Tim Burton is back — and, regardless of how you feel about the filmmaker's output of late, that's a good thing. While indulging his love of all things weird and wonderful has seen the likes of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows annoy rather than endear, the director is still capable of crafting enchanting efforts when he finds just the right level of quirkiness. Sure, they were made decades ago, but Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and his two Batman movies all remain classics for a reason. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children mightn't quite take Burton back to his strange, spirited heights, however it shares much more in common with his earlier work than his more recent fare. Of course it helps that the source material couldn't be a better fit. Boasting a title that champions its oddness, a story filled with outsider characters embracing their individual traits, and an unusual journey through both dark and delightful territory, the first book in the three-strong young adult series by author Ransom Riggs feels like it was destined to end up in Burton's hands. 16-year-old Jake (Asa Butterfield) has heard about Miss Peregrine (Eva Green) and her unusual abode from his doting grandfather Abe (Terence Stamp) ever since he can remember — although as he grew up, he stopped believing that the fantastical tales were true. Then tragedy strikes, leaving Jake with many questions — which a trip to Wales to seek out the house from his childhood stories just might be able to answer. There, with the help of the lighter-than-air Emma (Ella Purnell), the fire-starting Olive (Lauren McCrostie), the necromantic Enoch (Finlay MacMillan) and many more, Jake discovers the other side of his reality. What would happen if Burton made a mashup of X-Men, Harry Potter and The Matrix? Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, that's what. In fact, screenwriter Jane Goldman worked on X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days of Future Past, as well as Kingsman: The Secret Service. Once the 127-minute-long movie moves past its dragging, world-building first half, the director and scribe prove a well-matched pair, blending both eccentricity and adventure to mostly charming effect. And while the film follows a very familiar path and ponders recognisable themes, it does so with an ideal dose of Burton's distinctive sensibilities. Think visions of reanimated critters, gas mask-wearing kids, sunken ships and stalking monsters – to name but a few of the movie's more memorable sights. Crucially, however, the striking imagery doesn't overpower the narrative. Instead, it helps add depth and texture, and immerses viewers in the story. Cast-wise, the youthful talent proves uniformly up to the task, although if there's ever an actor that can convey Burton's bewitching brand, it's Green. Move over, Johnny Depp, there's a new muse in town.
Playing an Australian freshly arrived in Florida in Rough Night, Kate McKinnon bafflingly calls everyone's favourite Italian meal "pizzer". When she's hungry, she pulls a jar of Vegemite out of her bag. And for some unexplained reason, she asks for toilet tissue rather than toilet paper. These are three things likely to make Aussie audiences cringe. And yet despite this, they're actually attached to the best part of the film. Much as she was in Ghostbusters, Masterminds and Office Christmas Party, McKinnon is in Rough Night a downright comic delight, the best part of an ensemble cast that also includes Scarlett Johansson, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer and Zoe Kravitz. If only the material matched her skills. Unfortunately this unremarkable comedy proves to be little more than a blend of Very Bad Things, The Hangover and Weekend at Bernie's, with a few familiar, sentimental musings about female friendship thrown in. Indeed, writer-director Lucia Aniello and her co-scribe Paul W. Downs — both Broad City alum — are happy sticking to a formula. If their script simply read "women behave badly, then hug", we wouldn't be surprised. You already know exactly how this film is going to play out: aspiring state senator Jess (Johansson) and her pals Alice (Bell), Blair (Kravitz), Frankie (Glazer) and Pippa (McKinnon) converge on Miami for 55 hours of drinking, partying, penis-shaped paraphernalia and selfie-worthy raucousness. That's all well and good, until they hire a male stripper and then accidentally kill him. Following in the footsteps of Bridesmaids and Bad Moms, it's great that female-led comedies are finally hitting cinemas in increasing numbers, albeit slowly. It's also great that Rough Night is helmed and co-scripted by a woman and features five ace ladies in the lead roles. Still, we can't help but wish that the film delivered more than just by-the-book observations and stereotypical characters. Sensible, envious, posh, feisty, kooky Aussie: the women here have about as much dimension as members of a '90s girl band. Outside of McKinnon, the biggest chuckles stem from cutaways to Jess' fiance's bachelor party, which involves a civilised evening of wine tasting rather than knocking back shots and snorting drugs. Of course, the fact that more amusement stems from the men in the movie than the women is an enormous problem. With most of its great ladies sadly underused, Rough Night feels like a wasted opportunity. What the world wants is more smart, funny, female-led flicks. What the world didn't need is lazy gender-swapped hijinks packaged as girls-gone-wild fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlDvkRYrIlU
Neo. John Wick. Johnny Utah. Ted "Theodore" Logan. Across Keanu Reeves' almost four-decade acing career, the inimitable star has played many iconic parts — but only one thrust him to stardom as a time-travelling high-school slacker who had to round up famous figures from the past to pass his history report and save the future of humanity. As a result, the Bill & Ted movies have always held a soft spot in Keanu fans' hearts. Since first hitting screens in 1989 and 1991, the franchise has long been the subject of follow-up rumours, too. And now, just when the world particularly needs a reminder about being excellent to each other, the series is returning with its long-awaited third instalment. Nearly 30 years after Reeves last rocked out, grappled with fate and used a telephone box as a mode of transport in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, he's back doing the same thing. So is Alex Winter as Bill S. Preston, Esquire, Ted's best buddy, San Dimas High classmate and fellow founder of Wyld Stallyns, aka the garage band that'll change life as we know it and inspire a utopian society — at least according to Rufus (the late George Carlin) in film that started it all, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. But as both the first teaser and the just-dropped full trailer for Bill & Ted Face the Music shows, that plan hasn't quite panned out as yet for the franchise's central duo. A quarter-century ago, they played a concert in front of the entire world. One month ago, they played a gig in California for 40 people — "most of whom where there for $2 taco night", they're told. After being reprimanded by the folks from the future for their lack of progress — when you're supposed to write the song that unites the globe and rescues reality, 25 years without any progress isn't going to go by unnoticed — Bill and Ted decide to head forward in time to a point when they've already penned the tune in question. Once they're there, they figure they can just steal the track from themselves. Plenty of hijinks await, naturally, including singing at weddings, playing air guitar with the Grim Reaper (William Sadler) and coming face to face with beefed-up versions of themselves. Oh, and then there's Ted's daughter Billie Logan (Bombshell's Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Bill's daughter Thea Preston (Ready or Not's Samara Weaving), who follow in their dads' footsteps and get in on all the time-travelling fun. If the first teaser was enough to make you exclaim "party on, dudes!", Keanu-style, then this longer trailer will evoke more of the same. Bill & Ted Face the Music is clearly taking more than a few queues from its predecessors, too — as well as needing to create a song in 78 minutes that'll save the world and bring harmony to the whole universe, Bill, Ted, Billie and Thea also enlist some well-known personalities from the past to help. As for what happens next, how often someone will say "whoa!", and what the rest of the cast — which includes Kid Cudi, Kristen Schaal, Anthony Carrigan, Erinn Hayes, Jayma Mays, Jillian Bell, Holland Taylor, Beck Bennett, Hal Landon Jr and Amy Stoch — gets up to, that'll all be revealed when the film hits Australian cinemas on Thursday, August 27. Until then, check out the full Bill & Ted Face the Music trailer below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gnTuWEKSXw&feature=youtu.be Bill & Ted Face the Music is scheduled to release in Australian cinemas on August 27.
There's never been a better time to get acquainted with the top-notch wineries located right here in Melbourne's own backyard. And that's especially the case given that a slew of Macedon Ranges-based cellar doors are coming together to showcase their finest drops for the next edition of the Summertime Fling Festival. From Friday, January 3–Monday, January 27, wineries right across this cool-climate wine-growing region will throw open their doors to deliver a jam-packed program of wine, food and music events for all palates. You can also expect masterclasses, tours, feasts and tastings among this broad-ranging lineup. It seems the Macedon Ranges might be just the fling you're looking for this summer.
It's safe to say that Australia's COVID-19 vaccination rollout hasn't been all smooth sailing. Nor has it come without its (unfair) share of highly divided opinions. But, we can all agree that getting back to a world where we're all able to do the things we love would be very nice, indeed. For many, the arts industry is one of the biggest things we've sorely been missing in the last 18 months, and it's also one of the sectors that has been hit the hardest by the pandemic. This was the catalyst for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's compelling new ad campaign aimed at overcoming vaccine hesitancy in Australia. The Performance of a Lifetime was created with the help of a diverse cast of local artists and arts organisations in order to encourage audiences to get on board and get vaccinated when they're eligible. Its message? The sooner people play their part and get their jab — aka the performance of a lifetime — the sooner we can all get back to doing what we love. Best of all, it ditches any alarmist chat in favour of clear, straightforward messaging and a hopeful outlook. Musical comedy trio Tripod, who appeared in the ad, summarised the sentiment nicely in a media statement: "The sooner everyone mucks in and gets the jab, the sooner the arts community can get back to what we do best — providing a focal point for communities to gather, so we can all share our joy at being alive on this big, stupid planet." The two-minute-long ad features a rollcall of other familiar faces from Melbourne's music, theatre, dance and performance communities, including iconic entertainer Rhonda Burchmore OAM, composer and soprano Deborah Cheetham AO, and actress Virginia Gay. You'll also spy appearances from members of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Theatre Company, The Australian Ballet and national Indigenous opera company Short Black Opera. As comedian and songwriter Tim Minchin said in a statement, "Get vaccinated Aussies…as soon as you possibly can. Let's show this fucking bug the door." You can check out the full 'Performance of a Lifetime' ad video here on YouTube.
As attempts to combat COVID-19 ramp up around the globe, venues and organisations everywhere are temporarily shutting down. New York's Metropolitan Opera is one of them; however, it's not letting its fans spend their self-isolating days without their beloved artform, announcing nightly live-streamed opera performances from its collection. From Monday, March 16 US time (Tuesday, March 17, Down Under), the NY institution is streaming a different opera each evening. Called Nightly Met Opera Streams, the program kicked off with high-profile shows such as Bizet's Carmen, Puccini's La Boheme, Verdi's Il Trovatore and La Traviata, Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment and Lucia di Lammermoor, and Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin — streaming each for 23 hours from 7.30pm New York time each night. Other highlights included, Nico Muhly's Marnie, Verdi's Aida and Borodin's Prince Igor. On Monday, May 4, Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro is streaming, followed by Thomas's Hamlet on May 5, Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin on May 6 and Strauss's Capriccio, plus a double bill on Sunday, May 10 featuring Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. And, if you missed Puccini's celebrated La Boheme, you can catch it again on Friday, May 8. https://youtu.be/afhAqMeeQJk Even better — Nightly Met Opera Streams is free, so you can enjoy world-class opera recorded live (and streamed in HD) without either paying a cent or leaving your couch. Nightly Met Opera Streams commence on Tuesday, March 17, Australian and New Zealand time, with a new show live-streamed every day and available for 23 hours afterwards. For further details, visit the Met Opera website. Top image: Bengt Nyman via Wikimedia Commons. Updated May 5.
