Restaurant group Three Blue Ducks is hosting a fundraising dinner to aid communities impacted by flooding in Queensland and Northern New South Wales, with the support of some of Australia's finest chefs. On Wednesday, April 27 at their Melbourne location in URBNSURF, Three Blue Ducks will host a ten-course, canape-style dinner with all profits going to support Northern Rivers' Flood Relief Fund and Queensland's Food Bank. Creating the culinary experience are Three Blue Ducks chefs and owners Andy Allen, Mark LaBrooy and Darren Robertson alongside 12 prestigious guest chefs from across Australia, including Queensland's Louis Tikaram and MasterChef Australia judge Jock Zonfrillo. Home Grown Drinks and Stomping Ground will keep the drinks flowing throughout the night. During the event, attendees can enjoy musical performances by Ed Fisher and Harvey Miller, followed by DJ Mell Hall. The star of the evening, however, is the raffle. Boasting $15,000 worth of prizes, guests can purchase tickets to win donated items from Ripcurl, URBNSURF, YETI, Patagonia and Daiwa. A variety of prizes will also be available for auction, including a tennis lesson with Australian Paralympian Dylan Alcott, and two tickets to the Essendon AFL President's Club. The event will run from 6:30pm–11pm at URBNSURF, and tickets can be purchased now for $250 per person.
Before the pandemic hit, throwback tours were doing big Aussie business — nationwide shows that brought a heap of 90s and 00s musicians our way, let them belt out their biggest hits and doused everyone in as much nostalgia as possible, that is. And while life isn't quite back to normal yet, nature is healing in one key way, with Made in the 90s about to unleash an old-school lineup that'll get you chasing dreams. Responsible for one of the most iconic songs of the 90s, Coolio headlines this retro party, which hits Melbourne on Saturday, April 2. Head along to Festival Hall, prepare to feel like you've jumped back three decades and put that those memorised 'Gangsta's Paradise' lyrics to great use (because yes, if you were alive in the 90s, you know the words). Also on the bill are All-4-One ('I Swear', 'I Can Love You Like That'), Next ('Too Close', 'Wifey') and Renee Neufville, aka one half of Zhané ('Hey Mr. DJ', 'Groove Thang'). Been spendin' most of your life waiting for this? Of course you have.
To watch films written and directed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi is to watch people playing a part — in multiple ways. That's one of the key truths to features not only by the Japanese filmmaker, but by anyone helming a movie that relies upon actors. It's so obvious that it doesn't usually need mentioning, in fact. Nonetheless, the notion is as essential to Hamaguchi's pictures as cameras to capture the drama. He bakes the idea into his films via as many methods as he can, pondering what it means to step into all the posts that life demands: friend, lover, spouse, ex, sibling, child, employee, student, classmate and the like. Hamaguchi loves contemplating the overt act of performance, too — his Best International Feature Oscar-winning Drive My Car, which also nabbed its helmer a Best Director nomination at this year's Academy Awards, hones in on a play and the rehearsals for it in dilligent detail — but the auteur who's also behind Happy Hour and Asako I and II has long been aware that the art of portrayal isn't just limited to thespians. Shakespeare said it centuries back, of course. To be precise, he had As You Like It's Jaques utter it: "all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players". Hamaguchi's Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, his second film to reach cinemas in mere months, definitely isn't a French-set comedy; however, it lives and breathes the Bard's famous words anyway. Here, three tales about romance, desire and fate get a spin. This trio of stories all muse on chance, choice, identity, regret and inescapable echoes as well, and focus on complex women reacting to the vagaries of life and everyday relationships. They're about sliding into roles in daily existence, and making choices regarding how to behave, which way to present yourself and who you decide to be depending upon the company you're in. While Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy mightn't ultimately mimic Drive My Car's Oscars success, it's equally masterful. In the first segment — dubbed 'Magic (or Something Less Assuring)' — model Meiko (Kotone Furukawa, 21st Century Girl) discovers that her best friend Tsugumi (Hyunri, Wife of a Spy) has just started seeing her ex-boyfriend Kazuaki (Ayumu Nakajima, Saturday Fiction). She's told in a sprawling taxi chat, which makes for stellar early sequence, and then she grapples with her complicated feelings while musing on what could eventuate from there. Meiko also heads straight to her former paramour, which was never going to simplify the situation. Her mantle to bear: either remaining the picture of a supportive pal by failing to tell Tsugumi about her past with Kazuaki, or laying out their history and forever shifting the dynamic. It's a devastating tale in how intricately it understands the push and pull of bonds that splay in different directions, and how we hold ourselves in various ways depending on who we're with. Next, in 'Door Wide Open', college student Nao (Katsuki Mori, Sea Opening) is enlisted to seduce Professor Sagawa (Kiyohiko Shibukawa, Tezuka's Barbara) as part of a revenge plan by her lover Sasaki (Shouma Kai, Signal 100). She's forced into the part — which blatantly requires her to play a part — by the entitled Sasaki, all because the professor won't give him a passing grade. Nao is married, adding further shades to the roles she's inhabiting at any given time. She's also wholly uncomfortable with the position that her boyfriend has placed her in, but it still leads to authentic connections and revelations. Another of Hamaguchi's strong and frequently repeated truths: that the pretences we all sport, for whatever reasons we adopt them in any particular circumstances, are often barriers to genuine emotions and attachments. Finally, in a world where the internet has been eradicated due to a virus — making third chapter 'Once Again' a piece of science fiction, too, and as quietly fantastical as the feature gets — Natsuko (Fusako Urabe, Voices in the Wind) and Nana (Aoba Kawai, Marriage with a Large Age Gap) cross paths. The former has returned home to attend her high-school reunion, bumping into the latter within moments of getting off the train, with the two women instantly thinking that they were classmates decades ago. Thanks to the preceding portions of the film and also Hamaguchi's filmography in general, it's instantly clear that this scenario won't be straightforward, either. Nana invites Natsuko back to her house, the two chat and reminisce, but neither is all that confident about their shared history in a segment that tenderly but candidly examines role-playing as a two-way street, and also deception as a social grace. Hamaguchi's resume is littered with other obsessions beyond the fictions people spin to get through their days — to themselves and to each other, and willingly and unthinkingly alike — many of which also pop up in Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. Coincidence has a role in each of the movie's trio of intelligently and painstakingly plotted narratives, and destiny and fortune as well (as the name makes plain). The tangled web that romance weaves, and the sticky strands that represent alluring exes, also leave a firm imprint. So does seduction, and not always in its usual and most apparent form. All three of the picture's sections could stand alone, but each could've been fleshed out to feature length as well; as they exist, they leave viewers wanting more time with their lead characters. Commonalities ebb and flow between them, though, because this is a smart, astute and savvily layered triptych that's brought to the screen with everything that makes Hamaguchi's work so empathetic, warmly intimate and also entrancing. On the list: a canny knack for domestic drama that spies the revelatory in the seemingly ordinary and mundane; a willingness to let dialogue guide each story, yet never by resorting to only speaking in exposition dumps or lazily telling over showing; and, to help with that crucial last component, piercing and haunting long shots by cinematographer (Yukiko Iioka, Listen to Light) in every chapter. Indeed, each portion of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy almost resembles a full-length film as it is courtesy of these trademark traits, which make the entire movie seem deeply lived-in. It should come as no surprise, then, that Hamaguchi's cast fares just as brilliantly. With the filmmaker's patent fascination with performance on full display, the restrained yet meticulously textured portrayals he exacts from his cast are uniformly excellent. They're more than that; in a beguiling piece about playing parts, and that makes the process of adopting a role its very reason for flickering, peering at its actors feels like peering at reality at its most soulful, insightful and also playful.
What flickers in a robot's circuitry in its idle moments has fascinated the world for decades, famously so in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 — and in After Yang, one machine appears to long for everything humans do. The titular Yang (Justin H Min, The Umbrella Academy) was bought to give Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith, Queen & Slim) and Jake's (Colin Farrell, The Batman) adopted Chinese daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja, iCarly) a technosapien brother, babysitter, companion and purveyor of "fun facts" about her heritage. He dotes amid his duties, perennially calm and loving, and clearly an essential part of the family. What concerns his wiring beyond his assigned tasks doesn't interest anyone, though, until he stops operating. Mika is distressed, and Kyra and Jake merely inconvenienced initially, but the latter pledges to figure out how to fix Yang — which is where his desires factor in. Yang is unresponsive and unable to play his usual part as the household's robotic fourth member. If Jake can't get him up and running quickly, he'll also experience the "cultural techno" version of dying, his humanoid skin even decomposing. That puts a deadline on a solution, which isn't straightforward, particularly given that Yang was bought from a now-shuttered reseller secondhand, rather than from the manufacturer anew, is one roadblock. Tinkering with the android's black box is also illegal, although Jake is convinced to anyway by a repairman (Ritchie Coster, The Flight Attendant). He acquiesces not only because it's what Mika desperately wants, but because he's told that Yang might possess spyware — aka recordings of the family — that'd otherwise become corporate property. Before all that, there's a stunning dance — a synchronised contest where families around the globe bust out smooth moves in front of their televisions, competing to emerge victorious. The dazzling scene comes during After Yang's opening credits and is a marvel to watch, with writer/director/editor Kogonada (TV series Pachinko) conveying a wealth of meaning visually, thematically, philosophically and emotionally in minutes. To look at, the sequence brings to mind Ex Machina's, aka the Oscar Isaac-led scene that launched a thousand gifs. In what it says about After Yang's vision of an unspecified but not-too-distant future, it's reminiscent of Black Mirror, with engrained surveillance technology eerily tracking participants' every move. It's here, too, amid the joy of the family progressing further than they ever have before, that the fact that Yang is malfunctioning becomes apparent, turning a techno dream in more ways than one into a potential source of heartbreak. When a feature so easily recalls other films and television shows, and so emphatically, it isn't typically a positive sign. That isn't the case with After Yang. Adapting Alexander Weinstein's short story Saying Goodbye to Yang, Kogonada crafts a movie that resembles a dream for the overwhelming bulk of its running time — it's softly shot like one, and tightly to focus on interiors rather than backgrounds — and that makes it feel like a happily slumbering brain filtering through and reinterpreting its wide array of influences. Another picture that leaves an imprint: Kogonada's own Columbus, his 2017 wonder that also featured Haley Lu Richardson (The Edge of Seventeen), who pops up here as a friend of Yang's that Jake, Kyra and Mika know nothing about. It isn't the shared casting that lingers, but the look and mood and texture, plus the idea that what we see, what we choose to revel in aesthetically and what makes us tick mentally are intertwined; yes, even for androids. After Yang is transfixing, giving its audience plenty of opportunities to put those notions in motion themselves, all just by watching and being swept up in its gorgeously ruminative frames. It's a sci-fi film to revel in — it's cerebral, existential, meditative, hypnotic and soulful, as well as haunting and almost tangibly sensual — and, in the process, to slide onto its poignant wavelength about what truly defines life. After Yang is also tender and curious about intelligence wrought from flesh and from ones and zeros alike, digging into consciousness, memory, and both the impact of and loss of each. From all of that, it ponders the question that's as old as humanity and may even outlive us: what it genuinely means to be human, especially as AI develops, androids and other smart machinery get more immersed in our lives, and robots become inescapably intertwined with our emotional landscape (and perhaps boast their own). Her and A.I. Artificial Intelligence have also traversed somewhat similar terrain in their own ways, but After Yang remains its own film — its own take on all that it contemplates, everything it brings up but doesn't dare to try to simplify with clearcut answers, and the journey it makes through layers of recollections upon recollections. As Jake accesses Yang's memories, it reminds him of his own and reinforces a key fact: that memory is one of life's connective threads, linking our loved ones to us even when they're gone or we are. Kogonada conjures this up while evoking a captivating sense of space and framing via his interior-heavy locations, such as Jake, Kyra and Mika's home. Not since Parasite has a house been as pivotal not only as a setting, but to the atmosphere and substance of a movie. Glass and windows feature prominently, lensed lovingly but meticulously by cinematographer Benjamin Loeb (Pieces of a Woman, Mandy), and putting everyday moments in boxes to treasure. After Yang is a film to feel, to flow with, to sink into, to soak up. It codes that sensation in via Kogonada's sensitive editing, actually, which seems to intuitively mirror the leaping and lurching way the human brain thinks, and through a shifting use of aspect ratios. It's a picture that makes you want to touch it and step into it — and it's home to a masterclass of a quietly powerful portrayal by Farrell, the feature's standout among a well-deployed cast. Operating in the same subtle mode that made him astonishing in The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, he's a piece of connective tissue, too, bonding Jake's stresses and delights with viewers' (because everything his character experiences emotionally is unshakeably relatable, even sans androids like Yang). Only an exceptional movie can equally think and feel so vastly, and pose unresolvable queries while also offering such a soothing embrace. It's something that Yang might've pined for, and that we all may have without ever realising it; to see here, it's magic.
