We're still a week out from December 25, but you won't have to wait quite that long for a visit from the jolly man in red. Santa's getting a jump-start on this year's rounds and popping by nostalgia-fuelled ice creamery Kenny Lover this Sunday, December 22. And he's got plenty of treats in store for kids both big and little. From 3–6pm, he'll be dishing out free scoops of his favourite flavours from the Kenny Lover lineup — milk ice cream spiked with chunks of freshly baked choc chip cookie, and a frozen riff on the classic Christmas pudding. Santa's also bringing a sack full of 200 free presents to hand out to those on his 'nice' list, ranging from toys for littlies to some sweet Kenny Lover merch for the grown-ups. [caption id="attachment_755696" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Julia Sansone[/caption] What's more, the big guy's even agreed to sit for some classic Santa snaps while he's there. Grab a festive photo with your bestie, your kid or your fur baby, and it'll be turned into a true-blue Aussie Christmas card on the spot. Santa will be at Kenny Lover from 3–6pm. Top image: Kenny Lover.
You oughta know, Alanis Morissette is heading Down Under. The famed 90s singer will perform in Melbourne as part of her world tour celebrating the 25th anniversary of her chart-topping 1995 album Jagged Little Pill. So, get ready to sing along to 'Ironic', 'You Oughta Know' and 'All I Really Want' at Rod Laver Arena on Tuesday, April 14 and Wednesday, April 15, respectively. That first date was actually just added to the tour due to demand — because Melbourne clearly loves Alanis head over feet. The 90s icon will be supported by Australia's own Julia Stone. Stone has released two solo albums, with a third due out later this year — plus four together with her brother Angus, including Down the Way, which won Album of the Year at the 2010 ARIA Awards. Morissette's own collection of music awards is hefty, and includes seven Grammys and 12 Juno Awards. While her 1995 album Jagged Little Pill is the most critically acclaimed, the Canadian singer has released eight albums and is set to drop her highly anticipated ninth, Such Pretty Forks in the Road, in May. In the meantime, though, hype yourself up for the Aussie tour by belting out the following banger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jne9t8sHpUc
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. 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 — and go full inner child mode, obviously. It all takes place from 6.30–9pm on Friday, February 7 — and BYO shameless excitement, taste for glory, and creativity to enter the model of the month competition. It'll be a fierce one.
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 — Stay Gold's New Year's Eve shindig will indulge both your retro and your festive urges. Drinks, tunes, fashion: expect all of the above at the No Scrubs: 90s and Early 00s party from 9pm on NYE. 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 season. 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 $23.30, with the fun running through until 3am.
UPDATE, March 19, 2021: Children of the Sea is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Amazon Video. It's not the first animated film to attempt the feat — or achieve it — but Children of the Sea turns the delights of the ocean's depths into a dazzling spectacle. Where everything from The Little Mermaid and SpongeBob SquarePants to Ponyo and Song of the Sea first swam, this gorgeous Japanese movie follows, although comparing this striking animation to its great underwater predecessors doesn't paint the whole picture. Directed by Ayumu Watanabe and adapted from Daisuke Igarashi's manga of the same name by the author, Children of the Sea also paddles in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Akira's slipstreams. If that sounds like a wild ride, then strap yourself in for more to come. An eco-conscious tale about a lonely 14-year-old girl and two boys raised by dugongs that makes a connection between the ocean's vibrance and outer space's infinite expanse, this is an ambitious movie to say the very least. Ruka (voiced by Mana Ashida) is Children of the Sea's aforementioned teen outcast. School is out for the summer but, after a violent incident gets her shunned by her peers in her coastal town, she's at a loose end. Only her mother's (Yu Aoi) day-drinking awaits at home, so Ruka ventures to the local aquarium where her marine biologist father (Goro Inagaki) works. It's here that she not only re-ignites an affinity for the water that she's felt since she saw something glimmering in the tank as a small child, but where she also meets kindred spirits Umi (Hiiro Ishibashi) and Sora (Seishū Uragami). Her new pals have a definite advantage over Ruka in the sea-worshipping stakes, though; until they came to live at the aquarium, where they're taken care of by scientists, the siblings dwelled among the ocean's marine life — and they have exceptional underwater abilities to prove it. Ruka connects with the cheeky, impish Umi and the pale, ethereal Sora just as a series of environmental anomalies start gaining attention — including whale sightings near Manhattan, a meteor crash in the water, and an otherworldly song that's drawing the sea's creatures to one specific spot for a once-in-a-lifetime gathering. Also pertinent: the fact that Umi and Sora seem to be fading, perhaps even dying, thanks to their new life on land; and the possibility that Ruka's link to the duo just might be stronger than anyone imagines. Children of the Sea could've combined the above components into a somewhat straightforward story — awkward teens, the natural world and supernatural elements have been doing big business in Japan's animated fare of late, including Your Name, Weathering with You and Ride Your Wave — but that's not what Watanabe and Igarashi have in store. They're thinking big, bold and existential, as filtered through the experiences of Ruka and her friends. And, in pondering how everyone has a responsibility to the planet, while also recognising that each individual is a speck in a world far vaster than any one of us will ever encounter, the film's creative talents aren't afraid to dive into seemingly conflicting notions. Marrying the ecological with the cosmic, Children of the Sea's wide-ranging aims do occasionally threaten to exceed its reach (that Igarashi's manga was published in five volumes between 2007–12 won't come as a surprise). Accordingly, anyone hoping for a linear and logical progression through the feature's narrative, rather than many a flight of fantasy and a last-act burst of mind-bending imagery, is watching the wrong movie. But through its vivid visuals, this eye-catching, heart-swelling gem always conveys a sense of of awe and wonder — and a feeling that, no matter what a certain big entertainment studio keeps telling us, animation has its unique charms. This film could never be remade as live-action, or be used as template for a version with photo-realistic animals. Indeed, all the special effects in the world can't replicate Children of the Sea's intricate watercolour renderings of the ocean, which look complex, glorious and larger than life. The same applies to the movie's kaleidoscopic array of pictures and hues, the energy and liveliness of its marine ecosystem, and even its detailed human characters, who are clearly animated but never resemble cartoons. Plus, matching its audio to its imagery, Children of the Sea boasts quite the finishing touch. A score by Studio Ghibli veteran Joe Hisaishi (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle — the list goes on) layers the movie with suitably swirling emotion, and the end result easily sweeps audiences away. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ymJvqelwXE&feature=emb_logo
Once again, German DJ legend Claptone is preparing to hit Aussie shores, returning to deliver the latest edition of his international smash-hit soirée, The Masquerade. Popping up in Melbourne for the third time, the mysterious, multi-sensory event is being presented in collaboration with Untitled Group — the creative minds behind the likes of Ability Fest, Pitch Music & Arts and Beyond the Valley. Having toured a selection of cities worldwide over the past few years, The Masquerade's next stop is Burnley Circus Park in Melbourne on Saturday, April 13. It's set to transform the space into a den of revelry for one afternoon, featuring a heady mix of performances, acrobats, sounds and quirky characters you won't forget in a hurry. Promising to ramp up the intensity levels, all guests will be given masquerade face wear as they enter the event — a reference to Claptone's own signature golden mask.
The lull between the end of the Queen Vic Market's Summer Night Market in March and the start of the winter one in June is an annoying one — especially when you've just gotten used to spending Wednesday nights outdoors. To fill that gap, the QVM is launching an autumn European night market for the very first time this April. Get ready for Wednesday night paella, frites, barbecue, currywurst, all with a distinctly European flair, to help you celebrate the end of hump day or forget the disappearing summer. Europa is offering up a lot more than just food at its 20 food and 20 retail stalls. You can escape from the action over a beer at The Brexit Bar, join in at the silent disco or head over to the amphitheatre-style stage which will have live performances each week, all with roots in a new European region. Bringing some Spanish flamenco dancing, Ukrainian egg-dyeing, and French décor to the Queen Vic seems only fitting as the market has been a big part of the culture of Melbourne's European settlers since the 1830s. Europa Night Market runs from 5–10pm.
Why drink at one watering hole, when you can head to two, three, six or more? That's always been the motivation behind everyone's favourite boozy journey, aka a pub crawl. And, it's the exact same type of thinking behind the Urban Wine Walk. Taking another wander around Melbourne, it's the bar-hopping excuse every vino lover needs — if you need an excuse, that is. From midday until 4.30pm on Saturday, May 11, you'll saunter around the city — and between the likes of Good Heavens, Union Electric, The Mill House, Jack & Bones and more — sampling wines and having a mighty fine time. As for the tipples, they'll be taken care of by a range of local and national producers. Tickets cost $65 and places are limited. This moving cellar door will not only serve up more than 35 wine tastings, but also your own tasting glass — plus a voucher for another beverage, and a guide to help you plan your mosey between bars. Image: Good Heavens.
Meet Patriot, Potomac, Primrose, Poppet and Phil. They're each cute as a button, and they just might become America's next hard-working, helpful guide dogs. Born at the headquarters of US organisation Guide Dogs for the Blind, these labrador puppies will learn what it takes to become a seeing-eye companion for a human in need. While they won't all end up assisting the visually impaired to live fuller lives, they'll each try their best and look adorable in the process. That's the story behind Pick of the Litter, the documentary that'll make you want to hug your own doggo, get one, or volunteer to help train pooches that become guide dogs. The movie is coming to the Astor Theatre, screening at 4pm on Sunday, February 17 — and if you think it's something your own pet pupper would like, you can bring it along with you. Yes, you can not only spend 81 minutes exclaiming "awwwwwww" at adorable, helpful dogs on-screen, but do so in four-legged company. And if you don't have your own furball, head along anyway — if everyone else brings theirs, you might get in a pats a few before and after the screening.
The DC Extended Universe is dead. With Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, the comic book-to-screen franchise hardly swims out with a memorable farewell, hasn't washed up on a high and shouldn't have many tearful over its demise. More movies based on the company's superheroes are still on the way. They'll be badged the DC Universe instead, and start largely afresh; 2025's Superman: Legacy will be the first, with Pearl's David Corenswet as the eponymous figure, as directed by new DC Studios co-chairman and co-CEO James Gunn (The Suicide Squad). Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom ends up the 15-feature decade-long current regime about as expected, however: soggily, unable to make the most of its star, and stuck treading water between what it really wants to be and box-ticking saga formula. Led by Jason Momoa (Fast X) — not Adrian Grenier (Clickbait), as Entourage once put out into the world — the first Aquaman knew that it was goofy, playful fun. Its main man, plus filmmaker James Wan (Malignant), didn't splash around self-importance or sink into seriousness in giving DC Comics' aquatic hero his debut self-titled paddle across the silver screen (after Momoa played the same part in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League). Rather, they made an underwater space opera that was as giddily irreverent as that sounded — and, while it ebbed and flowed between colouring by numbers and getting winningly silly, the latter usually won out. Alas, exuberance loses the same battle in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. In a film that sets sail upon a plodding plot and garish CGI, and can't make an octopus spy and Nicole Kidman (Faraway Downs) riding a robot shark entertaining, any sense of spirit is jettisoned overboard. Having spent its existence playing catch-up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the DCEU does exactly that for a final time here. It isn't subtle about it; see: calling Aquaman's imprisoned half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson, Insidious: The Red Door) Loki and ripping off one of the most-famous throwaway MCU moments there is. As with 2023's fellow Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, there's also such a large debt owed to Star Wars that elements seem to be lifted wholesale from a galaxy far, far away (and from a competing company, although it was still terrible when Disney was plagiarising itself). Just try not to laugh at Jabba the Hutt as a sea creature, as voiced by Martin Short (Only Murders in the Building), introduced reclining in a familiar pose and, of course, surrounded by a school of amphibious ladies. Not intentionally by any means, it's Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom funniest moment. 2018's initial Aquaman used past intergalactic flicks as a diving-off point, too, including Jupiter Ascending, but with its own personality — no trace of which bobs up this time around. Wan helms again, switching to workman-like mode. While he's co-credited on the story with returning screenwriter David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick (Orphan: First Kill), Momoa and Thomas Pa'a Sibbett (The Last Manhunt), there's little but being dragged out with the prevailing tide and tonal chaos on show. Worse: ideas from abandoned spinoff The Trench, which was first floated as a horror effort about a villainous Atlantean kingdom but later revealed to be a secret Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Ambulance) movie, get clunkily flushed in. While this should be Saw, Insidious and The Conjuring alum Wan's wheelhouse, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom feels like the narrative equivalent of pouring the dregs of whatever's in Arthur Curry's liquor cabinet into one tankard. Now king of Atlantis as well as a father to Arthur Jr — the water-controlling Mera has become his wife, too, but that doesn't mean that Amber Heard (The Stand) says more than 50 words — the half-human, half-Atlantean best-known as Aquaman has another tussle with pirate David Kane to face. Bumped up to chief baddie, Black Manta is aided by dark magic manifested in the black trident, as found by a marine biologist (Randall Park, Totally Killer) who's endeavouring to prove that Atlantis exists. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom's evil threat is also climate change, as exacerbated by its nefarious enemy on his vengeance mission after the events of the first movie. With the human and undersea realms alike beginning to boil, only Aquaman teaming up with Orm will give the planet a chance to survive. Pairing Momoa and Wilson odd-couple comedy-style like they're Hobbs and Shaw would've been one of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom's best moves if the material was up to it. Their escapade amid the foliage on a volcanic South Pacific island — where the film wants to be a tropical creature feature, and also a Journey to the Centre of the Earth- and Jumanji-esque jaunt — is certainly the most promising visually. But here as across the entire flick, relying upon Momoa's charm to do the heavy lifting appears to be the number-one approach. In some pictures with some stars, that can work. Rom-com Anyone But You manages it thanks to Sydney Sweeney (Reality) and Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick), for instance. In Aquaman, Momoa had a mischievous ball and was a delight to watch. What everyone involved in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom hasn't factored in is that this version of Arthur has swapped underdog roguishness for the overblown kind. Momoa remains visibly enthusiastic as the wettest of the DCEU's world-saving cohort, but Aquaman's cockiness is laid on as thickly as a kelp forest. Although there's no doubting that the movie's star can handle the part, it's a less-engaging, more one-note turn than his last jump into this ocean, and sells him short. Momoa commits, though, with the kind of gusto that Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom lacks virtually everywhere else. What happens when a film that clearly wants to be as ridiculous as it can be, or as dark, clashes with staying within the genre's routine lane? This shipwreck, which ends the franchise it's in and the saga's busiest year — after Shazam! Fury of the Gods, The Flash and Blue Beetle — with one of its worst entries. At least it didn't have to worry about setting up sequels or connecting to other DCEU fare, aka a welcome lifeboat.
