $39.99 and anti-fog ski goggles for $15.99. Kids clothing is part of the deal, too, if you'll be travelling with younger skiers — including being able to nab a childrens' jacket, pants, gloves, beanie and socks for a total of $97.95. Once you're all kitted out, you're certain to stay toasty no matter what frosty landscapes you have in your future. Prefer spending winter indoors? This year's selection has cosy attire for that, too, and the whole lineup spans different styles and colours to previous years. The Aldi Snow Gear Special Buys range is available from Aldi stores nationally from Saturday, May 20.
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.
There comes a time every year when we must officially commence the sad countdown to the end of hot summery days and start preparing for our inevitable winter hibernation spent under a blanket watching Netflix. But fortunately, 2018 has more than proved it has a few sunny weeks left, even if summer is well and truly over. To help you absorb the maximum amount of vitamin D into your body before the sun officially sets on warmer climes, we've teamed up with the summer aficionados at Magnum to provide some inspo for things you can do to make the most out of the handful of sunny days we have left. This year, Magnum collaborated with three incredible Australian designers to take its creamy delights to the next level. The sartorial brains behind Romance Was Born, Bec and Bridge and By Johnny were all invited to co-create their own limited edition ice cream flavours to encapsulate their labels' unique styles — and most importantly, to help us savour summer in a stylish way. Romance was Born swirled tangy raspberry with rich chocolate truffle sauce to create a vibrant nod to its otherworldly fashion. Johnny Schembri of By Johnny created a homage to his simple silhouettes in the form of a hazelnut, slightly salted vanilla number. And Bec and Bridge upped the ante on the classic caramelly dulce de leche as a nod to effortless European style. Here's how to worship the last of those summery vibes — fashionable Magnum in hand. SPEND A LAZY DAY BY THE WATER When summer is officially over, it's those long lazy days spent by the sea that we miss the most. So, pack your towel, a sensible amount of SPF, a selection of fresh fruits and a sneaky box of dulce de leche Magnums by Bec and Bridge in a cooler bag, and make the most of the warm days where you can justify spending an entire day laying in the sun. Be sure you invite that one responsible adult friend who brings a waterproof speaker and an esky full of cool drinks so you can fully honour the sun gods by listening to some sweet beats. Where? Wylie's Baths in Sydney, St Kilda Beach in Melbourne and Stradbroke Island near Brisbane. INDULGE IN A LITTLE ALFRESCO DINING AND A MOVIE While the weather permits, there are plenty of amazing spots to indulge in some outdoor dining — extra points if you support your local food scene by picking an eatery that's cosy and family-owned. Enjoy a hearty meal, but forgo any decadent dessert. Instead, pick up a box of By Johnny hazelnut salted vanilla Magnums so you can have one while you stroll to the cinema to catch one of the many amazing Oscar-nominated films that are still showing. If there's still stomach room, be the envy of your fellow choc-toppers, when you whip out another secret squirrel Magnum during the previews. Where? Hayden Orpheum in Sydney, The Astor Theatre in Melbourne and New Farm Cinemas in Brisbane. PICNIC AMONG THE FLOWERS Savour the remaining warm afternoons by gathering some close friends, finding a sunny spot in the park and summoning all your foodie powers to create the most exquisite picnic to say goodbye to summer once and for all. Think mismatched picnic blankets, wicker baskets filled with a few bottles of rose and a world of delectable treats. Take your spread to the next level by investing in an array of cheeses (you can never have too many), a selection of cold cuts from a local deli, a few punnets of fresh berries and — for something a little wild — an esky full of raspberry chocolate truffle Magnums by the lords of whimsy at Romance was Born. Where? The Botanic Gardens in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Savour the last days of warmth outside and with a luxe Magnum in hand.
Welcome to Brunswick's next door hall venue, aptly named 'The Hall', has officially re-opened this month, following a top-to-toe refurbishment. For those that weren't aware, this is the old 'Mess Hall' venue, a heritage-listed Masonic Hall with timber beams that arguably belong in a Canterbury cathedral. The new Hall looks much the same, but the 4 Pines crew has polished the space and revamped the menu. The taps are still pouring freshly brewed 4 Pines, naturally. And the food has been designed to match: think pan-Asian snacking plates like battered, crispy eggplant and pork belly bao with slaw and sticky hoisin. You can also load up with some larger dishes — mostly curries. There's a knockout beef Massaman, a red pumpkin curry with baby corn and snake beans, plus the usual suspects like Pad Thai and a 12-hour braised pork belly. Plus, plenty of vegan options to keep everyone happy. Even better, to celebrate the grand opening, The Hall is currently selling curry bowls for $4 a pop (limited to one per person, you greedy monsters). This offer is for a limited time and expires on Friday, 30 June. There's also a Tuesday 'Locals Night', where guests can get 25% off their bill. All you have to do is flash a Brunswick postcode on your licence. Joss Jenner-Leuthart, Managing Director of Welcome to Brunswick, says the new space was designed with community in mind, "When we opened Welcome To Brunswick in 2019, we wanted to be a place that Brunswick locals and visitors could come for no-fuss food, the freshest beer and an easy going local vibe. The Hall now adds casual pan-Asian plates to our food offer and gives locals another reason to come into their local!" The Hall is open five days a week, Tuesday to Saturday (weddings pending) from 5pm to 10pm. You'll probably need to book a seat if you want to nab a $4 curry bowl. The Hall at Welcome to Brunswick is open at 400 Sydney Rd, Brunswick from 5pm–10pm Tuesdays–Saturdays. Images: supplied.
We're going to take a shot in the dark and say that this news will probably be relevant to your interests: the Westin Melbourne and cheesemonger Maker & Monger are once again pairing up to offer a tiered cheese experience this winter. A more dairy-filled version of a high tea, the High Cheese feature both sweet and savoury cheese dishes, created and sourced by the Westin chef Michael Greenlaw and Anthony Femia of Maker & Monger. The whole shebang will set you back $70, which includes all the food as well as unlimited cups of coffee and tea. Wine and bubbles also available, but you'll need to pay for that by the glass. There will still be scones, but they'll be infused with gouda and served with whipped butter — and there will also be a cheesy (and salted white chocolate) tiramisu, cannoli filled with ricotta and gruyère-filled gougères, too. The possible pièce de résistance, however, is an entire baked Normandy camembert served with lavosh to dip in it (if you don't resort to your fingers, that is). Many other cheese and cheese-themed dishes are on the menu (including roquefort served with Four Pillars gin marmalade), but simply too many to list before dinner: we're already hungry. You can satisfy yours from 5.30pm every day between May 24 and August 31. High Cheese is available from 5.30pm daily. To reserve your spot, head to the website. UPDATE: AUGUST 8, 2019 — Due to popular cheese demand, the Westin will continue to run High Cheese until the end of the year.
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.
If you eagerly drink your way through the taps at most craft beer bars, then a host of tell-tale signs await the next day: headaches, cold sweats, dehydration, a queasy stomach and a strong craving for greasy food, usually. That won't be the case at BrewDog's latest venture, however, with the Scottish brewery opening up the world's first alcohol-free craft beer joint. Called BrewDog AF — with the final two letters standing for "alcohol-free", rather than the other term that instantly popped into your head — the bar launches in London on Monday, January 6. Every one of its 15 taps will pour booze-free brews, focusing on draught craft beer sans alcohol. That includes both zero-percent and 0.5-percent tipples, with the latter also officially classed as alcohol-free. On the menu: BrewDog's 0.5-percent pale ale Nanny State, as well as the alcohol-free version of their flagship Punk IPA, Punk AF. It's also creating two new booze-free brews: a coffee stout called Wake Up Call, and Hazy AF, an alcohol-free version of its New England IPA, Hazy Jane. Alcohol-free spirits and cider will be available too, as will burgers, salads and buffalo wings — and if you're looking for something to do over your booze-free pint, get ready for karaoke and bingo, among other activities. While BrewDog has been busy opening bars and breweries around the globe over the past decade — launching its first Australian site in Brisbane late in 2019, in fact — BrewDog AF marks its first fully alcohol-free venue. It's not London's first booze-free bar, or the world's, but it is the first to focus on alcohol-free (and hangover-free) craft brews. To celebrate that fact, as well as the new range of booze-free beers, the brewery has also dubbed the entire month 'drink all you can Jan' — when it comes to alcohol-free beers, that is. Not only at BrewDog AF, but at all of BrewDog's bars and breweries worldwide, drinkers can score free refills of all alcohol-free beers throughout January. BrewDog AF and its increased non-alcoholic craft brew range forms part of the company's mission to whip up a craft beer for everyone, including folks who like their brews sans booze. As brewery founder James Watt explains, "drinkers opting for low or no alcohol are in danger of compromising on quality, taste and experience. And that's just the beer – forget about places in which to enjoy it. We are going to change that. We exist to be a point of difference, and our first BrewDog AF Bar is just that." Even if a trip to London isn't in your future, BrewDog's new venture is a welcome development for anyone who has tried to forgo alcohol during Dry July, doesn't drink booze but would still like to sink a few cold ones with their mates, or can't imbibe for a number of reasons — medication interactions, other health reasons or just by choice. With non-alcoholic spirits like Seedlip and Brunswick Aces gaining more attention, bars such BrewDog AF are the natural next step. Yes, you can get non-boozy beverages like juice and soft drinks anywhere, but it's not the same as knocking back booze-free beers in a spot that celebrates the drink but not the alcohol. Find the BrewDog AF Bar at the Mews Unit of the Bower Development at 211 Old Street, London, from Monday, January 6 — open 12pm–11pm Sunday–Thursday and 12pm–11.30pm Friday–Saturday. For booze-free beer lovers in Brisbane, BrewDog's first Aussie brewery — DogTap at Murarrie — is serving up unlimited refills of BrewDog alcohol-free beers until January 31.