When Bong Joon-ho makes a new movie, the world takes notice. It has never paid quite as much attention as it has to Parasite, though. Since premiering at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, the twisty Korean thriller has picked up the Palme d'Or, the Sydney Film Festival Prize, a Golden Globe, plenty more awards and nominations, rave reviews and an enormous cult following. And rightly so. It's best movie of the past year — a call we don't make lightly. It seems that no one can get enough of this dark and devious film, its class war between rich and struggling families, and the scathing mayhem that follows. Case in point: more than six months after the film first released in Australian cinemas, it's still showing on big screens around the country. And in the near future, Parasite will be flickering across small screens, too — not just via DVD or streaming, but adapted into a new limited TV series for HBO. As revealed by The Hollywood Reporter, the US network is set to join forces with Bong to turn Parasite into a television show, winning the rights over Netflix. Bong will adapt and executive produce alongside Adam McKay — the director of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, its sequel and a heap of other Will Ferrell-starring comedies, who then made the jump to more political and topical fare with The Big Short, Vice and TV's Golden Globe-winning Succession. The final deal on HBO's iteration of Parasite hasn't been done as yet, so there's no word on whether it'll be an English-language remake or a Korean-language follow-up to the film. Casting and timing haven't been revealed either. Parasite marks the second of Bong's stellar flicks to earn a small-screen version, with an American TV show-based Snowpiercer due to hit screens this year — although Bong himself isn't involved with that adaptation. Need a reminder of Parasite's greatness? Check out the film's trailer below or go see it in cinemas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEUXfv87Wpk Via The Hollywood Reporter.
Ring in the New Year in serious style at Arbory Bar & Eatery by the Yarra. The riverside venue is throwing one hell of a party, complete with DJs, projection art and more than enough food to see you through to the morning. We're talking roving canapes, including chorizo corndogs and steak tartare, yakitori such as ponzu-glazed barramundi, an honest-to-God charcuterie station plus doughnuts and espresso martini sundaes for dessert. With final release tickets currently on sale for just under $240 a head, it's not exactly the cheapest NYE option — but if you've got money to throw around you could certainly do worse. And good luck finding a better spot to watch the fireworks.
Just one month after the CBD opening of B. Lucky & Sons, Funlab — the group responsible for Holey Moley and Strike Bowling — is set to open yet another kidult wonderland in Melbourne. This time it's Archie Brothers Cirque Electriq, a circus-themed arcade bar that will open in Docklands next month. The Melbourne instalment is the second for the brand, which first opened in Sydney back in December 2017. The Melbourne version — which will open in the District Docklands shopping centre — will feature 67 arcade games (starting at $2 a pop) and tickets can be used to purchase the usual assortment of random objects and plastic toys at the prize bazaar. Like its Sydney counterpart, the venue also includes a bowling alley, dodgem cars, an interactive 3D theatre and virtual reality games. The food menu ties in with the circus decor and focuses on over-the-top novelty American diner grub. Think pink burgers, cheddar cheese-dusted potato gems and garlic aioli that's served in a syringe. You get the idea. The drinks follow suit, with a ridiculously involved Shark Tanq: a concoction of gin, blue curaçao, coconut syrup, egg white and orange bitters, all topped with flavoured Red Bull and garnished with gummy shark lollies. If that's just too much sugar for you, maybe go down the dairy route with an espresso martini with a Magnum on the side, or try one of the signature boozy milkshakes. It's a good thing the arcade is strictly adults-only from 8pm — you'll need to work off all that energy. But what you're coming here for is the arcade games, the nostalgia and to forget you're an adult with responsibilities for at least an hour or two. If the swathe of themed bars that keep popping up around town, it's something Melburnians are really responding to at the moment. Archie Brothers Cirque Electriq will open at District Docklands, 440 Docklands Drive, Docklands on October 18. It will be open seven days a week from noon until late.
Write a Brisbane-set book. Score a hit on the page. Then, see your words take to the stage, then the screen. That's how life went for Trent Dalton with Boy Swallows Universe. Next, going as far as treading the boards for now, that's also his path with Love Stories. Queensland Performing Arts Centre and Brisbane Festival have just announced that another of Dalton's books is getting a stage adaptation. As the play version of Boy Swallows Universe did, Love Stories will premiere at Brisbane Festival, with Tim McGarry penning the script and Dalton contributing additional writing. Fiona Franzmann will also contribute, while Sam Strong is directing. If much of this combination sounds familiar, Strong and McGarry also brought Eli Bell's antics to the theatre when it hit QPAC first. Their stage adaptation of Boy Swallows Universe wasn't just a smash — it's still the venue's bestselling drama ever. [caption id="attachment_944825" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Trent Dalton, Fiona Franzmann, Sam Strong and Tim McGarry. Image: Lyndon Mechielsen.[/caption] Fans won't have to wait long to see the end result for Love Stories, with the production set to have its world premiere in spring 2024, playing QPAC's Playhouse from Tuesday, September 10–Sunday, September 29. As for who'll be bringing it to life onstage, Jason Klarwein plays a writer and husband, while Michala Banas is his wife. They're both based on married couple Dalton and Franzmann. Also in the cast: Rashidi Edwards as Jean-Benoit, a Belgian busker who is also the show's narrator. Kimie Tsukakoshi, Jeanette Cronin, Mathew Cooper, Bryan Probets and Harry Tseng round out the acting talent from there, as joined by dancers Jacob Watton and Hsin-Ju Ely. The production will set its scene from the corner of Brisbane's Adelaide and Albert streets — and if you've read the book, you'll know why. Dalton wrote the 2022 Indie Book Awards Book of the Year-winner by heading to a corner in Brisbane's CBD, Olivetti typewriter in hand, and asking folks walking by for their tales. His question: "can you please tell me a love story?". Accordingly, this is another love letter to Brisbane, as Boy Swallows Universe is. This time, however, it tells true tales about romance and life. The aim is for it to be joyous but poignant, humorous but dramatic, and to be sentimental about Brisbane while telling a range of diverse love stories. [caption id="attachment_944824" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Trent Dalton and Franzmann. Image: Lyndon Mechielsen.[/caption] "It's a rare and wondrous thrill to see one's words brought to life in the boundless universe of Australian theatre. It's an even greater thrill to see the love stories of so many not-so-ordinary real-life Queenslanders given such reverence and weight," said Dalton. "I've already had the great honour of informing many of the storytellers who so kindly told their stories to me on that corner that their words will now be retold in the most thrilling theatrical way by the most gifted team of creatives. These beautiful people who come from every corner of Queensland are just as excited as I am." [caption id="attachment_935699" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Trent Dalton, Simon Baker, Phoebe Tonkin, Felix Cameron, Lee Tiger Halley, Bryan Brown and Travis Fimmel at the premiere of Boy Swallows Universe. Image: Jono Searle/Getty Images for Netflix.[/caption] "Love Stories the show will be filled with everything that people adore about the book (and Trent's work) — beautifully specific Brisbane stories that speak universal truths, undeniably unforgettable people, and stories that sometimes break our hearts but always fill them," added Strong. "In translating Love Stories into the theatre, we're also building on the original. Trent and Fiona's own love story, which interweaves through the book, has been expanded by them for the stage show. In addition, we're including some of the incredible love stories that have been shared since the book was published." There's no sneak peek available for Love Stories yet — images, trailer or otherwise — but check out the trailers for both the stage and versions of Boy Swallows Universe in the interim: Love Stories will play the QPAC Playhouse, South Brisbane, from Tuesday, September 10–Sunday, September 29, 2024 as part of Brisbane Festival. Head to the venue's website for tickets and further details. Images: Netflix / Lyndon Mechielsen.
As always, Melbourne's summer celebration of queer and LGBTQIA+ culture starts off with a bang with its annual Midsumma Carnival in Alexandra Gardens. There'll be 11 hours of live music and entertainment on the main stage, heaps of food stalls and bars, plus the return of the Midsumma Dog Show which is just an absolute delight. Then, once the sun starts to set, the park will be transformed into one enormous dance floor, with DJs and artists performing well into the night, led by Aussie hip-hop artist Miss Blanks. It's the perfect way to get into the Midsumma mood — and best of all, it's 100 percent free.
Another year, another Archibald Prize forced to adapt to these pandemic-afflicted times. After the 2020 award was delayed due to COVID-19, this year's gong was handed out as normal — but now the Art Gallery of NSW exhibition that always follows has been impacted by Greater Sydney's current lockdown. So, the folks at AGNSW have released a virtual version of the popular showcase, which means both at-home Sydneysiders and folks around the rest of the country can view 2021's top portraits from their couch. The 360-degree experience lets you tour the exhibition at your own pace, and see its works as they appear within the gallery space. You can learn more about the pieces along the way as well, thanks to clickable hotspots that provide information about each artwork. Every year for the past century, the Archibald Prize has recognised exceptional works of portraiture by Australian artists. In 2021, from a field of 52 finalists, the coveted award has gone to Melbourne-based artist Peter Wegner for Portrait of Guy Warren at 100. A unanimous decision by this year's judges, Wegner's portrait of the centenarian and fellow artist obviously won the gong in a fitting year. "Guy Warren turned 100 in April — he was born the same year the Archibald Prize was first awarded in 1921," Wegner said. "This is not why I painted Guy, but the coincidence is nicely timed." Wegner's win came after an equal number of works from both male and female artists made the finalists list for the first time in Archibald history — all of which you can now scope out from home, alongside entries and winners for the Wynne and Sir John Sulman prizes, too. Across the three prizes, 2144 entries were received this year, which is the second-highest number ever after 2020. And, the three prizes received the highest-ever number of entries from Indigenous artists. If you don't agree with the judges, you can also cast your own vote for the People's Choice Award before 5pm on Sunday, August 29. [caption id="attachment_814784" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Archibald Prize 2021. Peter Wegner, 'Portrait of Guy Warren at 100'. Oil on canvas, 120.5 x 151.5 cm. © the artist. Photo: AGNSW, Felicity Jenkins. Sitter: Guy Warren.[/caption] Top image: Archibald Prize 2021 finalist. Kirsty Neilson, 'Making noise'. Oil on linen, 50.1 x 60.1 cm, © the artist. Photo: AGNSW, Felicity Jenkins.