There's no swapping faces in John Woo's latest English-language action-thriller. Instead, the iconic Hong Kong filmmaker brings guns, chases and a quest for revenge to the festive genre. As anyone who rightly considers Die Hard among the pinnacle of Christmas movies already knows, seasonal cinema offerings don't need to drip in schmaltz, holiday humour, or Santas and reindeers to be an end-of-year present. Still, in making his first Hollywood effort since 2003's Paycheck, the director behind Hard Target, Broken Arrow and Face/Off in the 90s — plus Mission: Impossible II in 2000 — keeps the ties of family gleaming in Silent Night. That said, from the moment that the picture opens with a man in a Rudolph-adorned jumper, fuzzy red pom-pom and all, in a battle on Texan back streets with gang members who've just torn his brood apart on Christmas Eve, Woo also goes the brutal route. Silent Night's name echoes in several ways. Recalling a tune that's all about the jolliest time of the year is just one. Setting scenes in a period when halls are decked with boughs of holly is merely another. If protagonist Brian Godlock (Joel Kinnaman, The Suicide Squad) gets his wish, there'll be no more noise — let alone violence and bloodshed — from the criminals responsible for killing his young son (Alex Briseño, A Million Miles Away) with a stray bullet from drive-by crossfire as the boy rode his new bike in the front yard. Woo's main stylistic conceit comes to fruition instantly, however, because Silent Night largely avoids dialogue. Aided by meticulous sound design, that choice isn't a gimmick purely for the sake of it. Rather, Robert Archer Lynn's (Already Dead) script has Brian lose the ability to speak in the introductory sequence's fallout. The film's propulsive arrival is all frenzy, mayhem and intensity as Brian runs, cars packed with armed men blasting with abandon can't fell him, but being shot in the throat by villainous head thug Playa (Harold Torres, Memory) heralds blackness. If there's any doubt that Woo is enjoying staging the chaos, his use of slow motion says plenty. So does spotting a red balloon drifting away. Elsewhere, while the filmmaker mightn't work in his trademark doves, a bird does flutter. With cinematographer Sharone Meir (Echo 3) doing the lensing, Silent Night realises that stripping out chatter means heightening the visual experience, whether the picture is in frenetic or plotting mode. But there's also an earnestness to the movie and its aesthetics; this is a grim and bloody Christmas flick, and it's well-aware in every inch. As Brian prepares for his vengeance mission in training montages, then endeavours to execute his plan, an emotional underpinning anchors Silent Night's almost total lack of words (text on-screen features via SMS messages, and the radio still blares), too. He's a man robbed of the ability to verbally process his trauma. He can't shout, swear, scream or cry out. There'll never be any catharsis from just uttering his feelings aloud to a kindly listener. So, he's driven to act. As played with expressive physicality by Kinnaman, he's obsessively haunted into doing the only thing that he thinks he can — even if it means that his marriage to the also-mourning Saya (Catalina Sandino Moreno, From) suffers, and regardless of police detective Dennis Vassell's (Scott Mescudi, Crater) request for his assistance to lawfully bring the culprits to justice. There's a full-circle touch to Silent Night's disdain for talking as well, given how stellar the clearly Woo-influenced John Wick films have proven by also letting actions say far more than words, albeit never to this degree. Before that, it was the similarly Keanu Reeves-led The Matrix movies that help cement Woo's brand of stylised imagery as a Tinseltown standard, as far too many imitators have continued to ape ever since. Although Woo has kept adding to his resume over the past two decades, thanks to two-part war epic Red Cliff, wuxia effort Reign of Assassins, the also-split The Crossing and action-thriller Manhunt, he makes his Hollywood comeback with passion. In its look and feel, Silent Night is a work of relish — and, in its staircase sequence alone, a reminder of what American cinema has missed while it has been content taking Woo's cues over boasting him behind the camera. The filmmaker, his flair and his knack for eschewing words have it, then — plus the committed Kinnaman and Moreno — more than the plot, no matter how well-grounded in Brian's situation it proves. Death Wish, Taken and their own mimics have mined dads dishing out retaliation before, after all. Indeed, as fellow 2023 release Retribution demonstrates, Liam Neeson has resided comfortably in the "father in a fray for his family" niche ever since busting out his particular set of skills 15 years back. Silent Night isn't here to hold up Brian as a hero gleaming as brightly as a star on a Christmas tree, though. In other hands, that might've been the vibe, but there's no doubting that he's unravelling in desperate pain as he fixates upon his vigilante rampage. Marco Beltrami's (Renfield) score has it, too: this is an action-melodrama as much as an action-thriller. Woo hasn't just switched conversation for an onslaught of operatic sights and grunting, crunching sound effects — amid the kinetic altercations, of which there's many, he also lingers on his cast to see what's getting his characters ticking, pondering, yearning, hurting and swirling. This film spies in silence what wouldn't be done justice in dialogue, with feelings simmering and steaming in looks and gestures. Silent Night's action choreography impresses, unsurprisingly, but so does its emotional dance. Pass the Parcel might be a birthday-party game rather than a Christmas one, but it sums up this movie: each layer offers a gift, some expected, some exquisite.
UPDATE, Friday, June 21, 2024: May December is available to stream via Binge, Prime Video, YouTube Movies and iTunes. A line about not having enough hot dogs might be one of its first, but May December is a movie of mirrors and butterflies. In the literal sense, director Todd Haynes wastes few chances to put either in his frames. The Velvet Goldmine, Carol and Dark Waters filmmaker doesn't shy away from symbolism, knowing two truths that stare back at his audience from his latest masterpiece: that what we see when we peer at ourselves in a looking glass isn't what the rest of the world observes, and that life's journey is always one of transformation. Inspired by the real-life Mary Kay Letourneau scandal, May December probes both of these facts as intently as anyone scrutinising their own reflection. Haynes asks viewers to do the same. Unpacking appearance and perception, and also their construction and performance, gazes from this potently thorny — and downright potent — film. That not all metamorphoses end with a beautiful flutter flickers through just as strongly. May December's basis springs from events that received ample press attention in the 90s: schoolteacher Letourneau's sexual relationship with her sixth-grade student Vili Fualaau. She was 34, he was 12. First-time screenwriter Samy Burch changes names and details in her Oscar-nominated script — for Best Original Screenplay, which is somehow the film's only nod by the Academy — but there's no doubting that it takes its cues from this case of grooming, which saw Letourneau arrested, give birth to the couple's two daughters in prison, then the pair eventually marry. 2000 TV movie All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story used the recreation route; however, that was never going to be a Haynes-helmed feature's approach. The comic mention of hot dogs isn't indicative of May December's overall vibe, either: this a savvily piercing film that sees the agonising impact upon the situation's victim, the story its perpetrator has spun around herself, and the relentless, ravenous way that people's lives and tragedies are consumed by the media and public. While Oscar nods mightn't have come of it, May December is also an acting masterclass by two thespians who already have one such shiny trophy on their mantles each, plus a performer who turns in a stunner of a portrayal that's his best yet. With Haynes behind the camera, this is no surprise: watching the talent before his lens, even when they're Barbie dolls in Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (the genuinely plastic rather than Margot Robbie kind), means bathing in pure emotion. In her fifth film for the director after Safe, Far From Heaven, I'm Not There and Wonderstruck, Julianne Moore (Sharper) perfects the clash of control and insecurity within Gracie Atherton-Yoo, the movie's Letourneau substitute. It's a magnificent effort from someone who is never anything less than that — and Natalie Portman (Thor: Love and Thunder), who plays a part so sharp that it cuts as Elizabeth Berry, an actor preparing to play Gracie in a new picture, is every bit her equal. With Charles Melton (Riverdale) as Gracie's husband Joe Yoo, there's a case of art imitating life, in a way. His character spends Elizabeth's visit and his entire time with Gracie coming second, and he's behind his co-stars in terms of fame, but it's Joe's plight that's the core of May December and also Melton's performance that hauntingly lingers. This film begins with faeces as well, which isn't emblematic of what's to come, either, but still an important inclusion. A package of it sits on the Yoo family's doorstep when Elizabeth arrives to meet them for the first time — and Gracie makes it clear that this has happened before. May December sets its narrative 23 years after Gracie and Joe were initially caught together. They were colleagues at a pet store aged 36 and 13, respectively. They now have three kids, one (Piper Curda, The Flash) at college and twins (debutant Gabriel Chung and Somewhere in Queens' Elizabeth Yu) graduating high school, and have built a life after Gracie's prison sentence. Still residing in Savannah, Georgia, as they always have, she baked cakes and he's most passionate about raising monarch butterflies. There's a wariness over Elizabeth's project among the Yoos, but reassurance that this will be a sensitive take is also part of her time with her latest subject and her spouse. Make no mistake, because Haynes and Burch don't: for the role that she's hoping will elevate her beyond the TV series that she's best-known for, Elizabeth sees Gracie and Joe as mere source material. She interviews others, such as Gracie's first husband (DW Moffett, Monarch) and her eldest son from that marriage (Cory Michael Smith, Incomplete), each conversation saying as much about the actor as the woman she's set to bring to the screen. As rigorously rendered by Portman, she also becomes enamoured with the scenario that she's unfurling. A moment where Elizabeth loses herself explaining sex scenes to school kids — and the conflict between portraying pleasure and pretending not to actually feel pleasure — is savagely revealing. As Killers of the Flower Moon also does, this deeply astute movie has much to say about how circumstances like Joe's become sensationalised news and entertainment fodder, what that betrays about society and why people lap it up; add reflecting on its own existence and purpose to May December's many profoundly intelligent layers. When mirrors appear, they're frequently used around Gracie and Elizabeth. Of course, the latter is being a mirror herself. Cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt — Kelly Reichardt's regular collaborator; see: Showing Up, First Cow, Certain Women, Night Moves and Meek's Cutoff — visually recalls Ingmar Bergman's 1966 psychological drama Persona, as the movie in general does, as the lines between its two women start to blur. May December is partly a movie about what Gracie and Elizabeth spy when they're studying what's in front of them, and how divorced from reality both are. Gracie embraces a carefully erected fantasy where there's nothing more than love to her relationship with Joe, regardless of her domination over their household and repeated dissolving into tears in their bedroom. Elizabeth only takes in how she can become Gracie to her own advantage. Although Haynes and Blauvelt ensure that Moore and Portman are everywhere, neither of their characters will or can confront themselves or their manipulations. Finally challenging everything that's been his daily existence since he was a child, and the role that he's been inhabiting whether he truly wanted to or not — or was capable of making that decision at such a young age — is the shy Joe. The only word that fits: devastation. May December knows this before Joe accepts it, which campy lines about frankfurters on bread accompanied by dramatic music — the film adapts and reorchestrates the score from 1971 Palme d'Or-winner The Go-Between, in fact — oh-so-cannily play into. With its rich and meticulous visuals, tonal seesawing that can court laughs and welcome melodrama, and evocatively grand music, Haynes' feature isn't being erratic. It's crafted with shrewd understanding that discomfort is the only way to respond to what it's depicting, and that there's no one mood that suits. So, Haynes plunges May December and its audience into the full emotional spectrum. Consider the film a cocoon where transformation takes place, to soaring results.
If David Dastmalchian ever tires of acting, which will hopefully never happen, he'd make an entrancing late-night television host. He even has the audition tape for it: Late Night with the Devil. Of course, the star who earned his first movie credit on The Dark Knight, and has stood out in Blade Runner 2049, The Suicide Squad, Dune and the third season of Twin Peaks — plus Boston Strangler, The Boogeyman, Oppenheimer and Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter all in 2023 alone, alongside Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — might be hoping for a less eerie and unsettling gig IRL. Dastmalchian is a fan of horror anchors, writing an article for Fangoria about them. Here, putting in a helluva can't-look-away performance, he plays one. That said, the namesake of Night Owls with Jack Delroy isn't meant to fit the mould so unnervingly, nor is the series that he's on. Delroy is a Johnny Carson rival — and, because Australian filmmakers Cameron and Colin Cairnes (100 Bloody Acres, Scare Campaign) write and direct Late Night with the Devil, he's also a Don Lane-type talent — who isn't afraid of embracing the supernatural on his live talk show. On Halloween in 1977, airing his usual special episode for the occasion, he decides to attempt to arrest the flagging ratings of what was once a smash by booking four attention-grabbing guests. What occurs when Delroy, who is grieving the loss of his actor wife Madeleine Piper (Georgina Haig, NCIS Sydney) a year earlier, shares the stage with not only a famous skeptic and a psychic, but also with a parapsychologist and a girl who is reportedly possessed? That might sound like the setup for a joke, but it's this new Aussie horror gem's captivating premise. To be precise, it's the contents of the October 31 instalment of Night Owls with Jack Delroy, with Late Night with the Devil posed as a documentary about the broadcast that includes the entire show itself. With Michael Ironside (BlackBerry) on narration duties, Delroy gets some backstory first, stepping through Piper's lung cancer diagnosis despite never having smoked, plus Delroy's own affiliation with exclusive and highly questionable Californian men's club The Grove. The 70s gets some context, too, digging into its climate of fear and mistrust post-Manson family murders, and the anger of the decade's reckoning with race relations and the Vietnam War — all reasons put forward to explain why variety entertainment offering pure escapism is having a moment. The fortunes of the series itself from gleaming to flailing are also charted, justifying going all-in on the occult for the Sweeps Week episode that "shocked a nation", as presented in full as found footage from a master tape interspliced with behind-the-scenes material. If you've seen one evening talk show — from then, now or in-between; whether hailing from the US or Australia (Late Night with the Devil was shot in Melbourne, but packages its content as purely American) — then you know the basic format. Delroy monologues and banters charismatically to begin, albeit with an inescapable sadness that he's endeavouring to plaster over with a smile and 'the show must go on' bravado. So, he starts bringing on his guests. Medium Christou (Fayssal Bazzi, Prosper) foresees that something sinister is about to be afoot. Professional cynic Carmichael "the Conjurer" Haig (Ian Bliss, Safe Home), who was once a magician, is all doubt. There to spruik her book Conversations with the Devil, about a girl who was offered up as a Satanic sacrifice by a cult but survived, Dr June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon, Foe) is wary that her text's subject Lilly (Ingrid Torelli, Force of Nature: The Dry 2) isn't ready for the exposure. But with the kid supposedly afflicted with demonic possession, and so much at stake for Delroy and the show, no one is letting her remain off the air. When The Blair Witch Project made found footage a horror movie go-to 25 years back, sparking too many imitators — most generic and/or terrible — it didn't create the format. Indeed, the gimmick of unearthing tales from previous documents hadn't only been seen on-screen, but is engrained in iconic gothic horror novels Frankenstein and Dracula, both of which deploy correspondence to unfurl their stories. In the post-Blair Witch era, however, inventive and exciting screen uses of the tactic have become increasingly rare. Enter: the Cairnes brothers. The duo also give riffing on Martin Scorsese's 1982 satire The King of Comedy, which Joker did as well, a fresh spin. Late Night with the Devil is the best kind of pastiche: one that knows it, loves it, adores everything that it's drawing upon and is committed to never merely aping its inspirations (which also span Scanners, as Ironside's involvement helps reinforce — plus four-time Oscar-winner Network, which sports a fellow Aussie connection in British Australian actor Peter Finch). Watching the Halloween chaos of Night Owls with Jack Delroy in real time is a masterstroke: viewers have no alternative but to have the same experience that the show's audience, both in the studio and at home, did at the fateful broadcast — and that Delroy, his crew and guests all shared. Late Night with the Devil is constructed from a raft of equally clever decisions, the most pivotal of which is casting the hypnotic Dastmalchian. There's an Alan Partridge-esque air to the film and its protagonist, transported into literal horror rather than the horrors of cringe comedy, and with the same go-for-broke commitment that's always marked Steve Coogan's (The Reckoning) best-known character. Within the picture's sole setting — another savvy move — Dastmalchian owns the screen. He also grounds Late Night with the Devil's examination of the relationship between celebrity and the attention that mass media brings, aka the cult of personality; it might be easy to paint the price of fame as a Faustian bargain, but it works. A performance this perfect and an idea this brilliant receives the execution to match, making sitting down to the movie virtually a time machine. The look, the feel, the detailed production design (by Otello Stolfo, Aunty Donna's Coffee Cafe) and costuming (Steph Hooke, The Wheel), the era-specific cinematography (Matthew Temple, Gold Diggers) and editing (by the Cairnes siblings themselves) choices, the commitment to practical effects when the spookfest kicks in after a tense and patient build up: they all ensure that Late Night with the Devil plays like it truly has been newly discovered in a pile of forgotten tapes from decades and decades back. As it conjures up that sensation, this is Cairnes' best film yet, and a delight of a wild ride to watch in one of two ways: in a packed cinema where everyone reacts to its contents like they're in the studio with Delroy; and at home on the couch, glued to the tube like Night Owls with Jack Delroy devotees. Whichever suits, no one is switching off.