The movies have come to Downton Abbey and Violet Crawley, the acid-tongued Dowager Countess of Grantham so delightfully played by Maggie Smith (The Lady in the Van) since 2010, is none too fussed about it. "Hard same," all but the most devoted fans of the upstairs-downstairs TV drama may find themselves thinking as she expresses that sentiment — at least where Downton Abbey: A New Era, an exercise in extending the series/raking in more box-office cash, is concerned. Violet, as only she can, declares she'd "rather eat pebbles" than watch a film crew at work within the extravagant walls of her family's home. The rest of us mightn't be quite so venomous, but that's not the same as being entertained. The storyline involving said film crew is actually one of the most engaging parts of A New Era; however, the fact that much of it is clearly ripped off from cinematic classic Singin' in the Rain speaks volumes, and gratingly. When the first Downton Abbey flick brought its Yorkshire mansion-set shenanigans to cinemas back in 2019, it felt unnecessary, too, but also offered what appeared to be a last hurrah and a final chance to spend time with beloved characters. Now, the repeat effort feels like keeping calm and soldiering on because there's more pounds to be made. Don't believe the title: while A New Era proclaims that change is afoot, and some of its narrative dramas nod to the evolving world when the 1920s were coming to a close, the movie itself is happy doing what Downton Abbey always has — and in a weaker version. There's zero reason other than financial gain for this film to unspool its tale in theatres rather than as three TV episodes, which is what it may as well have tacked together. Well, perhaps there's one: having Lady Mary Talbot (Michelle Dockery, Anatomy of a Scandal) proclaim that "we have to be able to enter the 1930s with our heads held high" and set the expectation that more features will probably follow. A New Era begins with a wedding, picking up where its predecessor left off as former chauffeur Tom Branson (Allen Leech, Bohemian Rhapsody) marries Lucy Smith (Tuppence Middleton, Mank) with everyone expected — the well-to-do Crawleys and their relatives, plus their maids, butlers, cooks, footmen and other servants — in attendance. But the film really starts with two revelations that disrupt the Downton status quo. Firstly, Violet receives word that she's inherited a villa in the south of France from an ex-paramour, who has recently passed away. His surviving wife (Nathalie Baye, Call My Agent!) is displeased with the arrangement, threatening lawsuits, but his son (Jonathan Zaccaï, The White Crow) invites the Crawleys to visit to hash out the details. Secondly, a movie production wants to use Downton for a shoot, which the pragmatic Mary talks the family into because — paralleling the powers-that-be behind A New Era itself — the aristocratic brood would like the money. With Violet's health waning, she stays home while son Robert (Hugh Bonneville, Paddington 2) and his wife Cora (Elizabeth McGovern, The Commuter) journey to the Riviera — as part of a cohort that also includes retired butler Mr Carson (Jim Carter, Swimming with Men), who's determined to teach his French counterparts British standards. And, as the Dowager Countess remains in Yorkshire exclaiming she'd "rather earn a living down a mine" than make movies, potential family secrets are bubbling up abroad. That subplot takes a cue or two from Mamma Mia!; Downton Abbey creator and writer Julian Fellowes must've watched several musicals while scripting. Violet also notes that she "thought the best thing about films is that I couldn't hear them", because the production helmed by Jack Barber (Hugh Dancy, Late Night), and led by stars Guy Dexter (Dominic West, The Pursuit of Love) and Myrna Dalgleish (Laura Haddock, Transformers: The Last Knight), has hit a period-appropriate snag: talkies are the new hot thing, but their flick is silent. 2022 marks two decades since Fellowes won an Oscar for writing what remains his finest achievement yet: the fellow upstairs-downstairs affair Gosford Park. It doesn't do A New Era's viewers much good to dwell on that fact while watching his latest, which is directed by My Week with Marilyn, Woman in Gold and Goodbye Christopher Robin's Simon Curtis as if he simply had a job to get on with. Noticeably, despite the lavish setting and decor that's a fixed part of the franchise, as well as the handsome costuming, Curtis' vision of Downton looks flat and functional rather than gleaming — almost like being stuck with a TV with the always-abhorrent motion-smoothing settings left on. The French-set scenes appear lighter and brighter, purely due to the switch from old-world stateliness to coastal airiness, but hardly dazzle visually either. If a Downton Abbey movie doesn't make the most of its bigger canvas, serves up stories cobbled together from other films, gets soapier otherwise and doesn't have all that much of Maggie Smith in it — even if she makes the utmost of the time she does get on-screen — it's always going to prove a lesser jaunt. That can't be patched over by the winking knowingness of tasking Downton's residents with verbalising how inelegant it is to make a picture there, while also recognising how great the cash is; instead of tongue-in-cheek, that meta choice just lands awkwardly. And, although the returning cast do exactly what their parts call for, with so many players to shoehorn in this can never be a performance-driven piece. Unsurprisingly, some of the feature's best work comes from its newcomers, with Dancy and West both fine additions — and enjoying romantic threads that, while thin, don't just tick boxes as the majority of the screenplay does elsewhere. Also blatant: that the servants are firmly shortchanged, but butler Barrow (Rob James-Collier, Fate: The Winx Saga), kitchen maid Daisy (Sophie McShera, The Queen's Gambit) and Mary's maid Anna (Joanne Froggatt, Angela Black) fare best. Sometimes, A New Era imitates thumbing through a photo album — spotting adored faces fleetingly, recalling old times in the process and, well, that's it. For the most ardent of Downton Abbey devotees, getting another go-around with the show's figures may be enjoyable enough, but this film is all about that easy comfort, nostalgia and familiarity above all else. It's there when John Lunn's score kicks in early, lingers through the all-too-neat ups and downs, and remains when Dockery virtually announces that if this flick does big-enough box-office business, then more's likely to come. Top image: Ben Blackall / © 2021 Focus Features, LLC.
We all know that the Mornington Peninsula is home to stunning natural wonders and hidden gems, but let's not forget about its booming industry of local talent. From artists, designers and sustainable entrepreneurs to brewers and winemakers, the Peninsula is a place ripe with creativity. To showcase this talent, Stoker Studio will be hosting an inaugural Design & Drink Market with the help of online local guide The Ninch. So, head along on Saturday, April 30 and you'll discover all that area has to offer in terms of small-batch and sustainable products, as well as craft beverages. Stoker Studio will be home to a plethora of stalls for your perusing, with textiles from Sundance Studio, wine from Kerri Greens, and wares from Kate Bowman Ceramics and Boatshed Cheese among the items that'll be tempting your wallet. The market will run from 1–6pm, and attendees are asked to come with some spare change — as entry is via gold coin donation, with the proceeds going to for Jimmy's Youth Wellbeing Centre. You can also expect live music and great vibes suitable for the whole family (including the pups). [caption id="attachment_850818" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Kerri Greens Winery[/caption]
Despite being nominated for Best Actor for Being the Ricardos, Javier Bardem had zero chance of nabbing a shiny trophy at the 2022 Oscars. The movie he deserves his next nod for instead: savagely sharp workplace satire The Good Boss, which is home to a tour-de-force of a performance from the Spanish actor. Already an Academy Award-recipient for his powerhouse effort in No Country for Old Men — and a prior contender for Before Night Falls and Biutiful, too — Bardem does what he long has, playing a character who uses a set facade to mask his real self. Here, he's a seemingly kindly factory owner who makes a big fuss about treating his employees like family, but happily lets that ruse slip if they want more money, or have problems at home that disrupt their work, or happen to be an attractive intern. He still sports a smile though, naturally. In his latest Goya Award-winning part — his 12th to be nominated, too — Bardem becomes the outwardly friendly, inwardly slippery Básculas Blanco. Given the darkness that lingers in his self-serving, self-confident, self-satisfied true nature, the character's name is patently tongue-in-cheek. He presides over a company that makes professional-grade scales, which he inherited from his father, and tells his staff "don't treat me like a boss". But filmmakers who put the word 'good' in their movie's monikers rarely mean it literally, and writer/director Fernando León de Aranoa (who reteams with his lead after 2002's Mondays in the Sun and 2017's Loving Pablo) is one of them. As portrayed with quietly compelling magnetism by Bardem, The Good Boss' ostensibly respectable CEO finds his perfectly calibrated public persona cracking slowly, surely and devilishly, all thanks to the weight of his own ruthlessness. Awards aren't just coming Bardem's way off-screen for this exceptional turn; they're baked into the movie's plot as well. When The Good Boss begins, Blanco is determined to win a prestigious business prize — but he can't be called desperate, because appearing anything other than commanding, magnanimous and prosperous isn't in the grey-haired, sleekly attired manager's wheelhouse. Still, everyone around him knows how insistent he is about emerging victorious, including his clothing boutique-owning wife Adela (Sonia Almarcha, The Consequences). Their dutiful but hardly passionate marriage says plenty about Blanco, how he operates, and how careful he is about maintaining the illusion he wants the world to see. Indeed, when pretty young Liliana (Almudena Amor, The Grandmother) starts in his marketing department for a month-long stint, she instantly earns his attention, while he still outwardly flaunts committed family-man vibes. Liliana's arrival isn't without complications either professionally and personally. But in a film that skewers nine-to-five life and relationships alike, that's one of several troubles that upsets the company's balance. Just as Blanco's business is set to be inspected during the prize's judging process, his orderly world is pushed askew. There's the just-retrenched José (Óscar de la Fuente, The Cover), who won't accept his sacking, has set up outside the worksite's gate with a loudspeaker shouting out his woes and even has his school-aged children in tow. Then, there's underling and childhood friend Miralles (Manolo Solo, Official Competition), whose marital struggles are impacting day-to-day operations. And, trusted employee Fortuna (Celso Bugallo, The Paramedic) calls upon Blanco's sway for help with a domestic situation of his own. The Good Boss doesn't lack for subplots. It's filled with them — overstuffed, even. Putting so much chaos on Blanco's plate stretches the film out to two hours, and it feels it, but there's a method behind León de Aranoa's approach. The deceitful air that lurks around his protagonist, not to mention everything he weathers and gets away with, has its heart in paralleling Spanish history. The filmmaker is in as pointedly comedic territory as he was with 2015's A Perfect Day, his Benicio del Toro-starring English-language debut about aid workers — and while the analogy to his homeland's past here remains unspoken, it's as gleaming as Blanco's ashen tresses nonetheless. An employer, husband, friend and person like The Good Boss' central figure isn't unique to Spain, but it's easy to connect the dots between the morally reprehensible behaviour on display and what's come before at the highest level in the European nation. Also mutely blatant: the statement made about what Blanco and his ilk will justify to maintain their authority. With its shaggy running time, and the convenience that seethes through some of its plot points, The Good Boss isn't as fine-tuned as it could be. While bearing a completely different tone, it also somewhat sits in the shadow of Pedro Almodóvar's Parallel Mothers, which similarly nods to Spanish history. And, it is inescapably a movie of two clear halves — the patiently building setup, because there's much to establish; and the payoff, where what Blanco's corruption means for men like him in a place with such a past becomes apparent. Still, when León de Aranoa's script slices, it cuts deeply and with a blackly comic disdain for the excesses of power and privilege that's so palpable that feeling it is inescapable. Also a key component: layering in the change bubbling in modern Spain, especially with gender roles. Regardless of whether The Good Boss happens to be hitting all of its marks at any given moment, Bardem is always mesmerising. Exuding menace has never been hard for him, as his Academy Award illustrates, but he proves as skilled here at letting that unease linger behind a superficially affable exterior as he is at flat-out getting villainous (for the latter, see also: Skyfall). Perhaps what's most striking about that polished-but-ominous combination is how recognisable it is at every turn, as it's designed to be, and how genuinely unnerving it is as a result. Workplaces everywhere are filled with Blancos, of course, aka people who can't ever quite hide their entitled, opportunistic, bullying and winner-takes-all tendencies with pleasant posturing, and yet have made successful careers thanks to coming close enough. Bardem mirrors a world of folks like Blanco with his transfixing performance, but also ensures that The Good Boss' namesake won't be easily forgotten.
The World Press Photo Foundation is a global platform connecting professionals and audiences through raw visual journalism and storytelling. The organisation was founded in 1955 when a group of Dutch photographers organised a contest to expose their work to an international audience. Since then, the contest has grown into the world's most prestigious photography competition and global travelling exhibition. The 65th edition of the World Press Photo Exhibition will touch down in Melbourne this year and be on display at the Magnet Galleries at Docklands from Friday, June 10–Thursday, June 30. The winners from this year's contest were chosen by an independent jury that reviewed 64,823 photographs by 4066 photographers from 130 countries — and while the exhibition only showcases a selection, get ready to peer at the best of the best. Taking top honours for 2022: Amber Bracken's image for The New York Times, featuring red dresses hanging on crosses along the roadside to mark the children who died at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. It's a hauntingly striking photo. This will be on display alongside other finalists, plus eye-catching images in categories that span contemporary issues, the environment, general news, nature, portraits and sports. View this post on Instagram A post shared by World Press Photo Foundation (@worldpressphoto) Top image: 2022 Photo Contest, World Press Photo of the Year. Title: Kamloops Residential School. © Amber Bracken for The New York Times.
To write notable things, does someone need to live a notable life? No, but sometimes they do anyway. To truly capture the bone-chilling, soul-crushing, gut-wrenching atrocities of war, does someone need to experience it for themselves? In the case of Siegfried Sassoon, his anti-combat verse could've only sprung from someone who had been there, deep in the trenches of the Western Front during World War I, and witnessed its harrowing horrors. If you only know one thing about the Military Cross-winner and poet going into Benediction, you're likely already aware that he's famed for his biting work about his time in uniform. There's obviously more to his story and his life, though, as there is to the film that tells his tale. But British writer/director Terence Davies (Sunset Song) never forgets the traumatic ordeal, and the response to it, that frequently follows his subject's name as effortlessly as breathing. Indeed, being unable to ever banish it from one's memory, including Sassoon's own, is a crucial part of this precisely crafted, immensely affecting and deeply resonant movie. If you only know two things about Sassoon before seeing Benediction, you may have also heard of the war hero-turned-conscientious objector's connection to fellow poet Wilfred Owen. Author of Anthem for Damned Youth, he fought in the same fray but didn't make it back. That too earns Davies' attention, with Jack Lowden (Slow Horses) as Sassoon and Matthew Tennyson (Making Noise Quietly) as his fellow wordsmith, soldier and patient at Craiglockhart War Hospital — both for shell shock. Benediction doesn't solely devote its frames to this chapter in its central figure's existence, either, but the film also knows that it couldn't be more pivotal in explaining who Sassoon was, and why, and how war forever changed him. The two writers were friends, and also shared a mutual infatuation. They were particularly inspired during their times at Craiglockhart as well. In fact, Sassoon mentored the younger Owen, and championed his work after he was killed in 1918, exactly one week before before Armistice Day. Perhaps you know three things about Sassoon prior to Benediction. If so, you might be aware of Sassoon's passionate relationships with men, too. Plenty of the film bounces between his affairs with actor and singer Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine, Treadstone), socialite Stephen Tennant (Calam Lynch, Bridgerton) and theatre star Glen Byam Shaw (Tom Blyth, Billy the Kid), all at a time in Britain when homosexuality was outlawed. There's a fated air to each romantic coupling in Davies' retelling, whether or not you know to begin with that Sassoon eventually (and unhappily) married the younger Hester Gatty (Kate Phillips, Downton Abbey). His desperate yearning to hold onto someone, and something, echoes with post-war melancholy as well. That said, that sorrow isn't just a product of grappling with a life-changing ordeal, but also of a world where everything Sassoon wants and needs is a battle — even if there's a giddy air to illegal dalliances among London's well-to-do. Benediction caters for viewers who resemble Jon Snow going in, naturally, although Davies doesn't helm any ordinary biopic. No stranger to creating on-screen poetry with his lyrical films — or to biopics about poets, after tackling Emily Dickinson in his last feature A Quiet Passion — the filmmaker steps through Sassoon's tale like he's composing evocative lines himself. Davies has always been a deeply stirring talent; see: his 1988 debut Distant Voices, Still Lives, 2011's romance The Deep Blue Sea and 2016's Sunset Song, for instance. Here, he shows how it's possible to sift through the ins and outs of someone's story, compiling all the essential pieces in the process, yet never merely reducing it down to the utmost basics. Some biopics can resemble Wikipedia entries re-enacted for the screen, even if done so with flair, but Benediction is the polar opposite. It must be unthinkable to Davies that his audience could simply pick up standard details about Sassoon by watching a depiction of his existence, rather than become immersed in everything about him — especially how he felt. Benediction plays like the work of someone who wouldn't even dream of such an approach in their worst nightmares. That's true in Lowden's scenes, with the bulk of the movie focused on the younger Sassoon. It remains accurate when Peter Capaldi (The Suicide Squad) features as the older Sassoon, including opposite Gemma Jones (Ammonite) as the older Hester. When the latter graces the picture's immaculately shot frames (by Harlots, Gentleman Jack and upcoming The Handmaid's Tale season five cinematographer Nicola Daley), he's a portrait of man embittered, and he's utterly heartbreaking. Lowden and Capaldi's performances are as critical to Benediction as Sassoon himself, and Davies as well. They're that fine-tuned, that tapped into the whirlwind of emotions swirling through the man they're playing, and that awash with anger, determination, longing, loneliness, defiance, despair, resentment and tragedy. (Yes, that's a complicated and chaotic mix, and 100-percent steeped in everything that's thrown Sassoon's way). As overseen by Davies, Lowden and Capaldi are also two halves of a whole, not that either actor gives anything less than their all, let alone a fraction of a portrayal. It's devastating to see how and why Lowden's charisma eventually gives way to Capaldi's loathing, but that's the plight that both men are charged with surveying, relaying and helping echo from the screen — exceptionally so. For all of the feeling coursing through Benediction — including when using archival war footage to hark back to the combat that so altered his central figure, rather than taking the 1917 re-creation route — Davies remains a rigorous, fastidious and controlled filmmaker. The feature's 137-minute running time feels as lengthy as it is. While there's a rhythm to Alex Mackie's (Mary Shelley) editing, the movie is methodically paced. Every single image seen is meticulous in its composition, too. Watching Benediction is an active act, rather than a case of being swept away. That matches everything that the film conveys about Sassoon's experiences and the turmoil they caused him, of course. Still, the art of using restraint and precision to stir up big emotions, and to whip and whisk them around so that they're inescapable, is also on display here — and it's one that this exquisite picture's driving force dispenses with as much talent as his subject did with his poetry.
