Love wine? Then, boy, have we got some good news. This November, you can score a bottle of vino for as little as $8.50 a pop — and we're talking about the good stuff, too. All you have to do is head to online wine-slinger Vinomofo to purchase it and it'll get delivered straight to your doorstep. The catch? You've only got a couple of days to nab it. For the uninitiated, Vinomofo is a Melbourne-based online wine retailer that caters to vino lovers around the world. So it's safe to say it knows what it's doing when it comes to grape juice. From noon on Tuesday, November 10 (AEDT) till midnight Thursday, November 12 (AEDT), Vinomofo is hosting a Click Frenzy Sale, selling more than 100 wines at affordable prices, so you can stock up for summer. Think picnic-perfect Provence rosé, rich Barossa shiraz for red lovers and Clare Valley riesling that makes for an ideal, crisp afternoon tipple — which you can score at up to 70 percent off. Shipping for all orders purchased in that time period will be free, too. Score epic wine deals via Vinomofo's Click Frenzy Sale — for a limited time only.
Gobble up our bluffer's guide to oysters? Then head on down to the Albert Park Hotel this Thursday and put your newfound mollusk mastery to the test. Back by popular demand, the ninth instalment of Melbourne's largest Oyster Frenzy is shaping up to be one for the record books. For $75, diners get a front-row seat to a veritable shellfish smorgasbord, including all-you-can-eat oysters from every corner of Australia. They'll also be serving a selection of other seafood canapes, as well as local wines, beer and cider. Last September's frenzy saw a grand total of 18,760 oysters meet their maker, so naturally the organisers are hoping to smash that total wide open. Be part of history at the classiest buffet in town.
Summer's still a way off, but spritz season is already in full swing at Richmond's Baby Pizza. In fact, the venue's serving up a fresh series of daily aperitivo specials to see you happily sipping through the rest of spring. From 4–6pm each day, this is your go-to for $9.50 cocktails — whether you're keen on sipping a classic Aperol spritz or a spicy passionfruit margarita. Part with $6.50, and you can grab a bottle of Peroni Red, or opt for a $7.50 glass of Other Voices pinot grigio. What's more, every aperitivo cocktail comes with a complimentary snack. Either stick with these light bites for a pre-dinner sip-and-snack session or follow it up with a bigger feed at baby — ordering from the regular menu packed with Italian eats, including some of the best pizza in Melbourne. Walk-ins are welcome, though you can make a booking online if you want to be sure of nabbing a table.
With vegan options galore, locally made gluten free bases available and solid lineup of Victorian beers and wines, Brunswick's latest pizzeria is sure to please the whole family (and friendship group). Located on Victoria Street, across the road from Small Axe Kitchen, Green Acre was scheduled to open right when COVID-19 lockdown hit. Instead of hitting pause, though, co-owners Rob McKenzie (Hard Pressed Coffee) and Phil Gijsbers (Burnley Brewing, East End Wine Bar, Small Print Pizza in Windsor) ran a Small Print Pizza pop-up in the space until restrictions eased on June 1. Now, the duo has unveiled the OG idea for the space: Green Acre. Designed by Sash Design and built using mostly salvaged and upcycled materials, the space has cosy leather booths, a fairy light-lit courtyard area, polished timber tables and rustic gold light fittings. Wherever you choose to sit, you'll be digging into one of 14 stone-fired sourdough pizzas. Vegans will find joy in The Grass is Greener (roast zucchini, spinach, chilli and smashed peas) and Shroom (field and enoki mushrooms, truffle oil and rocket), as well as the various pizzas topped with dairy-free cheeses and vegan salami. Meat-eaters also have plenty to choose from, including the controversial ham and pineapple, a chilli chicken number and one topped with prosciutto and pear. If you prefer your pizza topped with neither vegetables nor meat but, in fact, sweets, we suggest you go straight for the dessert pizza, which comes with Nutella, smashed Oreos and strawberries. Plus, pizzas are just $15 on Tuesdays. As well as being built relatively sustainably, the pizzeria has a commitment to low waste and locally sourced produce. Wines are almost exclusively soured from Victoria — with a few numbers from across SA and WA — and there's nothing above $64 a bottle, while beers feature Burnley (understandably) and other Brunswick locals, such as CoConsiprators and Foreigner. While the duo encourages dining in where possible, to help minimise packaging waste, if you do takeaway, you can do so knowing your pizza box is made from recycled cardboard and can itself by recycled thanks to a piece of 'sacrificial' paper that catches the grease. Find Green Acre at 328 Victoria Street, Brunswick from 4–9pm Sunday–Thursday and 4pm–late Friday–Saturday.
Talk about a perfect name: if you're going to start a new music festival that revolves around The Smashing Pumpkins, then calling it The World Is a Vampire is a no-brainer. This exciting addition to Australia's festival scene is being sent to drain all of your attention this autumn, when it heads around the country with one helluva bill. Billy Corgan and his band members will be there, of course, and so will fellow alt-rock legends Jane's Addiction. Naturally, you can expect the rollicking classic that is 'Bullet with Butterfly Wings' to get a spin. As well as hearing fellow Pumpkins greats such as 'Disarm', '1979', 'Tonight, Tonight', 'Today' and 'Zero', the Perry Farrell-led Jane's Addiction will be on hand to bust out 'Been Caught Stealing', 'Jane Says' and the likes. How many 'Zero' shirts will you see at the fest? Oh so many, as at every Pumpkins gig. Also on the bill: Australia's own Amyl and The Sniffers, RedHook and Battlesnake, plus yet-to-be-announced local acts opening each stop. And this fest has stops. It'll be singing about rage and rats in cages at PICA in Port Melbourne on Saturday, April 22 and Thursday, April 27, alongside trips to the Mornington Peninsula and Ballarat. Each show also features professional wrestling, including matches between Billy Corgan's NWA (National Wrestling Alliance) and the WAOA (Wrestling Alliance of Australia). Wrestlers will take to the ring in-between the bands — and yes, Corgan does own the alliance that bears his name.
Melbourne Music Week is back for another year with nine days of live music, parties, and some seriously avant-garde experiences. Running November 16–24 and featuring 250 acts across 85 events and a tonne of unconventional venues, it's a truly extensive program of local music. But don't be overwhelmed by the smorgasbord of music treats, because we're here to help. From the most talked about emerging artists to laneway parties and gigs in the Melbourne sky, these are the nine best MMW events happening around town this year. Nine events and nine days — we think you could just about get to them all.
Submerged in black and gold, the Miller Design Lab kicked off its series of creative events this March with a launch party that celebrated everything arts, culture, design and technology. The invite-only event saw Chapel Street's SoHigh Gallery transformed into a glistening space that offered revellers an eclectic setting to eat, drink and enjoy works by the artistic collaborators of the Miller Design Lab. Flying into Melbourne to host the kick-off event was the creative mastermind and global curator for the Miller Design Lab, Jeff Staple. Wearing his trademark Nike SB Pigeon — the shoe that kick-started his career and sent New York sneakerheads bonkers in 2005 — Staple explained that he set out to "find the common DNA that flows between the different creators" featured throughout this event series. Meanwhile, Staple also led an animated conversation between the artists as they considered their own creative practices, the Australian art scene and how technology could shape art and design in the future. Half chic warehouse, half vibrant gallery, SoHigh Gallery was the perfect spot to highlight the artists' work. Meagan Streader's glowing orange and yellow electroluminescent tunnel transfixed attendees. Buff Diss' topographical mural was created in real-time while guests ate, drank and danced. Dreamcatchersdreamtime and Think Positive Prints' semi-transparent yellow and rose-coloured screens dangled from the ceiling beams creating an incredible centrepiece. And Christie Morgan helped partygoers experience Pitch Studios' immersive virtual reality work. Attendees were welcomed to the dancefloor at each party by the likes of DJ Nick Murray and DJ Paz and Alice Q, and a lucky few even managed to get their hands on NANA JUDY merchandise specially created for the event. After each event ended, revellers were invited to kick-on at the after parties held at The Emerson where DJ Sunshine, DJ Sezzo, DJ Cassette kept the vibe going. And rounding out this series of high-octane arty parties, Total Giovanni took to the decks on closing night hosted by NANA JUDY. See all the happenings from the parties above and read about the creatives here. Images: Parker Blain.
It's been a tumultuous few months for Melbourne's public transport system — and it's far from over. After an initial strike on November 28, the entire tram network will shut down again for four hours on Thursday, December 5. The strikes follow three four-hour stoppages in August, September and October and are in response to ongoing failed negotiations with Yarra Trams. While the strikes will happen in off-peak times and, thankfully, not on Fridays, they're still expected to cause some public transport havoc — so, best dust off that ol' bike and get set for some two-wheeled travel. The strike is expected to run from 10am–2pm, with no metropolitan tram services operating between these hours. Public Transport Victoria (PTV) is forecasting the strikes will have a flow-on effect, with significant disruptions expected until around 3.30pm on both days. It's advising passengers to defer all non-essential travel and consider alternative modes of transport, including the City Loop train. Tram replacement bus services will be running in the city and along St Kilda Road during the strikes, but it'll be "very limited" according to PTV. You can check out what replacement buses will be running and other suggested alternative travel options over here. The Rail Tram and Bus Union has been negotiating a new wage deal and improved working conditions with Yarra Trams for months, with the existing agreement expiring on June 30. As reported by The Age, the RTBU is demanding a six percent pay rise over three years, while Yarra Trams has offered three. The new agreement also includes increased part-time workers and rosters that are "completely unsuitable for workers with child care and caring responsibilities" according to RTBU Secretary Luba Grigorovitch. The off-peak strikes are designed to "minimise the impact on commuters", but industrial action could continue to escalate if negotiations are not unresolved. The strike is expected to run from 10am–2pm on Thursday, December 5. To plan alternative transport during these times, head to the PTV website. Image: Josie Withers for Visit Victoria. First published: Monday, November 25. Updated: Thursday, December 5.
Keeping up to date with contemporary architectural trends is like watching a science fiction movie. Leaning towers, spiral buildings, the world's longest skyscraper, a structure that hangs from an asteroid — what's next? Add super skinny towers to the list, and expect to see them popping up soon. Sure, not the most earth-shattering idea ever, but they're tall, thin, and there are plans to build one on the Gold Coast. A development application has been lodged for a new $200m project at 2 Wharf Road, Surfers Paradise, aiming to place a block of narrow apartments as close to the beach as possible. The 42-floor building would include a detached three-storey townhouse, 35 single-floor units, a two-storey sub-penthouse and a three-storey penthouse. A space called a 'neighbourhood store' will also feature. For those pondering aerodynamics — a reasonable concern when you put a skinny structure in a place where it'll be constantly battered by the sea gusts — the application claims that the design has been "optimised to reduce wind loads on the tower". It's proposed that the building's diagrid exoskeleton will "add torsional stiffness", aka make sure it doesn't twist and bend. You'd hope so. Don't go thinking that popping a huge grid over the outside will infringe on the apartments' scenic vistas, however, as every floor boasts two balconies. Sure, the tower looks like it could get knocked over by a breath of air at any moment, but it'll have one heck of a view. Via Brisbane Development. Images: Rothelowman.