For much of the six years that a new Hayao Miyazaki movie has been on the way, little was known except that the legendary Japanese animator was breaking his retirement after 2013's The Wind Rises. But there was a tentative title: How Do You Live?. While that isn't the name that the film's English-language release sports, both the moniker — which remains in Japan — and the nebulousness otherwise help sum up the gorgeous and staggering The Boy and the Heron. They also apply to the Studio Ghibli's co-founder's filmography overall. When a director and screenwriter escapes into imaginative realms as much as Miyazaki does, thrusting young characters still defining who they are away from everything they know into strange and surreal worlds, they ask how people exist, weather the chaos and trauma that's whisked their way, and bounce between whatever normality they're lucky to cling to and life's relentless uncertainties and heartbreaks. Miyazaki has long pondered how to navigate the fact that so little while we breathe proves a constant, and gets The Boy and the Heron spirited away by the same train of thought while climbing a tower of deeply resonant feelings. How Do You Live? is also a 1937 book by Genzaburo Yoshino, which Miyazaki was given by his mother as a child, and also earns a mention in his 12th feature. The Boy and the Heron isn't an adaptation; rather, it's a musing on that query that's the product of a great artist looking back at his life and achievements, plus his losses. The official blurb uses the term "semi-autobiographical fantasy", an elegant way to describe a movie that feels so authentic, and so tied to its creator, even though he can't have charted his current protagonist's exact path. Parts of the story are drawn from his youth, but it wouldn't likely surprise any Studio Ghibli fan if Miyazaki had magically had his Chihiro, Mei and Satsuki, or Howl moment, somehow living an adventure from Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro or Howl's Moving Castle. What definitely won't astonish anyone is that grappling with conjuring up these rich worlds and processing reality is far from simple, even for someone of Miyazaki's indisputable creative genius. Brilliance fills The Boy and the Heron visually, with its lush and entrancing hand-drawn animation both earthy and dreamlike, and its colour palette an emotional mood ring. Being trapped between two states, domains, zones and orbits recurs here in as many ways as Miyazaki can layer in. This is a film with a raging wartime fire that haunts with its flames, plus a traditional countryside home rendered with such detail that viewers can be forgiven for thinking they could step right into it — and of a tunnel where floating bubbles called warawara wait to be born, pelicans lament the circle of life and masses of people-eating oversized parakeets demand to enforce order. It's also a movie where the titular bird looks as a grey heron should, then flips its beak back like a hoodie to show something less standard loitering. Said fish-eating wader and the eponymous boy frequently make a pair, but the former is also the latter's white rabbit: following the feathered figure does indeed make everything curiouser and curiouser. Voiced by The Days' Soma Santoki in the Japanese original and No Hard Feelings' Luca Padovan in the English-language dub that's needless for adults but helpful for young children, Mahito Maki starts The Boy and the Heron in Tokyo in 1943 during World War II. And so it is that 2023 delivers two Japanese icons, Studio Ghibli and Godzilla, each harking back eight decades to spin stories steeped in loss and pain that never stops whispering in hearts and minds. As heralded by air-raid sirens, bombings leave 11-year-old Mahito without his mother. For viewers, the tragedy sees Miyazaki nodding to his own mourning for Isao Takahata, his Ghibli co-founder, who died in 2018. Grave of the Fireflies, the studio's greatest film — amid fierce competition and many fellow masterpieces — is not only set during the same conflict but is mirrored by The Boy and the Heron's early moments. How do you live? By knowing what to grasp to, Takahata's old friend posits. The Boy and the Heron plays like a mix of reverie and memory, as it is, albeit with the second beaming through in emotional truths more than narrative facts. Miyazaki evacuated Tokyo in the war as a boy, however, as Mahito does when his father Shoichi (The Swarm's Takuya Kimura and Amsterdam's Christian Bale) has a new bride in his wife's younger sister Natsuko (Avalanche's Yoshino Kimura and The Creator's Gemma Chan). The change doesn't usher in a reprieve from the quiet and lonely kid's longing for his mum. Instead, it brings the talking heron (Don't Call It Mystery: The Movie's Masaki Suda and The Batman's Robert Pattinson) and everywhere that the creature leads. In a feature with more thoughtful touches than a seemingly endless flock of parrots has feathers, that Mahito's mother and aunt's family estate springs from a great uncle said to have gone mad from reading too many books is quite the inclusion. Stories defined that relative's world, then, which Miyazaki makes literal. After beginning patiently, Miyazaki also makes following Mahito a tumble down the rabbit hole for his audience. Always inventive as a storyteller and a visionary, the Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke and Ponyo helmer and scribe's return to cinema keeps besting its spectacle while giving Studio Ghibli some of its most breathtaking images (as set to a score by Joe Hisaishi, who's been doing the honours for the director for four decades, of course). There's no such thing as merely a pretty, dazzling or radiant picture for the great animation house, though. As meticulously controlled as its work is during its creation, with animators sketching in every single thing that's seen, Ghibli is unparalleled in understanding the expressive nature of its chosen medium. In conveying how war, growing up, death, love, fear, isolation, sadness, yearning, belonging, standing out, connecting and just life is a whirlwind of confusion, Miyazaki not only lets his imagination take flight, but his flair. The Boy and the Heron can be as trippy as his company's output gets — and as emotionally raw. Since 1984's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, no one has made movies like Miyazaki, other than Takahata. As The Boy and the Heron sails through light and darkness, hope and horror, serendipity and choice, and alienation and acceptance, it also bobs and weaves through many of its filmmaker's trademarks, gleaning that the elements that can unite people and features alike can manifest in as many different ways as an ocean has waves. The pull to retreat then return is the same, whether for a director saying that he's retiring several times (including in 1997 and 2001, after Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, respectively) or a lost child desperate to flee his hurt and bewilderment. An extraordinary return, and a personal one, The Boy and the Heron isn't expected to be Miyazaki's latest movie now that he's back behind the camera, but it's also the awe-inspiring piece of alchemy that it is because of that history.
Plenty of us are keen to focus more on our own wellness in 2024, but there are so many places to start. Are we forking out for yearly gym memberships? Is it the year of the monthly massage? Or have we already reverted back to our old habits, feeling the twang of burnout creep on in? Whatever your journey, it's hard to pass up the opportunity to join Hepburn Bathhouse and Spa's inaugural Wellness Weekend on Saturday, March 23–Sunday, March 24, which includes personally curated spa treatments, bush walks, healing workshops, yoga classes, sound healing, meditation and nutritious meals. Marye O'Brien, an Ayurvedic health practitioner, vedic counsellor and yoga teacher, will be leading the weekend, trying to help guests relax and reconnect with themselves. It sounds like a super-chill couple of days in Daylesford, wherein there'll also be a bit of time to also soak in the mineral waters that the spa and region are famous for. Wellness seekers can either go all in and get the two-day overnight package ($2899), staying at the spa's accommodation while joining both days of experiences, or simply get a day pass (from $349) to one full day of events. So, you can go totally luxe or keep the self-care weekend within a more reasonable budget.
US singer-songwriter Julie Byrne is returning to Australian shores for a run of east coast dates in 2024. The acclaimed folk musician is currently touring behind the release of her devastating new album The Greater Wings, a record which reckons with the passing of Byrne's longtime creative partner Eric Littmann. You can expect an intimate journey through the songs of The Greater Wings and Byrne's back catalogue at a pair of Victorian shows. Firstly, she'll be hitting Melbourne's Darebin Arts Centre on Wednesday, January 24 with support from Melbourne's own Lee Hannah. Then, on Friday, January 25, Byrne will be travelling out to Castlemaine for an intimate regional show at the Theatre Royal. [caption id="attachment_641500" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Jonathan Bouknight[/caption] If you want to inject some beautifully gentle, intensely personal music into your summer, this is your opportunity. Byrne will be bringing her kaleidoscopic folk to Brisbane for her first trip Down Under since her 2018 tour with Mount Eerie — a must-see for anyone whose Spotify Wrapped was filled with plenty of sad-girl indie. If you want to secure your spot, tickets for the Melbourne show are available via the Arts Centre's website for $30–50, while passes to the Castlemaine show are on sale for $56.65 via Oztix. Top image: Alexander Kellner.
Bouncing across the screen with charm, energy and an 80s sheen, Air says one name often: Michael Jordan. This film spins an origin story so closely linked to the NBA all-timer that the true tale simply wouldn't and couldn't have happened without him; however, it isn't actually the six-time championship-winning former Chicago Bulls player's own. Instead, Ben Affleck turns director again for the first time since 2016's Live By Night to recount how Jordan also became an icon in the footwear game. Think shoes, and everyone knows the word that usually follows this flick's title. Think Air Jordans, and Nike also springs to mind. Those sneakers are still being made almost four decades after first hitting stories — in fact, the brand is now notching up $5 billion in annual revenue, $150 million of which is going to its namesake — so Air answers the question no one knew they had until now: how did it initially happen? Sports endorsement deals mightn't sound like compelling cinema, but neither did scouting, signing and trading in the right baseball players before Moneyball demonstrated otherwise. Working with a script by screenwriting first-timer Alex Convery — who is also one of Air's co-producers — Affleck turns the quest to sign a then just-drafted Jordan by a struggling shoe company into infectiously entertaining viewing. The actor and filmmaker might be nearly as famous for Sad Affleck and Bored Affleck as he is for movies, but he knows how to please a crowd. Forget his facial expressions when he's unhappy talking about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice or being at the 2023 Grammys with Jennifer Lopez; as Argo demonstrated back in 2012 to the tune of three Academy Awards including Best Picture, behind-the-lens Affleck is a feel-good wiz with lively and irresistible true tales. Indeed, give the Good Will Hunting screenwriting Oscar-winner an IRL event filled with tension and twists, and populated by vivid characters, then get him to replay it smoothly and at a snappy pace (and with ample talk): that's now not just a one-off Affleck formula. He's been helming films since 2007's Gone Baby Gone. He's up to five now, and he's also starred in them all since 2010's The Town. Also featuring Matt Damon, Jason Bateman, Chris Messina, Viola Davis and Chris Tucker on-screen, Air is one of Affleck's own greats as a director. Even from just the trailer, it's easy to see that he's in Argo mode again — welcomely so, as the end product shows. Somehow, we're currently living through a golden time for genuinely engaging pictures about corporate manoeuvring that could've just been expensive ads in lesser hands; see also: recent streaming release Tetris, which also stacked the right blocks into place. Air similarly heads back to the 80s, to 1984, when Jordan was a 21-year-old college standout newly in the NBA and facing a life-changing decision. Damian Young (Prom Night Flex) plays the basketball GOAT, but this is a movie about the making of a legend — so the pivotal character gets all the flick's admiration and praise while bounding into the boardroom wheeling and dealing. Crucially, Air doesn't block out Jordan. Rather, it pays tribute to his talent even without staging on-court scenes, and to the shrewd wrangling and negotiating that his no-nonsense mother Deloris (Davis, The Woman King) did on his behalf. The ultimate outcome is clearly well-known, because if there was no agreement, there'd be no Air Jordans and therefore no movie (and the Beaverton, Oregon-based Nike would still be best known for jogging shoes). But the slam dunk this endorsement proved for giving athletes their financial dues when their talents make bank for sponsoring companies is no minor matter, and nor is it treated as such. Working for founder and CEO Phil Knight (Affleck, Deep Water) four years after Nike went public, in-house basketball expert Sonny Vaccaro (Damon, The Last Duel) really just has one job: find the footwear outfit the right NBA name to tie their fortunes to, help them seem cool among the basketball crowd and get customers a-buying. His colleague Rob Strasser (Bateman, Ozark) wants three players, thinking that the company is already priced out of the market on top draft picks — and unalluring due to their paltry share of the market compared to Adidas and Converse. The stakes are high, albeit not Argo-level life-or-death high. The word is that Nike's basketball division will be scrapped if the next endorsement deal doesn't deliver. So, Sonny makes a bold suggestion. Instead of a trio of ballers, he's all-in on Jordan, certain that he's the future of the game and about to be its biggest-ever star. The latter's manager David Falk (Messina, Call Jane) won't entertain the prospect, though, which is what leads Sonny to courting Michael's parents Deloris and James (Julius Tennon, also The Woman King, as well as Davis' real-life husband). Sonny is a gambler, detouring to Las Vegas when he's scoping out college up-and-comers. On Jordan, he bets big. And, although Affleck ticks all the boxes that helped Argo become the hit and award-winner it is, Air isn't afraid to take its own chances. There's zero risk in the movie's spot-on aesthetic, which cinematographer Robert Richardson (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) roves over lovingly. (Commercials from the era are also spliced in). There's also no flukes in the period-appropriate soundtrack, which is as obvious as they come yet also still works. But Air is as much about what it means to leave a legacy and be remembered as it is about the ins and outs of teaming up Nike and Jordan — and crafting the kicks that became must-wear apparel (Hello Tomorrow!'s Matthew Maher plays designer Peter Moore) — a choice that might've been a long shot or even a miss if it didn't sail meaningfully but still breezily through the hoop. Actually, don't forget Affleck's facial expressions after all — he's having a blast on-screen as the grape-coloured Porsche-driving Knight, especially in his scenes with Damon. It's been more than a quarter-century since Good Will Hunting, that script collaboration and them apples, plus more than three decades since they were both in School Ties before that, and they remain a dynamic duo to watch simply bicker and banter. Including Tucker (Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk) as fellow Nike employee Howard White and Marlon Wayans (Respect) as George Raveling, a 1984 Olympics assistant coach when Jordan was first on the US team, Air's cast is a dream, but Davis unsurprisingly gives the swishest of performances. This is always a film about showing the money to the greatest to ever do it rather than just using him as a corporate asset, too, and in a movie that earns its audience's cheers, she's the face of that important battle.