Pablo Picasso jammed plenty of creativity into his 91-year life, including paintings, sculptures, prints, ceramics, stage design, plays, poetry and more. During the 1930s, he also etched and engraved a set of 100 pieces, in a series that was named after the art dealer who commissioned them: The Vollard Suite. Produced over an eight-year period, the collection takes inspiration from stories, tales and myths, as well as the human form, his mistress and politics at the time. In other words, it proves an artistic overview of his favoured themes and fascinations, while also offering an autobiography of sorts. It's the kind of intimate work that gives fans an insight into the Spanish master beyond his more famous pieces. As it happens, Canberra's National Gallery of Australia is one of the few institutions in the world to boast a complete set, and it's being so kind as to send the collection down our way for a spell. You'll be able to catch The Vollard Suite at the Ballarat Art Gallery for two months from February 22, 2019. Image: Pablo Picasso, Spain 1881 - France 1973, Minotaure aveugle guidé par une fillette dans la nuit. [Blind minotaur led by a little girl at night.] between 3-7 December and 31 December 1934, or 1 January 1935 from the Vollard Suite (97). Etching and scraper, printed in black ink. National Gallery of Australia. ©Succession Picasso. Licensed by Viscopy, 2017.
One-shot movies fall into two categories. Some hide their edits to make it appear as though they've been filmed in one continuous take, such as Alfred Hitchcock's Rope and the Oscar-winning Birdman. Others achieve the feat without resorting to cinematic trickery, including historical drama Russian Ark and Iranian thriller Fish & Cat. Either way, the intended effect is the same. By presenting an unbroken image free from cuts and interruptions, filmmakers try to plunge the audience so deeply into the on-screen action that they simply can't bear to tear their eyes away. Wandering from a Berlin nightclub to a cafe to a life or death bank heist, the adrenaline-fuelled Victoria joins the fold, unfolding in a single, unstaged take. Like all films that employ this technique, there's no denying the underlying technical wizardry on display in this heart-pounding German thriller. But writer/director Sebastian Schipper does more than simply jump on the latest movie-making bandwagon. Indeed, in his skilled hands, Victoria rarely feels like a gimmick. As the titular Spanish traveller (Laia Costa) catches the eye of the flirtatious Sonne (Frederick Lau) during a night out, and then tags along with him and his mates as they make the leap to the wrong side of the law, the uncut footage endeavours to take the audience along for the ride. Describing cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen's camera as one of the film's characters might be a cliché, but it's fitting. Victoria doesn't just want to make viewers watch its protagonist's wild night. It wants them to feel like they're in the thick of the frenzy, experiencing every single moment along with her. Here, variety and movement is key. While the screenplay crafts its own convincing dramas of the criminal and romantic kinds, it's not just the real-time story and changing locations that offer up a few unexpected elements. Equally unpredictable is the way Schipper uses the frame. Sometimes the visuals are claustrophobically precise and tight, while other times they're coasting and loose. The images lurch and circle, simultaneously going with the narrative's flow and creating their own momentum, and mimicking the feature's freewheeling mood while imparting their own urgency and personality as well. Of course, with the film clocking in at 138 minutes, Victoria's style does eventually threaten to overstay its welcome. Thankfully, Costa's naturalistic performance offers the pick-me-up fatigued audiences might need, even when she appears to be tired herself. The cast's improvised efforts add another layer of realism to a movie that could've just been the latest one-shot stunt. Instead, it's one of the most absorbing, surprising films we've seen in quite a while.
It's not like Mexican or Mexican fusion is all that hard to find in Melbourne, but new Windsor Street taqueria Tacocat intends to make their own mark and rethink the taco. With a menu inspired by owner Craig Dick's world travels, the dishes fuse Mexican street food with elements of traditional foods from a wide array of cultures. While tradition is usually the name of the game when it comes to international cuisines, Tacocat is taking the road less travelled. There's a 'Tacocat Madam' for breakfast, made with pulled pork, melted cheese, tomato, fondue sauce and a fried egg on sourdough, or the 'Pho' taco with beef, bean sprouts, coriander, Vietnamese mint, spring onions and Sriracha. For those with a sterling palate, Tacocat also serves a chilli and garlic roasted grasshopper taco with guac and pico de gallo, quite an interesting twist on the traditional protein. There are plenty of more traditional taco options, as well as vegetarian options across the board. The idea came during a trip through Central America, Iran, and North Korea in 2016, where Craig decided he could fuse flavours from Asian cuisine with Mexican food. "I just thought the two were a natural fit," he explains. Tacocat's insistence on not sticking to one location continues into dessert, as well. For those who have never tried a deep fried tequila shot, they are the business, so it's good to see one included on Tacocat's menu, albeit tweaked into a full dessert. With Cinco de Mayo just around the corner, Mexican places are going to be amping up the festival game around town, and Tacocat is throwing their sombrero into that ring, too — head down on the day to score yourself a special taco for free. Find Tacocat at 118 High Street, Windsor. Open Tuesday to Friday 5–10pm, Saturday to Sunday 8am–10pm.
For Australian music fans, Triple J's Hottest 100 is the most important event of the calendar year — followed closely by the date Splendour in the Grass tickets go on sale. With so much at stake music-wise, nominating yourself as host for the Hottest 100 party — and deciding what to serve — can be a daunting task. So, we've teamed up with BWS to ensure you snag a sausage that pairs perfectly with your Hottest 100 picks — a banger for your banger, if you will. Plus, if you share a snap of your snags to Instagram (post or story) and tag BWS, the company will donate $1 for every sausage in the picture to GIVIT. How good. So, before you head to the shops to get the supplies, hit this list to make sure you select savoury cylinders that are as tasty as your favourite tunes. 'GET MY OUT' BY KING STINGRAY Fans of this track by King Stingray are likely to have found themselves in one of two circumstances in 2021: a seemingly unending lockdown in one of our major cities or in a garbage job that they were ready to give the middle finger to. In our opinion, lovers of a song called 'Get Me Out' deserve a snag that'll set them free. If that's you, we can't go past the free-range frankfurters from Paddock to Plate. 'HERTZ' BY AMYL AND THE SNIFFERS The high-octane energy of Amyl and the Sniffers requires a snag that'll live up to the band's turbo reputation and gets the job done without too much fuss. And, since we're matching it with a title that measures frequency, we believe quantity is important, too. Our pick for Sniffers fans is a value pack of snags that are a staple at all good sharehouse barbecues and Bunnings sausage sizzles — the 1.8 kilomgram value pack of thin snags from Woolies. These bangers have been proven to satisfy the masses and feel almost as good as fanging down a highway in a Hertz hire car. 'MAREA (WE'VE LOST DANCING)' BY FRED AGAIN.. AND THE BLESSED MADONNA If you voted for 'Marea (We've Lost Dancing)', there's a good chance you're the person at a party who dominates the dancefloor. Considering you'll be spending most of the day hurling your flesh prison all over the backyard, we recommend taking your snags in small doses to avoid tasting them twice. A 16-pack of chicken chipolatas are an ideal bite-size snag that you could probably woof down in one go if you really tried. Plus, given there are so many in the pack, you'll have plenty of fuel to sustain your dancing all the way to number one. 'LIE TO ME AGAIN' BY THE BUOYS If you're someone who wants to be lied to, a pack of the plant-based snags with the adjective 'beefy' in the title seem like the kind of misleading sausage that you'd be into. Unreal Co's six-pack of vegetarian beefy brats are perfect for people who want to feel hoodwinked by a sausage. Go on, gaslight yourself with this irresistible snag. It'll be just like when the person this song reminds you of did it, right? 'KIM' BY TKAY MAIDZA (FEATURING BABY TATE) A track that brings as much heat as 'Kim' by Tkay Maidza and Baby Tate calls for a snag that is as hot and spicy as the song itself. Our solution? The smoked chilli snags from Suzy Spoon's Vegetarian Butcher. These vegan sausages are both super delicious and pack a punch, much like the song in question. Big fan of chilli dogs? These are a quality meat-free alternative with a chorizo-like flavour for an added kick. 'GOLD CHAINS' BY GENESIS OWUSU Fans of Genesis Owusu aren't your run-of-the-mill music lovers. They boast a superior sonic palate and we suspect that this elite taste exists when it comes to the humble snag, too. Lovers of an award-winning artist will want an award-winning snag. And, if Kel Knight has taught us anything, winning sausage competitions is serious business. Our go-to is The Gourmet Sausage Company's award-winning artisanal pork and fennel bangers. 'STAY' BY THE KID LAROI AND JUSTIN BIEBER Voted for a collaboration this huge in the Hottest 100? You'll be needing a snag that has a minimum of three main ingredients in it for the countdown. There are plenty of combination sausages to choose from however we're of the firm belief that it's the chicken, feta and spinach variety that pairs perfectly with this sad banger. It's salty, smooth and surprisingly good — much like the Bieber x Laroi collaboration itself. 'DRIVERS LICENCE' BY OLIVIA RODRIGO So you spent 2021 rinsing Olivia Rodrigo's debut album Sour? Us too. And while we simply adored immersing in the rich teenage angst of the record, a track from an album with a title this tangy needs a sweeter snag to balance things out. We recommend a pack of honey-flavoured beef sausages. And if that's a touch too sugary for you, load them up with onions to ensure you get that all-important cathartic cry while slicing them up and belting out this tune. Want to support a good cause while you enjoy your bangers? Upload a snap of your snags to Instagram (post or story), tag @bws_au and use the hashtag #snagadonation to ensure a $1 for every sausage in the shot is donated to GIVIT. Just make sure your Instagram profile is set to public for your entry to be counted. For more information, visit the website. Images: Elliott Kramer.