A long, hot, Melbourne summer deserves a proper Melbourne send-off, and how better to do that, than with a series of free music events? To squeeze a little extra goodness out of the sunny season, the folks at Rosé Rosé are set to host a three-week boutique music series called Wine Not?, complete with an all-Aussie lineup of wines, beers, cocktails and top DJ's. Held in conjunction with Arts Centre Melbourne's new exhibition, The Australian Music Vault, the event will take over the centre's ground floor al fresco space, The Barre, running Friday and Saturday nights, from March 9. WAT Artists has pulled together a banging musical lineup for the occasion, with the likes of Harvey Sutherland, Oscar Key Sung, Andras, Fantastic Man and Nite Fleit promising to have punters dancing their way through March. Alongside the tunes, expect a carefully curated, locally-focused bar offering, with cocktails from Melbourne Martini, brews from Grand Ridge and Rosé Rosé's own lightly sparkling rosé cans. There'll also be a rose-themed light show, a lounge area for chilling out under the stars, and easy access to The Australian Music Vault, for when those DJ tunes inspire you to dig a little deeper into the Aussie music story. Wine Not? will run from 5–11pm on March 9, 10, 16, 17, 23 and 24. Find it at The Barre, Arts Centre Melbourne. For more information, head to the website.
It looks like the Victorian government is seriously determined to beef up Melbourne's green space, with yet more grand parkland plans unveiled over the weekend. Days after Minister for Public Transport Jacinta Allan showed off her proposal for 11 MCG's worth of open space beneath Skyrail, Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change Lily D'Ambrosio and Member for Monbulk James Merlino have announced a $4.72 million development for Olinda, in Melbourne's east. The Olinda Precinct Project will breathe new life into the former golf course adjacent to The National Rhododendron Garden, which is being renamed the Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden. It'll free up 34 hectares of open space, set to feature a sports oval, picnic facilities, a play area and upgraded parking. The Botanic Garden will also enjoy an extra 6.5 hectares of space, to help house its sprawling collection of over 50,000 rare and exotic plants. Designs for the Olinda Precinct Project are set to be revealed in early 2018, with building work expected to start in the middle of the year. Image: Royal Botanic Gardens by Sarah Worthy via Flickr.
Kombucha on tap, halva ice cream and house-made falafel. No it's not a new music festival, but rather Carlton's latest pub. Meet The Green Man's Arms, a 100 percent vegan and vegetarian establishment owned by legendary publicans and artists Alison Whyte and Fred Whitlock (The Terminus, Yarra Valley Grand). "We have one vegan child, one vegetarian and one omnivore," says Fred. "As a family, we hardly ever eat animal meat protein anymore. We just want to create a friendly little place that has food that is fast, fun, fresh, affordable, delicious and healthy. A place that is full of our crowd, our crew." In collaboration with Israeli chef David Raziel, the duo have created an animal-free menu, based on ethically-sourced seasonal produce. For pub snacks there's house-made falafel; pan-baked Yemeni lahuh bread; fried eggplant with soft egg, Israeli salad and tahini; and green beans with mushroom and creamed corn. Among the mains are a grilled vegetable salad with beets, red cabbage, onions, almonds, labne and pomegranate dressing; and house-made cous cous with rich stock and roasted vegetables. Dessert offerings include house-made halva ice cream and knafeh pastry with ricotta, pistachios, pickled grapes and syrup. Punters can feel even better about their cruelty-free feast by matching it with a vegan wine. You'll find both De Bortoli's Vinoque Yarra Valley Nebbiolo Rosé, and Lobethal Road Pinot Gris on the list, while local brewers are well represented too. Look out for Hawkers Pilsner, Stomping Ground Saison and Holgate Mt Macedon Pale Ale. Designated driver? Get all the bubbles and none of the headaches with a glass of sparkling kombucha served on tap. Find The Green Man's Arms on the corner of Lygon and Elgin Streets, Carlton. For more information visit greenmansarms.com.au.
Melbourne's annual Night Noodle Markets have officially kicked off. This year you'll find the expected — dumplings, bao and ramen — and the unexpected — phorrito (yes, that's a pho and burrito mashup); katsu curry, sushi and kimchi fries and pastel pink pork buns, plus all of these tasty eats have been expertly paired with refreshing brews from Beer The Beautiful Truth. Pair a Cloud Thief (formerly Bao Stop) Chinese steamed roll trifecta with a Furphy, dig into a sampling of Let's Do Yum Cha treats with a James Squire 150 Lashes and nosh on some Bombay crab tacos from Mr Miyagi, Kirin Megumi in hand. And if you have a sweet tooth, leave space for an unreal, trompe-l'oeil offering from Gelato Messina. See all that's in store for you at the markets in the gallery, figure out which food stalls you'll hit first with our recommendation of the top ten dishes to try and plan to head out — preferably tonight — to start making your way through all the culinary treats at the Melbourne Night Noodle Markets. Hungry for more? Complement your cravings at the Melbourne Night Noodle Markets with expert beer pairings presented by Beer The Beautiful Truth from November 9 to 26.
When it comes to street art exhibitions, it really doesn't get any bigger than this. A retrospective of Banksy's work is making its way to Australia, featuring more than 80 of the artist's off-street masterpieces. From October 7 to January 22, The Paddock in Melbourne's Federation Square will play host to The Art of Banksy, a massive collection of pieces by the art world's chief enigma — including the darkly satirical, overtly political work that has turned the stencil-loving artist into such an infamous icon. Endeavouring to take audiences on a journey through Banksy's output and mindset, the exhibition will include the well-known Girl with Balloon, Flag Wall and Laugh Now pieces, as well as three efforts that have never before been displayed to the public. If it sounds epic, that's because it is. The art featured has been sourced from over 40 different private collectors around the world, and comprises the largest showcase of Banksy pieces to ever make its way to our shores. As curated by the artist's former manager Steve Lazarides, the exhibition is also a little controversial. While every piece is original, unique and authentic, The Art of Banksy proudly boasts that the entire show is 100 percent unauthorised. No, Banksy hasn't signed off on the event. As well as displaying Banksy's work in a custom-built enclosure, The Art of Banksy will also shine a light on a range of pieces by well-known and emerging local street artists. Expect to find them on the surrounding external surfaces and the inside walls of the exhibition's own Circle Bar, which will serve craft beers and cocktails. Outside, the Welcome to Thornbury team will corral a heap of food trucks into an area called 'The Railyard'. Plus, on Friday nights and Saturday arvos, DJs will also provide appropriate tunes to suit the occasion. Of course, Melburnians will know that this isn't the mysterious figure's first dalliance with the city. The artist's stencils have popped up around the city previously courtesy of a visit in 2003, though many have been destroyed and damaged in the years since. [competition]591262[/competition]
Six Melbourne councils are looking for input from inner-Melbourne makers, on an online initiative that will map and promote the city's vibrant creative culture. www.makers.melbourne is a new website where artists and boutique manufacturers can upload their information, creating a one-stop guide for Melburnians looking to support local businesses while indulging in a little retail therapy. The site was launched in the wake of a study by the University of Melbourne. Commissioned by the cities of Melbourne, Port Phillip, Stonnington, Yarra and Maribyrnong, who were later joined by Moreland City Council and the Metropolitan Planning Authority, The Dilemma of Urban Employment Land was designed to help local government make decisions in regard to the competing demands between commercial land use and residential development. "There is great value to Melbourne in nurturing small urban makers and innovators," said Stonnington Mayor Claude Ullin. "The www.makers.melbourne hub is part of a research project that will provide insights into how new forms of Australian manufacturing can be supported and fostered." Dozens of small businesses have already registered on the site, ranging from furniture makers to fashion designers to architecture firms to restaurants and cafes. For more information visit www.makers.melbourne.
Don’t know if it’s meant to be, but his stage name is pretty apropros. Pitchfork points out that it’s partly because Alex Zhang Hungtai spent the majority of his life feeling “unmoored and adrift”, but also his music is like all the other sun-soaked beach-inspired music acts that have been cropping up as of late had a delinquent distant relative who was a bit moodier and sometimes even a little menacing. Hungtai’s music looks beyond the psychedelic ’60s and back to 1950s rock ‘n’ roll, before cranking up the distortion so it comes out sounding even older again. On top of this add his grungy falsetto vocals and you have something that should come across as dated, but “timeless” is probably a better word. On his debut album Badlands the tracks bounce jerkily between poppy and powerful, sometimes even sad, but the one thing they all have in common is that they don’t sound like anyone else’s songs. Though the ideal listening situation would involve a rumbling ute, a dusty road and complete isolation, these songs are also quite good when you’re indoors and around other humans. Get to The Tote on February 13 for proof.
This article is sponsored by our partners, Ben & Jerry's Openair Cinemas. Watching a movie under the stars just got that little bit swankier. In partnership with the new Volkswagen Polo, Ben & Jerry's Openair Cinema have introduced a new premium ticket that lets film-lovers relax in comfort and style. Think Gold Class in the great outdoors. For the low price of just $27 when booked online, Volkswagen Polo Class ticket holders get the best seats on the beach. The special ticket includes extra comfy bean lounger seating, a cushion and a blanket, plus a delicious Ben & Jerry's shorty tub (we recommend New York Super Fudge Chunk) and a soft drink of your choice. Best of all, $2 from every ticket sold gets donated to WWF-Australia. There's only 30 of these prime pozzies per session, so book fast. If you'd like to chance to win free Polo Class tickets, head on over to the Ben & Jerry's Openair Cinema website and let them know what gives you confidence. Ben & Jerry's Openair Cinema runs from November 30 to December 21 at South Beach Reserve, next to the St Kilda Sea Baths. For the full program see their website.
Since first opening its doors, Vietnamese cuisine queen Hanoi Hannah has dished up over 250,000 bowls of pho. Pho real, that's a lot of warm beefy goodness. In celebration of this mighty, tasty achievement, the Prahran eatery is giving out free pho on the last day of winter. The pho-fest is only happening at Hanoi Hannah's restaurant in Prahran, and not the Express Lane. Make sure you get there nice and early, with free pho scurrying out the door from 1pm to 4pm on Sunday, August 31. Visitors can choose between beef, chicken or mixed mushroom pho. whatever takes your fancy. HH’s resident DJ will be spinning those classic '90s and '00s hip-hop vibes all afternoon to keep you upbeat as you wait for your free lunch. Ain’t no party like a free pho party. This free pho feed sounds like a freaking good way to spend a Sunday to us, the only difficulty will be not taking some rice paper rolls or soft shell crab for the road. Who are we kidding, we’ll probably load up pho sure. Hanoi Hannah is handing out free pho from 1-4pm on Sunday, August 31. Find the pho-stivities 180 High Street, Prahran.