Float on, festival fans: come April, Australia's newest excuse to see a heap of bands in one spot will make its way along the country's east coast. That touring event: the just-announced Daydream, which joins the country's ever-growing roster of excuses to see and support live music. Daydream is hitting the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne on Saturday, April 22 with quite the roster of indie-rock talent — headlined by Modest Mouse three decades after the Washington-born group first got together. Don't listen to the title of the band's acclaimed 2004 album, though — this is good news for people who love good news, not bad. Joining Modest Mouse on the bill are Britain's Slowdive, who initially formed in 1989, the reformed in 2017, as well as Australian favourites Tropical F*ck Storm. The lineup varies slightly per city, with Beach Fossils and Cloud Nothings also taking to the stage at all stops, plus Majak Door in Melbourne. [caption id="attachment_817946" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Somefx[/caption] Top image: Modest Mouse by Matthewvetter via Wikimedia Commons.
Being careful what you wish for sits at the heart of most superhero movies. As advice for Spider-Man, Stan Lee even penned an oft-quoted adage about that very notion. Shazam! Fury of the Gods' caped crusaders all know that using their super skills wisely is a duty — yes, with great power comes great responsibility — and they're aware that doing just that comes with struggles. They aren't great at unleashing their magical talents, however, earning the nickname "the Philadelphia Fiascos". But the folks truly realising they should've been more cautious with their dreams are this Shazam! sequel's viewers. Another riff on Big, The Goonies, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Ghostbusters in DC Extended Universe packaging like its 2019 predecessor sounds a heap better than the forgettable superheroes-versus-gods fare that's eventuated — a movie that isn't that fussed with the powers it has and sports zero responsibility for barely managing to be average. Shazam! Fury of the Gods hasn't completely moved on from nodding to beloved 80s flicks, though, or from referencing other films in general. Early on, it gives 'Holding Out for a Hero', which was originally recorded for the OG Footloose, a perfunctory spin. And, where the first Shazam! instalment was earnest and enthusiastic around all those winks and all that pilfering, this second effort uses E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial's Reese's Pieces product placement as a guide for shoehorning in a Skittles commercial. When it isn't having someone yell "taste the rainbow", it also likes name-dropping titles owned by Warner Bros, which owns DC Studios — or movies connected to its on- and off-screen players. So, in a picture that's about kids and teens transforming into spandex-wearing saviours when they say "shazam!", then fighting the mythical Daughters of Atlas, audiences are subjected to clunky, self-conscious Game of Thrones shoutouts and Fast and Furious gags (a dragon sparks the former, and star Helen Mirren and co-screenwriter Chris Morgan's experience with Vin Diesel's high-octane saga revs up the latter). Speaking of F&F, Shazam! Fury of the Gods also goes all-in on family — but Billy Batson (Asher Angel, High School Musical: The Musical — The Series) and his pals are too young to knock back Coronas. Also, Shazam! Fury of the Gods isn't much concerned with Billy in his normal guise, giving his Shazam self (Zachary Levi, Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood) the bulk of the character's screentime. The time for origin stories has been and gone here, but largely ditching Angel robs this franchise-within-a-franchise of one of its main points of difference in the DCEU. None of the series' other flicks are about awkward adolescents learning to grapple with power, and understanding that their wildest dreams aren't as easy as they'd always hoped. Shazam! Fury of the Gods still manages to hit some of those notes thanks to a bigger focus on Billy's best friend and fellow foster kid Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer, We Are Who We Are), a person with disability, but sidelining the teenager who turns into Shazam is clumsy and noticeable. Similarly plain as day from scene one: that Shazam! Fury of the Gods got as lucky as any superhero movie can with its new cast members. The film opens at the Acropolis Museum in Greece, where two of Atlas' offspring are determined to get back the Wizard's (Djimon Hounsou, Black Adam) broken staff and reclaim their dad's magic — and those two daughters, Hespera and Kalypso, come in the form of Mirren (1923) and Lucy Liu (Strange World). Despite splashing around the film's fondness for dim lighting and dull CGI early, this introductory sequence lets its big-name talents make more of an imprint standing around in their costumes and looking formidable than much that follows. Indeed, whenever Mirren and Liu are on-screen, and West Side Story's Rachel Zegler as well, Shazam! Fury of the Gods makes a case for pushing aside not just Billy, but Shazam and everyone else. This is still a Shazam! movie, of course, and not solely a vehicle for Mirren, Liu and Zegler to play goddesses and have fun. So, returning director David F Sandberg (Lights Out, Annabelle: Creation) and screenwriters Morgan (Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw) and Henry Gayden (Earth to Echo) have motions to go through. Cue Billy aka Shazam, Freddy aka Captain Everypower (Adam Brody, Fleishman Is in Trouble), and their foster siblings Eugene (Fresh Off the Boat's Ian Chen, then 13 Reasons Why's Ross Butler as a superhero), Pedro (Snowfall's Jovan Armand and From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series' DJ Cotrona), Darla (This Is Us' Faithe Herman and Harlem's Meagan Good) and Mary (Fall's Grace Caroline Currey as both versions of the character) trying to save Philly. And, in the process, cue their efforts to work out how to be careful with their fantastical abilities. Amid the bland jokes, The Avengers get a callout. Rather than being cheeky or funny, that quip among many flat quips acts as a glaring reminder that caped-crusader team-ups are oh-so familiar. Marvel's and DC's superhero franchises both include several, with Shazam! Fury of the Gods hardly distinguishing itself from any apart from its magic utterances. The pixel-frenzy battle scenes definitely don't dazzle, whether or not they involve Skittles. That said, some might've if the monster menagerie conjured up by Hespera and Kalypso had boasted a Ray Harryhausen-style approach. Yes, there's a lot of woulda, coulda, shoulda about the Shazam! films' second outing, which might be its last depending on what new DC Studios heads James Gunn (the director of The Suicide Squad) and Peter Safran (a producer on the same flick, and on this, the first Shazam! and Aquaman) summon up. New head honchos, new era: that's where the DCEU currently stands, with Gunn and Safran taking up their jobs in late 2022. Changes have sprung swiftly, including badging what'll come after 2023's The Flash, Blue Beetle and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom as just the DC Universe. Henry Cavill has been scrapped as Superman, but the Man of Steel will get a new flick helmed by Gunn. Also, more Black Adam is off the cards. The Batman will score a sequel, but there'll also be a Batman who isn't played by Robert Pattinson (and not just because The Flash co-stars Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton). It's little wonder then that Shazam! Fury of the Gods doesn't just feel routine — rarely has a big-budget franchise entry felt like it matters less. At least it gave us Mirren, Liu and Zegler, a trio that everyone should wish for, livening up a by-the-numbers affair.
If you're partial to stuffed cannoli, or some gnocchi of the ricotta variety — we've got the festival for you. That's Amore Cheese Ricotta Festival is returning at the end of March, bringing ricotta-filled delights back to Thomastown. For one day, from 10am–4pm on Sunday, March 26, the Thomastown spot is serving up a menu of gnocchi sorrentina, porchetta rolls, fresh cannoli, antipasto and other cheesy delights. Plus, there'll also be a range of local produce available for you to take home. Live music including Italo disco tunes courtesy of DJ Stefano Marciano will feature throughout the day, and there'll be a selection of wine, beers and cocktails for the adults. All guests receive a hot serving of ricotta calda with a $10 entry ticket, but kids under 12 can enter for free.
The City of Darebin is set to be transformed into a playground of creativity and performance, with multi-arts festival FUSE kicking off its next autumn instalment. Descending on streets, parks, venues and galleries across the inner-north region from Saturday, March 11–Sunday, March 26, it will once again serve up a sparkling program of music, art and more. Helping get the fest going on Sunday, March 12 at Edwardes Lake Park is Out of the Park Picnic — a free, creatively-charged celebration of culture hosted by Queen Acknowledgements, aka Natarsha Bamblett. You'll catch tunes by Emma Donovan, Dorsal Fins and DJ Jumps, and can even join in an interactive performance by African Star Dance. [caption id="attachment_892098" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Dorsal Fins, by Alexander Gow[/caption] Specially commissioned works will feature throughout the duration of the festival — including Delia Poon's photography exhibition Exquisite Bias, which explores locals' takes on the idea of cultural identity, and an imagination-fuelled interactive installation dubbed THINGAMABOBS. Two podcasts — Darker and The Future Leaders — will debut as part of FUSE, while on Sunday, March 19, Preston City Hall plays host to a Meet the Makers showcase, complete with food stalls, wine tastings and live tunes. The fun starts to wrap up on Saturday, March 25 with a huge closing fiesta at Northcote Theatre, featuring The Last Dance by arts organisation All the Queens Men. Expect a high-energy celebration of LGBTQIA+ folk and their allies, with a disco-fuelled soundtrack delivered by acts like Wendy Stapleton, Miss Katalyna, 2joocee and Nefertiti LaNegra. [caption id="attachment_892097" align="alignnone" width="1920"] The Last Dance[/caption]
Until Sunday, October 1, a trip to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image means exploring a stunning world-premiere exhibition dedicated to femininity across screen history. The Federation Square's Goddess: Power, Glamour, Rebellion is splashing affection for women in cinema and television across its walls and halls in a big way — via more than 150 original costumes, objects, artworks, props and sketches, all championing oh-so-many female-identifying talents and their impact. That's the spectacular showcase's daily setup; however, three times over its run, it's also welcoming in visitors when evening falls. Fancy spending a night at the film and TV museum revelling in everyone from Pam Grier and Margot Robbie to Michelle Yeoh and Zendaya? That's where Goddess Nights comes in on select Thursdays. Locked in for May 25, July 27 and September 28, this events program pairs after-hours access to the exhibition with food, drinks, and femme-focused music and performances. On the bill: DJ JNETT, CD, POOKIE and Ayebatonye to get the shindigs started; then DJ Kalyani, Komang and DJ Mothafunk come winter; and also Claddy, DJ Brown Suga Princess, GLO and C.FRIM B2B Mirasai when spring hits. Each party kicks off at 7pm, with the tunes echoing until 1am — and a curated range of cuisine and booze is being put together just for each evening. 3D motion artist Mikaela Stafford is also taking care of the events' lighting and visuals, so expect a festive mood. Images: Phoebe Powell.
Prince Dining Room's Executive Chef Daniel Cooper is set to host a dining series that will see guest chefs collaborating with the kitchen to serve up exclusive, one-night-only menus. The Mix program kicks off with Jake Nicolson, Executive Chef at Brisbane's Ghanem Group, on Thursday, May 25. Nicolson's past experience boasts stints at The Lake House in Daylesford and Circa — the past iteration of Prince Dining Room. Nicolson and Cooper will serve up a refined, modern Australian five-course menu that pays homage to Nicolson's time at Circa. The set menu runs to the likes of spanner crab tartlet with pine, pollen, Gippsland dairy cream and corn custard Caivar eclair. Guests will find plates of ora king salmon, served with salmon roe buttermilk, and wood-roasted calamari with 'ndjua butter. Wagyu rib fillet is served with smoked bone marrow and flowering garlic, while potato galette is paired with gruyere and chives. Dessert is a white coconut and mango lamington, served alongside black sesame ice-cream. Each course is paired with matching wines, and the $220 ticket price includes the five-course set menu with paired beverages. Images: supplied.
David Attenborough's nature documentaries are acclaimed and beloved viewing, including when they're recreating dinosaurs. Family-friendly fare adores cute critters, especially if they're talking as in The Lion King and Paddington movies. The horror genre also loves pushing animals to the front, with The Birds and Jaws among its unsettling masterpieces. Earth's creatures great and small are all around us on-screen, and also off — but in EO, a donkey drama by Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski (11 Minutes), humanity barely cares. The people in this Oscar-nominated mule musing might watch movies about pets and beasts. They may have actively shared parts of their own lives existence the animal kingdom; some, albeit only a rare few, do attempt exactly that with this flick's grey-haired, white-spotted, wide-eyed namesake. But one of the tragedies at the heart of this astonishing adventure is also just a plain fact of life on this pale blue dot while homo sapiens reign supreme: that animals are everywhere all the time but hardly anyone notices. EO notices. Making his first film in seven years, and co-writing with his wife and producer Ewa Piaskowska (Essential Killing), Skolimowski demands that his audience pays attention. This is both an episodic slice-of-life portrait of EO the donkey's days and a glimpse of the world from his perspective — sometimes, the glowing and gorgeous cinematography by Michal Dymek (Wolf) takes in the Sardinian creature in all his braying, trotting, carrot-eating glory; sometimes, it takes on 'donkey vision', which is just as mesmerising to look at. Skolimowski gets inspiration from Robert Bresson's 1966 feature Au Hasard Balthazar, too, a movie that also follows the life of a hoofed, long-eared mammal. Like that French great, EO sees hardship much too often for its titular creature; however, even at its most heartbreaking, it also spies an innate, immutable circle of life. It's amid strobing red lights that EO makes his debut, and in the embrace and safekeeping of the doting Kasandra (Sandra Drzymalska, Mental) at a travelling Polish circus. They perform, but they're also the best of friends beyond the big top, a bond that she doesn't ever want to end. Alas, swiftly after EO starts, protests engulf the donkey's home, with animal-rights campaigners striking and the troupe's management going bankrupt. Sold off with the other critters, the mule will meet his gentle and kind human pal again, but the movie's tale from here has almost as many strands as EO's own tail — including as he traverses the Polish and Italian countryside, complete with stints at a horse stable, a farm, wandering free, avoiding hunters, maybe bringing good luck to a local football team, definitely enraging their opposition, being accompanied by a young priest and more. After EO's liberation, the change of scenery doesn't initially seem too troubling or taxing. His next abode gets a fancy opening ceremony with dignitaries cutting ribbons, and gifts him a bountiful carrot necklace — the literal kind. But when he's startled by horses and knocks over a display stacked with trophies, he's moved on. There, he's offered just one chunky vegetable and appears despondent. Next comes a reunion, an opportune escape, the forest by night, feuding soccer clubs and awful violence, plus an animal hospital, a fur factory, the meat trade, a lonely truck driver (Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, Magnesium), that man of the cloth (Lorenzo Zurzolo, Under the Amalfi Sun) and a countess (Isabelle Huppert, Mrs Harris Goes to Paris) in a red dress in an Italian mansion. EO is also seen by spiders, frogs, owls, foxes and a Black Mirror-style robot dog. He canters across landscape sometimes left in its natural state, and sometimes blighted by humanity's footprint. And, while moseying through a town, he stops to neigh at fish in an aquarium. As with everything in EO's frames, that moment of communion between mule and goldfish is visually and emotionally striking. It also says oh-so much about Skolimowski's determination to let his eponymous critter just be an animal — more than that, about his success at achieving that feat, and also why. Viewers can read into EO's staring towards the glassed-in fish, and his braying, as an exchange between different types of creatures controlled by humans. The audience can also take it as a comment on the cages that people place around the animal kingdom, and how rare it is for them to be free of such influence. Or, it can be observed as simply a donkey reacting randomly because that's what a donkey, and all life, often does. The broader movie itself operates in the same fashion. It serves up ebbs and flows where one thing happens, then another, then more still, while so clearly and movingly knowing that that's just how being alive goes, and also always witnessing how EO's story takes the path it does because of humanity's dominance over the natural world. EO might boast the incomparable Huppert among its cast, but its stars to whinny about are Tako, Hola, Marietta, Ettore, Rocco and Mela. Skolimowski thanked them each by name when the movie shared the 2022 Cannes Film Festival's Jury Prize — coming in only behind Palme d'Or-winner Triangle of Sadness, then Grand Prix-recipients Close and Stars at Noon — and the care and notice that the veteran Le Départ, Deep End and The Shout filmmaker gave on the Croisette to the six donkeys who play EO is mirrored on-screen. This wouldn't and couldn't be so emotive, immersive and absorbing a film as it is if it didn't truly bask in its mules' presence with pure affection. For the feature's 87 minutes, this is their world, and EO's. For that running time, viewers see EO's donkey protagonist as animals are so scarcely seen: as everything, no matter the good and bad turns that come their way, and the life-and-death course they chart as we all do; as heroes in their own story, too. As a piece of contemplation about the relationship between humans and life around us, EO also brings documentary Gunda to mind. It's just as revelatory and wrenching as that dialogue-free, black-and-white farmyard doco — but, as set to an ever-changing, sometimes-pulsating score by Paweł Mykietyn (a veteran of Skolimowski's 11 Minutes and Essential Killing), it firmly makes the most of its sounds and colours. Everything clashes and crashes around EO, hues, textures, noises, tunes, camera angles and vantage points among them. In one especially stunning scene with an entrancing beat, the donkey scampers through and observes the woodland, green lasers from gunsights beaming bright in the dark of night against the leafiness and its inhabitants. The effect is otherworldly, as is the entirety of this haunting and touching film as it peers at life so often ignored, undervalued and exploited on this very earth.