For four decades, Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami explored his homeland — and sometimes the world as well — through a deeply thoughtful, probing and humanist lens. His features don't simply peer on at people and the places they call home; the late, great director's films truly see both his characters and the spaces they inhabit. And when he passed away in 2016, he left cinema with an exquisite body of work. This year, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image is paying tribute to the inimitable auteur, in its latest collaboration with Sydney Film Festival. Postponed from 2021 due to the pandemic, the retrospective season is called The Films of Abbas Kiarostami, and will screen seven of Kiarostami's features and a selection of his shorts. In Melbourne, the program will play from Thursday, June 9–Monday, June 20 — and spans early works, award-winners and seminal Iranian features all-round. Among the highlights: Close-Up, which blends fiction and documentary; Ten, his snapshot of the lives of contemporary Iranian women; and Taste of Cherry, the first Iranian film to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Is there anything more intimate than wandering around someone's home when they're not there, gently rifling through their things, and — literally or not, your choice — spending a few minutes standing in their shoes? Yes, but there's still an intoxicating sense of closeness that comes with the territory; moseying curiously in another's house without their company, after they've entrusted their most personal space to you alone, will understandably do that. In Mothering Sunday, Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young, The Staircase) finds herself in this very situation. She's naked, and as comfortable as she's ever been anywhere. After her lover Paul Sheringham (Josh O'Connor, Emma) leaves her in a state of postcoital bliss, she makes the most of his family's large abode in the English countryside, the paintings and books that fill its walls and shelves, and the pie and beer tempting her tastebuds in the kitchen. The result: some of this 1920s-set British drama's most evocative and remarkable moments. Jane is used to such lofty spaces, but rarely as a carefree resident. She's an aspiring writer, an orphan and the help; he's firmly from money. She works as a maid for the Sheringhams' neighbours, the also-wealthy Godfrey (Colin Firth, Operation Mincemeat) and Clarrie Niven (Olivia Colman, Heartstopper), and she's ventured next door while everyone except Paul is out. This rare day off is the occasion that gives the stately but still highly moving film its name as well — Mother's Day, but initially designed to honour mother churches, aka where one was baptised — and the well-to-do crowd are all lunching to celebrate Paul's impending nuptials to fiancée Emma Hobday (Emma D'Arcy, Misbehaviour). He made excuses to arrive late, though, in order to steal some time with Jane, as they've both been doing for years. Of course, he can't completely shirk his own party. Mothering Sunday does more than luxuriate in Jane's languid stroll around a sprawling manor, or the happiness that precedes it — much, much more — but these scenes stand out for a reason. They're a showcase for Australian actor Young, who has graduated from playing troubled daughters (see: 2015's The Daughter and the unrelated Looking for Grace) to searching young women cementing their place in the world (see also: 2020's Shirley). With her quietly potent and radiant help, they say oh-so-much about Jane that wouldn't have sported the same power if conveyed via dialogue. They're also exactly the kind of sequences that screenwriter Alice Birch (Lady Macbeth) knows well, although she isn't merely repeating herself. Helping pen the page-to-screen adaptations of Sally Rooney's Normal People and Conversations with Friends, she's inherently at home revealing everything she can about her characters just by observing what they do when no one's watching. The broader story in Mothering Sunday also springs from a book, this time from Graham Swift's 2016 novel, with French filmmaker Eva Husson (Girls of the Sun) making her English-language debut in the director's chair. Swift didn't choose an annual occasion at random, with the day cloaked in sadness in the Sheringham and Niven households — and across Britain — in the shadow of the First World War and all the young men lost to the conflict. Indeed, marking Paul's engagement is the best way to spend the date because his brothers, and the Nivens' boys too, will never have the same chance. The need to don a stiff upper lip, to keep calm and carry on, and to embody every other grin-and-bear-it cliche about English stoicism is deeply rooted in grief here, and more will come in this touching feature before the sunny March day that sits at its centre is over. In lesser hands than Swift's, Husson's and Birch's, Jane might've been a peripheral player — or one part in a straightforward upstairs-downstairs setup that could've stepped directly out of Downton Abbey. Thankfully, that isn't Mothering Sunday either as a book or a movie. While class clashes are inescapable within the film's frames, it's how the eponymous date shapes Jane, and how moments both big and small change anyone, that dwells at its core. The picture also flits forward to its protagonist as a writer, where she's drawn back to that past idyll and heartbreak while navigating a relationship with Oxford philosopher Donald (Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù, Gangs of London). And, it jumps further into the future still, where the even-older Jane (Glenda Jackson, making her first movie since 1990's King of the Wind) has spent decades reflecting on that one Mothering Sunday, plus the other joys and losses life has brought her way, in her head, heart and through her work. It's easy to think you know what to expect with Mothering Sunday. Within its 104-minute running time, its pace is as leisurely as British dramas come. Whether roving around the Sheringhams' mansion, the garden party or less lavish places, Jamie Ramsay's (Moffie) cinematography is the epitome of handsome. Also, reteaming The Crown's O'Connor and Colman signals its emphasis on performances (Young and Firth pair up again, too, but the film actually pre-dates their work on HBO miniseries The Staircase). And yet, Mothering Sunday is also never that formulaic, and it isn't merely the movie that could've been constructed simply by connecting the obvious dots. Husson's and Birch's touches give it a gloriously sensual feel, and not only in the lingering sex scenes, their thrusting bodies and even the stains that a tumble in the sheets can cause. Clearly, the two women who've turned Mothering Sunday into a yearning, sultry and textured splash of celluloid have taken the narrative's message to heart: that leaping in, lapping up whatever delights come your way, and also facing the pain if and when it comes, is always better than holding back to avoid the scantest trace of woe. There's nothing overtly forceful about Young and O'Connor's performances, but the same can be said of the wonderful duo, who could fuel several movies with their chemistry alone. That Firth and Colman don't have quite the same presence fits with their characters, though, who nonetheless prove an affecting portrait of post-war mourning. And while there's little that's left unsaid in Morgan Kibby's emotive score, her third for Husson — or in three-time Oscar-winner Sandy Powell's (The Young Victoria, The Aviator, Shakespeare in Love) eye-catching, period-appropriate costuming, either — that too couldn't be more apt, with the film revelling in what it can when it can.
They say the best part of a paella is the crispy, caramelised crust at the bottom of the pan. Well, thanks to Richmond restaurant Mr Joe, you can now get your fix of crispy bits — and all the rest — for half the usual price, every single week. The venue has kicked off a tempting new midweek offering, halving the price of its signature paella dishes every Thursday night. That means you can tuck into a hearty serving of the chicken and chorizo paella, or the vegetable and chickpea version, for just $8.50. Or, opt for the seafood paella, loaded with mixed shellfish and crayfish oil, for a very reasonable $11. But why stop there? If you're thirsty, you can match your feed with 90 minutes of free-flowing cocktails for $39 — think, margaritas, mojitos, espresso martinis and mimosas. Plus, Mr Joe's new tapas menu will have you kicking off your paella party in style, with bites like the smoky meatballs, stuffed peppers, potato tortilla and ras el hanout pork skewers. [caption id="attachment_854553" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Mr Joe, by Pete Dillon[/caption] Images: Pete Dillon
Some venues tell you exactly what they're about right there in their name, and Bridge Road Brewers' latest location, A Bar Made of Cardboard, is one of them. At this short-term spot at East Brunswick Village in Melbourne, the brewery has set up a completely zero-waste bar while working on its second brewery in the same location. Come December this year, it'll be home to a 350-person venue — but, while that's in the works, A Bar Made of Cardboard can welcome in 60 beer lovers inside and out. Cardboard features everywhere. It has been fashioned into tables, chairs shelves, signs and light fittings. In fact, the only things that aren't made of cardboard are the beer taps, fridges and dishwasher, for obvious (and soggy) reasons. Thanks to all that cardboard, the venue is entirely constructed from materials that are either recycled themselves — the cardboard is made up of at least 75-percent recycled material, in fact — or can be reused, recycled or composted. The pop-up is now open, operating from 4pm–late Wednesday–Friday and 12pm–late Saturday–Sunday. Bridge Road Brewers' full range of core and seasonal beers will rotate through the bar's six bar taps, and there's also a wine list that heroes small wine producers from throughout Victoria's High Country. And, an onsite bottle shop will be selling all of the above, plus Victorian spirits as well. Snacks-wise, Chappy's Chips and Mount Zero Olives feature on the menu, plus there'll be food trucks serving up meals on Friday and Saturday evenings.
Melbourne's hosted a swag of new must-see exhibitions of late — and there's an extra dose of after-hours fun to add to your cultural calendar this weekend, too. Coinciding with the launch of its newest exhibition Naadohbii: To Draw Water, Melbourne Museum is back with the next instalment of its monthly after-dark parties. On Saturday, September 24, this edition of Saturday Sessions will once again invite punters in to explore the precinct after it's normally closed; browsing its galleries, kicking back to DJ tunes and catching special curator chats. [caption id="attachment_864171" align="alignnone" width="1920"] 'Tyama', by Eugene Hyland[/caption] This time around, you'll enjoy after-hours access to the immersive projections and special effects of Tyama; the hands-on fun of Bricktionary: The Interactive Lego Brick Exhibition; and the world's most complete Triceratops, star of the Triceratops: Fate of the Dinosaurs exhibition. Plus, be among the first to scope out Naadohbii — a compelling exhibition of First Peoples art exploring the theme of water. Then, hit the dance floor to a gig by celebrated DJ Natalie Ex. There'll also be an immersive water-inspired film screening, plus pop-up bars stocked with bevs to lubricate your cultural wanderings. Saturday Sessions runs from 5pm–9pm. Entry to the event is $15 for adults, though you'll need to grab additional tickets for access to Tyama and Bricktionary at the time of booking. [caption id="attachment_868007" align="alignnone" width="1920"] 'Bricktionary', by Eugene Hyland[/caption]
Every year for the past 101 years, the Archibald Prize has recognised exceptional works of portraiture by Australian artists. In 2022, from a field of 52 finalists, the coveted award has gone to Moby Dickens by Blak Douglas. The painting depicts Wiradjuri artist Karla Dickens, who lives on Bundjalung Country in Lismore, and is designed as a metaphor for northern NSW town's floods earlier in 2022. Douglas — a Sydney-based artist with Dhungatti heritage, who was born Adam Hill – made history, too, as the first New South Wales First Nations artist to win with a painting of a New South Wales First Nations artist. Other winners include a portrait of the one and only Taika Waititi, Nicholas Harding's painting Eora, and Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro's depiction of a battle between warrior and demon, titled Raiko and Shuten-dōji A huge 1908 entries were submitted for the the 2022 Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes, with the three winners unveiled at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in May. And now the finalists are hitting the road for the annual Archibald Prize regional tour. The first (and only Victorian) stop: Narre Warren's Bunjil Place Gallery, where the 52 finalist works will be on display between Saturday, September 3–Sunday, October 16. There'll also be a program of workshops, tours, after-hours parties, themed high teas and other art events to match. [caption id="attachment_853909" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Winner Wynne Prize 2022, Nicholas Harding. Eora, oil on linen, 196.5 x 374.8 cm © the artist, image © AGNSW, Mim Stirling.[/caption] For more information on The Archibald Prize 2022 at Bunjil Place Gallery, head to the website. Top image: Excerpt of winner Archibald Prize 2022, Blak Douglas. Moby Dickens, synthetic polymer paint on linen, 300 x 200 cm © the artist, image © AGNSW, Mim Stirling. Sitter: Karla Dickens.
Melbourne's surf park is sending out the chilly season with a crash, dishing up a high-voltage serve of surf breaks, snow sports and DJ tunes. On Saturday, August 27, Urbnsurf is set to play host to the Boost Mobile Winter Jam, celebrating surf and snow culture with one big day of action. You'll be able to catch some of the country's top surf talent hitting the waves for Season 3 of the Rivals competition series, while a bunch of Aussie snow pros show off their stuff in a lagoon-side snowboard rail jam. While you're watching all that high-level athleticism, you'll be sipping bevs courtesy of Young Henrys, Hard Fizz and Red Bull, and snacking on eats from the day's food truck lineup. And it all wraps up with a big openair dance floor session, with a sunset DJ set from Dena Amy followed by the electronic sounds of Sydney duo Set Mo. [caption id="attachment_865840" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Set Mo[/caption]
Intrigued by the concept of collective behaviour and what it means to be part of a pack? Well, all the answers are waiting to be unearthed at Science Gallery Melbourne, within its latest exhibition Swarm. Running Saturday, August 13–Saturday, December 3, this interactive showcase doubles as a giant experiment, featuring 16 large-scale installations, all exploring various ideas around collective social behaviour. Ponder whether it's better to operate as part of a pack, or to fly solo, as you immerse yourself in highly creative works from around the world. Among them, you'll find an eight-metre-tall kinetic sculpture by performance artist Stelarc and Uni of Melbourne, which reacts in real-time to the presence of people using movements modelled on that of the human body. [caption id="attachment_865076" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Installation view of 'Sentiment Honk' by Rachel Smith (UK) in Science Gallery Melbourne's 'Swarm', captured by Alan Weedon.[/caption] Willoh Weiland's installation Scrape Elegy spits you out a personalised profile based on what's in your mobile phone using data-matching software, while Emmy Award-winning biomedical animator Drew Berry will wow you with the kaleidoscopic antibody swarms in his molecular visualisations of human viruses. Elsewhere, a kinetic sounds sculpture creates noises that are steered by real-time global population growth data, a karaoke-inspired work will see you singing to fruit flies, and there's a collection of robot trees that'll follow you around as you explore the gallery. [caption id="attachment_865078" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Installation view of 'Sentient Forest', by Bompas & Parr Studio (UK) in collaboration with Assoc Prof Monica Gagliano, Dr Claire Farrell and the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Melbourne (AU), in Science Gallery Melbourne's 'Swarm', captured by Alan Weedon.[/caption] Top Images: 'Ngapulara Ngarngarnyi Wirra (Our Family Tree)', by Adam Goodes, Angie Abdilla, Baden Pailthorpe (AUS) in Science Gallery Melbourne's SWARM; captured by Alan Weedon. 'Anthropomorphic Machine', by Stelarc (AUS), Dr Paul Loh, David Leggett, Psyche Hou, Quishi Zhou, Gabriele Marini, Dr Eric Schoof, Melbourne School of Design, School of Computing and Information Systems, LLDS Architects, Pelican Studios and Festo, in Science Gallery Melbourne's SWARM; captured by Alan Weedon.