Paradise Music Festival is once again starting off the summer music festival season on a high note, with the first lineup announced this morning. Just like last year, the lineup is entirely made up of up-and coming Australian talent. The boutique, Lake Mountain Resort festival, picks artists, bands and DJs who are killing it in their respective capital cities; planting them in the scenic natural surrounds of Marysville. The weirdly wonderful Kirin J Callinan is stopping by, as is Melbourne R&B darling Oscar Key Sung, with reckless rock kids Drunk Mums, electronic wizards Rat & Co and Crooked Colours. For those looking to get their dance on, Young Franco, Tranter and Otologic are our picks for a toe-tapping good time. Presale tickets already sold out before the lineup had even dropped; an exceptionally good sign for those thinking of heading down. This is only the second year for Paradise Music Festival, proving themselves to serious contenders for your hard-earned summer festival budget. PARADISE MUSIC FESTIVAL 2014 LINEUP (FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT): Kirin J. Callinan Oscar Key Sung Crooked Colours Young Franco Drunk Mums Rat & Co SILENTJAY UV boi LUCIANBLOMKAMP The Sinking Teeth Klo Banoffee Friendships JPS I'lls Kirkis Apart From This Otologic Tranter DEER Total Giovanni Planète ESC Lanks Darcy Baylis Air Max '97 CC:DISCO! RaRa Hubert Clark Jr Foreign/National Jahnne Null Urban Problems Harold Femi Paradise Music Festival will run from November 28 - 30 at the Lake Mountain Alpine Resort. First round tickets are now available for $130 here.
Desire lines are paths carved by repeated human diversion from designated routes. ACCA has used this concept of shared instinct and collective disobedience as the springboard from which to launch an enormous, 31-artist-strong group show featuring international and Australian artists. Some (Bruce Nauman) are familiar names, and others are fresh, like Charlie Sofo. Francis Alys is displaying his renowned Walks series, and Stephen Sutcliffe's uncanny video works are on display. Two installations are the show's main features — a moving rock sculpture by Mel O'Callaghan finds a new form for the icily detached beauty found in her barren landscape photography, while Dan Shipsides' climbing-based installation adorns the circumference of the ACCA building, in a literal implementation of the show's theme. ACCA is rarely off the mark, and this powerhouse exhibition looks to be no different.
He tore down a massive concrete letter ‘M’ in Sweden. In the Netherlands, he made a giant ‘S’ of vegetables to be devoured by a horde of pigs. Across the world, from Europe to Brazil, via India, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, Spanish installation artist Santiago Sierra has been making and destroying super-size letters as part of his two year project The Destroyed Word. What could they spell? With nine out of ten letters down and Sierra’s famously anti-capitalist stance it’s getting pretty obvious by now, but the last letter’s being incinerated on Wednesday and if you want to witness the culmination of this grand vision, you’re invited to come and watch it burn as part of the Melbourne Festival. There’ll also be an exhibition at NGV from October 17, featuring film of all ten demolitions, so you can partake in Sierra's rage against the global machine without risking getting smoke in your eyes.
If anyone can claim to be the voice of Melbourne’s soul, it is singer Paul Kelly. Like all great artists though, he knows how to stand on the shoulders of giants. In his concert for the Melbourne Festival, Conversations With Ghosts, Kelly will be paying tribute to past masters of the poetic art. From the canons of classical greats such as Yeats and Tennyson, and Australian icons Les Murray, Kenneth Slessor and Judith Wright, Kelly has taken poems that evoke a sense of loss and longing and, working with composer James Ledger, woven them into what promises to be a haunting musical experience. With accompaniment by Genevieve Lacey, a performer who can turn the simple recorder into an instrument of hypnotising beauty, and a ten piece orchestra of talented youth from the Australian National Academy of Music, this is a performance that will speak straight to your heart.
The Perserverance Hotel’s menu might not be a shining example of local innovation, but on the second Sunday of every month you can complement your pub grub with some of the craftiest wares this side of the city. Blackbird Market sees the Brunswick Street establishment get more fittingly Fitzroy with stalls peddling jewellery, bicycle accessories, PJs, zines and vintage clothing. Slide your pins into some reflective legwarmers from Melbourne’s most sartorially discerning cycle store CycleStyle, get an inky hit of culture from the latest copy of Spook Magazine and pick up the requisite nick nacks from grandmas florals, then dump them all into a plush leather satchel by Sarah van Oosterom. Since it’s still technically a bar there will be DJ tunes plus plenty of tasty liquids on tap to encourage financial nonchalance. But at least you’ll still feel good about your purchases later on in the afternoon.
If you’ve never engaged in a violent display of booty shaking while an enormous transvestite spits ass-related lyrics at you for two sweat-drenched hours, you should probably find out why thousands of people all over the world are now lining up in their most supple pairs of hot pants to do so. Queen Diva of urban New Orleans bounce scene Big Freedia is returning to Melbourne this October to amass more minions for her fast-expanding army of rapidly gyrating followers. Bringing hits such as “Azz Everywhere” and “Y’all Get Back Now”, the exuberant MC and her Divas fly the flag for a call-and-response music style that gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “audience participation”. Forget fried oysters and Muffuletta sandwiches — this is the juiciest taste of New Orleans you might ever experience.
Harnessing a Black Swan-like coalescence of physical beauty and total hysteria, Screen Space are presenting a two-night dance production investigating the idea of an uncertain future and a venture into the unknown. Double Vision takes its sci-fi stimulus from works such as Orsen Welles’ panic-inducing 1973 Halloween eve radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, which successfully duped listeners en masse into believing that our planet was being invaded by aliens. The show at hand aims to get us into a similarly panicky position on the edge of our collective seat, completely immersing us in sound and visuals as we follow the dancers into a world with endless possibilities. Double Vision is choreographed and performed by Victorian College of the Arts Dance graduates Yahna Fookes and Jess Wong, in collaboration with projection artist Thomas Russell. The performance starts at 7pm.
You know whose film industry has been quietly kicking a bunch of ass? Argentina. Say hello to the only South American country to ever win an Oscar. Producing an average of 35 films per year (Australia clocks around 25), from badass thrillers to award-winning, socially conscious badass thrillers, Argentina has edged out Mexico and become the flagship of Latin American cinema. Filmoteca, ACMI's Spain/Portugal/South American-focussed cinema program, is now hosting a program of the freshest shorts to come out of this growing industry. The next generation of Argentinian filmmakers is vibrant and diverse. Here you'll find relentlessly awkward comedy drama from the ever-quirky Martin Piyoransky, alongside a full complement of amazing animations from the stop-motion genius Juan Pablo Zaramella and CGI team Gervasio Rodriguez Traverso & Pablo A. Diaz, as well as a few other surprises, making for an engaging and fun hour of new cinema.
Everyone likes to say that their town, their city, or their country is the best. But our city really is the best! And we know that, thanks to Knowledge Melbourne, a government organisation dedicated to showcasing, expanding and utilising Melbourne's knowledge sector, which includes many universities, extremely advanced science, and information technology. So celebrate our knowledge! Come to Knowledge Week all over the City of Melbourne. A talk on neuro-gastronomy (the science of taste), a speed teaching event, a competition to change the city, a panel of Muslim women leaders... the list goes on. With more than 30 events over 6 days, Knowledge Week will be a fascinating insight into the cutting edge of technology and development that Melbourne is contributing to so much.
Radiance is the newest exhibition at the NGV and it looks rather exceptional. It is a showcase of Neo-Impressionism, an art style that developed in the late 1800s in France and Belgium. The Impressionists focused on light, movement and daily life, and Neo-Impressionism was an attempt to adopt those themes while using more consistent, rational 'scientific' techniques. It is the movement that made pointillism, the use of individual spots of paint, a world-famous artistic method. Filled with scenes of nature in the city and desires for a good beach, Neo-Impressionism is a style that Melbournites will relate to especially closely. Featuring works by Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Henri-Edmond Cross, and many others, this exhibition is one of emotion and personal experience combined with technical restraint and consideration. Running until March, enjoy this collection of late-nineteenth century masterpieces. Radiance is closed Tuesdays. Image of Girl in a straw hat (Portrait of Elisabeth van Rysselberghe) (Jeune fille au chapeau de paille (Portrait d'Elisabeth van Rysselberghe)) 1901 courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria.
From the mind of Lee Child comes Jack Reacher. Reacher is a former Military Police Officer, reduced to living the life of a drifter after years of distinguished service. After a series of killings, Reacher is called in to determine whether or not the prime suspect is indeed responsible for the killings, or if something far more insidious is afoot. Jack Reacher is the creation of author Lee Child, who has written numerous novels on the mysterious character. Jack is now being portrayed on film by action superstar, Tom Cruise. The film also has a solid supporting cast including Rosamund Pike, Werner Herzog and Robert Duvall. The film is in cinemas now and is the perfect film if you are after something with a bit of intrigue and plenty of action.
After taking the world by storm with her explosive brand hip-hop and pop, Nicki Minaj has solidified herself as a force to be reckoned with on the global music scene. Nicki hit Australian shores in May during her ‘Pink Friday’ tour, selling out venues in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. Now her tour has been ‘reloaded’ and she is back for some more, bringing special guest Tyga along for the ride. 13 million Twitter followers and millions upon millions of YouTube hits can’t be wrong, Nicki Minaj is at the top of her game. If you are after equal parts aggressive frenzy and stylistic pop, look no further. Remaining tickets are now $70, get some before they are gone.
He taps his pen on the page. An Amish psychopath? No. A Buddhist? No! A Quaker psychopath? Yes, perfect. Seven Psychopaths is not just about some guy writing a film script about psychopaths; it's a story of the ultimate friendship between the Irish alcoholic writer, Marty Faranan (Colin Farrell), and his nutso friend, Billy Bickles (Sam Rockwell), and the search for the ultimate B-grade film shootout. The two have their friendship tested to the max as Marty's tenuous relationship with his girlfriend Kaye (Abbie Cornish) hits the rocks, a dog heist goes awry, the mafia is hot on their heels, and some pretty shocking secrets surface. The overall flashy and ironic grain of the film is the hallmark of creative visionary Martin McDonagh, who also wrote and directed In Bruges. The characters and their individual stories spill all over the place, like balls on a billiard table, only to simultaneously land in their nets, in one foul strike. McDonagh himself describes the story as almost too complex and multilayered, and he works the same words into the film as Hans (Christopher Walken) says ominously of Marty's script: "It's got layers." The storyline echoes Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, whereby a struggling writer, who fails at real life, explores a fantasy world that titillates his fancy to such a depth that it weaves its way into his own reality. Not giving away too much (I hope), Gil Pender's fantasy of 1920s Paris is Marty's preoccupation with psychopathic killers. The author initially resists the fantasy and doesn't understand the bizarre things that are happening around him but eventually he surrenders to it all. As the billiard stick lines up and gets ready to strike, we know the end is nigh, and the film reveals that while Marty’s best friend Billy means ever so well, his zealousness leads the pack along to the ultimate place for a psychopath...
If you rock up to How to Dress Well expecting a tutorial in accessorising and shoe/belt combos, you may be disappointed. Though Tom Krell is a stylish fellow, his musical project How to Dress Well is less a Trinny and Susannah approach to making over frumpy office ladies and more an ethereal approach to making over early '90s R&B. 'Cold Nites' off his latest LP Total Loss sounds like the introspective soundtrack to the comedown that follows when your average champagne bottle-popping hip hop music video finishes. Setting soaring falsetto atop moody, sparse beats and instrumentation, How to Dress Well, like contemporary The Weeknd, is a creative, sensitive producer showing R&B can be smarter, more understated and, yes, more stylish than you'd expect.