Twelve fine-diners and casual eateries run by former MasterChef Australia judge George Calombaris have closed their doors as his restaurant group Made Establishment goes into voluntary administration. While Yo-Chi — the group's frozen yoghurt company — will continue trading as usual, seven Jimmy Grants, as well as Hotel Argentina, Gazi, Hellenic Republic Brighton and the newly opened Crofter Dining Room and Elektra have all "stopped trading immediately". The move comes months after Calombaris' restaurants were rocked by wage scandals, with the company admitting employees were underpaid by $7.8 million. While hundreds of workers will be impacted by the closures, Made Establishment's newly appointed administrators, KordaMentha, said in a statement that "employees have been paid all outstanding wages and superannuation up to the date of the appointment". According to KordaMentha, "declining trade across venues" and "difficult trading conditions in the hospitality industry...due to the expansion of the on-demand economy via services such as UberEats and Deliveroo" were also reasons for Made Establishment's voluntary administration. Calombaris himself responded to the appointment and closures via a post on Instagram, in which he said "I truly regret it has come to this". "The last few months have been the most challenging I have ever faced," Calombaris said in the post. "At this time, while personally devastated, I remain thankful to my family, friends, the MADE team, our loyal and regular customers". https://www.instagram.com/p/B8YEzVgFVgR/ All 12 of Made Establishment's restaurants and eateries will remain closed while the administrators seek alternative operators for the venues.
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.
If you've got zero resolve when faced with a room full of dreamy, artisanal chocolates, consider this South Yarra store dangerous territory. The new Como Centre flagship space for Victorian-born choccy brand Koko Black is simply brimming with smooth, cocoa-charged temptation. Decked out with Australian timber and a slew of custom-made lighting and furniture pieces, it's a lofty, light-filled space that's also home to a new concept for the chocolatier — the first-ever Koko Chocolate Bar, pouring a range of Belgian hot chocolates ($&), St Ali coffee and other signature drinks. A summery range of iced sips includes the espresso and salted caramel chill ($9), blending espresso, milk, ice cream and Koko Black's house-made salted caramel sauce, then finished with whipped cream. House-made ice creams, rich milkshakes and a selection of desserts are also up for grabs. Elsewhere in the store, you'll find a dedicated praline counter showing off Koko Black's collection of over 42 delicate, hand-crafted pralines. One wall makes a feature piece of more than 700 colourful chocolate blocks, in a huge range of 25 different varieties, while collections of other signature Koko Black goodies are showcased artfully on timber shelves and tables throughout the store.
"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.
After announcing they'll be playing sets at six European festivals this summer — their first live shows since 2012 — Radiohead have added a string of headline shows to their year, carving out a very neat 2016 world tour. So neat in fact, that's it's a little on the sparse side. That is to say that there are no Australian or New Zealand dates listed on their 2016 schedule as of yet (even after we checked and refreshed the page nine times). Instead, the band will do a series of May dates in Amsterdam, Paris and London, before heading to Barcelona's Primavera Sound, Iceland's Secret Solstice, Switzerland's Openair St Gallen and Lisbon's Nos Alive festivals. They'll then move onto New York, LA, Japan, Berlin for Lollapalooza and Mexico City. And although their website says these are "all the headline shows that the band will play in 2016", we're not taking that as an absolute, and will continue to cross our hopeful little fingers that a Australasian date or two gets added to the list. Not to be too forthcoming, but November would be perfect. No pressure. Radiohead have yet to announce a new album, but you can view all their 2016 tour dates at their website, W.A.S.T.E.
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.
If the stones and shopfronts of Lygon Street could talk, they’d surely do so in Italian. Sometimes referred to as Melbourne’s Little Italy, the iconic Carlton thoroughfare has played a major role in Australia’s cultural and gastronomical development over the past 60 years, and it is now the subject of a new home-grown documentary: Lygon Street – Si parla Italiano. The story begins in the years following World War Two, during which time millions of migrants left Europe in search of new beginnings. Of those that made the long journey to Australia, one in six were from Italy, many of whom came based on the promise of jobs that in reality didn’t exist. At first, the government funnelled them into migrant centres (viewers are left to draw their own parallels to the treatment of asylum seeks today). The conditions were shabby and the means of entertainment scarce, but the biggest sticking point for the Italians was the terrible quality of the food. Soon, the migrants flooded out into the community in search of a place where they could call their own. As if by fate, they settled on a street named Lygon. Before long, the road was littered with restaurants, coffee bars, grocers and delicatessens, many of them with and written signs in the window reading 'Si parla Italiano', meaning 'we speak Italian'. Locals were suspicious of the settlers at first, but were soon won over by the quality of their cooking. By the '80s, Lygon Street was one of the hottest night spots in the city, home to bars, clubs and theatres, not to mention, the scene of raucous celebration in the wake of Italy’s 1986 World Cup victory. Silky narration by Anthony LaPaglia keeps the film from feeling too much like a history lesson. Directors Shannon Swan and Angelo Pricolo combine archival footage and traditional talking heads with a more flavoursome approach to storytelling by inviting some of the street’s oldest pioneers – the owners of establishments like L’Alba and University Café – out for dinner. Over plates of pasta, the old friends recall stories from their past, laughing and shouting over the top of each other as they argue about which one owned the first Espresso machine in Australia. It’s an ingenious way of making viewers feel included – a Saturday night dinner in one of Lygon’s bustling eateries. Admittedly, it’s hard to imagine Si parla Italiano being as interesting to anyone from outside of certain areas of Melbourne, which is probably why the film is playing exclusively at Cinema Nova. Still, locals should be thoroughly charmed, particularly when factoring in the rather surreal experience of exiting the theatre onto the boulevard they’ve just been watching. If nothing else, the doco is a savvy marketing tool for traders. No one’s likely to walk out of the film not craving an Italian meal.