A ten-minute dance session for ten people at a time, held in a caravan. A future-focused art party featuring live performance, projection, visual art and music. A photo exhibition exploring the transformation of Australia's premier drag performers. Now that's how you mark three decades of celebrating Melbourne's LGBTIQA+ community and showering the city in queer arts and culture — and it's only the beginning of Midsumma Festival's 2017 lineup. Hitting the big three-oh is a spectacular affair and then some for the annual fest, complete with more than 130 events in the program. Keeping the impressive numbers going — and growing, as they have since Midsumma first kicked off in 1988 — the forthcoming iteration will also feature the work of over 1200 artists and culture creators in more than 70 venues and outdoor space, including hubs at Arts Centre Melbourne, Gasworks and The Hare Hole at Hares & Hyenas. As always, the annual Pride March through St Kilda proves one of the festival's must-attend highlights, alongside the fellow returning flagship event that is the Midsumma Carnival and T Dance. At the former, everyone will dance, strut, sing, catwalk, vogue, placard, drag and move together in a display of difference, acceptance and equality. At the latter, prepare to party all day and night, watch queer sports and even see a dog show, all at Alexandra Gardens. Other standouts include a showcase of portraits of LBTI women by photographer Lisa White, a new take on Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince by the folks behind Psycho Beach Party, a reimagined version of Fringe favourite dance piece HardQueer DeathPony, and UK drag stars Jonny Woo and Le Gateau Chocolat working their way through musical theatre hits such as Les Mis, The Lion King, Cabaret and Annie. Or, hear marriage equality activist and Queen of Ireland star Panti Bliss share her experiences, catch a comedy cabaret about how to be a wingman, enjoy the Cuddle Puddle (yes, it's exactly what it sounds like), pay tribute to Elizabeth Taylor, show off your interpretative dance skills and participate in the Muddy Gras obstacle course. It's going to be a fun and busy three weeks, that's for sure. Image: Coal Photography.
OMG Philip Quast! Sorry. We know that’s an undignified way to start a review of something as venerable as an MTC production of Henrik Ibsen but the sight of Quast on the posters for Ghosts has been exciting us for weeks. For those unfamiliar with him, Quast was the first man to play Javert in an Australian production of Les Miserables and his glorious stentorian voice has a special place in the hearts of theatre nerds nationwide. In Ghosts he plays a tormented priest, which is just perfect, opposite Linda Cropper (Offspring) who delivers a commanding performance as embittered widow Helene Alving. The drama on stage is so thick you could carve it. Ghosts is about as bleak a piece of theatre as you could wish for in your darkest hour. The widow Alving is sourly planning a memorial to her late husband, who she detested. Her maid (Pip Edwards), mistreated and manipulated by her drunken father (Richard Piper), schemes ruthlessly for advancement. Alving’s son (Ben Pfeiffer) is decaying with illness. Meanwhile Quast’s priest, Pastor Manders, scarce able to control his own tangle of emotions, savagely judges everyone else. Every single character is in some way haunted by their past. The ghosts of the title are not supernatural spirits but the echoes of bygone deeds, the lasting damage done by destructive people or obsolete ideas that continue to control people’s lives. The play appalled critics when it was first performed in the 1880s. It was described as “revoltingly suggestive and blasphemous", “as foul and filthy a concoction as has ever been allowed to disgrace the boards of an English theatre,” and “gross, almost putrid, indecorum.” Ibsen gave the critics a lot to be rattled by. Not only does the story includes illicit affairs, sexually transmitted disease and incest, the play’s indictment of outdated ideas is a clear tilt at religious moralising. MTC’s production, far from being putrid, is elegantly dark. The emotional tone is emphasised by a stark set, depicting the widow’s house as a mouldering barely furnished mansion. Rain beats constantly against a glass wall, heightening the feeling of entrapment, and characters frequently appear first through the fogged glass, like phantoms out of mist. At times the show does seem to waver between trying to modernise Ibsen and milking 19th century melodrama for all it’s worth. It can feel a little disjointed at times but this works in context with the script, which is after all about people failing to break free from their past. It is as if the play is also trapped by history, trying to modernise but unable to avoid sliding back into melodrama. While there are some inescapably dated elements — the depiction of illness in particular feels antiquated — Ibsen’s rage against the societal hypocrisies of his day shines through fiercely with strong resonance to our current time. It is still a powerful drama and this production drives that home with some blistering performances. Image: Jeff Busby.
The Mornington Peninsula is always synonymous with luxury. Wineries have a certain year-round appeal, after all. But one of the region's especially luxe locales — the oh-so-relaxing Alba Thermal Springs & Spa — is expanding its offering for the festive season to give you extra cause for a drive down south this Christmas. Earlier this year, the spa property opened an overnight destination with the arrival of five new luxury villas and two studio rooms on the dunes overlooking the estate. Now, there are some limited-time extras available for guests staying on-site in December. Alba's on-site restaurant, Thyme, is offering a limited-time Christmas menu that stars a trifle made with pistachio, mango and white chocolate — perfectly paired with a candy cane martini (gin, lemon and bitters with Alba's own candy cane–infused vodka, shaken and finished with a crushed candy cane rim). You can roll the treats into a complete booking with the 'Thyme to Celebrate' package — which includes a soak in the hot springs with a one-course lunch or dinner at Thyme for $120pp, available weekdays until December 24. Earlier in the month, on Sunday, December 7, with Christmas carols from Two Bays Choir on the staircase, 20% off all boutique items and complimentary gift wrapping. In fact, any guests staying on the property between Monday, December 1–24 have a chance to receive some stocking stuffers from the spa team. Every day, one guest will have a hand-painted bauble placed inside their locker, which could contain all sorts of prizes, from candles, bath salts and robes to private experiences, dining vouchers and even a free stay. Alba Thermal Springs & Spa can be located at 282 Browns Road, Fingal, VIC. For more information or to make a booking, visit the website.
UPDATE, November 13, 2020: The Front Runner is available to stream via SBS On Demand, Google Play, YouTube Movies and Prime Video. A true tale of scandal on the election trail, The Front Runner is inspired by events from three decades ago. The book that it's based on — non-fiction tome All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid — was published in 2014, while columnist-turned-author Mat Bai started the ball rolling with a profile in 2003. And yet, this is a film blatantly begging to be made in the current political climate. Adultery, cover ups, a media firestorm, and debates about the ethics of news coverage and what's even newsworthy all fill the movie's frames. Sound familiar? When Gary Hart's (Hugh Jackman) private life makes the headlines, with a young woman (Sara Paxton) who isn't his wife (Vera Farmiga) seen leaving his Washington DC townhouse, the US politician's response is simple. He might be the Democratic party's leading contender for the 1988 presidential nomination, but he believes that what happens behind closed doors is nobody's business. He's the young, handsome, idealistic hotshot with a real chance of mobilising the masses — the beloved midwestern senator with real policies and real momentum. He's about as far away as you can get from sitting American president Ronald Reagan and likely Republican candidate George HW Bush, and he's certain that his professional deeds matter more to voters than his personal peccadillos. Call Hart naive, call him optimistic or call his judgement incredibly poor; when first asked about his alleged womanising ways, he even dares one Washington Post reporter (Mamoudou Athie) to follow him around. Whichever description you choose, there's one thing that you can definitely call Hart: caught in interesting times. In the thick of the 80s, JFK's rumoured affairs were old news, Bill Clinton's impeachment was still to come, and everything that Donald Trump has brought to the presidency couldn't have been dreamed up. Forced to fight for his political life as stories keep circulating and reporters keep chasing, Hart's situation proves a time capsule of sorts. Unfaithful politicians are splashed across the news with frequency today, but we no longer live in a world where a highly publicised extramarital affair (or worse) precludes someone from becoming America's commander-in-chief. Is that the right outcome or the wrong one? Without overstating the parallels between then and now, The Front Runner successfully shows just how much has changed. That said, the movie also leans heavily on Hart's chief rebuttal to his attackers — that exposing his indiscretions cheapens political discourse. Initially shot and packaged with jaunty, fast-paced flair reminiscent of Aaron Sorkin's political dramas, or of writer-director Jason Reitman's own Thank You For Smoking and Up In The Air, the film doesn't always find a comfortable position. It wants viewers to condemn the current status quo, feel for Hart, experience the deflating effect the controversy has on his loyal staffers, and realise that, without this incident, history could've been very, very different. They're not always compatible ideas, even in a movie that knows how complicated the scenario is. More than that, they're not always given the depth they need by Reitman, Bai and Jay Carson's screenplay. Never lacking in complexity is Jackman, whose performance is charismatic without being smooth and serious without being sombre. Hart isn't the greatest showman, but rather a great believer in the power of elected office — and someone who believes he should get his chance to ascend to the top job. It's the kind of layered portrayal that hasn't featured on Jackman's resume that often of late. Beyond its leading man, however, The Front Runner is well-served by its entire cast. Paxton is never simply the stereotypical other woman, and nor is Farmiga just the bland, dutiful wife. JK Simmons, alongside Paranormal Activity alum Molly Ephraim, convincingly rides the ups and downs that come with working for the senator. But, worlds away from his work in Patti Cake$ and The Get Down, it's Athie who threatens to steal the show. Playing a young journalist trying to do what's right even when he's told that it's wrong, the actor provides the film's conflicted centre. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R-vFH_G0V4