Everyone remembers the great supermarket frenzy of just a few months back, when stores looked like post-apocalyptic film sets, people were everywhere but shelves were bare. And, as a response to the huge onslaught of panic-buying when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit — with shoppers hoarding everything toilet paper and hand sanitiser to pasta and milk — we all remember the item limits put in place by Aussie chains. Two months after local supermarkets started to lift those caps (and after the great bog roll crisis of 2020 seemed like it was over), Coles and Woolworths have been reintroducing restrictions — on some everyday staples, and across all of the two companies' Victorian stores. The first new limits were imposed towards the end of June, including on toilet paper (of course); however more have come into effect since the beginning of July. On the restricted list: toilet paper, hand sanitiser and paper towel, as well as flour, sugar, pasta, rice, mince, long-life milk and eggs. They were all subject to previous item caps, too — and Victorians can now only purchase two of each at Woolies, and either one (of toilet paper and paper towel) or two (of all of the other above items) at Coles. Also limited to two items each at Woolies, since Friday, July 3: 18 other products, including frozen vegetables, loaves of bread, chilled fresh milk, pre-packed sausages, burger patties and tissues. At Coles, two-pack caps were put in place on Tuesday, July 2 on fresh milk, cheese, butter, margarine, chicken breasts, chicken thighs, prepacked carrots and prepacked potatoes, as well as cans of tomatoes, beans, garden vegetables, fruit, meat, baked beans and spaghetti, pasta sauces, and frozen fruit and vegetables. The move comes in response to Victoria's ongoing spike in COVID-19 numbers over the past couple of weeks, which has seen the state take considerable action. The State Government has extended its State of Emergency for four more weeks, launched a suburban testing blitz, tightened some gathering restrictions for all Victorians and reintroduced strict stay-at-home orders for ten Melbourne postcodes that are experiencing the worst community transmission of coronavirus. For more information about the state of COVID-19 in Victoria, head to the Department of Health and Human Services website. For more information about the reinstated item limits at Australian supermarkets, head to the Woolworths and Coles websites.
Back in March 2020, Victoria implemented a State of Emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a move it has extended monthly ever since. It was currently due to run until March 15, 2021 — after which the Victorian Government wouldn't have been able to extend it again under existing legislation — but, under an amendment that has just been passed by the state's upper and lower houses, the government now retains the power to keep lengthening the State of Emergency until December 16, 2021. That's an extra nine months — but that doesn't mean that the State of Emergency will be active for the entire period. The power to prolong a State of Emergency falls under the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008, which states that each declaration can only run for four weeks, before it then needs to be extended. If you're wondering why the new change covered by the Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (State of Emergency Extension) Bill 2021 is required, that's because there are time limits built into the original act. Coming into effect long before the pandemic, the 2008 legislation only allows for six months of declarations. So, when September 2020 approached, Victoria passed the Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (State of Emergency Extension and Other Matters) Act 2020, which added a further six months to that timeframe. Now, with the pandemic still causing significant disruptions to life internationally, throughout Australia and in Victoria — and with the state only just experiencing its latest lockdown last month — the latest amendment expands the period for a further nine months. A State of Emergency declaration allows the state's authorised officers to "act to eliminate or reduce a serious risk to public health" as directed by Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton. That means restricting movement, preventing entry to premises and venues, and detaining people — measures that have been in place for almost a year now as the state responds to the coronavirus. As part of the negotiations surrounding the latest amendment, the Greens has announced that the party "secured a commitment that specific legislation will be developed for managing COVID-19 in nine months' time". That means that State of Emergency declarations would no longer be needed after December, as other legislation would cover the state's specific response to this pandemic. The Greens also advised that fines under the State of Emergency will also be reduced for people under 18 — and there'll be review process implemented for COVID-19 fines issued to people from disadvantaged backgrounds, including people who experience homelessness, people with mental illness, and people from low-income backgrounds, including young people. To find out more about the status of COVID-19 in Victoria and how to protect yourself, head to the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services website.
Before 2020 hit, anyone who found themselves in the Melbourne CBD on a Friday night was bound to have plenty of company. But after a year of lockdowns, social-distancing measures and modifying routines in response to the pandemic, the city centre isn't the thriving hub of activity it once was when the working week ends. To bring more folks back into the city on a Friday evening (and to get them to spend more money to support the CBD's businesses while they're there), the Property Council of Australia is proposing a bold plan. It's called 'Fab Fridays' and, if you're a nine-to-five worker, you'll be particularly excited about one of the key points: letting CBD workers call it quits at 4pm on Fridays so that they can then hang around, catch up with their colleagues and mates, have a bite to eat and a drink, and patronise the city's hospitality businesses. Making public transport free on Friday nights has also been suggested, with Property Council Victorian Executive Director Danni Hunter noting that it'd "encourage Melburnians into the CBD on Friday night, with the extra incentive of knowing you'll get home safely after a wonderful dinner and show". Hosting free morning activities like yoga, and giving CBD workers free or discounted food and coffee, has been floated as well — to get office-based employees to head into their place of work to finish the week, rather than working from home. Obviously, once they're already in the CBD, it's hoped that they'd stick around at knock-off time for a meal and a drink. "With only 24 percent of workers back in Melbourne's CBD, and hospitality businesses and retailers missing much-needed foot traffic, the Property Council has come up with the idea to get people back to the office on Fab Fridays, to play, stay and spend in the city into the evening and weekend," said Hunter. "We want to incentivise Melbourne's workers back into the city on a Friday in a safe and structured way. Where possible, it would be great to see them enjoy a Friday night in the CBD." The Property Council is calling on businesses to support the scheme by implementing some of the above suggestions — particularly the ones that can be put into effect in workplaces, such as 4pm knock-offs; and the ones that hospitality venues can enact, like free or discounted food and coffee — from Friday, April 23. That's when it's launching the Fab Fridays initiative, with the organisation sending an email to its members on Tuesday, March 9 asking for them to get onboard. The organisation is also calling for government support. "Melbourne's CBD supports more than 48,000 public sector jobs and we'd love to see the government make a concerted effort to encourage them to be in the office and active in our city on Fridays," said Hunter. The Herald Sun reports that discussions are underway with the City of Melbourne regarding how the scheme would operate. For now, though, nothing official is in place, so the Fab Fridays initiative is currently just a suggestion. But, Melburnians, if you're keen to kick off your weekends early — and to end your work weeks with a free or discounted bite to eat, and free public transport — start crossing your fingers that some of these ideas become a reality. For more information about the Property Council of Australia's Fab Fridays proposal for Melbourne's CBD, head to its website.
The Nice Guys mightn't have scored a sequel, but The Fall Guy does nicely instead. Getting a hearty workout: Ryan Gosling's charm, comedic talent that just earned an Oscar-nominated showcase in Barbie and action skills as last seen in The Gray Man. He's back in stunts, too, as Drive first gifted the world so mesmerisingly. A loose remake of the 80s television series of the same name, The Fall Guy is a take-it-and-run-with-it kind of film, then. Not only does it grasp hold of what Gosling does best and sprint, but the same applies for co-lead Emily Blunt (Pain Hustlers) — and, of course, for director David Leitch (Bullet Train), who first took the journey from stunt performer to filmmaker with John Wick, has kept filling his resume with action fare since (see: Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw and Bullet Train) and now virtually comes full circle in helming a flick where his protagonist does the same gig that he once did. Gosling's Colt Seavers is also taking it and running with it — in a profession where it's his job to help bring whatever impossible physical endeavour is required to the screen, as well as on the gig that gets him to Sydney. The Fall Guy starts 18 months prior to his trip Down Under, however, but still with him doubling for Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bullet Train), one of the world's biggest actors. Seavers has a career that he loves and steady work at it thanks to Ryder's fame. He's also happily romancing Jody Moreno (Blunt), a camera operator with dreams of doing more. Then a stunt goes wrong, leaving him badly injured, battered and bruised emotionally and psychologically, and inspiring him to quit the business. Only a call from Ryder-loving producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham, Ted Lasso) sparks his return to the industry — he makes a crust as a valet once he's fit and able in-between — and, even then, it's only really the fact that Moreno is helming Ryder's latest movie as her directorial debut that nudges him onto the plane. Upon his arrival in Australia, Seavers soon discovers that the situation isn't exactly what he's been told. Ryder is missing from the Metalstorm set, putting the future of the production at risk. Shady folks keep popping up whenever anyone — well, Seavers — goes looking for the absent star. And Moreno had zero advance idea that the man who ghosted her had been enlisted on the shoot, and is far from thrilled about it or the way that their relationship ended. Trying to win her back, getting emotional fortification from Taylor Swift tunes The Bear-style, attempting to track down Ryder, evading the unsavoury figures on this trail, bouncing around Sydney: sometimes while fending off sword-swinging foes, sometimes while wearing fluoro, sometimes while paired with an acting dog who'll chomp on command, that's all on Seavers' plate in Drew Pearce's (Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw) zippy screenplay. There's an easy, breezy vibe to The Fall Guy, the kind that comes from knowing wholeheartedly that you're capitalising upon the strengths of your key players. Although Seavers dates back to the television iteration and there was a Jody on the small screen, too (Banks, not Moreno), the film's main pair were moulded around Gosling and Blunt — and it always shows. For him, it's a charisma-forward performance whether he's getting goofy, earnest or thrust into a fray. His Kenergy-fuelled comic timing is impeccable, as is his ability to sell Seavers' soul-searching stint after a career that requires him to be invincible reminds him that no one is. For her, joining a resume that also includes excellent action turns in Looper and Edge of Tomorrow, it's a portrayal built on pluck. When Gosling and Blunt are together, the film boasts as much crackling chemistry — often of the screwball type — as it does dynamic fights, explosions, shootouts and car chases (one of the latter famously on the Sydney Harbour Bridge). And there are fights, explosions, shootouts and car chases (and boat jumps, helicopter battles and vehicular cannon rolls). You don't make a movie about a stunt performer on a mystery-caper adventure while working on a mega-budget alien sci-fi war romance flick — a film that turns the Sydney Opera House into a backdrop while it's at it — without highlighting stunts, stunts and more stunts. You definitely don't hold back if this was once your life as well. The action doesn't disappoint, nor does the commitment to weaving how such action comes to fruition into The Fall Guy's action sequences, complete with underscoring the importance of practical effects in the broader feature and the picture within it. This is a winking-and-nodding movie to its primary genre, lovingly so, right down to references built into the film. With stunt coordinator Dan Tucker (Winston Duke, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), Seavers swaps references to other films (The Last of the Mohicans and Rocky III, for instance). One of his prized possessions: a Miami Vice jacket. The words of 'Unknown Stuntman', the theme to TV's The Fall Guy which gets a new cover here, are clearly a guiding light for Leitch on this movie: "I might fall from a tall building, I might roll a brand-new car, 'cause I'm the unknown stuntman that made Redford such a star" is one memorable line. Accordingly, though the very basis of filmmaking's stunt performer-actor setup is that the former are meant to convince the audience that it's the latter risking their lives, revelling in everything that The Fall Guy throws Gosling's way as Seavers means relishing the work of his doubles Ben Jenkin (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts) and Justin Eaton (The Killer). The campaign for the stunts game to be given the credit it deserves — aka an Oscar category — couldn't earn a more persuasive push, then. Leitch's feature manages something that most flicks would kill for, because action deployed for the sake of it, then shot frantically and edited messily, gets repetitive; The Fall Guy is the lively, passionate and meticulously crafted antithesis of routine smashing and bashing. Back-and-forth rom-com bantering can similarly fall flat if the stars and the vibe aren't right. There's something about Sydney of late: in Anyone But You, Sydney Sweeney (Immaculate) and Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick) made it work in the Harbour City, as Gosling and Blunt do in the same place in The Fall Guy. So, while The Nice Guys mightn't have received a follow-up, it's easy to see The Fall Guy becoming a big-screen franchise, and welcomely. At the very least for its magnetic leads, it should set a new repeat double act in motion. Gosling teamed up with Emma Stone (Poor Things) three times on Crazy, Stupid, Love, Gangster Squad and La La Land, and makes an equally delightful duo with his current co-star. Just as there should be no underestimating stunt feats in general or in this flick, as Leitch stresses again and again, there should be no downplaying the ride that Gosling and Blunt take their characters on in this fun film, either — from doing the hard work while others win the glory to finally getting their time to shine.