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 play's about a group of actors in crisis... so art is imitating life." Actor Gareth Davies is in the middle of a manic final week of rehearsals for The Government Inspector ahead of its opening at Melbourne's Malthouse, before a Sydney season at Belvoir. "But manic's good," says Davies. "The plays I've done that have been bad have been slow, sedate, very careful and cautious things that we were all totally prepared for, and you get up there in front of an audience and it doesn't have a spark of spontaneity or panic." In the plot of the original Russian play by Nikolai Gogol, a low-level clerk is confused with an important bureaucrat and worshipped as a god. In this collaboration between director Simon Stone, writer Emily Barclay and the cast, the gormless pen-pusher becomes a bitterly unsuccessful actor (Davies). A cast of frantic actors who are desperately putting together a show mistake him for a famous auteur and worship him accordingly. Stone recently said that this play is "the furthest away I've ever gone [from a source text's foundations]". It's a big claim from a director who's built a career on adaptations that self-reportedly "rape and pillage" the classics. But Davies agrees that only the skeleton of the original work remains. "There's various character archetypes and a basic story structure that's there, but the setting's entirely changed," he says. "Thematically it's pretty similar — it's fraud, it's someone accidentally being placed in a position where everyone thinks he's someone else and then kind of enjoying that. Once he's realised that he's essentially being totally dishonest with everyone he starts to really wallow, to enjoy the free booze and the free food and the way that people talk to him." Like Gogol's story, Stone's choice of play was born out of misunderstanding: a sudden seismic shift prompted by the last-minute discovery of existing rights for Belvoir's scheduled production of The Philadelphia Story. I put it to Davies that the frustration of those events seems to have bled into this work, but he's more circumspect. "It is a starting point for our play, but it would have been pretty uninteresting to do an attack on that situation. With these actors, at the beginning, just like us, something that they knew and something that they wanted is taken away and then the story begins, but that's as far as it goes — it's just a crisis that sets off the story." As open as he is about its beginning, Davies is reluctant to give anything away about the latter parts of the play, especially the musical sections choreographed by Lucy Guerin and composed by longtime Stone collaborator Stefan Gregory. For Davies, this kind of mainstage production seems a little out of character, given his background in independent theatre as one of the founders of The Black Lung Theatre and Whaling Firm, whose work has terrorised audiences across Australia. Yet Stone's process has in many ways reflected the same kind of approach. "The way we're working here is much more similar to those shows. Often with mainstage work as an actor you're one of the last people to find out about anything — by the time you arrive, the vision for the play is already there." The world of The Government Inspector might be easy for the Malthouse and Belvoir to market to a theatre-savvy audience, familiar with the utter chaos that goes into creating a show, but Davies firmly believes in its wider appeal. "We've been really aware of this, of making it too in-jokey," he says. "It is about a group of people making a show, but in the end that's not what you're responding to. More than anything else, it's a play about characters responding to crisis. In the end, we're all human, and just as petty, and beautiful, and small-minded as everyone else."
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
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
In Martin Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life, 17 scenes encircle the play’s central character, Anne, a woman who is everyone; a child, a terrorist, an artist. It’s an unstable narrative that forms a seamless backdrop to the work’s meditations on 20th-century obsessions. Dennis Kelly’s The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas shares some aspects of this focus, but where the “attempts” of Crimp’s title are efforts at capturing the impossibility of fully knowing a person, here the ritual at the core of Kelly’s play is a systematic process of dread certainty, building up and destroying every atom of a man’s soul. Ritual Slaughter opens with the ambiguous voices of a sustained, direct-address prologue, one that maps out the early life of Gorge Mastromas with painstaking clarity; each sentence another pin in a butterfly’s wings. Even here at the beginning, Kelly’s writing makes organic, dizzying leaps between clinical detachment and stylised poetry. Somehow, the scope of his vision is exhaustive enough to enfold both microscopic detail and grand epic. While actor Dion Mills’ obvious relish for the text helps to keep this first, long section dynamic, the writer slyly introduces the play’s vein of jet-black humour and the uncertainties that begin to infect its narrators’ voices; the patches of time that “history does not record”. The twists and turns of Gorge’s deceit would spoil any retelling of the plot beyond this point, as the play enters a more conventional series of scenes between the central figure and other characters which hinge upon his constructed persona. The initial restraint in the production’s AV design pays off in the wrenching impact of the play’s first real revelation, with Mills and Olga Makeeva’s faces projected onto the stage itself, throwing up the collision between the play’s increasingly contradictory worlds of narration and action in stark, simultaneous relief. Here and throughout this Australian premiere at Red Stitch, director Mark Wilson and his actors embrace the ebbs and flows of the text’s slow-burning build to devastating effect. All of the ensemble cast are excellent, with Mills, Makeeva, Elizabeth Nabben and Richard Cawthorne joined by the company’s new graduate Jordan Fraser-Trumble. As Gorge, Cawthorne manages to wrap utter pathos in a magnetic physical presence, a combination that makes his character’s degradation hypnotising to watch. It’s all too tempting to explain away a play where the ravages of mindless financial expansionism are intertwined with literal and abstracted violence as overt, didactic commentary. Nietzsche wrote that “whoever thinks that Shakespeare’s theatre has a moral effect, and that the sight of Macbeth irresistibly repels one from the evil of ambition, is in error … He who is really possessed of ambition beholds this its image with joy; and if the hero perishes by his passion this precisely is the sharpest spice in the hot draught of his joy.” In this way, Ritual Slaughter is much more than a stern parable about the morass of unknowable forces that govern the flow of power and wealth worldwide. Kelly puts that darkness inside a man, and he squeezes. This is an intoxicating show, and bitterly rare among Melbourne theatre for a willingness to treat an audience as its equal. Pictured: Richard Cawthorne and Elizabeth Nabben. Image by Jodie Hutchinson.
Each autumn, Melbourne movie lovers score a super-sized French treat: a feast of flicks hitting the big screen, all thanks to the Alliance Française French Film Festival. In 2025, the fest marks its 36th year. On the lineup: 42 pictures that span the breadth and depth of Gallic filmmaking. So, when you're not enjoying the latest version of the The Count of Monte Cristo, you'll be diving into France's newest black comedies, then plunging into French drama and seeing a restored masterpiece. In the Victorian capital, the fun starts on Wednesday, March 5, with the full 42-title program playing until Wednesday, April 9 at Palace Cinema Como, The Kino, Palace Balwyn, Palace Brighton Bay, Palace Westgarth, Pentridge Cinema,The Astor Theatre, Palace Penny Lane and Palace Regent Ballarat. Kicking off the fest: opening night's Tahar Rahim (Madame Web)-starring Monsieur Aznavour, about singer-songwriter Charles Aznavour — which has been doing big business in France, selling 1.8-million-plus tickets. From there, the highlights keep coming, right through to closing night's rom-com In the Sub for Love. The aforementioned The Count of Monte Cristo features Pierre Niney (The Book of Solutions) in the lead and takes AFFFF's centrepiece slot, while Jean-Pierre Melville's 1969 great Army of Shadows arrives in 4K Down Under after premiering its restored version at Cannes 2024. Or, catch a 50-years-later remake of Emmanuelle, this time starring Noémie Merlant (Lee) and Naomi Watts (Feud), with Audrey Diwan (Happening) directing — or see Mélanie Laurent (Freedom) and Guillaume Canet (All-Time High) portraying Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI in their final days in The Deluge. Plus, Meet the Leroys is a road-trip dramedy that marks Charlotte Gainsbourg's (Alphonse) latest film, while Prodigies delivers a tale of sibling rivalry with Emily in Paris' Camille Razat. Viewers can also look forward to The Divine Sarah Bernhardt, with Sandrine Kiberlain (Meet the Barbarians) as the eponymous actor; All Stirred Up, a comedy focusing on a customs officer on the border between Quebec and the United States, plus her daughter's attempts to win a cooking contest; and Riviera Revenge, where an affair almost four decade prior sparks a quest for vengeance in the French Riviera. Elsewhere, How to Make a Killing features regular AFFFF face and Call My Agent favourite Laure Calamy (The Origin of Evil), as does My Everything; Louis Garrel and Vincent Cassel (co-stars in the 2024 festival's The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan and The Three Musketeers: Milady) team up in Saint-Ex, about Argentinian pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; When Fall Is Coming is the latest from acclaimed director François Ozon (The Crime Is Mine); and nonagenarian filmmaker Costa-Gavras (Adults in the Room) delivers the personal Before What Comes After. Or, get excited Beating Hearts, which is helmed by Gilles Lellouche (Sink or Swim), stars Adèle Exarchopoulos (Inside Out 2) and François Civil (The Three Musketeers), and played at Cannes International Film Festival 2024 — as did the music-loving My Brother's Band from The Big Hit writer/director Emmanuel Courcol. Also in the Cannes contingent are a range of movies exploring the stories of a courier facing a interview to obtain residency, plus artist Niki de Saint-Phalle, a midlife crisis, pastoral France and being a teenager amid Corsican gang politics, aka The Story of Souleymane, Niki, This Life of Mine, Holy Cow and The Kingdom.