What happens outside an upstate New York strip club at 10am on an ordinary weekday? Nothing — nothing good, or that anyone pays attention to, at least — deduces the unhappy Val (Jerrod Carmichael, Rothaniel) in On the Count of Three. So, he's hatched a plan: with his lifelong best friend Kevin (Christopher Abbott, The Forgiven), they'll carry out a suicide pact, with that empty car park as their final earthly destination. Under the harsh morning light and against a drably grey sky, Carmichael's feature directorial debut initially meets its central duo standing in that exact spot, guns pointed at each other's heads and pulling the trigger mere moments away. Yes, they start counting. Yes, exhaustion and desperation beam from their eyes. No, this thorny yet soulful film isn't over and done with then and there. There are many ways to experience weariness, frustration, malaise and despair, and to convey them — and On the Count of Three surveys plenty, as an unflinchingly black comedy about two lifelong best friends deciding to end it all should. Those dispiriting feelings can weigh you down, making every second of every day an effort. They can fester, agitate, linger and percolate, simmering behind every word and deed before spewing out as fury. They can spark drastic actions, including the type that Val and Kevin have picked as their only option after the latter breaks the former out of a mental health hospital mere days after his last self-harming incident. Or, they can inspire a wholesale rejection of the milestones, such as the promotion that Val is offered hours earlier, that everyone is told they're supposed to covet, embrace and celebrate. On the Count of Three covers all of the above, not just with purpose but with confidence, as well as a much-needed willingness to get messy. It knows it's traversing tricky terrain, and is also well-aware of the obvious: that nothing about considering taking one's own life is simple or easy, let alone a laughing matter. Working with a script by Ramy co-creators Ari Katcher (also a co-creator of The Carmichael Show) and Ryan Welch, Carmichael doesn't make a movie that salutes, excuses or justifies Val and Kevin's exit plan. His film doesn't abhor the emotions and pain behind their choices either, though. Instead, this is a complicated portrait of coping, and not, with the necessities, vagaries and inevitabilities of life — and a raw and thoughtful piece of recognition that the biggest standoff we all have is with ourselves. Rocking a shock of dishevelled bleached-blonde hair, and looking like he hasn't even dreamed of changing his wardrobe since the early 00s, Abbott could've wandered out of Good Time as Kevin — he and Robert Pattinson could/should play brothers some day — including when he's staring down Val with a gun. First, On the Count of Three jumps from there to the events leading up to it, including an earlier attempt by landscaping supply store worker Val in the work bathrooms, his response to hearing about that aforementioned climb up the corporate ladder. In hospital, Kevin is angry; "if any of you knew how to help me by now, you would have fucking done it!" he shouts. But when the time to shoot comes, it's him who suggests a reprieve to take care of a few last items — revenge being his. Calling On the Count of Three a bucket-list movie isn't quite right, because there's a difference between checking off your wildest dreams and working through the essentials that gnaw at you. Accordingly, and in its nervy, restless, go-go-go energy, too, the film is in day-in-the-life territory — focusing on Kevin's score to settle with a child psychologist, Dr Brenner (Henry Winkler, Barry), from his past, and Val getting his issues with his slippery dad Lyndell (JB Smoove, Curb Your Enthusiasm) and Natasha, the woman he thought he was going to marry (Tiffany Haddish, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent), off his chest. In-between, its main twosome relive minor past glories, whether it's breakfast at a favourite diner or returning to the dirt-bike park job they loved as teens. Those guns have to go off in one way or another, though; Chekov demands it. If On the Count of Three wasn't so deeply felt — so bitterly, unapologetically dark as well — and anchored by such compelling performances, it could've easily gone astray. Tragicomedy isn't straightforward, or simple to pull off. But Carmichael shows his skills as a director (he has TV documentary Sermon on the Mount and a Lil Rel Howery comedy special among his past helming credits otherwise) by skewing both intimate and wide. The film's one-on-one exchanges are candid and revelatory, while pivoting to tensely staged car chases and shootouts still feels natural. The crime-thriller sheen of Marshall Adams' cinematography helps, as does Owen Pallett's evocative score (especially during a climactic pursuit). And, that bickering, bantering, ride-or-die dynamic between the exceptional Abbott and the devastatingly understated Carmichael is captivating to watch. It's a great time for seeing two well-paired actors bouncing off of each other and wanting more — see also: Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan in the vastly dissimilar See How They Run — but On the Count of Three's on-screen chemistry is hardly surprising. Abbott keeps going from strength to strength in complex parts, such as James White, Black Bear and Possessor, while Carmichael knows how to match vulnerability with truth, as his comedy special Rothaniel made plain. Such a key factor here is balance, the elusive concept that Val and Kevin are searching for even if they don't necessarily know it. It bubbles through in the movie's comic moments, too; when On the Count of Three chuckles, it directs is humour at Val cathartically screaming along to Papa Roach's 'Last Resort' in such on-the-nose circumstances, Papa Roach in general, the way that minutiae always gets in everyone's way — whether they're planning to see another day or not — and only starting to live when you want to die.
They headed Down Under to give the town of Yass a makeover. They toured their first-ever standup show our way back in early 2020, too. Now, to make 2022 a whole lot more fabulous, Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness is again venturing to Australia — bringing their latest live show Imaginary Living Room Olympian to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre on Wednesday, September 28. On the agenda: not just tales from the Emmy Award-nominated television personality, hit podcaster and hairstylist to the stars' life, which'll definitely be included, but also gymnastics as well. Their last tour was inspired by a lifelong goal of becoming a figure-skating prodigy in time for the 2022 Beijing Olympics, after all. Clearly, that's not something you shake easily, and Van Ness has a gymnastics routine to show audiences this time around. The overarching theme of the show: that's it's not about the destination, but the journey. That might sound like standard advice, but fans of the rebooted Queer Eye know that no nugget of wisdom sounds average or cliched when delivered by Van Ness. The Imaginary Living Room Olympian tour comes after a big few years for Van Ness, including not only Queer Eye — which has notched up six seasons already — but this year's fellow Netflix series Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness, which is based on their podcast of the same name. And, there's Van Ness' publishing career, too, courtesy of 2019's Over The Top: My Story and this year's Love That Story: Observations from a Gorgeously Queer Life (plus children's picture book Peanut Goes for the Gold, about a gender non-binary guinea pig). Expect Van Ness' new shows to be popular — their last tour, which played 40 cities worldwide, sold out theatres in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
What's more terrifying: knowing that death is inevitable, because our fragile flesh will fail us all eventually and inescapably, or accepting that little we ever sense can truly be trusted given that everything in life changes and evolves? In horror movies, both notions stalk through the genre like whichever slasher/killer/malevolent force any filmmaker feels like conjuring up in any particular flick — and in You Won't Be Alone, the two ideas shudder through one helluva feature debut by Macedonian Australian writer/director Goran Stolevski. An expiration date isn't just a certainty within this film's frames. It's part of a non-stop cycle that sees transformation as just as much of a constant. You Won't Be Alone is a poetically shot, persistently potent picture about witches but, as the best unsettling movies are, it's also about so much that thrums through the existence we all know. Viewers mightn't be living two centuries back and dancing with a sorceress, but they should still feel the film's truths in their bones. First, however, a comparison. Sometimes a resemblance is so obvious that it simply has to be uttered and acknowledged, and that's the case here. Stolevski's film, the first of two by him in 2022 — MIFF's opening-night pick Of an Age is the other — boasts lyrical visuals, especially of nature, that instantly bring the famously rhapsodic aesthetics favoured by Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life, A Hidden Life) to mind. Its musings on the nature of life, and human nature as well, easily do the same. Set long ago, lingering in villages wracked by superstition and exploring a myth about a witch, You Won't Be Alone conjures up thoughts of Robert Eggers' The Witch, too. Indeed, if Malick had directed that recent favourite, the end product might've come close to this entrancing effort. Consider Stolevski's feature the result of dreams conjured up with those two touchstones in his head, though, rather than an imitator. The place: Macedonia. The time: the 19th century. The focus: a baby chosen by the Wolf-Eateress (Anamaria Marinca, The Old Guard) to be her offsider. Actually, that's not the real beginning of anyone's tale here in the broader scheme of things — and this is a movie that understands that all of life feeds into an ongoing bigger picture, as it always has and always will — but the infant's plight is as good an entry point as any. The child's distraught mother Yoana (Kamka Tocinovski, Angels Fallen) pleads for any other result than losing her newborn. You Won't Be Alone's feared figure has the ability to select one protege, then to bestow them with her otherworldly skills, and she's determined to secure her pick. That said, she does agree to a bargain. She'll let the little one reach the age of 16 first, but Old Maid Maria, as the Wolf-Eateress is also known, won't forget to claim her prize when the years pass. Nevena (Sara Klimoska, Black Sun) lives out that formative period in a cave, in her mum's attempt to stave off her fate — and with all that resides beyond her hiding spot's walls glimpsed only through a hole up high. Then the Wolf-Eateress comes calling, as she promised she would. From there, Nevena's initiation into the world — of humans, and of her physically and emotionally scarred mentor — is unsurprisingly jarring. Her transition from the care and protection of her "whisper-mama" to the kill-to-survive ruthlessness of her new "witch-mama" disappoints the latter, soon leaving the girl on her own. Still, the need to hunt, devour and mutate has already taken hold, even if Nevena is left fending for herself as she shapeshifts between animals and other humans, after extracting their innards and stuffing them into her own body first. With Noomi Rapace (Lamb), Alice Englert (The Power of the Dog) and Carloto Cotta (The Tsugua Diaries) also among the cast, You Won't Be Alone turns Nevena's curiosity-driven experiences of life, love, loss, identity, desire, pain, envy and power into an unforgettable, mesmerising and thoughtful gothic horror fable — charting switches and the stories that come with them with each metamorphosis. In her first new human guise, Nevena may as well be a newborn again; the families and communities she enters, assuming their members' forms, think her behaviour is strange to say the least even when she's been through the process a few times. But every incarnation teaches the young woman plenty, including that existence and its happinesses are oh-so fleeting, precarious, tenuous and precious. The more years that Nevena spends among the living, the more that the bitter Maria is dismayed, as she returns periodically to stress (and because completely leaving the child she took as her own isn't ever straightforward.) Stolevski doesn't let hurt and cruelty subside from You Won't Be Alone, especially as it ponders the way that women — be they mothers, daughters, spinsters desperate for children, ageing figures considered past their prime or anything in-between — are and have been so savagely treated in a patriarchal world. Suffering and fear dwell in the feature's intimate frames, which rove and roam, and also survey nature's horrors (as well as its splendours) as devotedly as they follow its central figure. Cinematographer Matthew Chuang adds the handheld camerawork here to his also immersive and expressive work in Blue Bayou, not only sweeping the audience on a witchy and whispery journey, but making them sense the film's emotions deeply. A repeated refrain, alongside that contrast between stark agonies and gorgeous sights, says everything about the movie, however: "it's a burning, breaking thing, this world; a biting, wretching thing. And yet... and yet...". Unnerving flicks, whether gruesomely carving up a body count like fellow 2022 release X or contemplating a plethora of weighty themes as Nope does, also pulsate with another truth: that life isn't something to lose or squander lightly. You Won't Be Alone emphasises that fact, and the yearning for connection that simmers within us all — recognising that being alive can mean blood, terror and tragedy, but also hope, beauty, affection, soul-changing bonds and even just delighting in the smallest of wonders. Cycling through its cast given the premise, the film's performances soar beyond the last category with their impressive and pivotal physicality, although it's You Won't Be Alone's ethereal mood, energy, understanding and reflection that hang powerfully and poignantly in the air. Take the title literally for many reasons, and because of one pivotal outcome: you won't be alone in being haunted by this meditation on what it means to live. To say that it is bewitching is obvious, too, but also accurate.