It's a film about searching for treasure, and it is indeed a treasure. La Chimera is also dreamy in its look and, while watching, makes its viewers feel as if they've been whisked into one. There's much that fantasies are made of in writer/director Alice Rohrwacher's fourth feature, which follows Corpo Celeste, The Wonders and Happy as Lazzaro — God's Own Country breakout and The Crown star Josh O'Connor leading the picture as a British archaeologist raiding tombs in 80s-era Italy chief among them. Thinking about Lara Croft, be it the game, or the Angelina Jolie (in 2001 and 2003 flicks)- or Alicia Vikander (2018's Tomb Raider)-led movies, is poking into the wrong patch of soil. Thinking instead about the way that life is built upon the dead again and again, and upon unearthed secrets as well, is part of what makes La Chimera gleam. Rohrwacher's latest, which also boasts her Happy as Lazzaro collaborator Carmela Covino as a collaborating writer — plus Marco Pettenello (Io vivo altrove!) — resembles an illusion not just because it's a rare mix of both magical-realist and neorealist in one, too (well, rare for most who aren't this director). In addition, this blend of romance and drama alongside tragedy and comedy sports its mirage-esque vibe thanks to being so welcomely easy to get lost in. As a snapshot of a tombaroli gang in Tuscany that pilfers from Etruscan crypts to try to get by, it's a feature to dig into. As an example of how poetic a film can be, it's one to soar with. The loose red thread that weaves throughout La Chimera's frames, intriguing folks within the movie, also embodies how viewers should react: we want to chase it and hold on forever, even as we know that, as the feature's 130 minutes tick by, the picture is destined to slip through our fingers. Wearing his crumpled linen suits and residing in his makeshift shack, O'Connor's Arthur knows what it's like to not be able to grasp tightly onto what you want. Just as the movie that he's in transports its audience four decades back, he's stuck in the past, obsessing over the missing Beniamina (Yile Yara Vianello, The Beautiful Summer). Stolen Italian artefacts are his trade, with friends to help with the excavations but his own divining methods (rod included) locating where an invisible X marks the spot. When he's not dowsing and delving, or offloading the loot he extracts to antiquities dealers who profit from and perpetuate the cycle of tombaroli thievery far more than Arthur and his pals, the mansion of Beniamina's mother Flora (Isabella Rossellini, Spaceman) is his frequent pilgrimage. It was equally true of The Wonders and Happy as Lazzaro: a movie by Rohrwacher, and with cinematographer Hélène Louvart (Disco Boy, The Lost Daughter, Never Rarely Sometimes Always) behind the lens, is a movie that looks ethereal and earthy at once. Shot on a mix of different film stocks (35-millimetre, 16-millimetre and Super16), La Chimera's imagery virtually floats, but it similarly sees the dirt and the grit. Arthur's journey couldn't better live and breathe that contrast as he illicitly uncovers riches in a marvellous setting, but not without the grime and the risk that goes with it. He also starts the feature freshly released from jail for his grave-robbing manner of making a living, then spends his time chasing more 2000-year-old pieces — pottery, statues and such — that mysterious broker Spartaco will pay for, as punctuated with chats with Flora and a burgeoning connection with her housekeeper Italia (Carol Duarte, Segunda Chamada). The language of archaeology, whether taking from the dead or studying history through its physical remains, is the language of discovering and seeking — and mine, disinter and pursue, Arthur does, including with his feelings and hopes. He pines for his lost love while burrowing down where valuables, secrets and lives gone by are kept; he's navigating his own Orpheus and Eurydice as well. He's haunted, plunging literally to where such torments spring from in humanity's eternal grappling with mortality, and also emotionally and psychologically into memories that gnaw as if they too are possessed. A mastery of symbolism is among Rohrwacher's many skills as a filmmaker; however, so is a command of effortlessly lingering in the realm, as La Chimera does, between the tangible and intangible. Here's another talent to her name: casting, especially with O'Connor standing in front of the camera. While Rossellini's involvement is a magnificent touch — only she can switch to marauding from warm, and back, so naturalistically and so quickly; also, the link with Italian cinema history that she brings via her director father Roberto Rossellini, the neorealist great, is so wonderfully apt — O'Connor is an exquisite choice as La Chimera's lead. Rumpled charm, lost-soul melancholy, drifting and yearning, a hold on his temper that's flimsier than a deal on the relics black market: as Arthur, he conveys or has them all. A picture as enigmatic as this needs someone at its centre that's able to both go with its flow and be grounded — and again, in a role that joins Mothering Sunday, Emma, Hope Gap and Challengers on his post-God's Own Country resume, that's O'Connor. As La Chimera proves evocative and expressive, and loose and playful, it takes its audience on an adventure so layered and distinctive that Rohrwacher could be the only one guiding it. Thoughtful and contemplative as her film also is, it has clear eyes to stare daggers at social inequality, and towards those who think that they can own the past. Forming a trilogy with The Wonders and Happy as Lazzaro — one about beekeepers, the other about sharecroppers, each fascinated with communities that are far from the everyday now, as with the tombaroli — La Chimera almost feels as if it has pulled off a heist itself, then. In ensuring that every single element of the movie works perfectly, this gem steals itself a place as an unforgettable piece of cinema; long may it keep being cherished.
Civil War is not a relaxing film, either for its characters or viewers, but writer/director Alex Garland (Men) does give Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog) a moment to lie down among the flowers. She isn't alone among the movie's stars on her stomach on a property filled with Christmas decorations en route from New York to Washington DC. Also, with shots being fired back and forth, no one is in de-stressing mode. For viewers of Dunst's collaborations with Sofia Coppola, however — a filmmaker that her Civil War co-star Cailee Spaeny just played Priscilla Presley for in Priscilla — the sight of her face beside grass and blooms was always going to recall The Virgin Suicides. Twenty-five years have now passed since that feature, which Garland nods to as a handy piece of intertextual shorthand. As the camera's focus shifts between nature and people, there's not even a tiny instant of bliss among this sorrow, nor will there ever be, as there was the last time that Dunst was framed in a comparable fashion. Instead, Civil War tasks its lead with stepping into the shoes of a seasoned war photographer in the middle of the violent US schism that gives the movie its name (and, with January 6, 2021 so fresh in everyone's memories, into events that could very well be happening in a version of right now). The US President (Nick Offerman, Origin) is into his third term after refusing to leave office, and the fallout is both polarising and immense. Think: bombed cities, suicide attackers, death squads, torture, lynchings, ambushes, snipers, shuttering the FBI, California and Texas inexplicably forming an alliance to fight back, Florida making its own faction, journalists killed on sight, refugee camps, deserted highways, checkpoints, resistance fighters, mass graves and, amid the rampant anarchy, existence as America currently knows it clearly obliterated. (Asking "what kind of American are you?" barely seems a stretch, though.) The front line is in Charlottesville, but Dunst's Lee Smith is destined for the White House with Reuters reporter Joel (Wagner Moura, Mr & Mrs Smith), where they're hoping to evade the lethal anti-media sentiment to secure an interview with the leader who has torn the country apart. That Dunst's character, nor anyone, will never be able to shake the chaos observed and experienced, no matter the no-nonsense demeanour sported, couldn't be more evident from Civil War's opening. This is a raw and deeply resonant movie about trauma, sources for which fill its chillingly realistic visuals constantly, as Garland and cinematographer Rob Hardy (returning from all of the filmmaker's past helming work, including Ex Machina and Annihilation) bring to the screen with haunting immediacy. It's also about desensitisation to that onslaught, for Garland's players and audiences alike. Combine both, even if Lee ignores the personal impact, and you get someone who'll never feel the calm that should accompany lying on a lawn in different circumstances — because the time when she'd soak that in, and the person who could do just that, are long gone. You also get someone so accustomed being surrounded by nightmarish horror that she's no longer aware of what she's lost. Garland's fourth film behind the lens is a probingly complex character study as well. It's a snapshot of a dystopia with far more potential to come immediately true than most such tales — and it gives America and its volatile political reality the filmic treatment usually reserved for almost anywhere else — but it's always also an unpacking of what it means to spend your life immortalising humanity at its worst; pics and it definitely did happen. Navigating the ethics of the gig, Lee is adamant that the job is to chronicle, not to intervene. "We take pictures so others can ask these questions," she advises. Everything about the performance behind not just the line but the figure lives and breathes that idea. That said, she's also as firm in her belief that what she does should spark pause. "Every time I survived a war zone, I thought I was sending a warning home: don't do this," Lee says to Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson, Beau Is Afraid), a New York Times veteran and fellow member of the movie's travelling party. "But here we are," she continues with a sigh. Garland gives Dunst another contrast beyond referencing one of her prior roles: Spaeny's Jessie. (That Civil War arrives so soon after Priscilla, which Dunst recommended Spaeny to Coppola for, adds inescapable emphasis.) Introduced being saved by Lee when they first meet in the thick of a brutal fray, the green as green — and keen as keen — wide-eyed 23-year-old freelancer is similarly snapping the conflict, learning as she's going and convincing Joel to let her tag along. Her vast range of emotions couldn't be in greater opposition to Lee's dispassion. "I've never been so scared in my entire life. And I've never felt more alive," Jessie notes after the movie's most intense scene, an unforgettable nerve-shredder where the foursome and a couple of colleagues (Ahsoka's Nelson Lee and The Brothers Sun's Evan Lai) cross paths with a cruel group of soldiers (led by Dunst's IRL husband Jesse Plemons, Killers of the Flower Moon). No one needs to be familiar with Dunst and Spaeny's cinematic history, and their echoes, to feel the weight of what Civil War is portraying. Spotting the array of cast members from Garland's 2020 sci-fi/thriller TV series Devs — Spaeny, Henderson, Offerman, Sonoya Mizuno (House of the Dragon) as an embedded British correspondent, Jin Ha (Pachinko) as a sharpshooter and Karl Glusman (The Idol) as a spotter — also isn't a must to understand that the author-turned-filmmaker is in his element. Garland has always been fascinated by how folks react to humanity's inherent lust for control and power, whether perpetuating it, fleeing it, being victimised by it or getting it on the record. That was true when he was writing novel The Beach, then penning the screenplays for 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Never Let Me Go and Dredd, too. Indeed, as Lee watches on and documents, Dunst virtually plays her director's in-film surrogate. For all of the ways that Civil War can be linked back to now, to recently, to not mere fiction or conjecture, Garland isn't here to overtly connect dots or take sides; he also began writing his script in 2020, pre-dating the Capitol attack. He knows as a given, as he gleans that everyone will, that fractures have become an entrenched part of the US. As intelligent as it is urgent, Civil War is a cautionary tale, then, but never a source of answers. What it sees is the loss, the toll and the consequences when democracy shatters, all through people, aka Lee and company, including the devastation of such grimness becoming a normality. Making The Virgin Suicides come to mind serves the picture in another way, reminding of a stunning Dunst performance laced with unflinching pain just as she's giving another one at the heart of this arresting and searing feature.