Have you ever seen Nick Cave smile before? It's a shocking thing. For the generations of Australians — and there are many of them — who have grown up with Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds at the centre of musical life, it is startling to realise that amongst the darkness and the tales of addiction, Cave's face can crease itself not into a grimace or a tormented frown but an expression of unguarded joy. Cave's sudden smile is not the only first for the quasi-documentary 20,000 Days on Earth. Filmmakers Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth have made a documentary that plays like a narrative but feels like a video clip. Unlike its obvious fictional music-doco predecessor This Is Spinal Tap, the duo's film is not a stealthy takedown: they're playing for real. Partly this is because the filmmaking team are artists with a 20-year partnership of making work together. Without any of the film world's preconceived ideas of what constitutes a documentary, their artistic training has allowed them to craft something out of elements that others would see as disparate and incompatible. And partly it's because Nick Cave's life and music necessitates a different approach to making documentaries. An artist as unconventional as Cave requires the defiance of filmmaking conventions. After opening Sydney Film Festival in June, 20,000 Days is now in art-house cinemas for everyone — including two very special sessions at Melbourne's Astor where Cave will be appearing in person for a Q&A. We spoke to Pollard and Forsyth about what it means to make a hybrid music documentary, the process behind the beauty and what Nick Cave is really all about. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ap0_y5EGttk This is a documentary that blurs some serious lines between genres and fiction and what we think we know as documentary. What exactly was scripted and what flowed organically? Cave himself is credited as a writer. Pollard: No dialogue was scripted at all. Apart from one line [preceding Cave's meeting with a therapist, Darian Leader], the psychoanalyst's assistant says, "Darian will see you now." The things that Nick wrote were all the voiceovers, with that particular tone. Some of those things came pre-written, we found them in his notebooks, like the first quote we used: "At the end of the twentieth century, I work, I write, I eat…" — that was a lyric from his notebooks. Then we we asked him to expand on those notes. We sent him about twenty, thirty topics for the voiceovers, and when he was on tour he'd write a paragraph and send it back. And if we thought it was worth recording, we'd get him to record it on his iPhone and just try it in different places in the film. I understand you didn't actually set out to make a doco about Nick Cave. How did this project start and evolve? Pollard: We'd filmed the scenes of Nick and Warren [Ellis] writing and demoing the album, and then the band in the studios. And we'd filmed all of that before we knew what it was we were going to make this into. The big scene in the film is them playing live from the album 'Push Back the Sky'. At that point we knew we had something that deserved to be carried in something much bigger than the scope of a contemporary music film or a promo that would end up on YouTube and sync very quickly. We wanted to make something bigger that would be more meaningful and stand the test of time, and that's when Iain and I wrote an action script. We knew we had two things we wanted to do, we had the cycle of the album, and then more specifically the individual song — that's the first thing you hear, the song 'Jubilee Street', and then the performance on the Sydney Opera House stage. So we had that cycle as one parallel for the storyline. The other cycle came from finding the film's title in Nick's notebook - it was a discarded song, and he'd done this calculation of how long he'd been on earth. We loved the phrase 'twenty thousand days on earth' and it gave us a very simple conceit to strap the rest of the film onto. So we thought, okay, let's make the film one day on earth. And then we can make whatever we want happen on that day. Everything that happened in that day was something we decided. We wrote the parameters of it, and Nick worked with us. He'd say, 'I'm not so sure about waking up in bed with my wife; I'll give it a go, but I might not be happy with that.' He kinda just cast his eye over what we wrote and said 'I'll give it a shot'. For us, that's where we decided to start. Cave talks a lot about the intersection of living in a story and telling a story. I really can't tell where the boundaries are with your film. Where did you guys draw these boundaries? Pollard: We set ourselves certain parameters. One rule was, we'd never ask Nick to do something twice. Even if he said something and it was great, but we didn't catch it or the camera wasn't on, we wouldn't ask him to do it again. He never had to flip from that headspace of being in the moment, to suddenly remembering the act of what we were doing which was making a film. And with Darian, we met him a few times, we gave him a set of topics, he read books and novels, and we gave him some structure. He had an idea of the sorts of things we were looking for. And then it became an endurance thing that we filmed for ten hours. There's a disorientating thing for both Darian and Nick, talking and not knowing what we would use. Forsyth: With Darian, the psychoanalyst, it was a totally artificial location. Darian is a professional psychoanalyst, that's what he does. Our cameras were out of Nick's sightline, all the technical side of filmmaking was hidden, so as much as possible, it would feel like a genuinely intimate conversation. They met for the first time on set. How do you negotiate these funny blurred lines in hybrid documentaries like this? How do you ensure you create something that's real and true and still semi-scripted? Pollard: It's a very simple thing: if we can physiologically feel an emotional truth in a scene, then that's the truth we're interested in. Whether it's factual or autobiographical, you still need to feel an emotional truth. [Had we only taken a strictly observational approach], it's a narrow road to take your story down, because suddenly it becomes tied and tent-pegged by things that are outside of it, outside its control and parameters and you'll inevitably have to break those parameters, as every reality program does. Everything we see that presents itself as factual or observational is flawed in the truth that it's telling, the actual truth that it's telling. I think the audience is sophisticated enough to get it. I just never doubt that an audience is going to stay with us. In your film, Cave talks a lot about his fear of being forgotten. As someone who's gone to art school and knows a lot of people who also have this fear, I'm not sure how I feel about it. Do you think it's intrinsically egotistical to want artistic immortality? Or is it a natural inclination for an artist? Pollard: I think anybody who has, as their job, put themselves into performing and creating something bigger than themselves, something that is about being remarkable and being on show and being a spectacle … to be a spectacle but not to be remembered? That's a tough dichotomy. His reason for existence is to be remarkable, to be the centre of something, to be spectacular and to entertain. Forsyth: If the question was, 'are you concerned about not making a difference?', that would be completely agreeable. As an artist, as a filmmaker, you want to be impactful. 20,000 Days on Earth is in select cinemas nationally, and also showing at some special screenings. The most special of these is probably Friday, December 19, at Melbourne's Astor Theatre, when Nick Cave will appear in person for a Q&A. More info and tickets on the Astor website.
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.
Something delightful has been happening in cinemas across the country. After periods spent empty during the pandemic, with projectors silent, theatres bare and the smell of popcorn fading, Australian picture palaces are back in business — at present, spanning both big chains and smaller independent sites in Melbourne and Brisbane. During COVID-19 lockdowns, no one was short on things to watch, of course. In fact, you probably feel like you've streamed every movie ever made, including new releases, comedies, music documentaries, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent all your time of late glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of new films are hitting cinemas so that you can do just that — and we've rounded up, watched and reviewed everything on offer this week. BLACK WIDOW Closure is a beautiful thing. It's also not something that a 24-film-and-growing franchise tends to serve up often. Since 2008, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has operated with the opposite aim — extending and expanding the series at every turn, delivering episodic instalments that keep viewers hanging for the next flick, and endeavouring to ensure that the superhero saga blasts onwards forever. But it's hard to tick those boxes when you're making a movie about a character whose fate is already known. Audiences have seen where Natasha Romanoff's (Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story) story finishes thanks to Avengers: Endgame, so Black Widow doesn't need to lay the groundwork for more films to follow. It's inexcusable that it has taken so long for the assassin-turned-Avenger to get her own solo outing. It's indefensible that this is just the second Marvel feature to solely focus on a female figure, too. But, unlike the missed opportunity that was Captain Marvel, Black Widow gives its namesake a thrilling big-screen outing, in no small part because it needn't waste time setting up a Black Widow sequel. Instead, the pandemic-delayed movie spends its 143 minutes doing what more MCU flicks should: building character, focusing on relationships, fleshing out its chosen world and making every inch of its narrative feel lived-in. The end result feels like a self-contained film, rather than just one chapter in a never-ending tale — which gives it the space to confidently blend family dramas with espionage antics, and to do justice to both parts of that equation. Sporting an impressive cast that also includes Florence Pugh (Little Women), David Harbour (Stranger Things) and Rachel Weisz (The Favourite), Black Widow begins in 1995, in small-town Ohio. Here, Harbour and Weisz play Alexei and Melina, parents to young Natasha (Ever Anderson, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter) and Yelena (Violet McGraw, Doctor Sleep), and the