Does your version of celebrating whichever occasion takes your fancy involve eating more of the things you love? Do pork belly, chicken schnitzels, chicken wings and German sausages fall into that category? If so, The Bavarian has an all-you-can-eat special that'll tempt your tastebuds — because a bottomless feast is on the menu. On Wednesdays, the German-themed chain is serving up all-you-can-eat meat platters. They come stacked with all of the aforementioned meats — and yes, the pork belly includes crackling — plus sauerkraut and gravy as sides. And, once you've finished your board, you'll get a whole new serving. On All-You-Can-Meat Wednesdays, there's no time limit to your eating, so you can pace yourself — and it'll cost you $35 per person. There is a two-person minimum, however, so you'll need to take at least one meat-loving pal along with you. Feel like you can fit in fries, mash and salad as well? That'll cost you an extra $5 for each one, or you can get all three for $10. You'll find The Bavarian at Knox and Highpoint. And if you want to pair all that meat with German brews — which is understandable — you'll pay extra for the drinks.
It's a great time to be a fan of movies and musicals, and of films that make the all-singing, all-dancing leap to the stage in particular. Think of a beloved flick and odds are that someone has turned it into a theatre production — including Cruel Intentions, Moulin Rouge!, Back to the Future, Frozen, 9 to 5, The Wedding Singer, Bring It On, Shrek and more. We could keep naming movies that've earned the musical treatment — Muriel's Wedding, An American in Paris and Hairspray, plus Round the Twist in the future, for instance — but we all know that it's a long list. Here's another one: Freaky Friday, the body-swap story that started out as a novel, has been brought to cinema screens multiple times, and is now heading to Melbourne as a musical in September. Whether you loved the 1972 book by Mary Rodgers as a kid, or you've watched and rewatched 2003's Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis-starring flick too many times — or the 1976 Jodie Foster-starring first movie adaptation, and the 1995 remake with Gaby Hoffman as well — you'll want to make a date to visit Chapel Off Chapel from Thursday, September 8–Sunday, September 18. That's when newly launched musical theatre company Theatrical is putting on the Victorian premiere of Freaky Friday in its musical form, based on the Disney stage version that first debuted in the US in 2016. Fans will already know the story. Here, a teenager and her mother get a bigger taste of each other's lives than they ever imagined possible when they find themselves not only in each other's shoes, literally, but bodies as well. Indeed, even if you've only seen the horror spin, Freaky, from a couple of years back, you'll also know the main two things: body swapping, and chaos afterwards. In this stage version, the tale has been updated to today, as set in Chicago — and this time the teen finding out what it's like to be her mum is called Ellie, not Annabel (in the book and first two movies) or Anna (in the Lohan-Curtis version). In its musical form, Freaky Friday features music and lyrics by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, aka the Pulitzer Prize-winning composers of If/THEN and Next to Normal. And, for its Melbourne run, Lyla Digrazia plays Ellie and Stephanie Powell plays Katherine, her mother.
Across four days in September, Melbourne's Kino Cinema will dedicate its screens to ten films from one country: Ireland. The reason? The return of the Irish Film Festival as an in-person event, after not one but two years of hosting sessions online — and, for its big cinematic return between Thursday, September 1–Sunday, September 4, it has quite the drawcard on its lineup. Box office Gaelic-language smash The Quiet Girl leads this year's program, after it initially takes to the city's big screens at the Melbourne International Film Festival — so if you miss it then, this is your next chance to see it. The tender 80s-set drama, about a soft-spoken nine-year-old (newcomer Catherine Clinch) who is sent to stay with relatives for the summer, has been breaking box office records for Irish-language movies in Ireland and in the UK. It was also just picked as the country's submission in the Best International Feature category at next year's Oscars, and hits IFF before its general Australian release. The rest of the festival's selection isn't short on highlights either, including opening-night documentary Steps Of Freedom, about Irish dance and its worldwide popularity — plus Let the Wrong One In, a vampire comedy that fittingly boasts Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Anthony Head among the cast. Or, there's Love Yourself Today, which focuses on Damien Dempsey's music; You Are Not My Mother, about a mother's disappearance from a North Dublin housing estate; and Redemption Of A Rogue, a black comedy about salvation. And, 1992 classic Into the West is also on the bill, with the magical-realist fantasy about a mysterious white stallion featuring a cast that includes Gabriel Byrne (Hereditary) and Brendan Gleeson (The Tragedy of Macbeth). IFF will also keep an online component to this year's fest, screening digitally from Friday, September 30–Sunday, October 16.
What do you get when you blend immersive performance with compelling storytelling and a diverse menu of home-cooked dishes? Well, you can taste the final product yourself, when Double Delicious hits the stage at Bunjil Place this month. Showing Friday, May 20–Saturday, May 21, Contemporary Asian Australian Performance's smash-hit production sees five performers share their stories via a unique mix of theatre and cooking. They'll each take you on a deep dive into their past and culture while whipping up a signature dish that's particularly meaningful to their personal identity. And yes, you'll get to taste their culinary creations, too. Among the lineup is Valerie Berry, who shares her defining childhood experience of moving from Manila to outback South Australia; and writer and media personality Benjamin Law, who delivers a humorous look at growing up on the Sunshine Coast as the son of immigrant parents. Tickets to Double Delicious come in at $70, which includes tastings of all five performers' dishes. [caption id="attachment_853904" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Heather Jeong, by Clare Hawley[/caption] Images: Clare Hawley
If you're the kind of beer lover who feels like they've tried every brew ever — or you've made it your mission to achieve that yeasty goal — then you're probably a big fan of the Great Australasian Beer Spectapular. For more than a decade now, since it started off as a Melbourne-only celebration of ales, lagers, ciders and more, the event has been serving up weird, wild, wonderful and inventive varieties, many of which are made exclusively for the booze-sipping shindig. In 2022, that's set to be the case once more, with the beer fest returning for a tour of Australia's east coast capitals in May. GABS is considered to be one of the best craft beer and cider festivals in the Asia Pacific region for good reason, and this year it has at least 120 of them, because that's how many brews will be on offer. Prepare to knock back beers inspired by breakfast foods, savoury snacks, desserts, cocktails and more when the event hits the Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne, over the weekend of Friday, May 27–Sunday, May 29. Some of the foods and drinks that this year's GABS brews are taking their cues from: peanut butter, coffee, earl grey tea, chicken salt, pizza, fairy floss, bubblegum and sour gummi bears. Confirmed highlights include Brouhaha's Baked and Wasted, a sour which uses wasted baked goods; Capital Brewing Co's experimental Smooches, which pairs cocao nibs with a strawberry kick; Mismatch Brewing Co's We Love NY Cheesecake stout, in case you've ever wondered what cheesecake in a glass tastes like; and The Catchment Brewing Co's Ra Ra Raspoutine, another stout that, yes, is brewed from chips, cheese and gravy. The event surveys both Australian and New Zealand breweries, with more than 70 set to be pouring their wares in Melbourne. As well as the aforementioned outfits, this year they'll also include Balter, Range, Otherside, Black Hops, Ballistic, Your Mates, Mountain Culture, One Drop and Little Creatures, as well as Colonial, Mountain Goat and Bentspoke — and NZ's Garage Project and Panhead Custom Ale. Also on the bill: other types of tipples, including non-alcoholic beers, seltzers, whiskey, gin, cocktails and wines (including by 19 Crimes Snoop Dog Cali Red). GABS is known for dishing up a hefty lineup of activities to accompanying all that sipping, too, which'll span a silent disco, roaming bands, circus and sideshow performers, games and panels with industry leaders in 2022, as well as local food trucks and vendors to line your stomach.
Talented pooches have been barking their way to big screen stardom since the birth of the medium, and Cannes Film Festival even gives out awards for ace pupper performances. In Australia for a few years now, we also celebrate the intersection of canines and cinema — via our very own dog-themed movie showcase. At the Top Dog Film Festival, doggos and puppers cement their status as humanity's favourite film stars in a touring program of pooch-centric shorts. For more than two hours, dogs will leap across screens in a curated selection of heartwarming flicks about humanity's best friend. Over the last few years, the lineup has included films about dog-powered sports, dogs in space, dogs hiking through the desert, senior dogs and more. The festival hits Melbourne's Astor Theatre on Sunday, July 31 as part of its 2022 run, and rushing after tickets the way your best four-legged friend rushes after a frisbee is recommended. Given how much we all love watching dog videos online, not to mention attending pupper-centric shindigs in general, this event is certain to be popular. You'd be barking mad to miss it, obviously.
This month, students from near and far are invited to celebrate the contribution international students make to the city at the inaugural Melbourne International Student Week. The week-long festival kicks off with a bumper opening weekend on May 7 and 8 at Federation Square, featuring an array of food, live entertainment and giveaways. The festival officially begins with a Welcome to Country and dance showcase by the Djirri Djirri dance group — Wurundjeri's only female dance company — while the two-day program at Fed Square also includes stand-up comedy by Annie Louey and He Huang, DJ sets, an international student photo exhibition and interactive salsa and K-pop dance workshops. You'll be able to stay fuelled with eats from a spread of international food trucks, free coffee and a dumpling giveaway — there'll be 1000 serves up for grabs — taking place on Saturday. Speaking of giveaways, there will also be 800 free hoodies given out at random times all weekend long. The weekend will be the start of a stacked week of events for Melbourne's international students, who can join wildlife sanctuary tours, museum tours and career coaching workshops and more. The best part? All events are free. Melbourne International Student Week kicks off on Saturday, May 7 with a two-day event at Federation Square. For more details and to see the full lineup, head to the website.
Twenty-six years ago, "do you like scary movies?" stopped being just an ordinary question. Posed by a wrong-number caller who happened to be a ghostface-masked killer with a fondness for kitchen knives, it was the snappiest and savviest line in one of the 90s' biggest horror films — a feature filled with snappy and savvy lines, too — and it's now one of cinema's iconic pieces of dialogue. It also perfectly summarised Scream's whole reason for being. The franchise-starting slasher flick didn't just like scary movies, though. It was one, plus a winking, nudging comedy, and it gleefully worshipped at the altar of all horror films that came before it. Wes Craven helmed plenty of those frightening features prior to Scream, so the A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Hills Have Eyes director was well-equipped to splash around love for the genre like his villain splashed around entrails — and to eagerly and happily satirise all of horror's well-known tropes in the stab-happy process. If you've seen the 1996 film or its three sequels till now, you've bathed in all that scary movie affection. You might've gleaned the horror basics from their rules and references; the OG film even had its characters watch Halloween and borrows the 70s classic's stellar score for key scenes. Geeking out over spooky cinema is the franchise's main personality trait, to the point that it has its own saga-within-a-saga, aka the Stab movies, and its fifth entry — also just called Scream — wouldn't dream of making that over. The famous question gets asked, obviously. Debates rage about the genre, enough other horror films are name-checked to fill a weekend-long movie marathon, cliches get skewered and dissected, and there's a Psycho-style shower scene. 'Elevated' horror standouts The Babadook, It Follows, The Witch and Hereditary earn a shoutout as well, but Scream itself just might be an elevator horror flick. It isn't set in one, but it crams in so much scary movie love that it always feels like it's stopping every few moments to let its nods and nerding-out disembark. In other words, you'd really best answer Scream's go-to query with the heartiest yes possible, and also like watching people keep nattering about all things horror. Taking over from Craven, who also directed 1997's Scream 2, 2000's Scream 3 and 2011's Scream 4 but died in 2015, Ready or Not's Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett task their next generation of slasher fodder with showing their devotion with all the subtlety of a masked murderer who can't stop taunting their prey. It's playful, irreverent, loving and meta but also overdone, even as the film has something savage to say about internet-era fandom and its non-stop demands (especially with big, popular and ongoing franchises like this). A little too often, the new Scream resembles chatting to that one person at a party who won't stop going on about the sole thing they adore, even if you love it with equal passion. One of those cinephile titbits that gets mentioned over and over: that the film considers itself a requel, aka a flick that keeps the same context as its predecessors — same timeline, same world and some legacy characters, too — but introduces fresh faces to give the original a remake. So it is that this Scream dispatches Ghostface upon today's Woodsboro high schoolers, because the fictional spot is up there with Sunnydale and Twin Peaks on the list of places that are flat-out hellish for teens. Scream 4 did the same, but the first new attack by the saga's killer is designed to lure home someone who's left town. Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera, In the Heights) hightailed it the moment she was old enough, fleeing a family secret, but is beckoned back when her sister Tara (Jenna Ortega, You) receives the feature's opening "do you like scary movies?" call. Soon, bodies are piling up, Ghostface gives Woodsboro that grim sense of deja vu again, and Tara's friends — including the horror film-obsessed Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown, Yellowjackets), her twin Chad (Mason Gooding, Love, Victor), his girlfriend Liv (Sonia Ammar, Jappeloup), and other pals Wes (Dylan Minnette, 13 Reasons Why) and Amber (Mikey Madison, Better Things) — are trying to both survive while basically cycling through the OG feature again, complete with a crucial location, and sleuth out the culprit using their scary movie knowledge. Everyone's a suspect, including Sam herself and her out-of-towner boyfriend Richie (Jack Quaid, The Boys), and also the begrudging resident expert on this exact situation: ex-sheriff Dewey Riley (David Arquette, Spree). The latter is the reason that morning show host Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox, Cougar Town) and initial Ghostface target Sidney Prescott (Skyscraper) make the trip back to Woodsboro again as well. Working with a script by Murder Mystery's James Vanderbilt and Ready or Not's Guy Busick, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are in familiar territory several times over — their ace last release was all about attempting to outwit disturbed murderers, too — and they're well-aware that their audience knows it. "I've seen this movie before," Sidney slyly comments in one pivotal scene, which is this Scream's most telling moment. Just like the thin line between intriguing and unhinged in all those gravelly-voiced phone chats, the line between fun and repetitive is oh-so-slight here. Because this kind of sequel is currently Hollywood's favourite thing, Scream splits the difference between Ghostbusters: Afterlife and The Matrix Resurrections; it's never anywhere near as dull and grating as the first, but it's not as smart and ambitious as the second, either. It is gloriously gory, though. Blood, like horror movie references, flows thick and fast. Indeed, Scream 2022 is at its best when it's doing two things: staging those teased-out kills with stylish flair, which is where the flick's self-referential obsession gets its finest time to shine, and taking another slice at its three franchise mainstays' stories. Sidney and co are supporting players this time, as per requel rules, but they're the callbacks that are worth the price of admission over the Stab chatter and obligatory 'Red Right Hand' needle-drop. The new cast members put in a fair effort — Barrera and Savoy Brown especially; both have had a killer on-screen past 12 months anyway — but the bulk of the movie's first-timers always feel too disposable. Yes, this slasher sequel falls victim to unshakeable tropes far more than it successfully subverts them. It's still mostly entertaining enough, and the franchise had endured other average-at-best chapters (see: Scream 3 and Scream 4); however, looking self-satisfiedly backwards instead of leaping forwards, it's basically running up the stairs when it should be heading out the front door.