Conformity rarely bodes well in cinema. Whenever everyone's dressing the same, little boxes litter the landscape or identical white-picket fences stretch as far as the eye can see, that perception of perfection tends to possess a dark underbelly. The Stepford Wives demonstrated that. Pleasantville, Blue Velvet and Vivarium all did as well. Yes, there's a touch of conformity in movies about the evils of and heralded by conformity; of course there is. That remains true when Florence Pugh (Black Widow) and Harry Styles (Eternals) navigate an ostensibly idyllic vision of retro suburbia in a desert-encased enclave — one that was always going to unravel when the movie they're in is called Don't Worry Darling. Don't go thinking that this handsome and intriguing film doesn't know all of this, though. Don't go thinking that it's worried about the similarities with other flicks, including after its secrets are spilled, either. It'd be revealing too much to mention a couple of other movies that Don't Worry Darling blatantly recalls, so here's a spoiler-free version: this is a fascinating female-focused take on a pair of highlights from two decades-plus back that are still loved, watched and discussed now. That's never all that Olivia Wilde's second feature as a filmmaker after 2019's Booksmart is, but it feels fitting that when it conforms in a new direction, it finds a way to make that space its own. That's actually what Pugh's Alice thinks she wants when Don't Worry Darling begins. The film's idealised 1950s-style setting comes with old-fashioned gender roles firmly in place, cocktails in hand as soon Styles' Jack walks in the door come quittin' time and elaborate multi-course dinners cooked up each night, with its protagonist going along with it all. But she's also far from keen on having a baby, the done thing in the company town that is Victory. It'd curtail the noisy sex that gets the neighbours talking, for starters. Immaculately clothed and coiffed women happily playing dutiful housewives in a cosy sitcom-esque dream of America generations ago: that's Wilde and screenwriter Katie Silberman's (also Booksmart) entry point; however, they waste zero time in showing how rebelling in her own child-free way isn't enough to quell Alice's nagging and growing doubts about utopia. There's much to get her querying, such as the earth-shaking sounds that rumble when Victory's men are at work, doing top-secret business on "progressive materials" out in the sandy expanse. There's the reflections in the mirror that briefly take on a life of their own, too — starting in a ballet class that's about retaining control, coveting symmetry and never upsetting the status quo far more than dancing. And, there's the pushed-aside Margaret (KiKi Layne, The Old Guard) after she disrupts a company barbecue. All the rules enforced to keep Victory's women in their places, and the cult-like wisdom that town and company founder Frank (Chris Pine, All the Old Knives) constantly spouts, are also inescapable. So is the force with which asking questions or daring to be different is publicly nixed, as Alice quickly discovers. And, it's impossible to avoid how the men band together when anything or anyone causes a bump, even their own other halves. Swiftly, Alice's days scrubbing and vacuuming her Palm Springs-inspired bungalow, then sipping cocktails poolside or while window shopping with fellow Victory spouses like Bunny (Wilde, Ghostbusters: Afterlife) and Peg (Kate Berlant, A League of Their Own), fall under a shadow — not literally in such sunnily postcard-perfect surroundings, but with shade still lingering over every part of her routine. Speaking up just gets dismissed, and Frank and his underlings (including a doctor played by Timothy Simmons, aka Veep's Jonah Ryan, who is instantly unnerving thanks to that stroke of casting) have too-precise answers to her concerns. As set to a jaggedly breathy score by John Powell (Locked Down), hell is all those drinks, chats and parties teeming with plastered-on smiles and oh-so-fake conversations. It's also the idea that deviating from the norm is an act of betrayal. Hell is the glitching existence that Alice finds herself in, in other words, as her suspicions won't subside and the urge to investigate and challenge keeps swelling. When it comes to showing the cracks fracturing Victory's gleaming facade, Don't Worry Darling moves fast — plenty of other movies have spent more time in the illusion of domestic bliss before shattering it, and Wilde smartly knows that her audience don't need to luxuriate in all that glitters to care about why nothing truly does glisten. Her audience can't miss the mirage anyway, thanks to the stunning production design and costuming, as brightly lensed by cinematographer Matthew Libatique (The Prom). Given how pristine that Alice's life literally looks, it's easy to see the flaws just as she does. It's easy to buy how speedily Alice's status quo starts to unfurl from there when the performance that accompanies it is so phenomenal. Pugh just keeps going from strength to strength since first earning attention in 2016's Lady Macbeth, in just her second film role, then backing it up with everything from The Little Drummer Girl and Fighting with My Family through to Midsommar and Little Women — and her anxious and alarmed work here is on par with her best. When Don't Worry Darling doesn't quite put its pieces together (when it gets repetitive with its psychological thrills in its midsection, primarily), she's the unbreakable glue still holding the movie in place. Forget the supposed feuds, screaming matches, affairs, boycotts and flying saliva, aka the picture's long list of highly publicised off-screen dramas; Wilde knows how to cast just as well as she knows how to lay impeccably manicured and yet insidiously tense scenes. That knack for finding the right actors for the part extends to Wilde enlisting her own talents (and visibly having a whole lot of fun in the process) as the gossipy but compliant Bunny — and, yes, casting Styles as well. The pop superstar-turned-actor is meant to pale in comparison to Pugh, in a portrayal that clicks exactly as it's designed to when the twist comes. On that subject, Don't Worry Darling's big revelation is hardly difficult to predict. It also doesn't say anything new about our patriarchal society, the power that men have long wielded over women and today's toxic perspectives. Still, that doesn't make Wilde's cautionary tale any less engaging, involving and rattling. It's imperfect, but that's apt; eschewing conformity always has to be.
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.
For four days this week discover the hidden masterpieces of artists living and working in Melbourne's inner west with Maribyrnong City Council's Open Studios in the West. Through a self-guided tour, you'll be able to wander in and out of the studios, galleries and workshops of some of Melbourne's most interesting artists, performers and designers in Footscray, Yarraville, Maidstone and Braybrook. These artists will welcome you into their studios — be it their backyard shed, a warehouse, or even their own lounge room. It's a great opportunity to experience the inspiration and working spaces of a diverse range of the city's creatives. Alongside the artistic wandering, the Maribyrnong City Council will be hosting two accompanying events: a screen-based arts instillation called Dangerous Deeds, and exhibition This Empty Chair. For the full program, visit the website.
It might have come a little late in Melbourne's outdoor drinking season, but the city's CBD just got a luxe new rooftop bar. Fleet, sitting on top of Vibe Hotel Melbourne (within the hotel's former penthouse apartments), boasts views over Flinders Street Station and the Yarra River that can be enjoyed no matter the weather, thanks to the retractable roof and smattering of indoor seating. Interior architecture firm Paul Kelly Design (BLACK Bar & Grill and Crown Casino) has designed the light-filled space, incorporating natural amber and pink hues throughout an interior full of high tables and plush stools. In contrast to these dusty tones, the wrap-around terrace is considerably brighter, with white accents. Low tables and upholstered couches line the windows, making the space ideal for long, casual hangouts in the sunshine. The drinks lineup comes courtesy of food and beverage consultant Grant Collins, who has stocked the bar with more than 70 different rums from across the globe, including a vintage and rare bottle collection dating back to the 1930s. But rum isn't all that's on show. There are 50 different gins on the docket, alongside an extensive list of other spirits. Collins has also curated a lengthy menu of nautical-themed cocktails, plus a few different spritzes, negronis and martinis. Craft beers, Victorian wines and mocktails round out the impressive bevs list. Whatever you want to drink, Fleet is likely to have it. And while you'll spend plenty of time flipping through the drinks menu, food is kept to a very manageable single page. Either keep it simple with fresh oysters and a meat and cheese board, or opt for a bigger spread. Chef Asish Kumar has crafted a Euro-centric menu with plenty of luxury French and Italian influences — think charcoal mushroom arancini, seared scallops with butter and caviar, lobster crepes and a chocolate cremieux with coffee caviar and cocoa meringue. Even though, first and foremost, this is a bar, the food is no mere afterthought. Folks can happily sip and snack a night away up at Fleet while admiring Melbourne's lit-up skyline and river. Fleet is located at Level 22 of 1 Queen Street, Melbourne (on the corner of Queen and Flinders Streets). It operates from 3pm–late Tuesday through Saturday. For more details, visit the rooftop bar's website.
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. It's hitting Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane 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. Daydream will hit up Melbourne's Sidney Myer Music Bowl on Saturday, April 22 to kick things off, then head north. The fest plays the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney on Saturday, April 29, followed up Brisbane's Riverstage on Sunday, April 30. The lineup varies slightly per city, with Beach Fossils and Cloud Nothings taking to the stage at all stops, but Majak Door missing Brisbane. And no, it isn't too early into 2023 to start packing your calendar with music festivals. New year, new diary to fill, after all — and Daydream, the also just-announced Lazy Mountain and more are firmly here to help. DAYDREAM 2023 LINEUP: Modest Mouse Slowdive Tropical F*ck Storm Beach Fossils Cloud Nothings Majak Door DAYDREAM 2023 DATES: Saturday, April 22 — Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne Saturday, April 29 — Hordern Pavilion, Sydney Sunday, April 30 — Riverstage, Brisbane [caption id="attachment_886745" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Dylan Jardine[/caption] Daydream will hit Australia's east coast capitals in April. Early-bird pre-sales start at 9am local time on Thursday, February 2, with general sales from 9am local time on Friday, February 3 — head to the tour website to sign up for the pre-sale, or for more information. Top images: Modest Mouse by Matthewvetter via Wikimedia Commons; Tropical F*ck Storm by Somefx.
There's no shortage of ways to send your love to your nearest and dearest, though sometimes an emoji, a surprise bunch of flowers or even a hardy succulent just doesn't cut it. Similarly, showering those close to you in sweet treats is far from difficult — but Australia's new chocolate company wants to provide another option. Combining taste, style and heartfelt messages, Good Measure Co is offering up the country's newest personalised artisan chocolate delivery service, not only ferrying their cocoa-based delicacies around the nation in attractive packaging, but letting you write your own tender missive to go along with them. You pick what goes inside and on the outside, choosing from gourmet dark and milk chocs in blueberry, milk and honey, dark raspberry, chocolate noir and signature salted caramel flavours — or Champagne truffles — plus four styles of box and whatever nice words you can dream up. Those eager to tailor their choccie selection for their special someone can expect to pay $50 for a box of 12, and $75 for 24. Boxes with a range of pre-written statements are also available for the same price, ranging from "chocolate for my favourite" to "it's time to celebrate". And, the cost includes free delivery, arriving the same day in Sydney for orders placed before 11am, and the next day if ordered afterwards. The company was created by Pete and Hannah Craggs, who "wanted to reimagine the humble chocolate box, and create a new way to share the joy of chocolate with friends and family in a simple and easy way," Pete explains. Continues Hannah, "we've tapped into the same sense of occasion and excitement you'd get from giving and receiving flowers, but with high quality, gourmet chocolate instead." For more information, visit Good Measure Co's website.