A scene-stealer in 2018's The Breaker Upperers, Ana Scotney now leads the show in Millie Lies Low. She's just as magnetic. The New Zealand actor comes to the part via Wellington Paranormal, Shortland Street, Educators and Cousins — and the film first debuted at festivals before her role in God's Favourite Idiot — but it's an exceptional calling card. It isn't easy playing someone so committed to making such utterly questionable choices, yet remaining so charmingly relatable; however, that's Scotney's remit and achievement in this canny, savvy and amusing comedy. It also isn't easy to pull off the timing needed to highlight the hilarious side of Millie's hijinks, while ensuring that her woes, hopes and everything that's led her to lie low but lie about living it up remain understandable; consider her entire portrayal a masterclass in just that. Scotney plays the film's eponymous Wellington university student, who panics aboard a plane bound for New York — where a prestigious architecture internship awaits — and has to disembark before her flight leaves. She says she isn't anxious. She also says it isn't an attack. And by the time she realises what she's done, she's alone in the airport, the aircraft has departed and her own face beams down at her from a digital billboard. Even getting that Big Apple opportunity had made her the toast of the town, and huge things were meant to await, hence the ads and publicity. Now, a new ticket costs $2000, which Millie doesn't have. Admitting that she hasn't gone at all — to her family, friends, teachers, school and the NZ capital at large — wouldn't cost her a thing, but it's a price she isn't willing to pay. First, Millie endeavours to rustle up the cash from her best friend and classmate (Jillian Nguyen, Hungry Ghosts), and then her mother (Rachel House, Heartbreak High). Next, she hits up a quick-loan business (run by Cohen Holloway, The Power of the Dog) but is still left empty-handed. Millie's only solution, other than admitting the situation and facing the fallout: faking it till she makes it. As she searches for other ways to stump up the funds, she hides out in her hometown, telling everyone that she's actually already in NYC. To support her ruse, she posts elaborate faux Instagram snaps MacGyvered out of whatever she can find (big sacks of flour standing in for snow, for instance) and scours for every possible spot, building feature and poster that can even slightly double for New York. There's a caper vibe to Millie's efforts skulking around Wellington while attempting to finance the ticket to her apparent dreams. Sometimes, she's holed up in a tent in her mum's backyard. Sometimes, she's putting on a disguise and showing up at parties in her old flat — eavesdropping on what her mates are saying in her absence, and spying on the boyfriend (Chris Alosio, Troppo) she's meant to be on a break from. While she's doing the latter, she's also reclaiming the car she sold pre-trip to use as loan collateral, because she's that determined to get to America and leave her nearest and dearest none the wiser. Making her feature debut, director and co-writer Michelle Savill has more than just a laugh and a lark in her sights, though, as entertaining as Millie Lies Low's namesake's antics are. There's a caper vibe to the picture of Millie's supposedly perfect existence that she's trying to push upon herself as much as her loved ones as well, like she's selling herself on an unwanted fantasy. Millie mightn't be sure whether the internship is truly her heart's desire, but she's sure that she doesn't deserve it or the fanfare that's come her way with it. Accordingly, Savill has imposter syndrome and the shame spiral it sparks in her gaze, too, and finds much to mine in both an insightful and darkly funny manner. As she follows her protagonist between episodic efforts to print the legend — or post it one Insta picture at a time — her keenly observed film also treads in the perennially great (and relevant) Frances Ha's footsteps. Both movies examine the self-destructive life choices of a twentysomething with a clear idea of what she wants everyone to think of her, but with far less of a grasp on who she really is herself and what she genuinely needs. Some framing and music choices make the connection between Noah Baumbach's Greta Gerwing-starring 2012 masterpiece and Millie Lies Low obvious, but this astute delight is never merely a Wellington-set copy of that fittingly NYC-set feature. Tapping into the reality that no one ever feels like a real adult, let alone a real person, is fuel enough for thousands of movies — and Savill's always has its own mood, thoughts and strengths, including in its interrogation of social media. It doesn't come as news that broadcasting a seemingly idyllic version of your life to everyone you know, and don't, creates pressure to maintain that facade. It isn't a revelation that that's what Facebook, Instagram and the like have inspired to begin with, either. Millie navigates a heightened version of a daily truth for many, and Millie Lies Low does what comedic exaggeration is meant to, acting like a mirror and a magnifying glass. Whether you're a Wellington local or not — or you've visited, or haven't — you can sense the city around Scotney as she flits around; Savill's direction, and Andrew Stroud's (The Changeover) cinematography along with it, has a lived-in look and atmosphere. It feels tangible, too, as do the many shrewd character details and bits of backstory layered through Savill and Eli Kent's (Coming Home in the Dark) script. Nothing about the film would work even half as well if Millie felt artificial, unsurprisingly. Scotney's magnificent performance is crucial, yes, but so is the fleshed-out material she's working with. Millie Lies Low also operates as a cringe comedy, and proves just as textured and relatable as viewers wince and squirm at its central figure's decisions. We cower and recoil — and chuckle — because we can spot the gap between the options that Millie takes and the better alternatives, and because there's nothing pretend about how accurate her fakery feels.
Move over lollies, ice creams, doughnuts and other sweet treats — when it comes to wandering through eye-catching and extremely photogenic installations, it's now nature's time to shine. The folks at Sugar Republic, the team behind Australia's pop-up dessert museum, have a new venture heading Melbourne's way for the summer. Called Bloomville, it's all about flowers and sunshine. When it hits Woodlea Town in Aintree from Saturday, January 15 — with tickets currently available till Saturday, January 29 — Bloomville will blossom with spaces, backdrops and props all fitting the theme. Think: cherry blossoms, a scratch 'n' sniff floral wall and a confetti shower, plus flowers galore. Plus, this time around, it's all happening in shipping containers in a park, so you can wander between actual nature and nature-inspired installations. Other highlights include rainbow ping pong, an upside down flower power bedroom, a giant daisy wall, a sparkly swing and neon flower crowns, all ready to fill up Instagram feeds. You'll also start your visit by spinning the weather wheel, then choosing between entering the sunshine room or the rainy room. It is the crew's first outdoor pop-up and, while Bloomville may sound like a place out of a Dr Seuss picture book, it'll be giving back to the community as well as giving your social media feeds plenty of content. Entry costs $5, and all ticket sales will be donated to supporting local charities Alex Makes Meals, the Lort Smith Animal Hospital and the Good Friday Appeal. And, because who doesn't want to take photos of dogs in floral-themed pop-ups (no one, obviously), there'll also be a pooch-friendly day. Images: Bri Hammond.
Is there a more fitting feed than a home-delivered feast courtesy of one of the country's most-awarded restaurants? Once again, Ben Shewry's Ripponlea fine diner Attica promises to bring some world-class culinary flair to your lockdown dinner, by way of a rotating at-home selection. The offering spans set menu feasts, family dishes and signature desserts which change up regularly throughout lockdown. But, if you've got the urge to splurge (and really, what else are you spending money on in lockdown?), opt for the likes of the $395 tasting menu. This one's a generous spread for two, featuring masterful dishes like a shiitake and black truffle broth, marron with roasted yeast butter, the famed spice-crusted lamb brick, croc fat caramel and more. There's a whole collection of matched beverages, too, ranging from batched cocktails to sake. How? Hit the website to see the current menu and place an order. Restaurant pick-up is available, as well as $15 delivery to select suburbs. [caption id="attachment_789134" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Chewy Carrots at Attica[/caption]
These days, plenty of events have been putting the 'fun' in fun run. Some take you jogging through a winery, then let you sip wine. Others ask you to dress up like your favourite Star Wars character, or as Batman. And, you can can decked out with colour while you put one foot after another, too. They're all well and good — but if you're eager to sprint through foam, tumble down waterslides and make your way through mud pits across a five-kilometre obstacle course, you'll want to head to the 5K Foam Fest. Hitting up St Anne's Vineyards on Saturday, November 30, this event will get you running, sliding, climbing, crawling, bouncing, hurdling, hopping through tyres and slipping over tubes. In total, you'll need to conquer more than 20 obstacles. And, although this should be obvious, you can expect to get wet, muddy and foamy while you're doing so. There's a reason that we keep stressing the foam, with 2.5 million cubic feet of it used across the course. Plus, there'll be some on your beer when you have a few cold ones in the beer garden once you're done. Tickets are on sale for this one-day family-friendly affair. If you'd like to have your entry fee reimbursed, you also have the option of using the event to raise money for the Make A Wish Foundation. Image: 5K Foam Fest.
If anyone knows how to do movie night in style, it's the crew at acclaimed cocktail bar The Everleigh. This month, the Fitzroy drinking destination is gearing up to host the next edition of its popular cocktail-matched cinema event, featuring cult musical comedy flick The Blues Brothers. Taking over The Elk Room across two screenings (6.15pm and 8.45pm) on Thursday, October 24, this one sees The Everleigh teaming up with global spirits company Diageo to deliver a movie night for adults. Curl up in a Chesterfield and catch the famed 1980 film on the big screen, while singing along to 'Jailhouse Rock' and 'Shake Your Tail Feather' and sipping a range of Blues Brothers-inspired cocktails. And yes, you can expect an appearance from on-screen favourite, the Orange Whip – The Everleigh's version is done with crème de cacao, vanilla and orange cream. On top of that, there'll be complimentary popcorn, NY-style slices from Connie's Pizza and plenty of opportunity for post-movie kick-ons at the bar. Tickets are $60 a head, which includes your entry to the film, a welcome cocktail on arrival, popcorn, pizza and three movie-inspired mini cocktails. First image: Pete Dillon
The 90s were great. That shouldn't be a controversial opinion. Whether you lived through them or have spent the last couple of decades wishing you did — aka binging on 90s pop culture — this late-night shindig at Brunswick's Stay Gold will indulge your retro urges. Drinks, tunes, fashion — expect all of the above at the No Scrubs: 90s and Early 00s party from 11pm on Saturday, October 12. Of course, it's up to you to make sure the clothing side of thing is covered, and to get into the spirit of the party. If you want to use Mariah Carey as a style icon, it'd be fitting. Expect to unleash your inner Spice Girl and Backstreet Boy too. TLC, Destiny's Child, Savage Garden, Usher, Blink-182, No Doubt — we'd keep listing artists, but you all know what you're getting yourselves into. Tickets are $10 online, with the fun running through until 3am.
When a song speaks to you — and when it seems like it's speaking only to you — it's one of life's great pleasures. Everyone has a track, album or artist that achieves that feat, and British journalist Sarfraz Manzoor is no different. Born in Pakistan, immigrating to Britain when he was a child and constantly feeling out of place in the southeastern town of Luton, he found solace in one of the big music stars of the 80s. Bruce Springsteen's hit tunes might be so steeped in American life that they've virtually become synonymous with it, but they also captured exactly how Manzoor felt as an outcast teen in the UK. Introduced to The Boss by a school classmate who told him that "Bruce is a direct line to all that was true in this world", he's since seen his idol live more than 150 times, and turned his transformative connection to the singer into a memoir. With music-led movies echoing across cinemas everywhere of late, adapting this superfan story into a sweet coming-of-age film was inevitable. That said, with Manzoor helping to pen Blinded by the Light's screenplay, the resulting picture has a more personal and authentic air — than Beatles-centric flick Yesterday and its manufactured "what if?" hypothetical, than big biopics Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman, and than forthcoming George Michael-focused festive rom-com Last Christmas as well. But, these types of movies still love a formula. With a soundtrack of well-known songs to bop along to, there are obvious beats to hit. Films about adolescent outsiders struggling for acceptance are also known to favour a template, which leaves Blinded by the Light feeling familiar several times over. Before he discovers songs such as 'Hungry Heart', 'The River', 'Thunder Road' and 'Born to Run', Javed (Viveik Kalra) — Manzoor's on-screen surrogate — splits his time between trying to meet his dad's (Kulvinder Ghir) expectations and channelling his general angst into his writing. His fiercely traditional father wants him to study hard, get a good job and have a better future than his own, but penning poetry and lyrics for his best friend Matt's (Dean-Charles Chapman) New Wave band stokes Javed's creative fires. Then, fellow South Asian student Roops (Aaron Phagura) lends him cassettes of Born in the USA and Darkness on the Edge of Town. Instead of being tired and bored with himself, Javed is suddenly dancing not just in the dark, but through life. Finding parallels between Springsteen's songs about working-class troubles, his own family's experiences as rare people of colour in a white, unwelcoming and often openly racist neighbourhood, and his dad's factory-job woes in Thatcher's Britain, the 16-year-old feels as if everything has changed. Matt laughs (partly because his own father, played by scene-stealer Rob Brydon, also loves Bruce), and no one at home understands — but soon Javed is asking out the girl (Nell Williams) he likes, writing essays about Springsteen and making a pilgrimage to his idol's home town. If underseen 2016 charmer Sing Street had used The Boss's music, rather than original tunes, it might've turned out something like this. Or, if Bend It Like Beckham filmmaker Gurinder Chadha had swapped soccer for Springsteen… actually, in a broad fashion, that's basically what does happen here. Directing, as well as co-writing with her frequent collaborator Paul Mayeda Berges and, of course, Manzoor, Chadha lets Blinded by the Light play out like a classic rock ballad that audiences already know inside and out. Perhaps that's by design, and not just because it suits Manzoor's real-life story. After the tenth or so spin, favourite songs keep resonating because they've become such an easy source of comfort — a sensation that, by sticking to all the usual music-focused and coming-of-age conventions, this agreeable movie mimics. While viewers are tapping their toes to a jukebox full of Springsteen tracks, and watching Javed navigate a predictable but pleasant path, Blinded by the Light has a clear aim. Even if you're not obsessed with The Boss and his anthems, music speaks a universal language, or so the cliché goes — and, if you can remember when a song has transformed your life, day or mood, then you can get swept up in the film's warm-hearted embrace. Chadha's purposefully amateurish musical-style sequences help, visibly translating Javed's passion to the screen. As the teen and his pals run around town while Springsteen tunes play, their enthusiasm proves infectious. Blinded by the Light plasters that feeling across its frames, weaving it into a likeable, albeit highly recognisable tale about finding your voice after first finding someone else's. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ond9SLcHX4Q
Wake in Fright and Mad Max 2 have a lot to answer for. While one remains a flat-out Australian masterpiece after almost half a century and the other belongs to our best dystopian action franchise, they've spawned more than their fair share of imitators. Many Aussie films have aped their visions of broken, isolated, male-dominated worlds. Quite a few have also used their shooting location, Broken Hill. It's easy to understand why: examining toxic masculinity's extremes is a juicy subject, and the outback town on the far-western edge of New South Wales' dusty expanse cuts a striking sight on the big screen. When layered one over the other, the seemingly endless array of scrubby nothingness that encircles the remote spot appears to pulsate with oppressive desolation. The third film in four years from director Heath Davis (after 2016's Broke and 2018's Book Week), grimy crime thriller Locusts is happy to trot out the above template once again. There's another thoroughly recognisable element at play as well, one that also pops up in Wake in Fright and other Aussie flicks like The Cars That Ate Paris and Welcome to Woop Woop: the outsider wandering across this desert landscape and discovering its hostility for himself. Here, that task falls to slick technology bigwig. Ryan Black (Ben Geurens), who returns to the drought-stricken ex-mining town of Serenity Crossing after the death of his estranged dad. Complete with a far-from-cosy reunion with his brother (Nathaniel Dean) and the old girlfriend-turned-single mum and stripper (Jessica McNamee) he long left behind, everything about this scenario ticks a heap of familiar boxes. Thugs, drugs, broken dreams, family secrets — throw in Cold Chisel on the pub radio (they sang about Broken Hill, aka the Silver City, in 'Khe Sanh'), and Locusts always plays out as expected. When a group of inhospitable locals make it clear that Ryan isn't welcome, but still demands he settle his father's debts, it seems as if first-time screenwriter Angus Watts is stamping squares on a generic movie bingo card. The more twists and turns that pop up, the more that this feels true, with Locusts' various plot developments wavering between convenient and flimsy. Flashes of a man yelling at a kid with a gun earn the same description, although they're clearly designed to ramp up the tension. And as for a hefty late revelation that tries to keep things topical, it feels tacked-on rather than meaningful. Why do films continually wade through such well-worn terrain? It makes for easy, B-movie-style genre fare and, in Australia, we sure do have the backdrop for it. In Locusts and Heath Davis' case, the movie also taps into a theme that the director keeps pondering across his career. While they're set in vastly different circumstances and brandish incredibly different tones, Broke and Book Week also follow men thrown out of their depth by the vagaries of life, then scrambling to recover. Locusts is his least convincing example to-date, however. That said, Geurens' somewhat dull lead performance aside, the film does overflow with suitably scruffy, stern, grizzled men (including Peter Phelps, Broke's Steve Le Marquand, Book Week's Alan Dukes and late actor Damian Hill in one of his final screen performances) who look and feel as rough and tough as all the dirt and bush that's constantly in sight. Filling the movie with sun-dappled shades of earthy reds, murky browns and parched yellows, cinematographer Chris Bland (another Broke and Book Week alum) not only has Locusts' best job, but does Locusts' best job. While Broken Hill doesn't look anywhere near as captivating in real life as it frequently does on the screen, it's hard to point a camera at its rusty vistas without finding a fittingly moody shot. So, Bland does this often. Once again, this fits the picture's contemplation of struggling men laid bare in forbidding surroundings, but the heavy emphasis on the landscape does stand out. For the film's characters, the town's post-apocalyptic scenery is a barrier that stops them from moving on. For the film itself, it's yet another crutch used by an inescapably familiar feature that repeatedly leans on obvious elements. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD_gvewa9JU&feature=youtu.be
If you're a lover of a good, crisp cold one and spend your weekends rolling from one of Melbourne's inner north breweries to another, then do we have news for you. BWS has jumped on board the craft beer boat. Well, actually, plane, train and every other mode of transport you can think of (including donkey) to grab six of the world's rarest drops. Not only has it brought these tasty tipples back to Aussie shores, but also because beers are better when shared, BWS is giving them away for free. Yep, you can soon get your hands on a six-pack of world-class brews for less than your usual schooey at the arie during happy hour. Soon you'll be sinking a sour IPA from Poland, a German-style 'weizen' from Japan and a smoky Schlenkerla beer that tastes like liquid bacon from Bamberg, Germany. If you're into your lighter styles, then the Belgian blonde ale from Mexico's 100 percent Yucatan-owned Patito brewery may be more your speed. Like barrel-aged brews? The saison from Italy's CR/AK craft brewery has been aged for seven months in a combination of 60 percent scotch whisky barrels and 40 percent rum barrels. But, perhaps the rarest of all, is a beer from Bhutan: a country that only sees a small number of tourists every year. Namgay's red rice lager is made in the Himalayas at a casual 2195 metres above sea level. BWS did all the hard work. All you have to do to get yourself a six-pack of the world's rarest (and arguably greatest) beers is head down to BWS's Albert Street store anytime after 10am this Friday, October 18. We recommend you get there quickly, too, as stocks are limited. To check out all of BWS's travel adventures along the way, head here.