portrait of all-American domesticity — or that's the ruse, at least. The film doesn't revel in small-town life, neighbourhood playtimes, 'American Pie' sing-alongs and an existence that could've been ripped from The Americans for too long, however, with the quartet soon en route back to Russia via Cuba at shady puppetmaster Dreykov's (Ray Winstone, Cats) beckoning. When the action then jumps forward to 2016, and to the aftermath of that year's Captain America: Civil War, Natasha hasn't seen her faux family for decades. On the run from the authorities, she isn't palling around with the Avengers, either, with the superheroes all going their separate ways. Then the adult Yelena (Pugh) reaches out, because she too has fled her own powers-that-be: Dreykov, the fellow all-female hit squad she's been part of for the last 21 years, and the mind-control techniques that've kept her compliant and killing. There's an unmistakable air of Bourne and Bond to Black Widow from there, but this deftly satisfying flick doesn't trade the MCU's blueprints for other franchises' templates. With Australian filmmaker Cate Shortland (Somersault, Lore and Berlin Syndrome) in the director's chair, this welcome addition to the franchise spins a thoughtfully weighty story about women trapped at the mercy of others and fighting to regain their agency. Read our full review. THE SPARKS BROTHERS "All I do now is dick around" is an exquisite song lyric and, in Sparks' 2006 single 'Dick Around', it's sung with the operatic enthusiasm it demands. It's also a line that resounds with both humour and truth when uttered by Russell Mael, who, with elder brother Ron, has been crafting art-pop ditties as irreverent and melodic as this wonderful track since 1969. Sparks haven't been dicking around over that lengthy period. They currently have 25 albums to their name, and they've taken on almost every genre of music there is in their highly acerbic fashion. That said, their tunes are clearly the biggest labour of love possible, especially as the enigmatic duo has always lingered outside the mainstream. They've had some chart success, including mid-70s hit 'This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us', Giorgio Moroder collaboration and disco standout 'The Number One Song in Heaven', and the supremely 80s 'Cool Places'. They're beloved by everyone from Beck and 'Weird Al' Yankovic to Jason Schwartzman and Mike Myers, too. They're the band that all your favourite bands, actors and comedians can't get enough of, but they're hardly a household name — and yet, decade after decade, the Maels have kept playing around to make the smart, hilarious and offbeat songs they obviously personally adore. Everyone else should love Sparks' idiosyncratic earworms as well — and, even for those who've never heard of the band before, that's the outcome after watching The Sparks Brothers. Edgar Wright, one of the group's unabashed super fans, has turned his overflowing affection into an exceptional documentary. It's the Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Baby Driver's first factual effort, and it's even more charming and delightful than the films he's best known for. That said, it'd be hard to mess up a movie about Sparks, purely given how much material there is to work with. Russell and Ron, the former sporting shaggier hair and the latter donning a pencil-thin moustache rather than the Charlie Chaplin-style top lip he's brandished for much of his career, are also heavenly interviewees. That's the thing about these now-septuagenarian siblings, every Sparks tune they've ever blasted out into the world, and this comprehensive yet always accessible film that's instantly one of 2021's best: they're all joyously, fabulously, eccentrically fun to an infectious and buoyant degree. The world has always needed more Sparks on a bigger stage; now, to the benefit of everyone that's ever loved them and anyone just discovering them, it's stopped dicking around and is finally delivering Read our full review. DATING AMBER "You look like a shit version of that guy from Blur". Before his reluctant first kiss, they're the exact words that the shy Eddie (Fionn O'Shea, Normal People) hears from the gum-chewing Tracey (Emma Willis, Vikings) — and the rest of their behind-the-building encounter, which is the result of pure peer pressure from Eddie's bullying classmates and zero actual desire on his own part, goes just as well. Afterwards, he soon finds himself face to face with another girl from his grade. This time, the similarly picked-on Amber (Lola Petticrew, A Bump Along the Way) has a far different assessment. In fact, she has a proposal, suggesting that they start dating each other to stop their peers from constantly taunting them about their sexuality. She's gay, she's picked that Eddie is as well, and this arrangement will help them stay in the closet in County Kildare circa 1995 until they finish the school year, graduate, and then both chase different futures. Plucky, no-nonsense and enterprising — she makes cash by renting out caravans in the park her widowed mother (Simone Kirby, Calm with Horses) runs to teens looking for somewhere to have sex — Amber wants to move to London to open "an anarchist bookshop with franchise potential". Quiet, determined to convince himself and the world that he's straight, and accustomed to tiptoeing around his parents' (This Way Up's Sharon Horgan and Extra Ordinary's Barry Ward) unhappy marriage, Eddie is training to join the military just like his dad, a path he clearly doesn't really want to follow. A warm and witty hormone-fuelled coming-of-age tale about seeking happiness, following your heart and breaking free of others' expectations, Dating Amber charts Eddie and Amber's faux relationship — including the camaraderie they feel as they play their parts, the comic subterfuge that comes with pretending they're the school's hottest couple, and the complications that spring the longer their charade continues. In another rom-com, this charming pair would simply be the queer best friends always by the straight protagonist's side, but thankfully that isn't the film that writer/director David Freyne brings to the screen. Instead, making his second feature after impressive zombie flick The Cured (and demonstrating his ability to hop seamlessly between genres in the process), the Irish filmmaker crafts a movie that's tender, thoughtful, perceptive and hilarious. His knack for 90s-era teen dialogue helps every exchange feel authentic, especially in the schoolyard. Even with the picture clocking in at a mere 92 minutes, the time and space he gives his central characters, as well as their hopes, dreams, fears and yearnings, is always noticeable. He helms a sunny but never visually glossy movie, too; however, alongside his insightful screenplay, he's served best by his core duo. In this amusing and astute gem, O'Shea and Petticrew put in wonderfully nuanced and layered performances that bring depth and emotion to every frame, and give them both a strong calling card for future roles. If you're wondering what else is currently screening in cinemas — or has been lately — check out our rundown of new films released in Australia on January 1, January 7, January 14, January 21 and January 28; February 4, February 11, February 18 and February 25; March 4, March 11, March 18 and March 25; and April 1, April 8, April 15, April 22 and April 29; May 6, May 13, May 20 and May 27; June 3, June 10, June 17 and June 24; and July 1. You can also read our full reviews of a heap of recent movies, such as Chaos Walking, Raya and the Last Dragon, Max Richter's Sleep, Judas and the Black Messiah, Girls Can't Surf, French Exit, Saint Maud, Godzilla vs Kong, The Painter and the Thief, Nobody, The Father, Willy's Wonderland, Collective, Voyagers, Gunda, Supernova, The Dissident, The United States vs Billie Holiday, First Cow, Wrath of Man, Locked Down, The Perfect Candidate, Those Who Wish Me Dead, Spiral: From the Book of Saw, Ema, A Quiet Place Part II, Cruella, My Name Is Gulpilil, Lapsis, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Fast and Furious 9, Valerie Taylor: Playing with Sharks, In the Heights, Herself and Little Joe.
On the long list of things that were bound to happen after the success of Stranger Things, seeing Dungeons & Dragons roll back into cinemas has always been right at the top. The role-playing game has already sparked three movies, with the first dating back to 2000 — but none of them starred Chris Pine, Rege-Jean Page, Michelle Rodriguez and Hugh Grant (or were well-received, whether they hit the silver screen or went straight to home entertainment). Another D&D film has been in the works in some shape or form since before the world saw a bunch of kids in Hawkins, Indiana play the game, unsurprisingly. Thanks to the success of Game of Thrones, fantasy epics have become a huge Hollywood cash cow (see also: the return of The Lord of the Rings as a streaming series later this year). Whether the new D&D will become one of the genres hits or misses is clearly yet to be seen — Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves doesn't reach cinemas until March 2023 — but the just-dropped first trailer certainly looks like it's aiming to start a franchise. Released to coincide with San Diego Comic-Con, which is currently on now, the initial glimpse at Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves introduces its motley crew of characters. "Here's the thing, we're a team of thieves," Pine (All the Old Knives) explains, if the title wasn't already obvious enough. This crew, which spans Page (The Gray Man), Rodriguez (Fast & Furious 9), Justice Smith (Jurassic World Dominion) and Sophie Lillis (IT and IT: Chapter Two), too, "helped the wrong person steal the wrong thing". Cue the greatest evil the world has ever known, unleashed unwittingly, which this band of thieves now endeavours to stop. Dragons pop up, of course. So do dungeons, to the astonishment of no one. Other fantastical animals, fights, flaming swords, fireballs: they're all included as well, as are Grant (The Undoing), fellow cast members Chloe Coleman (Marry Me) and Daisy Head (Wrong Turn), and Led Zeppelin's 'Whole Lotta Love'. Behind the camera, Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (Game Night) are in the directors' chairs, and co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Gilio. And yes, films based on Hasbro properties don't have the best record — the Transformers series, the GI Joe flicks, Battleship, Power Rangers — but if you're a D&D devotee, you'll be hoping this one changes that. Check out the trailer below: Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves opens in cinemas Down Under on March 2, 2023.