When Hollywood's biggest awards can run for 93 years and only give two female filmmakers its Best Director gong in that entire time so far, it's clear that gender diversity hasn't been big on the cinema industry's priorities for most of the last century. But for six years now, the Melbourne Women in Film Festival has been doing its part to celebrate women in film, as its name makes plain — and it's back for 2022 both in-person and online. The mixed format means that Melburnians can head along to ACMI from Thursday, February 10–Monday, February 14, while folks elsewhere — or those in Melbourne who can't make it physically — can watch along at home. On the bill, cinephiles will find a showcase of movies that champion female-guided on-screen comedy, a topic that'll also echo through the fest's conversations and skills-development programs. Screening highlights include short Groundhog Night, about a dad caring for his daughter with disability; 2018 Tropfest entry Paper Cut, which plays with gender experiences; and closing night's Love and Other Catastrophes, the 1996 indie classic starring Frances O'Connor and Radha Mitchell. Among the talks and workshops lineup, The Culture of Comedy will dive into using the genre to unite creatives and viewers from different backgrounds, while Creating Comedy Online will provide tips for women looking to make a digital splash by making viewers laugh.
Western Sydney could use a love letter right now, and that tribute arrives in Here Out West. The product of eight up-and-coming screenwriters from the area, it celebrates a place that has spent much of the past year garnering attention for a reason no one wanted: thanks to the tighter rules applied to the region during Sydney's four-month stretch of stay-at-home conditions in 2021, it was home to New South Wales' strictest lockdown of the pandemic to-date. Thankfully, COVID-19 isn't this movie's focus. Instead, as told in nine languages — Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, Kurdish, Tagalog, Turkish, Vietnamese, Spanish and English — and helmed by five female filmmakers, Here Out West dwells in everyday lives. It champions by seeing and recognising, and by trumpeting voices that have always been there but are infrequently given a microphone. Of course, as thoughtful and meaningful as Here Out West is — and as welcome a move it makes with sincere multicultural representation in Australia — it really shouldn't stand out as much as it does. There shouldn't have needed to be a concerted effort to champion western Sydney voices to make a film like this. It shouldn't grab attention as a rarity, either, and it shouldn't feel so timely because of the events of the last 12 months. Here Out West does all of these things because it's an outlier in Australia's homegrown filmic output, but it also clearly makes a case that's already apparent and inherent anyway: that presenting more than just the stereotypical image of Australia, and opting for a genuine picture of the country as it actually is instead, should always be the baseline and status quo. Opening shots of suburban houses and looping highways set the scene: viewers aren't journeying to an Aussie beach or the nation's parched outback expanse, aka two of the prevailing visions of this sunburnt, sea-girt continent on-screen. Rather, Here Out West unfurls its octet of intertwined vignettes in spaces far more ordinary — not to downplay the importance of surveying western Sydney, but to clearly note that these are its daily playgrounds. It's here that mothers have babies, neighbours look after the kids next door, grandmothers worry about their grandchildren, dads struggle to connect with their sons, and sport and food are among the ways that people come together. It's here that adults bicker among themselves over love, and with their parents about their futures. It's where lives begin and end, and where folks with dreams both big and modest also try to start anew. And yes, all of these scenarios are covered by the film's narrative. Initially, Here Out West spends time with Nancy (Geneviève Lemon, The Tourist), who takes care of her eight-year-old neighbour Amirah (debutant Mia-Lore Bayeh), but wasn't actually planning to help out today. She has a newborn granddaughter to meet — one that the authorities are planning to take away, so Nancy makes a drastic decision that'll ripple throughout the community across the movie's one-day timeframe. In the film's second segment, hospital carpark security guard Jorge (fellow first-timer Christian Ravello) is brought into the wider story, and also gets a snapshot chapter of his own. His instalment then intersects with friends Rashid (Rahel Romahn, Moon Rock for Monday), Dino (Thuso Lekwape, Book Week) and Robi (Arka Das, Babyteeth), who run through the streets arguing about Rashid's cousin. Next, their section links in with Ashmita (Leah Vandenberg, The Hunting) and her dying Bengali-speaking father back at the local hospital. Returning to specific spots comes with territory, because it comes with living anywhere; paths cross, people are drawn to the same busy and central locations, and some facilities — such as Here Out West's pivotal hospital — are always a hive of activity in any community. That truth continues to drive the film as it meets Kurdish refugees Keko (De Lovan Zandy) and Xoxe (Befrin Axtjärn Jackson), who are hoping to make a new beginning that still involves his penchant for music and her skills hand-weaving carpets, before jumping to Tuan (Khoi Trinh) and his brother Andy (Brandon Nguyen), who possess varying ideas about what it means to be Vietnamese Australian. Then comes a glimpse at nurse Roxanne's (Christine Milo, It's a Cult!) day as she works a double shift and misses her family in The Philippines. And, there's also Winnie (Gabrielle Chan, Hungry Ghosts) and Angel (Jing-Xuan Chan, Neighbours) as the mother and daughter close their Chinese restaurant for the last time. The common threads linking Here Out West's chapters are the ties that bind everyone: family, place and hope. But writers Nisrine Amine, Das (who acts as well as pens his section of the film), Bina Bhattacharya, Matias Bolla, Claire Cao, Dee Dogan, Vonne Patiag and Tien Tran find their own takes on the movie's common elements, sometimes by drawing from experience — and, unsurprisingly, the feature frequently feels personal. That sensation connects each of the picture's segments, too, with every section peering intimately at western Sydney residents, their lives and their emotions, and showing both the specific and the universal in the process. That isn't a revolutionary overall approach, and has long made so many stories strike a chord on pages, stages and screens, but the way that Here Out West uses such sparks of recognition is equally astute and moving. As directed by feature first-timers Fadia Abboud, Lucy Gaffy and Julie Kalceff, as well as the more seasoned Ana Kokkinos (Blessed) and Leah Purcell (The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson), Here Out West also charts a route that most anthologies do — because not every part matches the last or next. Each of its eight vignettes bring engaging people to the screen, and function as perceptively drawn character studies, but there's more to some than others. That's as fitting as the movie's naturalistically shot look, however, because that too reflects the reality that Here Out West so determinedly channels. Some tales are slight, others are immense and plenty sit in-between, but in this powerful, authentic, diversity-celebrating ode to western Sydney, they're all worth telling and sharing.
Describing a dance and a state of uncertainty alike, limbo is one of those always-intriguing words. Many terms boast multiple meanings, but this one skirts two ends of the spectrum — the party-fuelled joy of a parade of people trying to pass under a bar while bending over backwards, and the malaise of being stuck waiting and not knowing. Both require a degree of flexibility, though, to either complete physical feats or weather the fickleness of life (or, in limbo's religious usage, of being caught in an oblivion between heaven and hell). It's no wonder then that British writer/director Ben Sharrock chose the word for his second feature, following 2015's Pikadero. His Limbo lingers in a realm where men are made to contort themselves, biding one's time anticipating a decision is the status quo and feeling like you've been left in a void is inescapable. The fancy footsteps here are of the jumping-through-hoops kind, as Limbo ponders a revelatory question: what happens when refugees are sent to a Scottish island to await the results of their asylum applications? There's zero doubting how telling the movie's moniker is; for Syrian musician Omar (Amir El-Masry, Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker) and his fellow new arrivals to Scotland, there's little to do in this emptiness between the past and the future but wait, sit at the bus stop, check out the children's playground and loiter near the pay phone. That, and navigate the wide range of reactions from the locals, which veer from offensive to thoughtful. Everything about the situation demands that Omar and his companions make all the expected moves, but it also forces them to potter around in purgatory and stomach whatever is thrown at them to do so. In Omar's case, he's made the trip with an actual case — physically, that is, thanks to his prized possession. He's brought his grandfather's oud with him, which he rarely lets slip from his grasp, and so he feels its weight where he goes. It's a canny part of Limbo's script in two ways. Whatever they're fleeing in search of a better life, every refugee has a case to be welcomed into safer lands that they carry around with them, but Sharrock manifests the idea in a tangible sense. With Omar's musical dreams, which the beloved oud also represents, in limbo as well, the ever-present instrument additionally acts as a constant reminder of the sacrifices that asylum seekers make in leaving their homes, even when there's no other option, and the costs they pay when they're met with less-than-open arms, then left waiting for their new existence to begin. Just as the term limbo means so much, so does that oud — and so does the feature it's in. A film can be heartbreaking, tender, insightful and amusing all at once, and Limbo is indeed all of those things. It's both dreamlike and lived-in, too, a blend that suits its title and story — and also the mental and emotional state shared by Omar and his other asylum seekers as they eke out their hope and resilience day after unchanging day, all while roaming and roving around an island that may as well be another world. The Scottish landscape around them looks like it could grace a postcard, and Sharrock has cinematographer Nick Cooke (Make Up) box it into an almost-square frame to make it resemble vacation snaps. That choice of 1.33:1 aspect ratio also confines the movie's characters in another fashion, of course, offering a blatant visual flipside to the holiday-perfect splendour; being trapped anywhere is bleak, even if it appears picturesque. Omar has company in his misery: in the run-down house he's installed into, Afghani Farhad (Vikash Bhai, Hanna) is more optimistic, while Abedi (Kwabena Ansah, Enterprice) from Ghana and Wasef (Ola Orebiyi, Cherry) from Nigeria wait the wait with them. The biggest events in their routines come via talks by Helga (Sidse Babett Knudsen, The Translators) and Boris (Kenneth Collard, Fanny Lye Deliver'd), government officials, about appropriate behaviour and 'cultural awareness' in the fresh lives they haven't get been given permission to start. If hell is other people, as Jean-Paul Sartre coined, limbo is being told what to do by other people while lacking the means and opportunity to do it. A film can be both heavy and light simultaneously as well, which is another of Limbo's strengths, with every dose of biting truth counterbalanced by a wry streak. Sharrock sees both seriousness and levity in his narrative, his characters and their plights, and recognises the nightmarish and the beautiful in tandem. Obviously, the latter especially applies to the feature's aforementioned haunting cinematography, which lenses a place that keeps Omar pals physically in limbo with a probing eye, but it also ruminates on the small delights. Limbo is a film about people first and foremost, and also spies the solace they bring each other — and the catharsis they find when they need to, including when they're so far from home, not really by choice, and endeavour to find themselves a new one. In a movie that's witty and perceptive, affectionate and poignant, and unwavering and clear-eyed, the tonal seesaw that Sharrock rides and perfects is just that: perfection. Trauma, racism and punishment by bureaucracy sit beside friendship, Freddie Mercury obsessions and binge-watching Friends; yes, whether Ross and Rachel were on a break comes up. Limbo's casting is perfection also, because so much hangs upon El-Masry's ability to convey the whirlwind of emotions torturing Omar inside. He's trying to reconcile where he's stuck now with what he's left, and watching him fight that battle — in scenes where he's calling home to talk to his mother especially — epitomises the film at its most moving. That's the movie overall, too, lingering as it is between knowing what's right, best, smart and safe, and wanting what the heart wants when blighted by pain and dreariness. Limbo is a feature about coping with that dance, and it's something to willingly dwell on.
There are a few different ways you could celebrate the start of summer. But if you fancy ringing in the new season with a couple of glasses of something fruity, fizzy and free, then there's just one place for you to be. This Thursday, December 1, the good folk at Moon Dog are treating fans to the ultimate summer starter — free serves of its Fizzer alcoholic seltzer varieties. Roll into either the OG Abbotsford digs (17 Duke Street, Abbotsford) or Moon Dog World (32 Chifley Drive, Preston) on that first day of summer with a BYO vessel in tow, and you can have it filled for free with takeaway Fizzer poured fresh from the taps. You can bring along any old drinking vessel you fancy, be it a watering can, water bottle or heck, even a hollowed-out upside-down pineapple — but keep in mind they'll only fill it up to 1140 millimetres. You'll also want to make sure your container of choice is clean, and water-tight to avoid any nasty leaks. And, as a special treat for anyone with especially big ideas, there's a whole slab of Tropical Crush Fizzer up for grabs for the punter with the most creative vessel at each venue. BYO Cup Day kicks off at Moon Dog World from 12pm and at Moon Dog OG from 4pm.