Staying up late absorbing after-dark art and culture might sound like a pastime reserved for inner city folk, but come May, that's exactly what the crowds will be doing in one of Melbourne's outer suburbs, too. Werribee is set to score a brand-new 24-hour arts festival filled with music, performances, live art and film. Simply dubbed 24, the inaugural fest is set to take over Chirnside Park from 6pm on Saturday, May 6 to 6pm on Sunday, May 7. It'll be an all-ages affair that's free to explore, with a jam-packed program of happenings to keep you entertained non-stop for 1440 minutes straight. The Riverside Stage will play host to a broad-ranging lineup of acts, including all-female Wurundjeri dance outfit Djirri Djirri, reggae singer-songwriter Nhatty Man, hip hop and spoken word artist NOMAD, and Amadou Suso & Friends Band, showing off those legendary skills on the kora (a West African stringed instrument). [caption id="attachment_895392" align="alignnone" width="1920"] 'Chromatica', by David Beach[/caption] Tarabeat and MzRizk will treat audiences to a fusion of classic and contemporary Arabic tunes, Halo Vocal Ensemble will be delivering their signature RnB-soaked sound and indie-rock three-piece Berkeley will have the crowds thrashing. The multi-sensory fun continues away from the stage, with a slew of giant installations and live art performances. You'll spy the massive tune-spinning robotic insect UKI, recognisable from appearances at White Night and Burning Man, plus pop-up dance performances by Janette Hoe and a colourful cast of roving entertainers weaving through the night. [caption id="attachment_895393" align="alignnone" width="1920"] 'UKI', by John Palmer[/caption] You can unleash your own creativity with a couple of large-scale interactive works by Slow Art Collection, wander through a luminous garden maze made entirely from recycled plastics, and see artist and designer Callum Preston (set builder for RONE's Time) transform a beat-up car into a neon masterpiece live in front of your eyes. There's a giant interactive kaleidoscope, games of glow-in-the-dark tennis and a silent disco that'll have you bopping from 11pm until 7am. You can even put your feet up, pop on some headphones and catch a flick, thanks to the 24-Hour Outdoor Cinema, which'll be screening back-to-back classics right through the festival. And of course, to keep you fuelled for all that late-night action, there'll be food trucks onsite slinging a wide array of goodies. [caption id="attachment_895397" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Callum Preston[/caption] [caption id="attachment_895388" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Slow Art Collective[/caption] [caption id="attachment_895389" align="alignnone" width="1920"] 'Imaginary Botanicals' by The Indirect Object[/caption] The inaugural 24 will run from 6pm on Saturday, May 6–6pm on Sunday, May 7, at Chirnside Park, 220 Watton Street, Werribee. Top image: Halo Vocal Ensemble
Looking for an excuse to get out of the city this weekend? The Great Australian Beer Festival might be it. The fest is returning to the Geelong Racecourse for its seventh year this Saturday, February 16 with over 200 Australian beers and ciders in tow. Craft producers from across the country will set up stalls, including the Gold Coast's Balter Brewing Company — which just won top spot on the GABS Hottest 100 list — Melbourne's Stomping Ground and Two Birds, Sydney's Young Henrys and Adelaide's Pirate Life and Prancing Pony. This year, in addition to tasting tokens, the festival is also offering middies and craft tinnies for purchase. The beer cocktail stall will return as well, and table reservations are up for grabs, too. Apart from the brews, there'll be over 20 live acts performing across three stages — one of which is a dedicated piano bar. Headliners include Great Gable, The Settlement, Mick Thomas and the Roving Commission, The Grand Wazoo and Skyscraper Stan. Otherwise, there's a keg rolling competition, themed races, a beer cabaret and carnival DJs to boot. And, for eats, expect a range of food trucks, with a focus on barbecued, slow-cooked meats. General admission tickets are $39 in advance, or $45 on the day. Tasting tokens can be purchased at the venue or a ten-pack can be purchased with your ticket. The whole thing kicks off at 1pm, and a shuttle will run to the event from South Geelong Station, so no one in your crew has to be designated driver.
"It's actually a western" is a fairly common call these days, directed towards everything from superhero films to horror flicks. In the case of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the comparison really sticks. In the latest biting black comedy from writer-director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths), a horrific tragedy inspires a determined crusade, as a lone hero commits to doing whatever it takes to see justice done and a small town gets caught up in the chaos. Shots are fired, in the form of controversial signs, scuffles with dentists, cursing at priests, and hurling both people and Molotov cocktails through windows. Clad in faded boilersuit rather than cowboy hat and holster, Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) leads the charge. After spotting a trio of weathered billboards on the rarely used Drinkwater Road outside of the titular locale, she hires them out with the purpose of sending one hell of a message. Still mourning the death of her teenage daughter seven months earlier, and equally furious and frustrated about the lack of progress in the local police investigation, Mildred arranges for the signs to bear three statements. "Raped while dying," reads the first. "And still no arrests?", asks the second. "How come, Chief Willoughby?", pleads the third. The origins of the film's fantastic title might be immediately apparent, but the directions that Three Billboards heads in from there are far from predictable. The movie wears its rage as prominently as Mildred wears her wilt-inducing glare, while at the same time chronicling her grief with empathy and understanding. It's a delicate balance, never downplaying either her ire or her pain, and it's one that McDonagh gets just right. It also proves essential as Mildred crosses paths with other townsfolk, such as the well-respected Chief (Woody Harrelson) named on her signs, and the easily angered Officer Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell), who's known for his brutal racism more than his law-enforcement prowess. Packed with dark, hilarious, nigh-unprintable dialogue, McDonagh's script mightn't be subtle, but it is teeming with complexity — much more than some of its seemingly simplistic takes on race and gender might initially indicate. Taking his cues from gunslinging revenge tales gone by, the filmmaker crafts a complicated rumination on humanity's contradictions, including the way that the right intentions can still lead to murky outcomes, and vice versa. His storytelling approach demonstrates a similarly stark contrast in action, convincingly flitting from scathing to thoughtful to loud, foul-mouthed and attention-seeking, and back again, in an instant. From the second that McDormand's Mildred locks eyes on the billboards, there's no doubting the movie's other big standout. It's hardly surprising given the actress' track record, but it bears highlighting all the same. While Harrelson and Rockwell are in terrific form, they've got nothing on McDormand, who seems certain to pick up another Academy Award nomination more than 20 years after scoring her first playing the polar opposite type of role in Fargo. She's in total command of the movie from beginning to end, though in true western style it's the small gestures, more than the witty speeches, that really leave a lasting impression. The range that she shows — whether in a momentarily faltering gaze, an unthinking act of kindness in a confrontational situation, or a look of troubled realisation — many actors can only dream of. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aZ3r-84EQc
Thirty years, hundreds of films and thousands of minutes spent staring at the silver screen: that's what the Alliance Française French Film Festival is celebrating in 2019. Three decades since first launching in Australia, the event is marking its mammoth milestone with a particularly huge festival. And like all of the best big birthday bashes, the fest has assembled quite the on-screen guest list. When AFFFF starts touring the country from March 5 — kicking off in Sydney before heading to heading to Melbourne, Canberra, Perth, Brisbane, Hobart, Adelaide, Avoca Beach, Parramatta and Byron Bay — it'll not only screen 54 movies across a six-week period, but also showcase a heap of French acting greats. Think Juliette Binoche, Audrey Tautou, Isabelle Adjani, Vincent Cassel, Catherine Deneuve, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Mathieu Amalric, plus Vanessa Paradis and her daughter Lily-Rose Depp. The list goes on (obviously). With acclaimed French directors Claire Denis and Jacques Audiard each making their English-language filmmaking debuts over the last 12 months, this year's AFFFF also boasts a bit of Hollywood star power. Robert Pattinson and André Benjamin (aka André 3000) join the aforementioned Binoche in Denis' stellar dystopian space effort High Life, while Joaquin Phoenix, John C. Reilly and Jake Gyllenhaal star in Audiard's western, The Sisters Brothers. Both titles have been gathering praise on the international festival circuit since late last year, and will hit Aussie screens for the first time at AFFFF. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtOwfo1ypOw From opening film The Trouble with You to closing night's Kiss & Tell — both comedies — the full lineup boasts plenty of other features to get excited about. Intimate drama A Faithful Man steps into the complications of romance, with Louis Garrel both in front of and behind the camera; César award-nominee Amanda follows a twentysomething forced to bond with his niece; and doco fans can get a fashion fix with both Celebration: Yves Saint Laurent and Jean-Paul Gaultier: Freak & Chic. Elsewhere, famed director François Ozon returns with By the Grace of God, which comes our way after premiering in Berlin in February, and Olivier Assayas is back with his thoughtful latest offering, Non-Fiction. While the trio of The World Is Yours, Knife + Heart and Sorry Angel have already played on Australian screens, specifically in Melbourne last year, they're also worth looking out for — the crime caper, campy slasher and queer romance all made our best of MIFF list for a good reason. Finally, if you're keen on both old and new French talents, they're both in the spotlight in a considerable way. The former comes courtesy of a restored screening of Alain Resnais' classic 1961 effort Last Year at Marienbad, and a dedicated program strand highlights the latter, including emerging filmmakers such as Coralie Fargeat (Revenge), Cécila Rouaud (Family Photo) and Dominique Rocher (The Night Eats the World). The Alliance Française French Film Festival tours Australia from March 5, screening at Sydney's Chauvel Cinema, Palace Norton Street, Palace Verona, Palace Central and Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace from March 5 to April 10; Melbourne's Palace Balwyn, Palace Brighton Bay, Palace Cinema Como, Palace Westgarth, Kino Cinemas and The Astor Theatre from March 6 to April 10; Perth's Palace Raine Square, Cinema Paradiso, Luna on SX, Windsor Cinema andCamelot Outdoor Cinema from March 13 to April 10; and Brisbane's Palace Barracks and Palace James Street from March 14 to April 14. For more information and to buy tickets, visit the AFFFF website.
When I was bartending, a lovely lady gave me her number over the bar. My manager, having seen the smooth exchange, turned to me a said, "I didn't think people met like that anymore!" It gets to feeling like that in Melbourne's dating scene, with so many first contacts with a potential flame coming through the simple swipe of a finger. Keely Sonntag, the brains behind The Datevine, is looking to chuck that notion away — or at least provide an alternative. Instead of checking out a bunch of pictures and making a snap judgment, The Datevine is all about getting together in a fun environment and just simply seeing what happens. You know, social interaction. There's no pressure, no expectation, just some single people maybe or maybe not hanging out together. After a string of sold-out events in Sydney, The Datevine is hosting their first Melbourne party on Thursday, June 8, booking out Brunswick Street's Rice Queen for the night. $59 gets you dinner in the form of a set menu, plus the opportunity to chill out with similarly minded people. So put the phone down, get out there and meet some people. The next event will take place at Rupert on Rupert on Thursday, June 22.
Consider yourself reminded – Valentine's Day is just around the corner. But don't fear if you've forgotten to organise a fancy table for you and your SO, bestie or group of pals – with A Table to End Hunger you can secure that last minute booking, while also supporting an important cause. A Table to End Hunger has already made reservations at 140 of Australia's best restaurants, which come inclusive with a dinner and drinks package to ensure your night goes off without a hitch. All you have to do is place the winning bid on any one of the many high-flying restaurants, and you'll get the spot. Plus, your winning bid will also help end world hunger by 2030, as 100% of the proceeds go straight to The Hunger Project. And going one step further, if the winning bid is paid with an eligible American Express Card, Amex will donate an additional 15% of the bid value. No matter what part of the country you live in, there are loads of participating restaurants in your state. Feel like some Spanish tapas overlooking Melbourne CBD? Place a bid on Bomba. Or, if stylish Italian is more your game, stake your claim on Double Bay's Matteo. If you're in Brisbane, snag a table at newcomer Little Big House. There's pretty much every type of atmosphere, cuisine and location you could need, so head over to the A Table to End Hunger auction page and spread the love this Valentine's Day. Online bidding is happening right now and will close on Sunday February 11, 2018 at 9pm AEDT. Terms and conditions apply. Image: Nikki To.