Pushing ladies to the front, welcoming them on-stage to discuss their fields of expertise and their experiences, and exploring a broad range of topics that are relevant to women: that's been the aim of Sydney Opera House's key feminist festival since 2013. From its inception, All About Women has dedicated a day to focusing on female voices, fittingly popping up around International Women's Day each year. Of course, it's never been possible to confine everything there is to talk about to one single day, so 2022's fest is expanding. When next March rolls around, All About Women will mark its tenth festival — and it'll hit double digits and broaden its footprint in tandem. To celebrate, Sydney Opera House's Head of Talks & Ideas Chip Rolley and First Nations legal academic, broadcaster, filmmaker, writer and Distinguished Professor Larissa Behrendt OA, the event's co-curators, have amassed an impressive range of speakers to participate in talks, panels, performances and workshops. The big focus: bravery, allyship and collective responsibility. One of the must-attend sessions of the 2022 fest, which'll take place between Saturday, March 12–Sunday, March 13: current and former Australians of the Year Grace Tame and Rosie Batty, who'll appear together publicly for the first time. In a session to moderated by author and political commentator Jamila Rizvi, they'll chat through the title they've both shared, including its challenges and opportunities. [caption id="attachment_837696" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Jacquie Manning[/caption] Another of All About Women's key talks will feature American Bad Feminist and Hunger writer Roxane Gay in conversation with writer/actor and Gamilaroi/Torres Strait Islander woman Nakkiah Lui, discussing their personal experiences of racism and misogyny. Other highlights include a session on the story of 'Kate', who posthumously accused federal MP Christian Porter of sexual assault; an exploration of consent, featuring lawyer and author Bri Lee, writer Lucia Osborne-Crowley, and advocate for sexual assault law reform Saxon Mullins; a conversation with Distinguished Professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Goenpul author of Indigenous feminist text Talkin' Up to the White Woman; and a panel discussing the everyday of disabled parenting curated and led by Eliza Hull, whose anthology of stories by disabled parents, We've Got This, will soon be published. [caption id="attachment_837698" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Jacquie Manning[/caption] The rest of the lineup also features an opening night gala headlined by poet and contemporary dancer Tishani Doshi, who'll perform Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods; writer, historian and podcaster Yves Rees hosting a panel that imagines a future without gendered expectations; Fight Like A Girl, Boys Will Be Boys and How We Love's Clementine Ford giving a secular sermon on love; a panel on the fate of women in Afghanistan now the Taliban has taken back control of the country; a session highlighting veteran ABC journalist Laura Tingle; and a panel showcasing next generation First Nations voices. While the festival is going ahead in-person for Sydneysiders, it'll also live-stream to viewers both around Australia and worldwide — because this top-notch program, and the subjects it covers, can't be confined to either one day or one place. All About Women 2022 will take place on Saturday, March 12–Sunday, March 13 at the Sydney Opera House. Livestream tickets and event multipacks are on sale from 9am AEDT on Thursday, December 16, with single-ticket pre-sales starting at the same time — and general public tickets available from 9am AEDT on Friday, December 17. Top image: Prudence Upton.
Across 2021's cooler months, locations around Australia will transform into winter wonderlands, celebrating the chilly season in all of its frosty glory. From May through until September, The Winter Village is returning after its debut run in Melbourne two years back — with the city's return stop taking place at Skyline Terrace at Federation Square (aka the top of the carpark) from Thursday, May 13–Sunday, August 29. Modelled on your typically picturesque European winter market — and giving Aussies a taste of a winter experience that we don't really have otherwise — The Winter Village comes complete with an ice rink, an igloo village, daily snow showers, and a food and drink lineup. Think of it as your quaint wintery escape in the very heart of Melbourne. Attendees will be able to dust off their skates and hit the ice, and hire a private igloo where you can wine and dine in cosy solace — either with up to five people in a smaller space, or in a six-metre-wide igloo that can cater for 14. Folks spending their time in The Winter Village's igloos will feast on grazing plates of chips, dips, mini pretzels, cured meats, fried chicken bites, mac 'n' cheese croquettes and more, drink their choice of wine or beer, and tuck into a chocolate ice cream sandwich for dessert. That's the $49 package, with the $69 option including espresso martini-flavoured chocolate fudge dipping sauce, berries, brownies, marshmallows, cookies and your choice of an Aperol spritz, espresso martini, wine or beer. Or, get festive over brunch instead — which includes a 45-minute skate session and a meal afterwards for $35. There'll also be pop-up bars and outdoor seating throughout the village, should you be keen on heading along without spending time in an igloo. The latest venture from hospitality group Australian Venue Co, the frozen oasis will be open daily and free to enter — from 11am–10pm Monday–Thursday, 11am–12am Friday, 10am–12am Saturday and 10am–10pm Sunday. That said, ice skating, igloo hire and a couple of winter warming beverages will obviously come at a cost. Top images: Mazloum J.
Next time you do your grocery shopping, you could cut down your reliance upon single-use plastics, treat your four-legged friend and pick up a fresh-cooked pizza — all at Coles. The supermarket chain has just launched a revamped store in Moonee Ponds, and it comes with a big focus on sustainability and quite a few upgrades. Also included: a fishmongers, cheese from That's Amore, and a fruit and vegetable bar. It certainly hasn't been a normal 12 months for supermarkets, with toilet paper battles and limits on everyday items hitting the front page more than once. But now the pandemic palaver has settled down somewhat, Coles hopes to make your everyday grocery shop (dare we say) exciting with the launch of its fancy new store — which is part of the company's mission to reduce waste. The newly renovated and reinvented store joins Chatswood in Sydney in boasting a range of forward-thinking elements. You can stop buying shampoo, conditioner, body wash, hand wash and laundry liquids in throwaway containers thanks to packaging-free in-store refill stations — and some fresh foods will be misted and stored on cold plates to reduce the need for packaging there, too. Herbs are being sold without plastic packaging as well, and you can also head to the fruit and vegetable bar to get your fresh produce of choice sliced, diced or made into juice while you wait. On the eco-friendly front, the Moonee Ponds site also has a coffee cup recycling station, as well as a soft-plastic recycling service — with the latter turning your discarded waste into benches, furniture, playground equipment, roads and Coles car parks. And, it's using trolley baskets made from recycled milk bottles and other recycled plastics, and also capturing waste heat from the refrigeration system to warm up the store. Overall, Coles has pledged to deliver net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and to power the entire Coles Group via 100-percent renewable electricity by the end of the 2025 financial year — with the Moonee Ponds store operating as a sustainability concept store. Last month, the company also announced that it would stop selling single-use plastic tableware from July 1. As well as ticking a heap of eco-conscious boxes, Coles Moonee Ponds now features locally caught seafood available at The Fishery, which is run by industry expert John Sussman and features food by Sam Cheetham (ex-Cumulus Inc). Pizzeria Tremila is whipping up the Italian favourite in 90 seconds in its in-store oven, and selling pizzas whole or by the slice. Roll'd also has a space onsite, serving its Vietnamese dishes; That's Amore is suppling 13 lines of cheese as part of an artisan dairy nook; Vegan Dairy is providing handmade products from the Mornington Peninsula; and Liquorland is heroing 140 local beer, wine and spirits brands. Plus, Coles hasn't forgotten about the most important member of your family: your pets. You can pick them up a few goodies thanks to the new in-store pet treat pick-and-mix bar — so your pooch can have an after-dinner snack while you enjoy your Tim Tams. Coles Moonee Ponds is located in Moonee Ponds Central Shopping Centre, Homer Street, Moonee Ponds — operating from 7am–11pm daily. Images: Coles.
Far more than simply sustenance, food is about bringing people together, creating an experience and sharing something of yourself. Preparing a meal is an act of love, and it's this attitude that a handful of revered cooks will be bringing to Abbotsford Convent for Double Delicious. There's a story behind every dish, and the storytellers — which include prolific writer Benjamin Law, chef and kimchi master Heather Jeong, and choreographer Raghav Handa — will be spinning a yarn while slicing and sautéing to tell you what food means to them, both personally and in terms of its cultural significance. It'll be an experience that promises to be equal servings mouth-watering and mind-altering. The show is part of Asia TOPA, Melbourne's three-month celebration of performing arts in the Asia Pacific region. Image: Ashley de Prazer.