A new day-long, picnic-style music fest will take over Hanging Rock on Sunday, November 27, with the clear focus of showcasing and highlighting First Nations artists and performers. And First & Forever's jam-packed lineup, hand-picked by Briggs (with a thank you to Paul Kelly), features everyone from Baker Boy, Jessica Mauboy and Thelma Plum, through to Christine Anu, Sycco, Alice Skye, Busby Marou, Ziggy Ramo and Barkaa. In fact, there are more than 20 acts on the bill, spanning a whole range of genres and showcasing big-name talent alongside emerging stars. King Stingray, Budjerah, Dan Sultan, Electric Fields, Emma Donovan...the list goes on and on. [caption id="attachment_862591" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Electric Fields, by Morgan Sette[/caption] The specific Hanging Rock venue has been named The Gathering Place for the event, acknowledging the people of the Dja Wurrung, Taungurung and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung who have long met there, and also the power of Country. What's more, First & Forever is paying tribute to the late Archie Roach by dubbing its sole stage the 'Uncle Archie Stage'. This contemporary celebration of Blak excellence in music and culture comes courtesy of Mushroom Group, the Victorian Government and Bad Apples Music. [caption id="attachment_872292" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Thelma Plum, by Georgia Wallace[/caption] Top Image: Sycco
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. Packed with artists, designers and sustainable entrepreneurs, as well as brewers and winemakers, the Peninsula is a place ripe with creativity. To showcase this talent, Stoker Studio is bringing back its giant Design & Drink Market this month, showcasing creative talent and craft bevvies. [caption id="attachment_850818" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Kerri Greens Winery[/caption] Head along to Stoker Studio on Saturday, November 12 and you'll discover all that area has to offer in terms of small-batch and sustainable products, as well as local cheeses, craft beverages and artisanal spirits. A plethora of stallholders will be there to tempt your wallet, including textiles from Sundance Studio, wine from Kerri Greens and wares from Kate Bowman Ceramics. If you're using it as a chance to get a jump on your Christmas shopping, there will be a handy gift-wrapping station available. You can also expect live music and great vibes suitable for the whole family (including the pups). The market will run from 10am–4pm, and attendees are asked to come with some spare change — as entry is via gold coin donation, with the proceeds going to Jimmy's Youth Wellbeing Centre. Top images: Sundance Studio and Kate Bowman Ceramics - Supplied
First, the sad news: Melbourne Queer Film Festival doesn't run year-round. That makes its in-person festivals all the more special, of course, but hitting a Melbourne cinema isn't the only way to get your MQFF fix in 2022 — including if you live beyond the Victorian capital. Spreading its program of LGBTQIA+ movies as far and wide as it can, MQFF also has an online component this year called MQFF+. Streaming from Monday, November 21–Sunday, November 27, it features 25 films that you can watch from home. Yes, that's more than half of the physical lineup, complete with many of the fest's big highlights. On the bill: the Brazilian titles that both launched and wrapped up the fest in-person, aka opening night's Private Desert, about a genderfluid blue-collar worker in an online relationship who goes missing; and closing night's Uýra: The Rising Forest, focusing on trans-indigenous artist Uýra. Or, among other highlights, movie lovers can check out Blitzed!, about the eponymous London nightclub, with Boy George, Princess Julia and Spandau Ballet sharing their memories; Black as U R, a documentary about the lack of attention paid to the black queer community; Youtopia, exploring the inadvertent formation of a hipster cult; and My Emptiness and I hones in on a young trans call-centre worker. Films are available individually, or with three- and five-movie passes — with the latter giving cinephiles a discount.
UPDATE, December 16, 2022: Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths screens in Australian cinemas from Thursday, November 17, and streams via Netflix from Friday, December 16. Everyone wants to be the person at the party that the dance floor revolves around, and life in general as well, or so Alejandro González Iñárritu contends in Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths. In one of the film's many spectacularly shot scenes — with the dual Best Director Oscar-winning Birdman and The Revenant helmer benefiting from astonishing lensing by Armageddon Time cinematographer Darius Khondji — the camera swirls and twirls around Silverio Gama (Daniel Giménez Cacho, Memoria), the movie's protagonist, making him the only person that matters in a heaving crowd. Isolated vocals from David Bowie's 'Let's Dance' boom, and with all the more power without music behind them, echoing as if they're only singing to Silverio. Iñárritu is right: everyone does want a moment like this. Amid the intoxicating visuals and vibe, he's also right that such instances are fleeting. And, across his sprawling and surreal 159-minute flick, he's right that such basking glory and lose-yourself-to-dance bliss can never be as fulfilling as anyone wants. That sequence comes partway through Bardo, one of several that stun through sheer beauty and atmosphere, and that Iñárritu layers with the disappointment of being himself. Everyone wants to be the filmmaker with all the fame and success, breaking records, winning prestigious awards and conquering Hollywood, he also contends. Alas, when you're this Mexican director, that isn't as joyous or uncomplicated an experience as it sounds. On-screen, his blatant alter ego is a feted documentarian rather than a helmer of prized fiction. He's a rare Latino recipient of a coveted accolade, one of Bardo's anchoring events. He's known to make ambitious works with hefty titles — False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths is both the IRL movie's subtitle and the name of Silverio's last project — and he's been largely based in the US for decades. Yes, parallels abound. While dubbing Bardo as semi-autobiographical is one of the easiest ways to describe it, simplicity isn't one of its truths, even if the film champions the small things in life as existential essentials. Another easy way to outline Bardo: Silverio faces his choices, regrets and achievements as that shiny trophy looms, and ponders where his career has taken him, who it's made him and what that all means to him. From the filmmaker who first earned attention for telling narratives in a fractured, multi-part fashion (see: his debut Amores Perros, plus 21 Grams and Babel), and lately has loved roving and roaming cinematography that unfurls in the lengthiest of takes (see: Birdman and The Revenant), this was never going to be a straightforward affair, though. And so he weaves and wanders, and has the silver-haired Silverio do the same, while weighing up what's brought them both to this point. Bardo opens by visibly recalling Birdman, with a bounding force casting a shadow upon an arid land, but it's an early glimpse at a house from above that encapsulates Iñárritu's approach best. The home initially resembles a miniature, which Silverio then flits through — and, given its lead often segues between places and times like he's stepping through a doorway, the movie functions in the same manner. Sometimes, he's in a hospital corridor as his wife Lucía (Griselda Siciliani, The People Upstairs) gives birth to a baby boy who whispers that the world is too broken for him to want to live in, and is then pushed back into the womb. Or, he's picturing how a big TV interview with a bitter ex-colleague could go wrong, or shrinking down to childhood size to chat with his deceased father. Sometimes, Silverio is in Los Angeles holding a bag of axolotls, or striding through Mexico City streets that are empty except for corpses. Elsewhere in Bardo, Silverio has an argument with a US Customs Agent about whether he can say he lives in America, as part of the feature's interrogation of what it means to straddle two countries. But, he also refuses to fight when the family's housekeeper isn't allowed to join them at a swanky resort, with the film carving into its protagonist's contradictions. Also popping up: Silverio and Lucía's twentysomething daughter Camila (Ximena Lamadrid, On the Rocks) and teenage son Lorenzo (first-timer Íker Sánchez Solano), who are similarly tussling with the chasm between their heritage and the nation they've mostly called home, in the movie's multigenerational flourish. And, Bardo includes a recreation of the Mexican-American War, albeit with a brass band; a conversation with Aztec Empire-toppling Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés; and news reports about Amazon buying Baja California, as approved by the US Government. As ideas to unpack, enforced control over Mexico and willingly giving up ownership of one's Mexican identity never stray far from the picture's gaze. A film can deeply contemplate weighty topics, personal and universal alike, and be told with rampant self-indulgence. Bardo is one such movie. Its best moments pull its audience into the frame emotionally and psychologically, and into Silverio's shoes, but it's also meandering and blighted by distance. Iñárritu isn't alone in trying to understand who he is by excavating his own story, of course. 'Tis the time for it, as James Gray has also done with Armageddon Time, Paul Thomas Anderson with Licorice Pizza, Kenneth Branagh with Belfast, and fellow Mexican filmmaker and two-time Best Director Oscar-winner Alfonso Cuarón with Roma. Iñárritu's first movie in the seven years since The Revenant, and his first set and shot in Mexico in more than two decades since Amores Perros, Bardo stands out by imagining its guiding force now looking back, rather than just looking back itself — and by veering so sharply between overdone and brilliant. Thankfully, whether Bardo is at its trippiest or laying its thoughts and feelings bare — nodding to Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 and Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty no matter what fits — Giménez Cacho demands attention. In a performance that's never a case of an actor flattering his director, self-critical sadness radiates from his eyes as Silverio processes his trauma, plus confidence and ambition when he's wading through applause and acclaim. He's electric in that standout party scene, and thorny and tender when the feature calls for either, all seamlessly. Bardo doesn't want to be a seamless movie overall, though. It wants to gyrate, drift and whirl, and for that sensation to sweep up its audience like a man cutting loose at a shindig in his honour. It also wants to ruminate on battles internal and external, and jostle its viewers in every direction like a man conflicted. It does both and, as its title references, it loiters and lingers. Top image: SeoJu Park/Netflix © 2022
When King Richard III was killed in battle in the 15th century, did anyone wonder about a public holiday? Given the era and its working conditions, likely not. There's also the hardly minor fact that the monarch was slain by the forces of Henry Tudor, who promptly became England's ruler, so downing tools for a day of mourning probably wasn't a priority. The world has a frame of reference for grieving a British sovereign, though, and recently. When Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022, pomp and ceremony reigned supreme. Dramatising the discovery of Richard III's remains, The Lost King wasn't made with the queen's passing in mind. Actually, it world-premiered a day afterwards. But the Stephen Frears (Victoria & Abdul)-directed, Steve Coogan- and Jeff Pope (Philomena)-scripted drama benefits from audiences knowing what's done now when whoever wears the crown is farewelled. The Lost King isn't about chasing a parade, pageantry, and a day off work for the masses in Britain and further afield. Charting the true tale of Richard III's location and exhumation 527 years after he breathed his last breath, it follows a quest for recognition and respect. When the film opens, Philippa Langley (Sally Hawkins, The Phantom of the Open) wants it for herself, as a woman over 40 overlooked for a promotion at work in favour of a younger, less-experienced colleague — and as someone with a medical condition, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, who's too easily dismissed due to her health. She's also newly separated from her husband John (Coogan, This Time with Alan Partridge), adding to her unappreciated feelings. It's no wonder that Richard III's plight catches her interest thanks to a production of Shakespeare's Richard III, aka one of the reasons that the king was long seen as a hunchbacked villain. Swiftly an amateur historian, Philippa objects to the characterisation of the last Plantagenet sovereign as monstrous, a usurper and a murderer, and the connection between this dim standing in the annals of history and being a person with a purported disability. As she researches via piles of books, zoom chats and the Richard III Society, aka the Ricardians, she questions what's fact and fiction — not just due to Shakespeare, but also Tudor propaganda from five centuries earlier. Arguing the case, including with dismissive academics, is one thing; however, taking on the search to find the monarch's long-lost skeleton is another. It's a two birds, one stone situation in The Lost King's neat screenplay: restore the denigrated ruler's reputation and put his remnants to rest, and show Philippa's own naysayers — or even just herself — what she can achieve. Yes, she follows a hunch. Yes, there's an obligatory gag about it British cinema loves an everyperson taking on the establishment, and underdogs in general. The past two years have also delivered The Dig and The Duke, after all. The first chronicled another extraordinary find by someone not deemed an expert, and the second delighted in its working-class protagonist's antics with Goya's Portrait of the Duke of Wellington — and, in a case of tonal seesawing, The Lost King recalls both. There's clearly a fascinating IRL story behind this flick, which ripples with intrigue whether or not you already know the details (or you've merely seen the trailer, which spells everything out). There's also a tussle between positioning the film as a bit of a caper and something more serious. Having Philippa see Richard III (Harry Lloyd, Brave New World) — being haunted by the play's version of him and talking to him, in fact — wavers between the two moods depending on the scene. Buried within The Lost King is a sense that Frears, Coogan and Pope — who all collaborated on Philomena, too — aren't always sure how they want the movie to land with audiences. They're patently keen for it to inspire rousing support for everyone who's ever been downplayed, cast aside or ignored, including for their gender and health. They're eager for the same emotions to spark up for anyone ever saddled with a pre-judged narrative about themselves that isn't accurate, as both Richard III and Philippa are, as well. And yet, there's also an air of not quite trusting that the true tale being relayed innately evokes those responses. It does, so everything feels simplified and smoothed out here, given too many quirks and rendered a tad cartoonish. Also noticeable: using the contemptuous academics as easy adversaries, perhaps as conveniently as Shakespeare is said to have demonised Richard III. Getting angry at seeing Philippa pushed aside and underestimated again and again is easy, but so is spotting how The Lost King itself is constructing its story. Thankfully, Frears does trust in Hawkins, the feature's MVP alongside its real-life details (and an on-screen treasure in everything from Happy-Go-Lucky and Submarine to The Shape of Water and the Paddington movies). The two-time Oscar-nominee serves up a winning, earnest and relatable blend of vulnerability, warmth, curiosity and determination, plus the kind of persistence that arises when someone has spent too long being forced to fight just to be seen, let alone valued. Indeed, even when The Lost King is at its slickest and most straightforward — or when it inexplicably focuses on whether John will get a new car — she's its anchor and heart. With Philomena in 2013, The Lost King's key creative trio also unearthed the past. As they do now, they similarly told of addressing secrets and redressing wrongs. And, they centred on a mature woman, enlisted a phenomenal leading lady to play the part, gave Coogan a prime role and set it all to an emphatic Alexandre Desplat (Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio) score. There's no doubting why their latest collaboration has a formulaic feel to it, then, despite the intriguing slice of history it brings to the screen. No one needs the type of intuition that guided Philippa to the Adult Social Services department's car park in Leicester, to a space marked 'R' for reserved, to spy those parallels. No one needs as much force and fantasy as The Lost King deploys, either, to understand that this is a rare and meaningful tale that's told with all the subtlety of the world's latest royal goodbye — so, very little. Richard III and Queen Elizabeth II's deaths mightn't have much in common but, via this still engaging-enough film, they do share that.
Open up your eager eyes, Melbourne: The Killers are headed our way. The Las Vegas-born rockers will hit up a heap of arenas Down Under to cap off 2022, and destiny is calling you to Rod Laver Arena on Tuesday, December 13 and Wednesday, December 14. Given the band's lengthy back catalogue, Brandon Flowers and company won't just be playing 'Mr Brightside' on repeat, but will be making a hot fuss over plenty of their hits — including tracks from their 2020 album Imploding the Mirage. The tour is named after that record, even though they released another one, Pressure Machine, in 2021. That's what happens when live gigs get put on hold during a pandemic, clearly. [caption id="attachment_831494" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Raph_PH via Wikimedia Commons[/caption] Remember: somebody told you that you'll be dancing along to 'Somebody Told Me', 'Smile Like You Mean It', 'When You Were Young', 'Bones', 'Human' and 'The Man' as well. Fancy seeing The Killers in a winery instead? They're also playing A Day on the Green show in Geelong.
So, you used up all your good present ideas on Christmas and now you're stuck on what to get your loved one for that fast-approaching annual celebration of romance? Fear not, Molly Rose is here to guide you with its Be My Valentine Market, which is popping up at the Collingwood brewery on Sunday, February 12. Two days out from Valentine's Day, it'll be brimming with nifty gifting options — but hey, also plenty of goodies to treat your own damn self with, too. We're talking choccies from Mörk and Planet Cocoa, sweet-smelling mists and oils from Happy Society, TRIKL's statement candles and a whole range of wares courtesy of Preston Apothecary. The team from Young Aunties Haus (founded by the minds behind Gammin Threads and Haus of Dizzy) will be slinging creations of their own, and you'll find accessories for all tastes gracing the stalls of Yuria, Sacreflux and SGS Jewellery. The market is dedicated entirely to local makers and creatives, which is a big win for conscious shoppers. And of course, the bar will be open and pouring a stack of Molly Rose brews right throughout the afternoon. [caption id="attachment_807467" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Amanda Santamaria[/caption]
On Sunday, December 3, Hecho en Mexico turns ten. And to celebrate, the crew at 16 Victoria venues (that's all its locations except for Ringwood) will be slinging $10 margaritas throughout the day. But if you want to take it up a notch, the flagship Fitzroy restaurant is throwing a much bigger birthday bash. On top of the $10 margs deal, all dishes and other cocktails will also be priced at $10. This includes all the big main meals, from nachos and burritos to paella and fajitas platters. And this isn't just for a tiny time window, either. The deal is available from 12pm–10pm, so you can spend your whole Sunday sipping on cocktails and feasting on Mexican eats at bargain prices. Adding to the festivities, the team has organised a mariachi band to play live tunes and will also be giving away bottles of tequila, dine-in vouchers and some Hecho merch.