Lean, mean and a Nazi-killing machine: that's Sisu and its handy-with-a-hunting-knife (and pickaxe) protagonist alike. This stunningly choreographed Finnish action film's title doesn't have a literal equivalent in English, but means stoic, tenacious, resolute, brave and gritty all in that four-letter term; again, both the movie and the man at its centre fit the description. Former soldier Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila, perhaps best-known internationally for 2010's Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale) has one aim. After he strikes gold and plenty of it in Lapland's far reaches, he's keen to cash in. For someone who has already lost everyone and everything to World War II, that requires transporting his haul; however, the year is 1944 and German troops still lurk even as the combat winds down. Accordingly, getting those gleaming nuggets from the wilderness to a bank means facing a greedy and unrelenting platoon led by Helldorf (Aksel Hennie, The Cloverfield Paradox), who can spy a payday and an exit strategy for himself. Before anything yellow shimmers, Nazi-filled tanks are sighted, a single shot is fired or a blow swung, Sisu explains its moniker as "a white-knuckled form of courage and unimaginable determination". Text on-screen also advises that "sisu manifests itself when all hope is lost." As a film, Sisu may as well be shorthand for John Wick meets Inglourious Basterds meets Django, the iconic 1966 spaghetti western that Quentin Tarantino riffed on with Django Unchained, too — plus all of that meets the work of legendary spaghetti western director Sergio Leone as well. The carnage is that balletic. The Nazi offings are that brutal, roguish and inventive. And valuing deeds over dialogue as a lone figure dispatches with nefarious forces against an unforgiving landscape, and no matter what they throw at him, is firmly the setup. "He is one mean motherfucker that you don't want to mess with," the Nazis are told of Sisu's one-man death squad after they cross paths, the Germans think that their numbers will win out, and Aatami swiftly and savagely shows their folly. Of course, Helldorf and his underlings don't heed that advice. They're heading to Norway, destroying villages and also transporting a wagon filled with Finnish women they've taken captive, such as the spirited Aino (Mimosa Willamo, Memory of Water) — and the nihilistic Helldorf is soon fixated on the gold at any cost. That's a bad choice for the Nazis but great news for audiences. Enter: minefields proving deadly and also coming in handy, oh-so-many limbs going flying, the most grisly way to breathe underwater that's possibly been seen in cinema, taking the battle onto boats and planes, and Aatami continually demonstrating why he's earned such a fierce reputation. The latter doesn't take kindly to Nazis, as no one should, nor to being attacked, having his gold stolen and, like Keanu Reeves' best character of late, seeing his dog threatened. Sisu writer/director Jalmari Helander also helmed dark festive action-comedy Rare Exports, giving seasonal flicks a memorably twisted spin. Then, although to much lesser success, he cast Samuel L Jackson (Secret Invasion) as a US President evading terrorists-slash-hunters in the woods in 2014's Big Game. Here, he knows which footsteps he's treading in — Mad Max: Fury Road also springs to mind in Sisu's staging, setting and elements of its story — and also how to make his film its own extravagantly bloody and entertaining spectacle. There's ticking boxes, and then there's colouring them in with your own hues and designs so that yes, they've been marked off but in your distinctive manner. Sisu works through everything that audiences think will happen, even winkingly signposting via named chapters splashed across the frame with western-esque font, and yet it's no mere exercise in lazily fulfilling a checklist. Helander is too willing to get as OTT and pulpy as he can manage, to get as immersed in the film's playfully and gruesomely engrossing violence as he's able to, and to keep one-upping the creative and downright novel kills at Aatami's hands. In every case, he's giddily going for broke — and frequently getting in close via cinematographer Kjell Lagerroos (another Memory of Water alum). Sisu casts its solo hero against a sprawling setting that's oppressive in its immenseness in classic western style. The colour palette is colder, though; the feature surrounds Aatami with visible, inescapable, ever-present and grey-tinged desolation, as reality dictates of war movies. Helander paints this intense, grim and devastating big picture, while also seeing the gore and dirt and sweat intimately and intricately. What would the John Wick franchise be without Reeves? Django without the great Franco Nero (who popped up in John Wick: Chapter 2) in his breakout role? A Fistful of Dollars and its sequels without Clint Eastwood (Cry Macho)? The question now: what would Sisu be without the irrepressible Tommila? Every single one of the films just mentioned boasts a sublime mix of perfectly chosen stars and directors doing their utmost — brothers-in-law Tommila and Helander among them. With so few words uttered, Tommila's physical performance has to convey everything. So, a stare screams with ferocity, a gaze at Aatami's dog bubbles with emotion and a twitch is never just a twitch. Watching silent protagonists dispensing with a constant onslaught of foes also gets audiences mirroring the characters, aka surveying the scene for even the slightest change or sign given that even the smallest details can alter so much. As villains get slain again and again — and Aatami keeps weathering what's blasted his way — Sisu unleashes its barrage with weight. That isn't only because the atrocities of the Second World War should never be forgotten. All those lingering views of messy and madcap carnage? They don't just notice Aatami's actions, but show what he goes through as he persists and subsists. This is a film about survival as much as it's about payback. It has stakes and makes them plain, even as it's as blatant a good-versus-evil movie as they come. It's grounded in the past, stripped down to bangs and smacks and crunches that pack a visceral and emotional punch (smashes and crashes, too, with meticulous sound design that makes every pop and snap echo), and pulled off with cartoonish flair. Sisu is many things, just like the term itself in its native Finland — and impossible to stop watching is one of them.
Canines are so beloved in cinema that the Cannes Film Festival even gives them a gong: the Palm Dog, which has been awarded to a performing pooch (sometimes several) annually since 2001. Among the past winners sit pups in Marie Antoinette, Up, The Artist, Paterson, Dogman and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — most real, one animated, some anointed posthumously and none scoring their prize for a quest to bite off someone's penis. That genitals-chomping journey belongs to the four-legged stars of Strays alone. They're played by actual animals, with CGI assisting with moving lips and particularly raucous turns, and they're unlikely to win any accolades for this raunchy lost-dog tale. The pooches impress. They're always cute. Also, they're capable of digging up laughs. But Strays is a one-bark idea that's tossed around as repetitively as throwing a tennis ball to your fluffy pal: take a flick about adorable dogs, and talking ones at that, then make it crude and rude. Games of fetch do pop up in Strays, but via a version that no loving pet owner would ever want to play. This one is called "fetch and fuck", with stoner and constant masturbator Doug (Will Forte, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson) doing the pitching. He isn't a kindly human companion to Reggie (voiced by Will Ferrell, Barbie). He's cruel and resentful after his girlfriend adopted the border terrier as a pupper, then left him when the dog exposed his cheating — and he insisted upon keeping the pooch purely out of spite. So, he constantly drives Reggie to various distant spots. He sends him running. As soon as the ball is in the air, Doug hightails it. The canine isn't supposed to follow him back, but does every single time, hence the expletive part of the pastime's name. With unwavering affection, plus the naivety to only see the good in his chosen person, Reggie thinks that it's all meant to be fun. Being abandoned in a city hours away, and meeting Boston terrier Bug (Jamie Foxx, They Cloned Tyrone), Australian shepherd Maggie (Isla Fisher, Wolf Like Me) and great dane Hunter (Randall Park, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) while he's there, soon has Reggie realising the truth about his relationship with Doug. Cue Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar director Josh Greenbaum and American Vandal creator/writer Dan Perrault sending the pup on a revenge mission with his new dog squad trotting along to help. Really, cue a parade of canines-gone-wild antics, each instance more OTT than the last. Urinating on something to claim it as your own and humping a grimy outdoor couch are just the beginning. Getting intimate with a garden gnome, squirrel threesomes, tripping on mushrooms, trying to use Hunter's great member to escape from doggy jail and a steaming pile of poop jokes: they are as well. Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, A Dog's Purpose, Beethoven, every family-friendly pooch flick, any treacly ode to human's best friend: Strays definitely isn't in their pack. Depending on your fondness for super-sweet dog films, that isn't a bad thing. Cat & Dogs, Doctor Dolittle, Marmaduke, Babe, Paddington: Strays doesn't join those talking-animal pictures either. Instead, as Greenbaum and Perrault riff on the fact that canines love doing everything that humans do, their feature has more in common with Sausage Party, Ted, Good Boys (not a dog movie) and The Happytime Murders. Taking something that's usually for all-ages audiences, then ensuring that it 100-percent isn't: that's the formula that Strays seeks as eagerly and forcefully as a tail-wagger sprinting after a hurled stick. Smearing straightforward gags about sex, drugs, crotches and bodily functions through a story about endearing pups isn't the film's best trait, even if that's the number-one approach and aim. Again, getting foul-mouthed and lewd with pooches is the entire concept and reason that the movie exists, but hitting the same beats over and over, then over and over some more, makes its 93-minute running time seem far longer than it is. Unsurprisingly, some comic bits are worn out quicker than a mutt's favourite chew toy. Strays is a better and funnier flick, however, when it's doing two things: leaning gleefully into the surreal and grounding its humour in perceptive insights into dog behaviour. Glorious silliness doesn't come as easily to Greenbaum as it should, though — Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is one of the best absurdist comedies of the 2020s, and best comedies in general — but it leads to a few standout moments. One involves fireworks experienced from the canine perspective. Another brings in bunnies. Both are memorable (as are a winking mid-picture celebrity cameo that riffs on the dog-movie genre and the use of Miley Cyrus' 'Wrecking Ball' at a pivotal moment). Strays also isn't afraid to get dark; it might be as predictable overall as a dog licking a bone, dishing up exactly what audiences expect, but it largely craps all over schmaltz. It's less convincing when it's trying to skew deep, with musings on self-worth, emotional trauma, and folks who bring pets into their lives with selfish and attention-seeking motives well-meaning but treated flimsily. Perhaps it's fitting that Strays flits between perky (when it's bounding beyond the obvious) and sleepy (when it's happy chasing its own tail); IRL, the critters at its centre often do. Still, one thing can't be underestimated: the impact of the movie's voice work and animal cast. The wrong vocals would've left the film doing nothing but howling, and looking shoddy would've had it burying itself from frame one. Playing Reggie as an earnest child who navigates the world with curiosity and trust, Ferrell is basically in Elf mode, but it worked there and does the same here. Perfecting the pint-sized Bug's big-dog syndrome, Foxx is all swagger — while Fisher charms breezily and Park deadpans. And, even though it takes special-effects wizardry to make Strays' main quartet appear as if they're speaking, the real-life pups earn themselves ample treats. Although they still won't be winning any shiny trophies, they ensure that this hit-and-miss picture is just like people: better just by having dogs around.