If you've ever had a sneaky little go with some small person's Lego blocks once they're all tucked up in bed, Legoland sees you, tips you their hat… and raises you an adults-only night at its Melbourne Discovery Centre. And, because it's the time of year for it, the venue is throwing in some Halloween shenanigans as well. With no children to get in the way (or outdo your creations), you'll be able to have free rein of Legoland to check out the 4D cinema and rides, take a factory tour and build to your heart's content in the brick pits. Challenge yourself by taking on the master builder or a speed build, and vie for the prizes up for grabs — there'll even be a scavenger hunt so you can go full inner child mode. This adults-only evening will be getting spooky, too, with a Duplo Farm scary adventure, plenty of chances to take terrifying pics, and a quest to spot skeleton, ghost, zombie and mummy mini-figures in a city made out of 1.5 million Lego bricks. Wear a frightful costume to win prizes, and take part in a silent auction — with ex-display sets up for grabs. It all takes place from 6.30pm on Friday, November 1 — and BYO shameless excitement, taste for glory, and creativity to enter the model of the month competition. It'll be a fierce one.
UPDATE, August 19, 2020: Birds of Passage is available to stream via Stan, Google Play, YouTube Movies and iTunes. Thanks to Narcos, Blow and plenty of similar films and television shows, the term 'Colombian drug drama' conjures up a particular image. But that's not what viewers will find in Birds of Passage, a movie that falls into the same broad category while carving its own niche. Forget Pablo Escobar, piles of cocaine and cartels fighting against the US. Forget the genre's usual slick and shiny sheen, too. Instead, Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego (Embrace of the Serpent) immerse their feature within a highly insular indigenous tribe, watching as its way of life is forever changed after getting into the marijuana business. The result: a multigenerational crime saga that's as much a portrait of Colombia's Wayúu community as it is about dealing in illicit substances. If the above description didn't already distinguish Birds of Passage from other drug-fuelled gangland affairs, then its visuals achieve that feat. As they did with their last picture (which Guerra directed and Gallego produced and helped edit), the filmmaking duo take an ethnographic approach, as seen in each of the movie's vibrant images and scenes. Showcasing traditional locations, clothing and ceremonies, the pair don't just present these details — in every shot and sequence, they revel in them. With ample assistance from returning cinematographer David Gallego, Birds of Passage is filled with dusty plains far removed from the Colombian drug trade's stereotypical jungles, intensive rituals used to initiate courtships and striking jewellery that has more than a decorative impact. Indeed, to see the absorbing and engrossing film's frames flicker by is to walk through the Guajira region of in the country's north, bear witness to its first peoples and explore their intricacies. While it should go without saying, other dramas that do this aren't just rare — they're non-existent. It's this specificity that both marks and shapes Birds of Passage, especially as its story purposefully winds down a recognisable path. Guerra and Gallego want their audience to take in everything that makes the Wayúu who they are, but they also want to highlight that devastation can and will plight any culture, even this one, once it's steeped in a destructive cycle of power, wealth, death and bloodshed. When the feature opens in a desert village, such matters appear far from everyone's minds. Emblazoned in red from head to toe, local beauty Zaida (Natalia Reyes) is the centre of attention, with young men lined up to win her heart — and willing to dance until they drop to do so. Rapayet (José Acosta) doesn't falter; however, although Zaida is instantly smitten, her mother Ursula (Carmiña Martínez) is hardly convinced. The formidable matriarch sets a high dowry of 30 goats, 20 cows, five necklaces and two decorative mules, expecting that the determined suitor won't be able to pay. But after a chance meeting with weed-seeking American Peace Corps volunteers, Rapayet and his pal Moisés (Jhon Narváez) discover a way to make all the money they need (and all the goats, cows, necklaces and decorative mules as well). Set across a two-decade span from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, Birds of Passage charts the ups and downs that ripple throughout the entire Wayúu enclave, as seemingly simple choices have far-reaching consequences. It's not difficult to guess where Zaida and Rapayet's tale is headed across its five chapters, or that of their entire tribe — or to foresee that Ursula's fears about her possible future son-in-law will prove well-founded. That said, it's worth noting that she's also obsessed with dreams and omens, interpreting everything around her for signs about her family's future, a technique that Guerra and Gallego also deploy with their narrative. It isn't difficult to discern what'll happen at each turn, but that's the basis of this epic film's sweeping tragedy: audiences can glean what happens next, just as Ursula tries to, and yet everyone remains thoroughly powerless to stop it. The same idea bubbled through Gabriel García Márquez's landmark novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, and the same haunting feeling of inevitability, too. Tint the Colombian author's awarded and applauded 1967 tome with an extra layer of shattering bleakness, bring it to the screen with breathtakingly vivid images and set it in a unique gangster world, and that's Birds of Passage — almost. One of the wonders of this stunningly shot and performed movie is how it nods to literary greats, to on-screen crime sagas like The Godfather and The Sopranos, and even to Shakespeare's darkest accounts of misfortune, and yet remains a wholly distinctive work. In plunging viewers into a specific way of life, beholding its beauty and watching how something so fragile can crumble when plagued by corruption, Guerra and Gallego peer closely and systematically, while also seeing the bigger picture. That's what great ethnographers do — and great filmmakers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhQsCz0X4Vw
Now that summer's finally made itself known, we can't think of a much better way to celebrate than with some free gelato. Especially if it's the extra fun, squiggly kind from Madame Spaghetti. Luckily, this Sunday, December 22, Melbourne's masters of spaghetti-shaped gelato (yes, it's a real thing) are getting right into the summer spirit with a big gelato giveaway at their new St Kilda pop-up store. Head in between noon and 2pm to score a frozen treat from Madame Spaghetti's current menu, for free. You can choose from signature flavours like salted honey, belgian chocolate and a vegan-friendly mango concoction, jazzed up with extras like cookie dough fudge, raspberry jam or even a sprinkling of golden peanuts. The weekend fun doesn't stop there, either. Alongside the free frozen treats, there'll also be a pop-up photobooth where you can capture some silly summer selfies. Madame Spaghetti's latest pop-up has taken over the Pizza E Birra terrace (now PB's Bar & Eatery), nabbing a prime openair location just metres from St Kilda beach. Free spaghetti gelato is available from 12–2pm.
They're red, they're sweet and they're small — and they're also the fruit that we all associate with the merriest time of year. Yes, it's cherry season. And if you're keen to not only eat them, but also to pick them, you can do just that at Cherryhill Orchards. From Friday, November 27, the Yarra Valley site is letting folks in to help pluck those rosy fruits from all of its cherry trees, as it does every year. And heading along and taking part comes with a very tasty bonus, because you can eat as many cherries as you like while you're picking them. Sessions are currently available until Sunday, January 10, starting at $19.50 per person. That's how much you'll pay to get in, and to pick. If you'd like to take some cherries home with you as well, they're charged by the kilogram when you head off. This year's cherry-picking shenanigans will be a little different from previous years, adapting to everything the past 12 months has thrown the world's way. The number of folks allowed onsite to pick at any one time will be limited, and you'll get two hours — plus half an hour for administration requirements before you start and once you've finished. When you're done, you can also head to the onsite cafe for a cherry ice cream, hit up some food trucks or tuck into your own BYO picnic.
In need of some new procrastination material? Well, you're in luck. Google image search 'Banff' and spend a few minutes (or half an hour) taking in the gorgeous pictures of snow-capped mountains, aqua water and towering pines. It's impossible to not daydream about holidaying somewhere far-flung and exciting while ogling these picture-perfect views, as we're sure you'll agree. Thankfully, this June, you'll have the opportunity to slip into this magical world without ever leaving Melbourne. A selection of venues are hosting Banff Mountain Film Festival's 2020 tour — the event's latest stopover, after beginning back in 1976. Its stunning cinematography attracts film buffs and adventurers alike, making the festival mighty popular across the world today. Every November, hundreds of films enter the competition with the cream of the crop chosen to entertain and amaze festival goers. Some of the featured flicks battled it out in categories including Best Film on Mountain Sport, Best Film on Mountain Environment, Best Film on Mountain Culture, Best Film on Exploration and Adventure, People's Choice Award and more. Check them out at Crown Melbourne between Monday, June 1–Tuesday, June 2 and at the Astor Theatre from Wednesday, June 3–Thursday, June 4.