If everyone looked at strangers in the same way as French New Wave icon Agnes Varda (Cléo from 5 to 7, Vagabond), the world would be a much kinder place. Indeed, when Faces Places begins with the Belgian-born filmmaker and oldest ever Academy Award nominee hitting the road with street artist JR, the octagenarian can't hide her excitement. "I'm always game to go towards villages," she explains, "toward simple landscapes, toward faces." It's with honesty and humour that she expands upon why: "In fact, JR is fulfilling my greatest desire. To meet new faces and photograph them, so they don't fall down the holes of my memory." So commences Varda's 22nd film, one of this year's best documentary Oscar contenders. Co-directed by JR, the movie centres on the pair's jovial jaunts through the French countryside. Zipping about in JR's custom-made vehicle — a van with an in-built large-scale photo printer — Varda and her younger companion do just what the doco's title promises: they take photos of different faces in different places. The photographs are her obsession; for him, it's just the start. Thanks to his distinctive car's printing abilities, it's not long before JR is standing in a cherry picker, zooming up the exterior of rustic, historic, often crumbling buildings and pasting the giant photos on their facades. As pieces of large-scale art, the results of their efforts are never less than striking, each installation towering down in all of its detailed glory. Moreover, their odd couple collaboration makes for a heartwarming project, requiring and encouraging openness, curiosity and warmth. Wide smiles beam from lofty heights, sparking wide smiles from those below — regardless whose portrait is on the wall, or if it's a goat instead. A sense of community also springs up around the photographs, cultivated not only by something as simple as paper stuck on buildings, but by the willingness to pay a stranger some attention. "I like your laughing eyes," Varda tells one woman, whose likeness will soon adorn a stack of dockside shipping containers. "We wanted to pay homage to you," she tells another, who refuses to move out of her slated-for-demolition home in an old mining town. With her friendly, empathetic chatter and her distinguishing mop of grey and red hair, Varda looms as large over the project as the images she makes with JR. As the duo roam through small yet lively villages, Varda makes new memories while reminiscing about older ones — about love, work, times passed, friends lost and past moments immortalised in earlier photos. She's looking forwards and backwards in tandem, observing, sifting and making sense of her lengthy life in the process. Of course, all photos, films, paintings and the like are informed as much by the artist's aims as their experiences. Faces Places doesn't pretend to coin this idea, but rather explores it in a thoughtful and affectionate manner. In her travels, in the people she meets and in her blossoming friendship with a man six decades her junior, Varda interrogates how she chooses to capture her existence as it's inching towards an end. Well known for making personal documentaries across her career, hers is a sometimes melancholy but always enchanting journey, accepting the changes that time brings and acknowledging the fact that nothing is permanent. Served up with charm and heart, that's a perspective we could all benefit from embracing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKbjnLpxv70
If you're a Melbourne movie lover who's been hanging out for a night — or several — staring at the big screen, you've had to take your trips to the flicks in stages. First, when the city's lockdown ended, outdoor cinemas were permitted to reopen. Now, with the next set of eased restrictions kicking in at 6pm on Friday, October 29, indoor picture palaces can get their projectors whirring again as well. Under stay-at-home restrictions, no one is ever short on things to watch, of course. In fact, you probably feel like you've streamed every movie ever made over by now, including new releases, comedies, music documentaries, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent more time than usual over the past 18 months glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of films are hitting indoor cinemas so that you can do just that — and we've picked ten must-see flicks that've only reached big screens from Friday, October 29 that you can now head to. LAMB Just over a decade ago, Noomi Rapace was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, too. After starring in the first film adaptations of Steig Larsson's best-selling Millennium books, the Swedish actor then brought her penchant for simmering ferocity to Alien prequel Prometheus, and to movies as varied as erotic thriller Passion, crime drama The Drop and Australian-shot thriller Angel of Mine. But Lamb might be her best role yet, and best performance. A picture that puts her silent film era-esque features to stunning use, it stares into the soul of a woman not just yearning for her own modest slice of happiness, but willing to do whatever it takes to get it. It also places Rapace opposite a flock of sheep, and has her cradle a baby that straddles both species; however, this Icelandic blend of folk-horror thrills, relationship dramas and even deadpan comedy is as human as it is ovine. At first, Lamb is all animal. Something rumbles in the movie's misty, mountainside farm setting, spooking the horses. In the sheep barn, where cinematographer Eli Arenson (Hospitality) swaps arresting landscape for a ewe's-eye view, the mood is tense and restless as well. Making his feature debut, filmmaker Valdimar Jóhannsson doesn't overplay his hand early. As entrancing as the movie's visuals prove in all their disquieting stillness, he keeps the film cautious about what's scaring the livestock. But Lamb's expert sound design offers a masterclass in evoking unease from its very first noise, and makes it plain that all that eeriness, anxiety and dripping distress has an unnerving — and tangible — source. The farm belongs to Rapace's Maria and her partner Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason, A White, White Day), who've thrown themselves into its routines after losing a child. They're a couple that let their taciturn faces do the talking, including with each other, but neither hides their delight when one ewe gives birth to a hybrid they name Ada. Doting and beaming, they take the sheep-child into their home as their own. Its woolly mother stands staring and baa-ing outside their kitchen window, but they're both content in and fiercely protective of their newfound domestic happiness. When Ingvar's ex-pop star brother Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga) arrives unexpectedly, they don't even dream of hiding their new family idyll — even as he's initially shocked and hardly approving. Enticing, surreal and starkly unsettling all at once, Lamb also benefits from exceptional animal performances — it won the Cannes Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize for Palm Dog, the prestigious event's awards for best canine acting — and its own savvy. It nabbed Un Certain Regard Prize of Originality at Cannes as well, but the movie's shrewdness isn't limited to its standout concept. Each patient shot that roves over the hillside, peeks through the fog, and soaks in the strain and pressure is just as astute. Each rustle, huff and jangle in the film's soundscape proves the same. Every aesthetic decision paints Lamb in unease and uncertainty, in fact, and lets its lingering gaze towards the steely Rapace, affecting Guðnason and their four-legged co-stars unleash an intense and absurdist pastoral symphony of dread and hope, bleakness and sweetness, and terror and love. Read our full review. RIDERS OF JUSTICE Few things will ever be better than seeing Mads Mikkelsen get day drunk and dance around while swigging champagne in an Oscar-winning movie, which is one fantastic film experience that 2021 has already delivered. But the always-watchable actor is equally magnetic and exceptional in Riders of Justice, a revenge-driven comedy that's all about tackling your problems in a different and far less boozy fashion. In both features, he plays the type of man unlikely to express his feelings. Instead of Another Round's mild-mannered teacher who's so comfortably settled into his adult life that his family barely acknowledges he's there, here he's a dedicated solider who's more often away than home. Beneath his close-cropped hair and steely, bristly beard, he's stern, sullen and stoic, not to mention hot-tempered when he does betray what's bubbling inside, and he outwardly expects the same of everyone around him. Mikkelson excels at transformational performances, however. He's also an exquisite anchor in films that dare to take risks. No matter what part he's playing, the Danish star is gifted at conveying subtlety, too, which is ideal for a character, Markus, who slowly realises that he needs to be more open with his emotions. And, while Mikkelson is usually expertly cast in most entries on his resume — the misfire that is Chaos Walking being one rare outlier — he's especially in his element in this genre-defying, trope-unpacking, constantly complex and unpredictable film. With a name that sounds like one of the many by-the-numbers action flicks Liam Neeson has starred in since Taken, Riders of Justice initially appears as if it'll take its no-nonsense central figure to an obvious place, and yet this ambitious, astute and entertaining movie both does and doesn't. After a train explosion taints his life with tragedy and leaves him the sole parent to traumatised teenager Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg, Pagten), Markus returns home from Afghanistan. Talking is her method of coping, or would be if he'd let her; he refuses counselling for them both, and opts not to discuss the incident in general, because clamming up has always been his PTSD-afflicted modus operandi. Then Riders of Justice's writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen (Men & Chicken) and screenwriter Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair) send statistician Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas, The Keeper of Lost Causes), his colleague Lennart (Lars Brygmann, The Professor and the Madman) and the computer-savvy Emmenthaler (Nicolas Bro, The Kingdom) knocking at the grieving family's door. They're a trio of stereotypically studious outsiders to his stony-faced military man, but they come uttering a theory. Mathematically, they don't think that the events surrounding the accident add up, so they're convinced it wasn't just a case of pure misfortune — because it's just so unlikely to have occurred otherwise. The nervy Otto, who was on the train with Mathilde and her mother Emma (Anne Birgitte Lind, The Protector), has even started to narrow down possible culprits with his pals. Markus, with his action-not-words mindset, is swiftly eager for retribution, but again, this isn't like most films of its ilk. Narratives about seeking justice often ride the expected rails on autopilot, getting from start to finish on the standard vengeance template's inherent momentum; this attentive and layered gem questions and subverts every usual cliche, convention and motif along the way, including by putting its characters first. Read our full review. THE HARDER THEY FALL Idris Elba. A piercing gaze. One helluva red velvet suit. A film can't coast by on such a combination alone, and The Harder They Fall doesn't try to — but when it splashes that vivid vision across the screen, it's nothing short of magnificent. The moment arrives well into Jeymes Samuel's revisionist western, so plenty of stylishness has already graced its frames before then. Think: Old West saloons in brilliant yellows, greens and blues; the collective strut of a cast that includes Da 5 Bloods' Delroy Lindo and Jonathan Majors, Atlanta's Zazie Beetz and LaKeith Stanfield, and If Beale Street Could Talk Oscar-winner Regina King; and an aesthetic approach that blasts together the cool, the slick and the operatic. Still, Elba and his crimson attire — and the black vest and hat that tops it off — is the exclamation mark capping one flamboyant and vibrant movie. Imaginative is another appropriate word to describe The Harder They Fall, especially its loose and creative take on American history. Where some features based on the past take a faithful but massaged route — fellow recent release The Last Duel, for example — this one happily recognises what's fact and what's fantasy. Its main players all existed centuries ago, but Samuel and co-screenwriter Boaz Yakin (Now You See Me) meld them into the same narrative. That's an act of complete fiction, as is virtually everything except their names. The feature freely admits this on-screen before proceedings begin, though, and wouldn't dream of hiding from it. Team-up movies aren't rare, whether corralling superheroes or movie monsters, but there's a particular thrill and power to bringing together these fictionalised Black figures in such an ambitious and memorable, smart and suave, and