When Peninsula Hot Springs unveiled its revamped facilities in 2018, the acclaimed Fingal spot added something extra exciting — especially if you're keen to pair your soak with some entertainment. At the Mornington Peninsula getaway's outdoor Bath House Amphitheatre, you can now not only relax in the 39-degree geothermal pool in the evening air, but also direct your eyes at a movie on the big screen while you're there. The Peninsula Hot Springs bathe-in cinema is all about getting blissful in warm water while watching movies that explore themes of connection, nature and laughter. A different film plays every Friday night in February, as well as on Sunday, February 14 as well — and, for its 2021 run, the site is doing something different with its lineup. Until January 31, you can hit up the venue's Facebook page to vote for your choice of movies. Two options are available each week, and it's a smartly curated range whichever one you pick. Do you prefer Sixteen Candles or Ferris Bueller's Day Off? Sliding Doors or Bridget Jones' Diary? The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert or The Sapphires? They're just some of the hard decisions you'll have to make. The finalised lineup will be announced afterwards — and then you'll just have to choose the best date to head along. Even better — catching a flick is included in the regular Bath House bathing price, which'll set you back $45 per person.
If you're struggling to remember a time when you didn't have a craving for Lune Croissanterie's world-class, New York Times-approved pastries, that's probably because the cult-favourite bakery has been around for an entire decade. Yep, the Melbourne-born croissant haven has been in our lives for ten whole years — and in a huge win for fans in Melbourne, it's celebrating its milestone birthday with a month full of buttery, flaky specials. In fact, for the month of October, Lune will be tripping back in time and reviving some of its all-time greatest hits. Each weekend, it's set to drop a limited run of one of its best-loved creations, available only from the OG Fitzroy store and Lune's new Armadale outpost. October's roll-call of favourites will be kicking off with a special appearance from the famed black forest croissant, which had us all drooling when it featured on season 11 of MasterChef. The decadent dessert is baked with sweet cherry jam and chocolate frangipane, stuffed full of chocolate mousse, whipped cream and maraschino cherries, and then sprinkled with tempered chocolate and a salted chocolate crumb. [caption id="attachment_871783" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Lune founders Kate and Cam Reid[/caption] It'll be available from both stores from Saturday, October 1–Sunday, October 2, though with limited numbers of the treat being whipped up, you'll want to get in quick. Each of the following four weekends will feature a different re-release from Lune's star-studded back catalogue — keep an eye on the bakery's Instagram to find out what's coming up next. If all those croissants leave you inspired to hit the kitchen yourself, you'll also be able to get your hands on founder Kate Reid's first cookbook, Lune Croissants: All Day, All Night, from early November. Lune started life back in 2012 as a pint-sized store in Elwood. The brand then moved into its now famous Fitzroy warehouse space, before opening a second store in the CBD in 2018. It's since expanded into Brisbane with two outposts in the Queensland capital, and is set to launch in Sydney next year, too. Lune's tenth birthday specials will be available each weekend of October at Lune Fitzroy (119 Rose Street, Fitzroy) and Lune Armadale (835 High Street, Armadale).
They've taken us through the streets of Japan with Tokyo Tina, sent our tastebuds tripping across Vietnam with their Hanoi Hannah stable and, most recently, immersed us in modern Chinese flavours at their Balaclava diner Moonhouse. Now, the Commune Group has hit its next global food tour stop with its latest project, Studio Amaro — an Italian bar and eatery based in Windsor. The team has dived into unchartered territory in more ways than one, with this Chapel Street venue being its largest yet. It boasts a 100-seat dining room at ground level, leading down to a DJ-fuelled, subterranean drinking den with space for an extra 60. Open from lunch through dinner and on into late-night revelry, this big corner site celebrates the classic flavours of Italy, with an offering that's bright and lively, yet steeped in simplicity. "Studio Amaro is our interpretation of Italian dining done in a very Melbourne way: communal, casual dining," explains the group's Creative Director Simon Blacher. Along with the eats, the venue's music offering features a diverse lineup of artist residencies who grace the downstairs DJ decks, and plenty of focus is given to the overall sonic experience. Meanwhile, Bergman & Co (La Fantaisie, Poodle, Chancery Lane) have looked after the interiors, delivering a warm, nostalgic setting complete with yellow corduroy banquettes. Find Studio Amaro at 168 Chapel Street, Windsor. It's open daily from 12pm–late. Images: Julia Sansone
UPDATE, August 30, 2020: Mary Shelley is available to stream via SBS On Demand, Google Play, YouTube Movies and iTunes. It has been exactly 200 years since Frankenstein's monster first shuffled through the pages of Mary Shelley's now-classic story, completely reshaping the gothic horror landscape in the process. At the time, no one anticipated the impact that the novel or the woman behind it would have. No one realised that Mary was responsible for the greatest horror novel ever written, either, a title it still holds today. In fact, only 500 copies of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus were initially printed back in 1818. It was also published anonymously, with Mary's poet husband Percy Bysshe Shelley penning the introduction and originally thought by many to be the text's author. Today, the beast conceived by the teenage Mary has carved a path not only through the literary world, but across cinema screens for more than a century — but, as the movie's title suggests, Mary Shelley doesn't replay Frankenstein's familiar narrative. Instead, Haifaa Al-Mansour's follow-up to 2012's Wadjda subscribes to a different filmmaking trend. Like everything from James Whale's iconic 1930s adaptations, to Tim Burton's gorgeous Frankenweenie, Mary Shelley obviously owes its existence to Frankenstein. But this origin story is more concerned with the early life of its author than with an obsessed young scientist and his resurrected creature. It's not the first time that Mary has earned the biopic treatment, with 1980s flicks Gothic, Haunted Summer and Rowing with the Wind all exploring the woman behind the classic tale. Still, where that trio honed in on the Lake Geneva getaway that sparked Frankenstein into being (the novel originated from a holiday wager among friends to see who could write the scariest ghost story), this movie focuses on Mary's tumultuous adolescence, her relationship with Percy, and the influence of both upon her famous work. Before images even reach the screen, the sound of writing echoes from Mary Shelley. Before Mary (Elle Fanning) has even dreamed of Frankenstein, the film deploys her lyrical prose to set a distinctive mood and tone. Stylistically, that's Al-Mansour's vivid and evocative approach, infusing every moment of the movie with the same passion and poetry that drives its heroine. A willowy yet strong-willed teen, from the outset Mary is either spinning her own tales or reading others in her father's (Stephen Dillane) bookshop. In-between, she fights with her stepmother (Joanne Froggatt) and finds solace with her stepsister Claire (Bel Powley) — until Percy (Douglas Booth) comes along. Although Mary is just 16, and despite the fact that Percy already has a wife and child, the couple is determined to be together. In her debut feature-length script, Australian screenwriter Emma Jensen endeavours to examine a side of Mary's tale that hasn't previously received as much on-screen attention, championing her protagonist's achievements as well as the considerable obstacles that she faced. Neither can be downplayed and nor are they. That said, sometimes the scandalous love story that accompanies them is given a little too much prominence. Indeed, parts of the film feel like a stock-standard period romance that just happens to involve one of the most influential writers who ever lived. When Mary Shelley connects the dots between Mary's experiences and the book she'll forever be associated with, it's a much more satisfying, moving and involving picture. Likewise, when it delves into Mary's tussles with sexist, dismissive men who can't even conceive of a woman writing such dark, smart and terrifying things, the film comes much closer to doing justice to its subject, her struggles and her continuing importance. Thanks to Fanning's lively and spirited portrayal, there's no doubting the fire that burned inside Mary, even when the film does favour her amorous affairs. Whether surrounded by towers of tomes, scribbling by her mother's grave, or swooning over Percy, Fanning's take on the real-life figure always stands out — from the movie's sumptuous backdrops, which constantly catch the eye, as well as from the romantic plot. It's a performance worthy of the woman it depicts, and it leaves audiences wanting more. The same is true of Mary Shelley, although in a different way. You'll want to keep watching Fanning as she brings the fiercely independent and thoroughly fascinating Mary to life. But you'll also want the movie to flesh out the aspects of Mary's trailblazing existence that it sometimes rushes over. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zFFs6BHsS0
Netflix might be making a docu-soap about Byron Bay influencers, but it isn't the only streaming service set to beam the area's scenic backdrops into Australian homes. Stan will soon unveil Eden, a new eight-part series shot in the coastal town and New South Wales' Northern Rivers region. It's unlikely that this fictional mystery-drama will receive the same backlash that Netflix's reality TV show has been garnering since its announcement, though. Eden does sound somewhat familiar, however. Like plenty of TV shows — Twin Peaks and The Killing, just to name two — it begins with a missing person. From there, it also charts the secrets and revelations festering beneath the surface of its small-town setting. In this case, a young woman has disappeared, with the series chronicling the aftermath over the course of a summer. The just-released first teaser sets the mood — and if you're wondering when the whole show will drop, Stan is yet to reveal an exact date. But, sometime this year (and likely to be sooner rather than later), you'll be able to watch a cast that includes BeBe Bettencourt (The Dry), Sophie Wilde (Bird), Keiynan Lonsdale (The Flash), Cody Fern (American Horror Story), Samuel Johnson (Molly), Christopher James Baker (True Detective), Rachael Blake (Cleverman), Leeanna Walsman (Penguin Bloom), Simon Lyndon (Mystery Road) and Maggie Kirkpatrick (The Letdown) step through Eden's twisty tale. Behind the camera, the show stems from head writer Vanessa Gazy (Highway) and writing team Jess Brittain (Clique), Anya Beyersdorf (Shakespeare Now), Clare Sladden (Freudian Slip) and Penelope Chai (Other People's Problems) — and directors John Curran (Chappaquiddick), Mirrah Foulkes (Judy & Punch) and Peter Andrikidis (Alex & Eve). And, the creator of Skins, Bryan Elsley, helped created Eden, too, with Fiona Eagger and Deb Cox (Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries). Check out the first teaser trailer for Eden below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaPeDr3DoMA Eden will hit Stan sometime this year — we'll update you with an exact date when it is announced. Top image: Every Cloud Productions.