UPDATE, November 6, 2020: Sonic the Hedgehog is available to stream via Amazon Prime Video, Foxtel Now, Google Play, YouTube Movies and iTunes. First up, some good news: the Sonic the Hedgehog film could've been a whole lot worse. Mostly because, as you might've seen in the movie's nightmarish first trailer, it initially was. But while Sonic thankfully no longer looks like a toothy blue Matt Dillon from There's Something About Mary, the rushed cosmetic changes carried out by Paramount only run skin-deep. Sonic the Hedgehog might now look pretty great, but the film is a hot mess just about everywhere else. To begin with, it's a mystery why this movie even exists. Not only is the Sega game it's based on almost 30 years old, but films based on video games are like white whales for studios — strangely irresistible yet doomed to cause ruin. It's appropriate that one of the first (and undoubtedly one of the worst) examples was Super Mario Bros back in 1993, since it was that game franchise that led to Sonic's creation. Did Hollywood learn nothing? The appeal of gaming lies squarely in the user's participation — "play, don't watch" should be scrawled on every movie executive's cheque book — and these films do not work. Following Sonic's adventures on earth as he accidentally attracts the US government's attention, then tries to escape them, the other big problem with Sonic the Hedgehog is the pacing. Specifically, Sonic's. His whole reason for existing is to go fast — super fast. He's like the Flash, Road Runner and X-Men's Quicksilver combined. And while there are some genuinely fun sequences where viewers get to see that play out, he spends a full third of the film cruising around in a sensibly-priced sedan. Worse — he's not even driving. Live-action is very much in vogue at the moment (see: Beauty and the Beast, Pokémon: Detective Pikachu), but this feels like an instance where a completely animated film would've been the superior option. The movie's opening five minutes take place on Sonic's home planet, and it's a tantalising glimpse of what might have been had first-time feature director Jeff Fowler gone down that road. Ah well. Cast-wise, there's a clear standout. Jim Carrey is back in full force, dropping the most endearingly over-the-top performance audiences have seen from him in ages. As villain Dr Robotnik, he's somehow even more cartoonish than the CGI Sonic — and it's spectacular. Like Sonic's running, however, there's far too little of it throughout. Instead, the lion's share of screen time is reserved for Sonic (voiced by Parks and Recreation's Ben Schwartz) and his new pal Tom Wachowski (James Marsden), the local sheriff who's helping him avoid capture. Giving credit where credit's due, Marsden delivers the goods, charming his way through scenes that ought to have tanked hard. Schwartz, too, makes the inspired choice of keeping Sonic low-key instead of manic, resulting in a far more likeable hero. As a kid-friendly family film, Sonic the Hedgehog ticks all the boxes, including the apparent must-have of a central character doing the floss (twice, in this instance). Query, though, how many kids even know who Sonic is. The same question applies to writers Patrick Casey and Josh Miller (YouTube series 12 Deadly Days), who not only relegate the eponymous character to scant speediness, but have also crowbarred in a ton of woeful pop culture references that will date this film far too quickly. Since his creation in 1991, Sonic the side-scrolling bundle of blue fluff has earned over $5 billion. That's some legacy, and one this middling film will neither damage nor improve. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szby7ZHLnkA
UPDATE, January 29, 2021: 1917 is available to stream via Foxtel Now, Google Play, YouTube Movies and Amazon Video. If you didn't already know that 1917's Sam Mendes directed the last two Bond films, then his new First World War drama makes that plain via its high-stakes plot. The premise: in the penultimate year of the conflict, with a generation of young men at battle, two British soldiers are dispatched into enemy territory to deliver a message. If they don't make it through No Man's Land, across lines of barbed wire, out of booby-trapped mines, over collapsed bridges and past ever-determined Germans — and do so by dawn the next day — 1600 men will charge into a battle that'll wipe them all out. Tragic on its own merits, that needless loss of lives would also severely hamper the Allies' overall efforts. In attempting their crucial task, 1917's central pair can't rely on exploding watches, missile-shooting cars or other 007-style gadgets, of course. Still, the film does sport a particularly action-packed idea in a genre — aka war flicks — that's typically filled with fights, gunfire and explosions anyway. Sending its heroes on a tumultuous journey in the most literal of senses, 1917 also spins a classic adventure narrative within its combat-riddled confines. But, co-scripting with Krysty Wilson-Cairns (Penny Dreadful) and dedicating the feature to his grandfather, a veteran of the war in question, Mendes can be forgiven for taking a minor leaf out Skyfall and Spectre's books. Charting the experiences of Lance Corporals Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay), his film endeavours to show the on-the-ground horrors of war through the duo's gruelling quest. The storytelling gimmickry is obvious, jamming in chaos and peril across a wealth of scenarios, but the overall impact is inescapably immense and heartbreakingly intense. What Dunkirk did for a pivotal World War II event, 1917 does just as commandingly for an entire earlier war. The date is April 6 in the film's eponymous year. First seen stealing a rare moment's rest in a flower-strewn northern France field, Blake and Schofield are soon sent on their not-so-merry way. "Pick a man. Bring your kit", the especially boyish Blake is told, chosen for the mission because his older brother is in the battalion about to chase the seemingly retreating Germans. As weighs heavily in the air during the ensuing trek, the warier, world-wearier Schofield is merely the friend in Blake's closest proximity when the latter receives his orders. Instantly, Thomas Newman's nerve-rattling score kicks into gear. Beginning their walk in the muddy British trenches, Blake and Schofield's hurried footsteps, breaths and snippets of small talk are accompanied by needling beats that echo with tension and urgency. The music sets the appropriate mood, although the movie's second overt piece of gimmickry does that as well — and strikingly. As lensed by Blade Runner 2049's Oscar-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins (who, like Newman, also worked with Mendes in his Bond years), 1917 is crafted to look like it's shot in two long takes. Constantly roving and roaming, the film's visuals capture the two soldiers' every move, rarely letting either man's face out of sight. Accordingly, youth and eagerness, pain and sorrow, and carnage and death all flicker across the screen as Blake and Schofield try to make their way through a gruelling ordeal — one that plays out without any reprieve for them or for the audience. When a filmmaker leans so heavily upon such a self-imposed technical constraint, it's usually in the service of immediacy and immersion, with both evident in every exquisitely choreographed and staged second of 1917. Son of Saul, the Academy Award-winning 2015 holocaust film, used the same faux single-shot approach to the same emotionally devastating effect. Single-setting survivalist thrillers like All Is Lost deliver a similar emotional onslaught via restrained means as well. Both cast a shadow over 1917, because there's nothing more harrowing than being forced to stare into someone's eyes when they're enduring utter hell. MacKay, a certain future star going from strength to strength, conveys every iota of Schofield's grit and suffering. It's a performance on par with his second film screening in cinemas at present — True History of the Kelly Gang, where he plays Ned Kelly. Here, his character is an everyman, representing the many that went through the real-life ordeal. Indeed, he looks like he could've easily stepped out of Peter Jackson's recent World War I documentary They Shall Not Grow Old. But thanks to MacKay's quietly aching portrayal, the audience needn't know much about Schofield to see him as individual, rather than merely one of many. Amid a cast that also features Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Fleabag's Andrew Scott and Chapman's Game of Thrones co-star Richard Madden in bit parts, he's the face of the so-called 'war to end all wars' — and he's just as effective as Mendes' jam-packed narrative and Deakins' stunning cinematography. And, he helps makes 1917's unshakeable case. Whether scrambling along a Turkish hillside in Gallipoli, sailing into the jungle in Apocalypse Now, or meandering over piles of bodies and past despairing soldiers here, the strongest war movies always function as anti-war movies. As illustrated in visceral detail, this is one of them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwRL0u87nbc
It has been a couple of years since The Jungle Collective first started taking over Australian warehouses and slinging plenty of plants, all thanks to its huge sales in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. These leafy excuses to fill your home with greenery always have a bit of a celebratory vibe, and they just keep coming, with the outfit's next Melbourne outing happening across the weekend of Saturday, January 18 and Sunday, January 19. Gorgeous green babies are the main attraction — and more than 170 varieties of them, too. You'll pick up everything from fiddle leafs and monsteras to giant birds of paradise and rubber trees, as well as oh-so-many ferns and hanging plants. You'll also be able to shop for designer pots and get expert advice from the horticulturalists onsite. Oh, and if you bring your dog with you in a bag — taking inspiration from New York's subway — you'll receive $5 off your purchase. It's all happening at 36 Stephenson Street, Richmond, with sessions held at 8am, 10am, 12pm and 2pm on Saturday, plus 10am and 12pm on Sunday. Entry is free, but you'll need to register for a ticket — which you can do from 12pm on Monday, January 13.
Some movies spin tales about ordinary folks struggling through difficult dramas. Others focus on love, laughs or superheroes. They're all well and good — and you can see them at the multiplex any day of the week. But films about unicorn-riding writers, a mutant zombie apocalypse and one of Germany's most horrific serial killers don't pop up anywhere near as often. Indeed, it's genre movies like these — and a plethora of other strange and surreal horror flicks — that makes Melbourne's new Fantastic Film Festival Australia stand out. It's not the first Aussie fest dedicated to unnerving, eerie, offbeat and subversive films, of course. It won't be the last, either. Still, it does boast a mighty fine inaugural lineup. Look out for opening night's Chained for Life, a horror-comedy that tackles representation and exploitation; Away, a wordless animated Latvian feature about a boy and a giant stuck on an island; Diner, an over-the-top Japanese affair that unleashes a horde of assassins on a fortress-like restaurant; and Horror Noire, a documentary that explores African American talent in Hollywood — and specifically in the horror genre. A true crime tale harking back to 70s Germany, The Golden Glove definitely isn't an easy watch, while apocalyptic Portuguese effort Mutant Blast is gleefully low-brow and trashy. Or, you can check out Saint Maud's unnerving account of a devout hospice nurse obsessed with saving her dying patient's soul, step into Zombi Child's Haitian voodoo thrills, and see Game of Thrones' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau get stuck in a secret hotel in Suicide Tourist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXs2-TY9qok Fancy a local blast from the past? A 30-year anniversary screening of Aussie sci-fi metal musical Sons of Steel is also on the program. Catch all of the above — and show off your genre knowledge at a trivia night, too — when Fantastic Film Festival Australia hits up the Lido Cinemas Hawthorn from Thursday, February 20–Wednesday, March 4. Some sessions will even screen at the site's rooftop cinema.
In early February every year, sweet-toothed souls the world over celebrate 'World Nutella Day'. The day of dessert eating is just around the corner once again — and it's safe to say Preston Market has your feasting well and truly sorted. The northside precinct is transforming into a treasure trove of chocolatey and hazelnuty delights for the occasion on Sunday, February 9, as a stack of its traders get into the spirit with a range of special offers, free tastings and one-off Nutella dishes. Swing by Local Pantry & Co to sample a free tasting of Pana Organic's hazelnut and chocolate spread, then road-test some Nutella croissants at both Publique Bakery and Dragisha & Nikola Bakery. Or head to Rustic Bean where you can snag a free chocolate croissant with any coffee purchase. Meanwhile, Les Crepes Gourmandes will be stacking Nutella pancakes and waffles, and Cannoeleria will be piping Nutella into its famed cannoli for the day. Sweet-toothed vegans will also be in excellent hands, with Super Raw's vegan Nutella smoothie bowls and raw vegan Nutella treats. World Nutella Day runs from 8am–3pm.
UPDATE, March 25, 2021: Guns Akimbo is available to stream via Stan, Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Amazon Video. Sadly, they exist everywhere online: petty folks who troll, subtweet and spit insults from the safety of their keyboards, all while simultaneously playing the victim and claiming to be superior. As personified by gamer and computer programmer Miles (Daniel Radcliffe), that's the kind of attitude Guns Akimbo seemingly endeavours to skewer. Miles is initially one of those guys, to an extent. Especially forlorn after breaking up with his girlfriend Nova (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), he's happy to mouth off on social media without thinking, even though he definitely knows better. But when he picks a fight with someone willing to take their beef into the real world, he's suddenly immersed in a physical, tangible, life-or-death battle — with guns bolted to his hands, no less — instead of merely trading belittling remarks with an unseen enemy from his couch. Guns Akimbo isn't the first film or TV show to ponder where humanity's thoroughly 21st-century obsession with technology and always-connected lifestyles may be taking us as a society (as Black Mirror keeps telling us, it's nowhere good). Following in the footsteps of 2016's mostly effective Nerve, it's not the first to get slick and playful with its commentary in this space, either. Alas, although Deathgasm writer/director Jason Lei Howden makes a perceptive leap from online trolling to actual death matches, he isn't particularly interested in engaging with the idea. Sure, one of the movie's characters yells "have you learned nothing from video games?" — winking at and nudging the audience in the process — but rather than meaningfully satirising or making a statement about the internet age, the ease with which abuse has become normalised and the lack of empathy that goes with it, Guns Akimbo is happy to simply lean into its OTT spectacle. Heartbroken, constantly denigrated at work and just mopey all-round, Miles wades into trouble when — like everyone in this futuristic world, or so we're told — he starts spending too much time watching an illegal underground fight club channel called Skizm. The battles are real, brutal and fatal, and the people pulling the strings don't take kindly to Miles' snarky commentary. Next thing he knows, ringleader Riktor (Ned Dennehy) and his cronies are banging down his door, giving him the body modification from hell and forcing him to play. To stay alive, Miles will have to hunt down reigning champion Nix (Samara Weaving), all while drone cameras capture and stream his every move to the braying, dead-eyed masses. One of Riktor's henchmen goes by the name Fuckface (Set Sjöstrand). When Miles and the Harley Quinn-esque Nix cross paths, she dubs him 'Fuck Boy'. And, standing atop a car, straddling a gun and wearing heart-shaped sunglasses like she's stepped out of someone's wet dream, Nix is also fond of yelling far more colourful banter. That's the level that Guns Akimbo is operating on — one that splashes slow-motion visuals all over the screen as frequently as its characters fire bullets, and attempts to dress it all up with plenty of supposedly edgy dialogue, relentless chase scenes, and emojis and video game-like imagery. Just as Miles discovers when he wakes up with weaponry nailed to his appendages, however, it all gets old fast. Expertly choreographed action scenes are a wondrous art form, as the John Wick franchise just keeps demonstrating, and will hopefully keep continuing to do so until Keanu Reeves is an octogenarian. Guns Akimbo is clearly reaching for such heights — while also taking inspiration from Battle Royale, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and the much less successful Keanu-starring and -directed Man of Tai Chi — but proves sorely lacking in the style and flair department. The trouble with largely forgoing any substantial plot or depth in favour of an overblown look and feel is that, if a movie misses its mark, it just comes off as empty rather than exhilarating. That's the case here, in a film that aims for wild but settles on obnoxious and grating. The one saving grace: Radcliffe, aka the likely reason that this flick even exists. On paper, watching Harry Potter fight for survival with guns bolted to his hands sounds like an entertaining prospect — and the former Boy Who Lived certainly gives his part more depth than the script or premise calls for. He's been doing that, of late. Finally free of his childhood altercations with Voldemort in one of the biggest movie series there is, Radcliffe has since gravitated towards out-there roles that he's been giving his all. See also: his turn as a farting corpse in Swiss Army Man, and his work as both a hapless angel and a floundering medieval prince in anthology TV series Miracle Workers. But he can't save Guns Akimbo from its worse impulses, and nor can Flight of the Conchords' Rhys Darby in a brief appearance as a homeless man. As for Weaving, who was such a standout in last year's Ready or Not, she's more on the movie's wavelength: cartoonish, ridiculous and in pure wish-fulfilment territory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOFatKD0Vzo
UPDATE: June 29, 2020 — Honeyland is available to stream via Movie Night, At Home and iTunes — and is currently screening in some Australian cinemas. In Honeyland's opening moments, Hatidže Muratova performs feats that wouldn't be out of place in an action blockbuster. Against the craggy, sun-parched North Macedonian landscape — vistas that could easily provide the backdrop to a Star Wars movie or Mad Max: Fury Road — she scrambles over rocks and creeps along ledges, making her way from her stone and mud hut to the cliffs near her otherwise desolate rural village. There, with her green floral headscarf contrasting against pale walls, she tends to a hive of bees. Hatidže doesn't always wear protective gear, but the insects don't sting her. Pulling out the gleaming honeycomb, she's careful and respectful as she goes about her task. That also comes through in the phrase she repeats like a mantra: "half for me, half for you". Hatidže is the main point of focus in Honeyland, a multiple award-winner at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival that also became the first-ever movie to receive Oscar nominations for both Best International Film and Best Documentary earlier this year. In this intimate observational doco, she's worlds away from cinema's big-budget spectacles — but she's still a daring superhero. Dedicated to traditional apiary methods, Hatidže is the last female wild beekeeper in Europe. That mightn't mean much when audiences start watching Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov's debut feature-length film, but it will when the credits roll. As will those words that Hatidže keeps mentioning, which sum up her approach. When she removes honey from her hives, to bottle raw and sell at markets four hours away in the capital city of Skopje, she leaves as much as she takes so that her bees still have something to feed on. Filmed over three years, with Kotevska and Stefanov's team recording more than 400 hours of footage, Honeyland steps into Hatidže's daily life — and the bees aren't the only things buzzing. At first, the film's indefatigable protagonist splits her time between harvesting honey and caring for her bed-ridden, partly blind octogenarian mother Nazife, their banter brimming with both honesty and affection. Then, in a wave of movement and noise that's an omen for things to come, a family of nine moves in next door. Together, the Muratovas and their new neighbours are the only inhabitants of their village. But the Sams have completely different tactics for working the land, whether they're tending to the cows they trucked in with them or — initially under Hatidže's advice — beekeeping themselves. With so many mouths to feed and, as the movie conveys in its bee-on-the-wall fashion, a struggling existence to begin with, Sam patriarch Hussein has no time or concern for Hatidže's "take half, leave half" methodology. Kotevska and Stefanov's obviously didn't know that this clash would arise when they started filming Hatidže. They couldn't have predicted that the Sams would show up at all, in fact. However, in demonstrating how age-old practices and modern tactics come into conflict, they couldn't have stumbled upon a more pertinent situation. Hussein needs cash, and as much as he can make, with selling honey for €10 a jar seeming like a gold mine. Hatidže needs her beekeeping to remain sustainable, so she can continue on as she has been year after year, and as many an apiarist has before her. Unsurprisingly, the two approaches hardly complement each other. Honeyland explores an overwhelmingly specific feud, but it speaks to a universal conflict — between the old and new, tradition and contemporary thinking, and living with nature versus exploiting it. Hatidže's life is all about balance with the planet around her, and yet it's so easily turned upside down by someone who couldn't care less because there's desperately needed money to be made. As a result, this distinctive snapshot also speaks to much of the modern world's current problems, with Hatidže's experiences filled with obvious parallels. Kotevska and Stefanov don't judge Hussein and the Sam family, but their whirlwind of chaos inherently sits in stark contrast to the Muratovas' modest setup. The juxtapositions keep coming, there for viewers to see frame by frame — in the boisterous kids lassoing unhappy cattle, the tender way that Hatidže sings to her hives, the mess and mayhem of the Sams' property, and the peacefulness of Hatidže and Nazife's humble abode. There's more to Hatidže's story on a personal level, as slowly and meditatively unfurled in a documentary with many purposes, including presenting a detailed character study. Audiences need to understand her work and the problems she's facing to understand who she is — to truly glean the weight of her choices and regrets, too — and both facets of Honeyland are as gripping as they are fascinating. This is a compelling, clear-eyed portrait of a woman who is just as frank and unflinching, and who has taken each facet of her existence as it comes. The filmmakers want viewers to do the same, of course. Taking in their stunning drone-shot views of Hatidže in her formidable surroundings, peering closely at bees going about their business, listening to her candle-lit chats with her mother and simply watching her face, it's impossible not to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dii0FMXXVvA&feature=emb_logo
No matter the occasion — whether it's a celebratory drink or a deluxe date — popping open a bottle of bubbly makes any outing far more special. So, if you're looking to take things up a notch, head to Newport's Junction Hotel for a luxe wine and food pairing available till the end of April. For $185, you'll get a Moët & Chandon Rosé Impérial and the hotel's specialty ploughmans board, loaded with cured meats, terrine, caper berries, mustard, relish, and a wedge of cheddar cheese. The pink-hued champagne, with its brightness, red fruit aromas and slightly dry finish, will pair nicely with your spread — plus it's sure to elevate any date, party or dinner. You'll be saving some pennies, too, as a bottle of Moët Rosé and the ploughmans usually comes to $215 when bought as separate items. If you're after a more casual setting head to the the pub's airy beer hall. Or, settle into a leather booth in the sleek, dimly-lit wine room for a fancier affair. To book your spot, head here.