In the Bram Stoker vampire novel that's inspired almost all other vampire novels, Dracula is undead. In popular culture since and forever, the fictional Transylvanian bloodsucker will never die. Regardless of his fate on the page back in 1897, the most-portrayed character in horror movies ever keeps baring his fangs on-screen, rising again and again like the sun that this creature of the night can never bask in. 2023 brings two new Dracula films, which isn't overly notable, but this crop of Stoker-influenced flicks doesn't simply retell the usual 126-year-old tale. Leaning into comedy and action, Renfield sunk its teeth in by giving the vampire's long-suffering familiar some love. Now the dread-dripping Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter hones in on one chapter of the book that started it all, detailing the captain's log from the neck-munching fiend's journey to London via ship. In print, this stint of seafaring isn't Dracula's main focus. In adaptations upon adaptations over the past century, sometimes it isn't even included — or, if it does pop up, it's often a montage or a passing mention. The watery trip glistens with horror-movie potential, however, boasting a specific setting, a captive group, and an ominous force stalking and slaying. Slasher films, haunted-house fare, Jaws, Alien: they've all fed on such scenarios. Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter has spent decades in various stages of development, cycling through a feast of various talents, but bringing this Dracula chapter to the screen was always a sound idea. While the end result doesn't star Noomi Rappace (You Won't Be Alone), Ben Kingsley (Daliland), Jude Law (Peter Pan & Wendy) or Viggo Mortensen (Thirteen Lives) as previously floated, and isn't directed by Robert Schwentke (The Captain, Allegiant), Marcus Nispel (Conan the Barbarian, Friday the 13th) or Neil Marshall (The Lair, Hellboy), a solid concept with eerie, moody and gory potential remains at its core. Leading instead: Corey Hawkins (In the Heights) as physician Clemens, Aisling Franciosi (The Nightingale) as stowaway Anna and Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones) as Captain Eliot. The former hops onto the latter's ship in Eastern Europe, where a promised job falls through due to his race, forcing a pivot onto the Demeter's crew to return to England. Clemens isn't the only new boarding, with the vessel also welcoming 50 unmarked crates from the Carpathian Mountains. Given that the film is named Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter Down Under — elsewhere, it's known as just The Last Voyage of the Demeter — there's no surprises about what's among the cargo. So, as initially told in Dracula's seventh chapter, in the epistolary format of letters, journals and clippings that Stoker's tome deployed across the entire novel, the key contents of those mysterious wooden chests soon begins offing fellow seafarers. As it relishes gothic-horror chills and, later, gruesome blood spills, there's a full-circle air to the latest film by Trollhunter, The Autopsy of Jane Doe and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark director André Øvredal. Of course Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter feels like Alien but Dracula, or Halloween with the nape-chomping Count — all visions of slaughter at sea owe his acclaimed text's 'The Dailygraph' segment a debt, and all slasher flicks owe Stoker's book as a whole. Bragi F Schut (Escape Room) and Zak Olkewicz's (Bullet Train) screenplay isn't quaking about those similarities. It isn't afraid of unfurling a narrative with zero tension about its outcome, either, because Dracula's time in London is already that well-covered. Indeed, after commencing with the end that's so deeply established, the bulk of the movie arrives as flashbacks, as lifted from Eliot's log, of the infernal odyssey that eventuates whenever "a man, tall and thin, and ghastly pale" — aka a Nosferatu-esque Dracula (Javier Botet, His House) — awakes from coffin. Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter's script is an invitation to its filmmaker, then: take this setup, with its familiar situation, famous monster and foregone conclusion, and make it an old-school frightfest through atmosphere, execution and investment in characters. Øvredal largely obliges. Exactly what the audience knows will happen does — regardless of how intimate you are with the source material, or past Drac outings, or not — but this isn't a mere water-treading viewing experience in the Norwegian director's hands. How creepily and compellingly this story is splashed across the screen is as crucial as the plot details. So is the film's willingness to let its antagonist terrify, plus its eagerness to flesh out its pivotal humans. Enlisting Botet, who was also a menacing presence in Mama, Crimson Peak, IT, Insidious: The Last Key and Slender Man, helps. In avoiding relegating Clemens, Anna, Eliot, his grandson Toby (Woody Norman, C'mon C'mon) and first mate Wojchek (David Dastmalchian, Oppenheimer) to just prey and pawns, the rest of the cast also assists. The ins and outs of Schut and Olkewicz's script see the science-minded Clemens set sail, clash with the Demeter's crew over their faith in myth and superstition — they're also not fussed about his attire or smooth hands — then try to hunt down the creature that's leaving a red-streaked body count. The film's narrative also chronicles Anna's shock appearance mid-voyage, as well as a cat-and-mouse game as the living endeavour to stop the undead. Øvredal's committed direction, plus discerning cinematography (by Mortal's Roman Osin and The Ice Road's Tom Stern), production design (Edward Thomas, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions) and composing (Bear McCreary, Foundation), showers that doomed journey with unease. As the helmer's filmography already attests, he knows the horror genre's basics inside out. And, he's equally aware that textured performances leave a mark, whether Hawkins is conveying why believing in the rational is so important to Clemens, or Franciosi is expressing pain and perseverance, or Cunningham embodying down-with-the-ship dutifulness. As it charts its carnage-filled cruise, Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter isn't an origin story but an in-between story. "In-between" sums up the picture overall, too. It lingers in the middle of Hammer flicks and Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula. It is gleefully keen on bloodshed, but also frequently refined in look and feel. Øvredal's feature is enthusiastic about staking its own claim; however, as too much does lately, it goes to great efforts to spark a follow-up — and attempt to resurrect Universal's monster movies after 2014's Dracula Untold and 2017's The Mummy failed. (Consider Renfield and Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter's swift-in-succession releases the studio giving itself two new tastes.) This trip with ol' Drac never sinks, yet it also doesn't truly soar. For the bloodsucker himself over this particular journey, that's a welcome outcome. For viewers witnessing a literary masterpiece given a different big-screen spin after its packed history, it's enough to bite into.
Jaws, but bigger. Jurassic Park but sharks. Like a prehistoric underwater predator scooping up a heap of beachgoers in one hefty mouthful, describing what The Meg and its sequel Meg 2: The Trench are each aiming to be is easy. Ridiculous big-screen fun that sets Jason Statham (Fast X) against multiple megalodons, his scowl as shiny as their razor-sharp teeth: they're the type of waters that this creature-feature franchise also wants to paddle in. Since debuting in cinemas in 2018, all things The Meg have always had a seriousness problem, however. They're at their best when they're also at their silliest, but they're rarely as entertainingly ludicrous as they're desperate to be. This five-years-later follow-up might task Statham with shooting harpoons while riding a jet ski at a tourist-trap holiday destination called Fun Island — and also busting out the line "see ya later, chum", which lands with such a sense of self-satisfaction that it feels like the entire reason that the movie even exists — but such gleeful preposterousness is about as common as a herbivore with a meg's massive chompers. Again based on one of author Steve Alten's books — he's penned seven so far, so more flicks are likely — Meg 2: The Trench doesn't just want to ape the Jurassic series. It does exactly that overtly and unsubtly from the outset, but this film is also happy to brazenly treat multiple movies from a few decades back as fuel for its choppy antics. When the feature starts, it's 65 million years ago, dinosaurs demonstrate the cretaceous period's food chain, then a megalodon shows who's boss from the water. Obviously, life will find a way to bring some of this sequence's non-meg critters into the present day. Next comes a dive in The Abyss' slipstream, before embracing being a Jaws clone again — even shouting out to Jaws 2 in dialogue — but with a Piranha vibe. Before it's all over, Meg 2: The Trench also flails in Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus' direction, just with a visibly larger budget. Leading the charge on-screen is Statham's Jonas Taylor, who also scores an early eco-warrior Bond stint. When his character is reintroduced, he's on a container ship in the Philippine Sea taking down pirates that are dumping radioactive waste. His next stop is the Oceanic Institute run out of Hainan in China, where the world's only megalodon in captivity lives — and where Jonas' friend Jiuming (Wu Jing, The Wandering Earth), uncle to teenager Meiying (Sophia Cai, Mr Corman), claims that he has the creature called Haiqi trained. Viewers of the first film might remember that oceanography runs in Meiying's blood, but her mother has been killed off between movies because Li Bingbing (Transformers: Age of Extinction) didn't return for the second production. Hence Jiuming's arrival, and also Taylor playing father figure to a kid he forbids from accompanying him on his latest deep-dive research trip. Meiying stows away, naturally. Off-screen, British filmmaker Ben Wheatley makes the leap to the Hollywood action fold with Meg 2: The Trench, a move that isn't as wild as it initially might seem — just like everything in his big-budget B-movie. Wheatley knows black comedy, with his 2012 film Sightseers an absolute masterclass in it. With High-Rise and Free Fire, he knew how to bring a spectacle, too. Alas, the director that also crafted Down Terrace, Kill List, A Field in England and Happy New Year, Colin Burstead, flitting between the dark and the trippy along the way, plus thrillers and dramedies, is saddled with a script that couldn't be more routine. Explaining his approach to problem-solving, including while submersed 25,000 feet below sea level in the Pacific, Jonas tells Meiying that "we do what's in front of us, then we do the next thing". Was that returning screenwriters Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber and Dean Georgaris' own mantra as well? Whatever is in front of Jonas, and audiences, usually involves a meg. When he descends into the titular ditch with Jiuming, Meiying and their team — among them is The Meg alumnus Page Kennedy (The Upshaws) as DJ, the forceful comic relief who has definitely seen Jaws' sequel — of course oversized sharks that died out millions of years ago IRL are lurking. When Jonas finds a rogue mining outfit pilfering the deep, of course stopping its ruthless leader Montes (Sergio Persis-Mencheta, Snowfall) becomes all the more complicated with megalodons as a constant threat, too. Wheatley wrings what tension he can out of a bottom-of-the-ocean walk in Iron Man-meets-RoboCop suits as hungry creatures linger, and also out of his riff on The Thing, Alien and every horror film set in an isolated space when Meg 2: The Trench's heroes get to the miners' base. What he can't do is make the movie's various contrived parts resemble a coherent whole, skew engagingly campy or feel like anything more than a knockoff of so many other flicks in The Meg's clothing. Another feat that Wheatley's turn at the franchise's helm fails to bite into: convincing special effects. While viewers don't go to a film that has basically swapped "you're gonna need a bigger boat" for "we're gonna fight a bigger shark" for the realism, Meg 2: The Trench's CGI is distractingly subpar. Anything busting out dinos not just post-Jurassic Park, but after Prehistoric Planet and its second season, is always going to struggle if their critters can't wow. Although the megs hardly fare any better, frequently focusing on a big fin sticking out of the water still remains as helpful a tactic as it did when Steven Spielberg defined the shark genre. Getting audiences terrified, perturbed or even just a little on-edge, though? Even when the obligatory jump-scares pop up, no one is leaving this flick afraid to go into the water. Whether he's starring in several Guy Ritchie films, turning The Transporter into a franchise, making a couple of Crank and The Mechanic movies, or showing up in six Fast and Furious-related entries so far, Statham does love repeating himself. Meg 2: The Trench doesn't ask him to do anything more than he did the last time that he faced sea-dwelling fears — but even he's just going through the motions. The rest of the cast, returning and new alike, are as disposable as anyone enjoying a dip to a meg. As trusty offsider Mac, Cliff Curtis (Avatar: The Way of Water) leaves the biggest impression among an ensemble that also spans Skyler Samuels (Aurora Teagarden Mysteries), Melissanthi Mahut (The Sandman), Sienna Guillory (Silo) and Whoopie Van Raam (Counterpart). Not that anyone is required to try, but no one can stop Meg 2: The Trench's most apt line from proving oh-so-true: "this is some dumb shit".