There is nothing quite like settling into a Harry Potter film. Whether you are a die-hard fan who has read every book, or just enjoy peeking into the beautiful world of Hogwarts, watching a Harry Potter flick is always a nostalgic and magical experience. Luckily, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra are helping us make this experience even more magical with three screenings of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince backed by a live orchestra. Relive the franchise's sixth instalment with Nicholas Hooper's iconic score performed live by the MSO. And to top it off, the concerts will be held in the beautiful Hamer Hall, so you can see Harry soar on his broomstick playing quidditch on a huge screen in HD, brought to life with live orchestral music, for a truly grand experience. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in Concert will take place from the Thursday, March 10 until Saturday, March 12. Tickets are on sale now from $60 per person and you will want to get in quick so you don't miss out on the magic.
If you look at some of the biggest cultural events around the country over the past few years, it's clear that we have a bit of an obsession with nighttime antics supported by neon light installations. Of course, Sydney has Vivid, Melbourne has White Night and, on a regional level, Uluru's Field of Light has been a huge hit. Now, Bendigo is following in these luminescent footsteps with its own White Night festival. Inspired by Paris' Nuit Blanche movement, White Night has been an annual festival in Melbourne since 2013 and expanded to Ballarat in 2017. And, along with Geelong, Bendigo is joining in on the festivities for the first time this year. Celebrated artistic director and producer David Atkins, OAM will be leading the event. From 7pm on Saturday, September 1 until 2am the next morning, Bendigo's CBD will be will be transformed by vibrant activities, artwork and performances. With View Street as the central hub, the festival will extend down Pall Mall and spill out into Bull Street, Chancery Lane and Rosalind Park. You will witness light installations — including a garden of a giant bugs and an inflatable space man — plus projections onto buildings, live music in the streets and endless free photo opportunities. There's also a mini film festival, a silent disco walking tour of Bendigo Art Gallery and a 70s disco in a heritage tram scheduled. For more information on the White Night Bendigo program — including info on accommodation and how to navigate the event — head to the website. Then check out our guide to Bendigo's arts and culture to make a weekend of it.
Like all significant art forms, dance is a medium that transcends language, culture and geography. This September, The Australian Ballet will explore the contemporary dance canon from three distinct corners of the globe in Instruments of Dance, a triple bill at Arts Centre Melbourne featuring three evocative ballets that showcase ground-breaking modern dance from the world's top choreographers. Each choreography talent has created a work inspired by musical scores by contemporary composers who work in very different musical fields. The resulting performance will be a spectacular showcase of modern dance and the music that inspires it. First on the bill is Justin Peck, the resident choreographer of New York City Ballet who is making his Australian debut. Everywhere We Go is set to a score commissioned from acclaimed singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens and is a nine-part ballet for 25 dancers streaming in and out of complex group formations and expertly executed pas de deux which brings the energy of Hollywood and Broadway to the classical stage. Next up, Wayne McGregor's all-male Obsidian Tear explores the dark shadows of the planet and psyche. McGregor, who is the resident choreographer of The Royal Ballet, has created a performance that touches on a range of disciplines, from geology to mythology to the powerful effects of emotion on the body, set to a suite of violin works by Finnish conductor-composer Esa-Pekka Salonen. A range of fashion designers including Gareth Pugh and the legendary Vivienne Westwood have been enlisted for the costuming, ensuring a true visual feast. Finally, The Australian Ballet's own resident choreographer Alice Topp will present her new work, the appropriately titled New Work. The piece continues the celebrated choreographer's journey into the emotional core of the lived human experience, and features Australian design and a commissioned score by AACTA Award-winning composer Bryony Marks. Sound like something you want to see? We've teamed up with The Australian Ballet to give away one double-pass to what promises to be a spectacular showcase of 21st century ballet. You and a lucky plus one will score two premium tickets to a performance of your choosing. To really make a night of it, the prize also includes $100 to spend at Arts Centre Melbourne's sleek Mod Oz venue The Barre, where you can enjoy a pre-or post-show feast of seasonal local produce. Just drop your details below to go in the running. [competition]866781[/competition]
Unlike a certain lab coat-wearing grandfather and his nervous grandson, we can't all exclaim "wubba lubba dub dub" and zap our way to a different part of the multiverse when things aren't going our way. But, we can get schwifty, kick back and watch a couple of animated interdimensional adventurers unleash their specific style of chaos, with Rick and Morty set to return in 2021 for its fifth season. Once again, Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith (both voiced by show co-creator Justin Roiland) will do what they do best: not just aping a concept straight out of Back to the Future, but wreaking havoc in as many universes as they can stumble across. Also back are Morty's mother Beth (Sarah Chalke, Firefly Lane), father Jerry (Chris Parnell, Archer) and sister Summer (Spencer Grammer, Tell Me a Story) — and, as the just-released first trailer for season five shows, they're playing a big part in Rick and Morty's dimension-hopping antics this time around. Sneak peeks at Rick and Morty's upcoming episodes are more about the mood, look and feel than the storylines. The show's trailers tease glimpses of all of the out-there situations that its characters will find themselves in, and leave the specifics for the new season itself. That's the case here, naturally — with nods to everything from Voltron to Blade bundled into the trailer, because that's the way the news goes. As for when you'll be able to watch the next batch of Rick and Morty anarchy — and rejoin the smartest Rick and Morty-est Morty in the universe, of course — the fifth season will start airing week-to-week in the US from mid-June. Hopefully Netflix Down Under will follow suit shortly afterwards. That's what happened with season four, which released its long-awaited episodes in two batches in 2019 and 2020. Watch the trailer below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6Zy_mLgSNQ Rick and Morty's fifth season will start airing weekly from June 20 in the US. Down Under, the show airs on Netflix — and we'll update you with a release date for the new season when one is announced.
Marking the release of their new album, Leave Your Soul To Science, Something For Kate embark on their first Australian tour in five years, stopping off at The Corner. The recently released record is an almost perfect album, one fans have been waiting on for six years. The follow up to 2006’s Desert Lights is a well-paced effort, with moments of calm joined by ones of direct attack, an impressive and eclectic effort from a band whose career has spanned nearly twenty years. With eleven ARIA music award nominations under their belt, Something For Kate are heralded as one of Australia’s finest live acts, and fans here in their home city are sure to have missed them these past few years. Supported by Mr Ben Salter, Something For Kate will bring out favourites old and new like 'Survival Expert', 'Songs For A Sleep Walker', 'Cigarettes And Suitcases' and 'Working Against Me'.