After shutting down over the cooler months, The Craft & Co's distillery and brewery in Preston is finally reopening to the public on Saturday, November 18. To celebrate, the crew will be giving away 1,000 free pots of draught beer across the opening weekend. And this isn't just your stock standard lager or pilsner. Punters can sample something from the whole range — from Japanese rice lagers to hazy pales, sours and more. You can't just rock up on the day, so make sure you register for a free ticket ahead of the weekend. Once you've nabbed your free pot, stick around to sample a few more brews from the Craft & Co range, and have a hit of table tennis by the barrels. The brewery and distillery will also launch its new kitchen during the weekend, serving up woodfired pizzas and a selection of share plates for the first time since opening last year. Get around sticky pork belly bites, salt and pepper squid, mixed mushroom arancini and truffle parmesan fries — all top accompaniments with hoppy brews. Beers aren't the only bevs on the menu; for the opening weekend there'll be a heap of specials on their own spirits and cocktails too. Craft & Co will be serving up free beers on Saturday, November 18 and Sunday, November 19 at its brewery and distillery on 96 Chifley Drive, Preston. To nab the free pot of beer, secure your ticket from the venue's website beforehand.
For most, there isn't much in Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel The Color Purple that screams for the musical spin. Broadway still came calling. On the page, this tale always featured a jazz and blues singer as a key character. When it initially reached the screen in 1985 with Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans) directing, it also worked in an anthem that earned an Oscar nomination and has been much-covered since; Quincy Jones composed the film's score and produced the movie. But if the idea of lavish song-and-dance numbers peppered throughout such a bleak account of incest, rape, domestic abuse, racism, injustice, violence and poverty feels like hitting a wrong note, claims otherwise keep springing. First arrived 2005's Tony-winning stage adaptation, then 2015's also-awarded revival. Now, joining the ranks of books that became movies, then musicals, then musical movies just like the new Mean Girls, a second feature brings Walker's story to cinemas — this time with belted-out ballads and toe-tapping tunes. With each take, The Color Purple's narrative has predominantly remained the same as when it first hit bookshelves, crushing woe, infuriating prejudice and rampant inequity included. Musicals don't have to be cheery, but how does so much brutality give rise to anything but mournful songs? The answer here: by leaning into the rural Georgia-set tale's embrace of hope, resilience and self-discovery. Ghanaian director Blitz Bazawule follows up co-helming Beyoncé's Black Is King by heroing empowerment and emancipation in his version of The Color Purple — and while the film that results can't completely avoid an awkward tonal balance, it's easy to see the meaning behind its striving for a brighter outlook. When what its characters go through as Black women in America's south in the early 20th century is so unsparing, welcoming wherever light can pierce the gloom is a human reaction, and how Celie (American Idol-winner Fantasia Barrino in her feature film debut) copes. Although the sun streams, there's little that's merry about The Color Purple's protagonist's existence when the latest movie begins, or afterwards. On her second pregnancy to her bullying father Alfonso (Deon Cole, Black-ish), who sees her as mere property, the teen Celie (fellow first-timer Phylicia Pearl Mpasi, who was a writer on Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies) knows that this baby will be snatched from her again. But at least she has her sister Nettie (Halle Bailey, The Little Mermaid) to dote on, cling to and protect — until she doesn't. Celie is traded to farmer Mister (Colman Domingo, Rustin) for a cow and a couple of eggs, after he asks for Nettie. The younger sibling soon comes knocking on the door after Celie is burdened with cooking, cleaning, mothering his existing kids and weathering more abuse; however, the sisters are forced apart when Mister still can't get what he wants. Heartbreak is The Color Purple's baseline: over Celie's abhorrent treatment by her dad, and then by Mister; at two girls with nothing else to rely on being torn so cruelly from each other; and at the onslaught of pain that keeps streaming, and widely. With Sofia (Oscar-nominee Danielle Brooks, Peacemaker), the wife of Mister's son Harpo (Corey Hawkins, Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter), Celie meets someone who is unapologetic about her place in the world — even in such a harsh and discriminatory world — only for the xenophobic use of the law to cut her down. With aforementioned crooner Shug Avery (Taraji P Henson, Abbott Elementary), who Mister would prefer to have by his side, she finds more than a push towards self-confidence, a true confidant and friendship; alas, happiness in any form is so frequently fleeting. This Marcus Gardley (I'm a Virgo)-penned The Color Purple might package its championing of persistence and sisterhood with emotion-dripping songs, but it still shares much with its big-screen predecessor beyond its plot. Many holdovers come via personnel. Spielberg and Jones return, both as producers. Oprah Winfrey does the same, swapping from playing Sofia in her acting debut the first time around, which earned her both Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. Another of the original movie's key cast members pops up for a cameo appearance. Also a blatant commonality: that film iterations of this story continue to tamp down The Color Purple's queer romance. 'What About Love?', a duet between Celie and Shug, is a dreamy picture-stealer. As Shug helps Celie to finally value her own desires, Barrino and Henson make a glowing pair. There's passion in their rousing relationship — but if 2024 isn't the time to make their love more than a footnote, then when? Alongside getting audiences yearning for more of Celie and Shug together, that standout tune epitomises a facet of the film that's evident from the very moment that anyone starts singing: this is a stagey production. When musical numbers are pitched as lively escapist fantasies, which isn't rare, Bazawule appears to be making the choice purposefully. Again, although it doesn't always go as smoothly as planned, the reasoning tracks. For Celie and Sofia in particular, finding ways to persevere through everything that they endure, and to retain or regain any sense of spirit, means confronting big emotions. And just as it does in a theatre rather than a cinema, The Color Purple as a musical goes big when those feelings are released through song. (The movie also gets overly enthusiastic with its editing, which proved the case when Jon Poll took on the same role on The Greatest Showman as well.) Even when the exuberant tone doesn't land and emphasising the sets is clunky, Bazawule has compiled an exceptional cast. Barrino and Brooks reprise their turns from the stage, with considerable tasks following in Whoopi Goldberg (Harlem) and Oprah's footsteps — but their expressive performances, which make everything that courses through both Celie and Sofia ripple from the screen, are each rich, raw and resonant. Henson is entrancingly sultry and fierce as Shug, Bailey caring and determined as Nettie, Domingo monstrous but damaged as Mister and Hawkins accommodating as Harpo. Louis Gossett Jr (Kingdom Business) and Jon Batiste (an Academy Award-winner for Soul's score) also make an impression in small parts. This lineup of talent is reason enough to have The Color Purple flicker and echo as a movie musical. And when this reclamation of a grim tale shines brightest, it shines in the same way that Celie's life eventually does: through the right company.
If you're into high-class desserts and free stuff, head down to Atlas Dining on Tuesday, September 5, because you can score free s'mores by hatted chef Charlie Carrington. And if that's not enough to entice you, Atlas is sweetening the deal by giving away free Vodka Cruiser cocktails (if you're over 18). To mark the launch of its new premix cocktails, Vodka Cruiser has teamed up with Carrington — Atlas Dining's Head Chef — to create a range of canned meals to pair with its new canned cocktails. The star of the show? A twist on the traditional classic, transforming the s'more from a standard campfire staple into something "fancy-ish" — bringing together preserved raspberry, rosewater marshmallows and Dutch chocolate. The dish is designed to match the new Vodka Cruiser Raspberry Cosmopolitan and, of course, it comes in a can. You'll want to be quick though, as only the first 100 people to head to Atlas Dining after 12pm will be able to claim a free s'more (and a free cocktail from the new range). Other flavours include Passionfruit Daiquiri and Lime Margarita, created to invoke flavours of the Caribbean and Mexico, respectively. So, make sure to leave a blank space in your schedule around midday. It's not every day you get to try a fancy canned delight from a hatted chef. Pair that with a free Vodka Cruiser, and you've got yourself quite the Tuesday arvo.
What's more terrifying than standing out at high school? It Lives Inside scares up an answer. Here, fitting in with the popular kids has haunting costs — literally — as Indian American teen Samidha (Megan Suri, Never Have I Ever) discovers. Her story starts as all memorable movies should: with a sight that's rarely seen on-screen. While beauty routines are familiar-enough film fodder, watching Sam shave her arms, then use skin tone-lightening filters on her photos, instantly demonstrates the lengths that she's going to for schoolyard approval. Among the white girls that she now calls friends, she also prefers to go by Sam. At home, she's increasingly hesitant to speak Hindi with her parents Inesh (Vik Sahay, Lodge 49) and Poorna (Neeru Bajwa, Criminal). And when it comes to preparing for and celebrating the Hindu ritual of puja, Sam would rather be elsewhere with Russ (Gage Marsh, Big Sky), the boy that she's keen on. It Lives Inside's frights don't spring from razors and social media, or from shortened names and superficial classmates; however, each one underscores how far that Sam is moving away from her heritage. Worse: they indicate how eagerly she's willing to leave her culture behind, too, a decision that's affected her childhood bond with Tamira (Mohana Krishnan, The Summer I Turned Pretty). As their school's only students with Indian backgrounds, they were once happily inseparable. Now Sam considers Tamira a walking reminder of everything that she's trying to scrub from her American identity. Keeping to herself — skulking around clutching a jar filled with a strange black substance, and virtually hiding behind her unbrushed hair — the latter has become the class outcast. So, when she asks Sam for help, of course no is the answer. Making his feature debut after a sizeable list of shorts —and winning SXSW Austin's 2023 Audience Award in its Midnighters section with the unsettling results — writer/director Bishal Dutta loads It Lives Inside's early moments with gnawing unease. Everything that Sam is putting herself through doesn't sit cosily, nor is it meant to. Distress has been eating away at Tamira as well, as her horrified stare everywhere that Sam looks constantly makes plain. Wild and wide eyes shaped by fear and uncertainty may be one of this genre's staples, but Krishnan sports a perfectly petrified pair of peepers as she pleas for assistance. After Sam smashes the ever-grasped canister in anger, annoyance and disbelief, letting out the flesh-eating demonic entity inside, Suri joins in with her own frequently aghast eyeballs. Casting Get Out's Betty Gabriel as a concerned teacher at Sam and Tamira's school savvily reinforces what audiences can quickly spot with In Lives Inside: this is a social thriller just like Jordan Peele's Oscar-winner (and also Us and Nope), plus everything from Sorry to Bother You and Parasite. Here, with a moniker and a central stalking force that also brings It Follows to mind, cues similarly taken from The Babadook, plus high-school humiliation that'd do Carrie proud, it's the pressure to eschew one's roots to blend in that scores the horror treatment. The supernatural presence doing the spooking is a Pishacha, which hail from Hindu and Buddhist folklore — and, as it feeds on negative vibes, its targets aren't random. Indeed, in painting a portrait of the pains that accompany being caught between the traditions of your parents' homeland and the daily reality of the only place you've ever known and its homogenous demands, Dutta gets his movie sinking its teeth in. There's no doubting that It Lives Inside's feature filmmaking first-timer is a student of scary movies: conventions from English-language frightfests spanning decades keep peeking through. Accordingly, the plot co-penned by Dutta with Ashish Mehta (Hush Hush) does inescapably feel like plenty of other flicks, complete with being set in a Spielbergian-esque town. This film loves splashing around red hues to get nightmarish as well, and peering intently at everyone quivering in Pishacha's presence. Using alarmed and startled people on-screen to evoke the same sensations in viewers might be one of the simplest tricks in the book, but it works: empathy is one helluva horror-movie tool. Dutta understands that, and also how powerful it is to witness Sam being so visibly shaken by being trapped between her background and the Americanised ideal that she's decided is her future. Also working swimmingly: Suri and Krishnan, who both make expressive horror stars (as, given Dutta's affection for close-ups, they need to). When Tamira disappears, forcing Sam to take her otherworldly mythology tale and its life-and-death manifestation seriously, Suri keeps adding weight to It Lives Inside's layered emotional journey. Trying to erase your heritage because you think that's the only option and then grappling with what that truly means aren't easy things to deal with, with or without confronting a monster. While many of the movie's most potent moments don't involve the Pishacha in the frame, Suri sells it all — the angst, the facade, coping with her supposed pals thinking that speaking another language is cute, the frustration over her mum's disapproval and choices since moving stateside, the realisations, and the terror and panic all included. It Lives Inside isn't without its own chilling visual touches, though; proving that hinting works better than showing, one early altercation with the picture's boogeyman gives Dutta an instant resume highlight. And, that it's the situation and its significance rather than the actual murderous beast that lingers is 100-percent by design. Musing about immigration, displacement and conformity, and joining the ranks of culturally specific horror such as Under the Shadow and The Vigil, this is a tense and thoughtful film — even if it too, like Sam, is torn between two realms. Thankfully, the meaning that lives inside It Lives Inside gives freshness to a movie that knows it's working with a formula; filtering US teen horror through the Indian American experience is also one of Dutta's clear quests.
Great news, dog lovers of Melbourne: you can now expect to see more pups at more pubs. Across the country, 18 venues are serving pooches their very own version of charcuterie — adorably dubbed 'barkuterie' — including at Richmond's Bridge Hotel. If you spend your life with a canine companion, you'll be able to take your barking buddy on a bar date from Saturday, September 16. On the menu: barkuterie boards created in collaboration with online pet supplies retailer Pet Circle, featuring three dog treats from Nature's Cuts and Zignature paired with seasonal fruit and vegetables. So, while you drink and graze, so can your pupper. Just don't go giving your dog any beer to go with their barkuterie board, of course. The canine snack plate comes in at $12, and arrives to celebrate spring. It's a limited-time special, however, getting tails wagging for four weeks — or until stocks last. 2023 has already delivered doughnut-shaped biscuits for dogs — now this is your next excuse to treat your pet.
'Tis the season for many things — although at one particular pop-up Christmas market, the festivities are entirely, deliciously gin-related. The Craft & Co's returning Gin Market is a one-stop present shop with a very distinct flavour. Taking place at The Craft & Co in Collingwood across the first weekend of December — from Friday, December 1–Sunday, December 3 — this market will showcase a careful curation of delights from an array of Aussie gin distilleries. As it's a sitdown event, they'll be going from table to table, speed-dating style, so you can hear all about the passion for their products. [caption id="attachment_876364" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Rebekah Halls[/caption] Taking part: Boatrocker, Imbue Distillery, Noble Bootleggers and Bibendum, as well as Tiny Bear, Artillery and obviously The Craft & Co. Exclusive specials are promised, so if you're a real ginthusast, you'll want to stock up on presents — and, you know, a few treats for yourself. Tickets cost $35–40 depending on the session — each running for two-and-a-half hours, at 7pm on the Friday; 11am, 2pm and 5pm on the Saturday; and 11am and 2pm on the Sunday — and there'll be nine stalls on offer. And yes, tastings are included in the price, as is a The Craft & Co showbag. You do need to book in advance, too, as walk-ins won't be accepted. Images: Rebekah Halls.