It has been a couple of years since The Jungle Collective first started taking over Australian warehouses and slinging plenty of plants, all thanks to its huge sales in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. These leafy excuses to fill your home with greenery always have a bit of a celebratory vibe, and they just keep coming, with the outfit's next Melbourne outing happening across the weekend of Saturday, March 21 and Sunday, March 22. Gorgeous green babies are the main attraction — and more than 170 varieties of them, too. You'll pick up everything from fiddle leafs and monsteras to giant birds of paradise and rubber trees, as well as oh-so-many ferns and hanging plants. And, there'll be a special focus on pet-friendly plants, because your indoor garden and your cat and/or dog should all get along. You'll also be able to shop for designer pots and get expert advice from the horticulturalists onsite. Oh, and if you bring your pet along, you'll receive $5 off your purchase. It's all happening at 36 Stephenson Street, Richmond, with sessions held at 8am, 10am, 12pm and 2pm on Saturday, plus 10am and 12pm on Sunday. Entry is free, but you'll need to register for a ticket — which you can do from 12pm on Monday, March 16.
UPDATE, January 15, 2021: Ride Your Wave is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Amazon Video. In the type of scene familiar from many a film, 19-year-old Hinako (voiced by Rina Kawaei) frolics around a seaside spot with her boyfriend Minato (Ryota Katayose). In the scenic Japanese city of Chiba, the pair chat, laugh, stroll and sightsee, as plenty of couples have in similar situations. Actually, this duo does so twice. The first time plays out exactly as everyone expects but, occurring well into Ride Your Wave, the lovestruck duo's repeat romantic rendezvous comes with a twist. In the kind of image that can only really be brought to the screen via animation, Hinako isn't spending time with Minato in the flesh the second time around — instead, she's dragging around an inflatable porpoise filled with water that, when she hums the pair's favourite song, manifests her boyfriend's spirit from beyond the grave. Basically, Hinako is now dating a ghost in the guise of a blow-up aquatic mammal — a spectre that can appear in anything else that's wet, such as a glass of water and even a toilet bowl, too. It's a heartfelt yet clearly strange sight, and it's an image that filmmaker Masaaki Yuasa builds his whole sweet, sensitive and charming movie around. Already known for offbeat and distinctive animated efforts such as Night Is Short, Walk on Girl and Lu Over the Wall, the Japanese director blends his fondness for weirdness with a perceptive exploration of love and loss that belongs in the same company as huge recent global hits Your Name and Weathering with You. As brought to life, vocally, by former Japanese pop idol Kawaei and fellow local pop star Katayose (whose boy band, Generations from Exile Tribe, provides the film's pivotal — and extremely catchy — tune), Hinako and Minato's story begins much earlier. Initially, she's a surf-obsessed newcomer arriving in town to study oceanography, while he's a dutiful local firefighter. They cross paths on several occasions — she frequently hits the waves near his fire station, as he just-as-frequently notices — but they don't properly connect until Minato comes to Hinako's rescue when her apartment building is set ablaze. And, if tragedy didn't strike, perhaps they would've simply lived happily ever after. As Ride Your Wave astutely realises, though, those kinds of blissful, uncomplicated tales aren't the norm for everyone. Japan's plethora of big-screen animated gems have always received ample praise for their visual prowess; given how gorgeous and glorious everything from Studio Ghibli's greats to Yuasa's own filmic back catalogue looks, that's understandable. But movies such as Ride Your Wave don't surf their way into viewers' hearts based solely on eye-popping imagery alone. At their best, these films ripple with emotional depth and resonance — and while there's much about Ride Your Wave that threatens to veer into cheesiness at times, it remains an insightful, moving and charming example of the genre. On the surface, it might appear to be just another supernatural teen romance; however from the moment that Hinako is forced to face her future alone, this is a thoughtful, delicate and observant portrait of a woman struggling with one of the worst things that can happen. As whimsical as it might sometimes seem — and as it definitely sounds on paper — there's a rich vein of melancholy in Hinako's escapades with Minato's spirit. As she continues to hold onto him in any way she can, Yuasa and screenwriter Reiko Yoshida (A Silent Voice, Okko's Inn) show a raw and profound understanding of grief, its all-encompassing impact and the reality that, to those in mourning, absolutely everything reminds them of the person they're missing. Everyone who has lost someone has returned to places they once visited together and seen memories of happier times linger at every corner. Everyone in the same position has felt their heart skip a beat when a significant song plays, too. As well as being cute and quirky, the literal inflatable porpoise in Ride Your Wave's frames gives these common and relatable experiences a physical dimension. Don't go expecting this film to receive a live-action remake any time soon, of course, not that any animated movie ever needs one. Disney might currently be obsessed with turning its cartoon hits into flesh and blood (or photorealistic approximations), but Japan's animators are well aware that their chosen medium is far more expressive — especially when it comes to matters of the heart. There's a rhythm, flow and glow to Ride Your Wave that perfectly captures its protagonist's complicated situation, and that simply wouldn't translate to any other format. There's also the feeling that, through its seemingly fanciful narrative gimmick, Ride Your Wave tackles tough emotional terrain with unflinching, heart-swelling honesty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMB7SpEvxOI Image: ©Ride Your Wave Film Partners.
Richmond's The National Hotel is giving you an excuse to change up your average Thursday night drinks with mates. The longstanding pub has once again invited The Plant Whisperer to host a tipsy terrarium workshop. Throughout the 90-minute class, the host will walk you through the creation of a mini plant world, providing tips on plant selection and design, as well as soil composition and layering techniques. All terrarium materials are included in the ticket price — expect an array of tropical plants to choose from, plus a glass bowl, stones, soil, moss and figurines. And all experience levels are welcome, whether you entered the class a pro or are a repeat offender black thumb. The bar will also be serving up all its usual bevvies throughout the workshop (to help provide some liquid creativity) — along with its Thursday night Korean fried chicken special. For $15, you get half a chook plus pickles, Kewpie mayo and bao. From 5–7pm, $7 pints of Mountain Goat, cider and house wine are also available. The 1.5 hour class will cost $80, with drinks and food at the bar purchased separately. Bookings are a must.
If it's the knockoff frothies you're missing the most, tuning into the new live stream programming from The Crafty Pint and Ale of a Time should provide some hopped-out, fizzy relief. The two Aussie beer publications have joined forces and launched a new YouTube channel, where they're broadcasting a series of daily virtual beer-sipping sessions. The Beer Together videos are here to help during a time when the pub's off-limits, inviting a roll-call of industry mates to your screens for some good ol' beer appreciation, education and banter. Each session varies, though they're mostly focused on celebrating great local beer, with guests from some of your favourite breweries and venues. You can keep an eye on what's to come over at Ale of a Time's Facebook page. We've had an on-couch tasting party with New Zealand's Behemoth Brewing Co, a sit-down with Sparkke Brewing's Carla Naismith, a cooking class with Casey Wall of Falco Bakery and now a regular beer quiz helmed by The Crafty Pint's Judd Owen, streaming 8.30pm AEST every Sunday. And of course, if you miss any of the live streams, the videos are sticking around on YouTube for you to view any time you like. Hooked and want more? Jump on the mailing list for links to the post-video after-parties. Top image: Kate Shanasy
Love pasta, but never quite mastered the art of making your own gnocchi? Always wanted to whip up your own soap and shampoo bars — or maybe some soy candles? Perhaps you've dreamed of fashioning bangles, macrame key rings and clay planters yourself. Or, you could harbour a lifelong dream to get into calligraphy. Whether you're keen to get stitching and sewing, build a terrarium, or paint a portrait of your pet pooch, ClassBento's new Craft Box workshop series has a session for you. Moving its classes online, it's now live-streaming all manner of 30–60 minute creative seminars. They're taught by a range of artists and teachers across Australia — and you can either enrol in one of ClassBento's public classes, or round up some pals (virtually, of course) and book in for your own private session. Given the broad selection of classes on offer — including punch needle embroidery, making edible wafer paper roses for cakes and shibori dyeing, just to name a few — dates and prices vary. For the latest details on your session of interest, head to Class Bento's website. [caption id="attachment_766964" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] The Paint Bar[/caption] Plus, if you're wondering about all the different tools you'll need to learn to weave, make a kokedama hanging moss ball or create paper mache collage bowls, each class comes with a craft box. Once you've chosen your session, it'll be delivered to you in advance — so, when class time comes, you'll be ready to go.
If you're a Brisbanite with a fondness for trivia — and a head full of otherwise pointless tidbits just waiting to be scribbled down quickly — then you've likely been to one of Man vs Bear's events. Usually, its slate is filled with both general and themed trivia evenings at plenty of pubs and bars around town; however, when COVID-19 restrictions hit, it took its questions online for everyone everywhere to enjoy. Meet Isolation Trivia. No, all the questions won't just be about staying indoors — but because that's what we're all now doing, these trivia nights will be live-streamed. Man vs Bear and Not On Your Rider's Aimon Clark will play quizmaster, you'll jot down your answers at home and everyone can compare scores virtually — and battle for trivia supremacy. Isolation Trivia will be popping up regularly, with the next trivia nights live-streaming on Tuesday, September 22 and Friday, September 25 — at 6.30pm AEST. To play along, head to the event's Facebook page. Top image: Not On Your Rider
National Reconciliation Week happens every year, with the purpose of educating all Australians about our shared history and celebrate the culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The (very fitting) theme this year? In This Together. Running from May 27 to June 3, the festival's dates signify two important milestones in our reconciliation: the 1967 referendum and the Mabo decision, which saw the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples land rights. This year, the program will centre on ideas of moving forward as a nation and working toward a shared future. Of course, due to COVID-19 restrictions, the week-long program will look a little different. It'll launch with an Acknowledgement of Country from 12pm on Wednesday, May 27, with Australians paying their respects via social media. Then, a panel discussion hosted by Larissa Behrendt (Speaking Out) will take place on Thursday, May 28 from 12–1pm. She'll be joined by parliament members Ken Wyatt and Linda Burney, plus Reconciliation Australia CEO Karen Mundine and University of Wollongong Lecturer Summer May Finlay to discuss the historic bridge walks of 2000 and the role of reconciliation since then. For more information and to stream, check out the Facebook event here. Also on the bill is a Virtual Indigenous Film Festival and an hour-long concert, featuring Busby Marou, Alice Skye and Jimblah and hosted by Christine Anu, no less. It'll go down at 9.05pm on Friday, May 29 and you can tune in via ABC Radio or head to Reconciliation Australia, ABC Sydney or ABC Australia Facebook pages. The National Gallery of Victoria will be hosting its own events to celebrate Reconciliation Week, including an introduction to Indigenous art, a look at the artworks of Destiny Deacon, and 'Curating Indigenous Art', which is a collaboration between the NGV, ACMI, Koori Heritage Trust and Deakin University. Sydney's AGNSW currently has an interview with artist Gail Mabo you can watch as part of its Together in Art series. The Sydney Opera House has a five-day program lined up, too, including recorded concerts, talks, dance performances, Badu Gili and the First Nations Arts Awards 2020. Red Room Poetry is hosting its annual Poetry in First Languages. https://youtu.be/T5hs5MLVqUM Images: Badu Gili, Sydney Opera House; Regalla (2013) by Reko Rennie, NGV courtesy of blackartprojects.
Keen to make your next night in a big one? Now that you can invite five mates round (with sensible social distancing in place, of course), you can make it a real party. So, if you're keen to cut some serious shapes this weekend, ring up five of your nearest and dearest and dust off that disco ball because a new one-off party with pumping tunes and bad fashion is taking over your living room on Saturday, May 23. Yep, Canadian Club's annual Bad Sweater Party is going virtual. Hang on, a Bad Sweater Party? The major point of difference for this party is that you've got a dress code. Don an ugly jumper — it's OK, you're partying at home. And, yes, you'll get pretty sweaty with all those killer moves you'll be busting. Hot Dub Time Machine will be bringing the dance-worthy tunes, which will have you pushing your furniture aside and starting a makeshift dance floor in no time. Expect everything from 50s rock 'n' roll tunes to disco hits like ABBA's 'Gimme Gimme Gimme' and Earth, Wind & Fire's 'September'. Once you hit the more recent decades, there's often glam rock, a bit of 90s grunge, Darude's epic 'Sandstorm' and 'Toxic' by Britney. As you dance your way through the decades, you'll be working up quite the sweat (you'll be in a sweater, remember), so you'll also want some cold ones nearby. Get into the spirit of things by mixing up some CC 'n' drys. Or save yourself the trouble and grab a case of the stuff. It'll all kick off at 7pm and you can tune in to the live set via Hot Dub's Twitch account.