Prepare to step inside the mind of a cinematic genius. It's a big call, sure, but it's true when it comes to David Lynch. No one makes movies or TV shows quite like the man who brought us Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and a little series called Twin Peaks, and we mean no one — no matter how hard anyone else keeps trying. Don't just take our word for it, though. At Cinema Nova's LYNCHPINS: Essential David Lynch, film lovers can experience his movie marvels for themselves. The Carlton venue is diving into the director's distinctive audiovisual catalogue, screening six of his features on various dates and at different times throughout August and September. On the agenda: Eraserhead, the film that started it all and still has no equal in the mindblowing stakes; Lynch's moving, thoughtful and eight-time Oscar-nominated The Elephant Man; the twisty thrills (and ace 90s soundtrack) of Lost Highway; and Inland Empire, aka the flick the director famously wanted Laura Dern to win an Oscar for so badly that he campaigned on Hollywood Boulevard with a live cow, showing here in a fully restored version. Then there's two Kyle MacLachlan-starring stunners: Blue Velvet, which will ensure that you'll never look at white picket fences the same way ever again; and Twin Peaks' exceptional horror sequel/prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. BYO damn fine cup of coffee to the latter. Each film in the LYNCHPINS: Essential David Lynch lineup opens on a Thursday, then treats viewers to daily sessions.
Before it busts out licking lucky cats, K-pop-style Cardi B covers, cocaine enemas, threesome injuries and intimate tattoos, Joy Ride begins with a punch. For most of the movie, Audrey Sullivan (Ashley Park, Beef) and Lolo Chen (Sherry Cola, Good Trouble) are nearing 30, travelling in China and going on a wild journey in a gleefully raucous comedy. In the 1998-set prologue in White Falls, Washington, though, they're five-year-olds (debutants Lennon Yee and Milana Wan) first meeting, being taunted by a racist playground bully and responding with the outgoing Lolo's fist. Crazy Rich Asians and Raya and the Last Dragon screenwriter Adele Lim uses her directorial debut's opening scene not just to start a fast and firm friendship, but to establish the film's tone, sense of humour and, crucially, its willingness to fight. Joy Ride will ultimately get sentimental; however, this is a movie that beats up cultural prejudices and stereotypes by letting its four main female and non-binary Asian American characters grapple with them while being complicated and chaotic. Hollywood should be well past representation being such a noteworthy factor. That should've happened long before Bridesmaids and Bachelorette gave The Hangover's template a ladies-led spin more than a decade ago, and prior to Girls Trip spending time four Black women on a raucous weekend away six years back. Reality proves otherwise, sadly, so Joy Ride openly addresses the discrimination and pigeonholing slung Audrey, Lolo, and their pals Kat (Everything Everywhere All At Once Oscar-nominee Stephanie Hsu) and Deadeye's (comedian and movie first-timer Sabrina Wu) ways — and in Audrey's case, after being adopted as a baby by the white Sullivans (The Recruit's David Denman and Bridesmaids' co-writer Annie Mumolo), internalised. With its booze- and sex-fuelled antics, Lim's film could've simply been formulaically entertaining, just with Asian American characters in Asia. It certainly doesn't hold back with its raunchy setpieces. But it's a better and more thoughtful feature because it engages with the diasporic experience; "I'm just a garbage American who only speaks English," Audrey chides herself, which the picture she's in unpacks. The full Joy Ride equation, then, also treads in The Farewell and Everything Everywhere All At Once's impressive and rightly acclaimed footsteps. Tellingly, Lim and her co-screenwriters Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao, both of whom boast Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens on their resumes, originally had Joy Fuck Club as their film's working title. Also revealing: that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's production company Point Grey Pictures is behind the movie, after previously giving cinemas flicks like Bad Neighbours and its sequel, This Is the End, The Night Before, Sausage Party, Blockers, Long Shot and Good Boys. Getting culturally specific; dismantling Asian cliches; examining identity, belonging and displacement; being hilariously bawdy: Joy Ride always feels like the sum of these easily spotted parts, but it also always feels genuine. As children, Audrey and Lolo are thrust together due to their shared heritage — "are you Chinese?," the Sullivans ask the Chens (The Midnight Club's Kenneth Liu and Platonic's Debbie Fan) in that introductory sequence, which inspires a shared glance that says everything — but they're a chalk-and-cheese pair personality-wise. Before the young Lolo smacks their tormentor, Audrey is cowering. As adults, Lolo makes sex-positive art riffing on Chinese culture that hasn't yet brought her success, while Audrey is a fast-rising lawyer eyeing a promotion at a firm filled with white men (such as Don't Worry Darling's Timothy Simons). Lolo lives in Audrey's garage, is steeped in her culture and content being herself. Audrey names Mumford & Sons and The National as her favourite bands, and can list Succession characters instantly. As they head to China so that Audrey can close a big deal, with Lolo along for the ride as her personal translator, the latter is excited about seeing family, while the former is guilty of making wary assumptions about what the trip will be like. When Lolo's K-pop-obsessed cousin Deadeye joins them at the airport, it's the first surprise that's thrown Audrey's way. The bickering between Lolo and Kat, Audrey's college roommate-turned- Chinese soap-opera star, over who's truly her BFF — that she easily foresees. This wouldn't be a wild getaway comedy if there weren't more bolts out of the blue coming at Audrey, of course, kicking off with a drink-heavy night trying to get her client Chao (Ronny Chieng, M3GAN) to sign, which leads to a cross-country quest to find her birth mother. Drugs, sex, vomit, a faux band, 'WAP', a distracted basketball team, vagina-view camerawork: that all follows. So does a fateful train ride that's utter pandemonium in a completely different way to Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, and Kat trying to hide her between-the-sheets past from her very Christian fiancé (Desmond Chiam, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier). Lim weaves Audrey's journey of acceptance and discovery, embracing her background and realising the eager-to-please and assimilate part that she's unwittingly played since childhood, throughout a zippy and brightly shot madcap romp of a movie. And, she largely finds the right balance — including as Lolo refuses to be anyone but herself; the blunt, introverted but caring Deadeye yearns to be liked for being themself; and Kat struggles with knowing how to be true to her real self beyond the demure, polite and dutiful front that she's been putting on professionally and personally. Along the way, Joy Ride revels in a candy-coloured dance number, lets Asian men be ripped and lusted after, and, yes, gets mawkish when it comes time to tie everything up neatly. Sometimes it's sidesplittingly funny, sometimes it's only eagerly trying to be, but it's aptly never happy slipping into one easy category. At their best when Joy Ride is either at its most manic and outrageous, or its weightiest and intelligent, Park, Cola, Hsu and Wu are a dream cast. If the film wants to stick to The Hangover setup by sparking sequels, teaming its core quartet up again and again would be keenly welcomed after this first go-around. Park has the trickiest and straightest role, Cola the brassiest, Hsu the lewdest and Wu the most awkward — and each nails the task while giving the film a fleshed-out, multi-faceted, smart, striving, relatably imperfect crew, and actively dispelling the idea that to be Asian American is to be a monoculture. Indeed, their energy and authenticity, and Lim's behind the lens, sometimes eclipses Joy Ride's jokes — and that couldn't be a better problem to have.
Pasta and parmesan are one of Italian cuisine's perfect pairings. Eat the former without the latter, and your tastebuds will know the difference. And while sprinkling your spaghetti with fine shavings of hard cheese is all well and good (and delicious), that's nothing compared to devouring a bowl of pasta that has been prepared inside a parmesan wheel. If it sounds like all of your culinary dreams come true, that's because it is — and it's the dish in the spotlight at Cucinetta's returning Parmesan Wheel Week. After a swag of successful previous events in past years, the South Yarra restaurant is bringing this cheesy situation back for a second time in 2023 alone. Why? Other than the perfectly excellent answer "why not?", it's because the eatery is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Once again, this special means serving up the Italian specialty pasta cacio e pepe straight out of a wheel of 24-month Parmigiano Reggiano. And, despite the name, the $36.90 special is actually running across two full weeks. Given that cacio e pepe is a pasta concoction made with parmesan and pepper — think: fancier, tastier mac 'n' cheese — the results promise quite the cheesy meal. The dish will be available at Cucinetta for lunch from 12–3pm and dinner from 5pm–close between Monday, May 22–Sunday, June 4. We'd tell you to arrive hungry, but we're sure that just thinking about it already has you feeling ravenous.
Winter and comfort foods always go hand in hand, but fans of doughnuts should find the start of the frosty season particularly delicious. Each year, to kick off June, National Doughnut Day arrives. And, when the date hits, free round orbs are often on the menu. In 2023, on Friday, June 2, Donut King will be handing out freebies — and keeping Australians happy with their eponymous blend of sweets and carbs. The chain is known for its hot cinnamon doughnuts, and that's exactly what it'll be giving away at every store Australia-wide. Donut King hasn't advised exactly how many doughnuts are up for grabs, and it is a while-stocks-last affair. That said, the brand is intending to serve up a whole heap of its number-one treat to customers in exchange for zero cash, beginning at 1am AEST — if that's when your local store opens — and running through until 11.59pm AEST. The big caveat, other than the first-in-best-dressed rule: there's a limit of one free hot cinnamon doughnut per person. Also, you do have to hit up a Donut King shop in-person, with the giveaway not available for deliveries. To snag yourself a freebie, folks in Melbourne can make a date everywhere from Northcote and Sunshine to The Pines and Southland Westfield. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Donut King (@donutking_au)
David Lynch's films and television shows should never be far from a screen, but it's been 17 years since his last new movie and six since he brought back Twin Peaks. Thankfully, the inimitable filmmaker is a favourite of retrospective programmers. Lynch's work isn't always gracing a cinema somewhere around Melbourne, but it's rarely far away in all of its wild and wonderful glory. Movies don't get much more Lynchian than Mulholland Drive, which is the latest of the director's masterpieces to get a-flickering again, this time at The Capitol on Tuesday, July 18. This shimmering neo-noir is showing as part of the latest entry in The Best Films You've Never Seen series, this time badged A Night of Surrealist Cinema. Hopefully you have indeed watched this Los Angeles-set tale starring Naomi Watts as a wide-eyed aspiring actor, and hopefully you've even caught it on the silver screen — but whether you have or not, this is a golden opportunity. It's the film that scored Lynch his third Best Director Oscar nomination, plus a Best Director win at Cannes. In dreams, it lingers long after you've seen it. And, heading along to this 6.30pm session will only cost you $10. Something that you genuinely mightn't have seen before is on the bill with Mulholland Drive: Maya Deren's experimental avant-garde 1943 short Meshes of the Afternoon. Both titles were named in the top 20 in the recent British Film Institute Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll, if you need any more motivation. [caption id="attachment_905946" align="alignnone" width="1920"] NAGC/FMC[/caption]