all-round swaggering film. After proving such a commanding lead in HBO series Lovecraft Country, Majors takes centre stage here, too, as gunslinger Nat Love. First, however, the character is initially introduced as a child (Anthony Naylor Jr, The Mindy Project), watching his parents get murdered by the infamous Rufus Buck (Elba, The Suicide Squad). A quest for revenge ensues — and yes, Nat shares an origin story with Batman. Samuel definitely isn't afraid to get stylised and cartoonish, or melodramatic, or playful for that matter. One of the keys to The Harder They Fall is that it's so many things all at once, and rarely is it any one thing for too long. This is a brash and bold western from its first vividly shot frame till its last, of course, and yet it's also a film about the tragedies that infect families, the violence that infects societies, and the hate, abuse, prejudice, discrimination and bloodshed that can flow from both. It's a romance, too, and it nails its action scenes like it's part of a big blockbuster franchise. As an adult, Nat still has Rufus in his sights. It'll take a few twists of fate — including a great train robbery to free Rufus en route from one prison to the next — to bring them face to face again. The sequence where the outlaw's righthand woman Trudy (King) and quick-drawing fellow gang member Cherokee Bill (Stanfield) take on the law is sleek heist delight, and the saloon clash with marshal Bass Reeves (Lindo) that gets Nat back on Rufus' trail is just as dextrously handled. Nat also has bar proprietor and his on-again, off-again ex Stagecoach Mary (Beetz) on his side, plus the boastful Beckwourth (RJ Cyler, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), sharp-shooting Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi, Briarpatch) and diminutive Cuffee (Danielle Deadwyler, P-Valley). Everyone gets their moments, and every one of those moments sashays towards a blood-spattered showdown. Read our full review. THE ALPINIST Standing atop Yosemite National Park's El Capitan after scaling it alone and without ropes, harnesses or any other safety equipment, Alex Honnold cut a surprisingly subdued figure. As the Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo captured, he was obviously ecstatic, but he isn't the type to leap and scream with excitement. So, he smiled blissfully. He also advised the cameras that he was "so delighted". In the opening moments of new doco The Alpinist, however, he is effusive — as enthusiastic as the no-nonsense climbing superstar gets, that is. In a historical clip, he's asked who he's excited about in his very specific extreme sports world. His answer: "this kid Marc-André Leclerc." Zipping from the Canadian Rockies to Patagonia, with ample craggy pitstops in-between, The Alpinist tells Leclerc's tale, explaining why someone of Honnold's fame and acclaim sings his praises. Using the Free Solo subject as an entry point is a smart choice by filmmakers Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen — industry veterans themselves, with 2014's Valley Uprising on their shared resume and 2017's The Dawn Wall on Mortimer's — but their climber of focus here would demand attention even without the high-profile endorsement. Indeed, dizzying early shots of him in action almost say all that's needed about his approach to great heights, and his near-preternatural skill in the field. Scaling hard, immovable rock faces is one thing, but Leclerc is seen here clambering up alpine surfaces, conquering glistening yet precarious sheets of ice and snow. Any shot that features the Canadian twenty-something mountaineering is nothing short of breathtaking. Describing it as 'clambering up' does him a disservice, actually, and downplays The Alpinist's stunning footage as well. Leclerc is just that graceful and intuitive as he reaches higher, seemingly always knowing exactly where to place his hands, feet and axe, all while heading upwards in frighteningly dangerous situations. As Mortimer notes, narrating the documentary and almost-indulgently inserting himself into the story, alpine free soloing is another level of climbing. No shortage of talking-head interviewees also stress this reality. Protective equipment is still absent, but all that ice and snow could melt or fall at any second. In fact, the routes that the obsessive Leclerc finds in his climbs will no longer exist again, and mightn't just moments after he's made his ascent. Simply charting Leclerc's impressive feats could've been The Alpinist sole remit; Mortimer and Rosen certainly wanted that and, again, the film's hypnotic, vertigo-inducing imagery is just that extraordinary. Some shots peer at the mountains in all their towering glory, letting viewers spot the tiny speck moving amid their majesty in their own time, before zooming in to get a closer look at Leclerc. Other nerve-shattering scenes intimately capture every careful choice, every movement of his limbs and every decision about what to hold on to, inescapably aware that these are sheer life-or-death moments. But The Alpinist isn't the movie its makers initially dreamed of, because Leclerc isn't Honnold or The Dawn Wall's Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson. While affable when posed in front of the camera, he's also silently begrudging, because he'd visibly rather just be doing what he loves in total anonymity instead of talking about it, having it filmed and earning the world's eyes. Read our full review. PASSING Locking gazes across the room, staring intently with a deep fascination that feels fated, seeing oneself in the sparkle of another's eyes: when these moments happen in a movie, it's typically to fuel the first flushes of romance. When they occur early in Passing, however, it's because former childhood friends Irene (Tessa Thompson, Westworld) and Clare (Ruth Negga, Ad Astra) have spied each other in a swanky Manhattan hotel. The pair peer back and forth, intrigued and attentive. That said, it isn't until Clare approaches Irene — and calls her Reenie, a nickname she hasn't heard in years — that the latter realises who she's been looking at. It's the immaculately styled blonde bob that fools Irene, as it's meant to fool the world. As becomes clear in a politely toned but horrendously blunt conversation with Clare's racist husband John (Alexander Skarsgård, Godzilla vs Kong) shortly afterwards, Irene's long-lost pal has built an entire life and marriage around being seen as white. Passing's eponymous term comes loaded not just with meaning, but with history; adapted from Nella Larsen's 1929 novel of the same name, it's set in America's Jim Crow era. This introductory scene between Irene and Clare comes layered with multiple sources of tension, too, with Irene only in the hotel because she's decided to flirt with visiting a white establishment. Still, she's shocked by her pal's subterfuge. When she initially spots Clare, the film adopts Irene's perspective — and its frames bristle with a mix of nervousness, uncertainty and familiarity. Irene rediscovers an old friend in a new guise, and also comes face to face with the lengths some are willing to go to in the name of survival and an easier life. Friendships can be rewarding and challenging, fraught and nourishing, and demanding and essential, including all at once, as Passing repeatedly demonstrates from this point onwards. Irene can't completely move past Clare's choices and can't shake her fears about what'd happen if the vile John ever learned Clare's secret; however, she's also quick to defend her to others — to her doctor husband Brian (André Holland, The Eddy), who swiftly warms to Clare anyway; and to acclaimed white novelist Hugh Wentworth (Bill Camp, News of the World), who's her own entry point into an artier realm. Indeed, in household where talk of lynchings is common dinner conversation, Irene recognises far more in Clare's decision than she'll vocally admit. Almost everyone she knows is pretending to be something else as well, after all, including Irene in her own ways. Largely confined to Irene and Brian's well-appointed Harlem home and other parties in the neighbourhood — after that first hotel rendezvous, that is — Passing is an economical yet complicated film. It may seem straightforward in charting Irene and Clare's rekindled acquaintance, but it's exacting and precise as it interrogates both societally enforced and self-inflicted pain. Its Black characters live in a world that pushes them aside and worse merely for existing, with its central pair each internalising that reality. Their every careful move reacts to it, in fact, a bleak truth that actor-turned-filmmaker Rebecca Hall (The Night House) never allows to fade. That's one of the reasons she's chosen to shoot this striking directorial debut in elegant, crisp and devastatingly telling monochrome hues: both everything and nothing here is black and white. Read our full review. ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN When Anthony Bourdain strode around the world, and across our screens, in food-meets-travel series A Cook's Tour, No Reservations, The Layover and Parts Unknown, he was as animated as he was acerbic and enigmatic. Beneath his shock of greying hair, the lanky New Yorker was relatable, engaging to a seemingly effortless degree and radiated a larger-than-life air, too. The latter didn't just apply because he was a face on TV, where plenty gets that bigger-than-reality sheen, but because he appeared to truly embrace all that life entailed in that hectic whirlwind of travelling, eating and waxing lyrical about both. Arriving three years after his suicide in 2018, documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain captures that. It's so filled with Bourdain thanks to all that time he'd spent in front of the camera, it'd be near-impossible for it not to. But it also lurks under a shadow due to its now-infamous choice to use artificial intelligence to add dialogue that its subject didn't speak. Watching the film, there's no way of knowing which words Bourdain merely penned but didn't utter; the technology truly is that seamless. It still resounds as an unnecessary move, though, especially when such lines might've been incorporated in ways that wouldn't sit at stark odds with his visible liveliness. Roadrunner delves behind the facade that Bourdain presented to the world, of course. It notes his death immediately and goes in search of the sorrow and pain that might've led to it, as mulled over by friends such fellow chefs David Chang and Éric Ripert, and artist David Choe; crew members on his shows; and his second wife Ottavia Busia. Still, once you know about the AI, there's a sense of disconnection that echoes through the doco — because it surveys all that Bourdain was, compiles all of this stellar material and still resorted to digital resurrection. Thankfully, the passion and curiosity that always made Bourdain appear so spirited — yes, so alive, as compared to being vocally recreated by AI after his death — still makes Roadrunner worth watching. That's true for Bourdain fans and newcomers alike, although director Morgan Neville (Oscar-winner 20 Feet From Stardom) doesn't use his two-hour-long film as a birth-to-life primer for the uninitiated. Crucially, as also proved the case with his 2018 Mr Rogers documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?, Neville jumps through the details of Bourdain's life in a way that also muses on what his success and popularity said about the world. Why he struck such a chord is as essential an ingredient in Roadrunner as how he went from cook to celebrity chef, TV host, best-selling author and travel documentarian. The footage of Bourdain — from his shows, obviously, as well as from a plethora of TV interviews, behind-the-scenes clips and home videos — is edited together with the same restlessness that the man himself always exuded. You don't spend most of your year travelling if you can be easily pinned down, after all. It's a wise choice on Neville and editors Eileen Meyer (Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution) and Aaron Wickenden's (Feels Good Man) parts, but Neville has long had a knack for making his films feel like his subjects. Talking-head chats are spliced throughout, offering further details and grappling with how Bourdain's story ends; however, Roadrunner is repeatedly at its finest when it's peering at him and showing how his work encouraged us all not just to watch, but to eat, travel, think, talk and live. Read our full review. BECOMING COUSTEAU He's been parodied in a Wes Anderson film and mentioned in a Flight of the Conchords song. His red beanie, and those worn by his fellow crew members on his research ship Calypso, are an enduring fashion symbol. He won the second-ever Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or — becoming not only the first filmmaker to receive the prestigious prize for a documentary, but the only one to do so for almost half a century afterwards. When he started making television in the 60s, he turned his underwater-shot docos about the sea into truly must-see TV. He helped create undersea diving as we know it, and he's the most famous oceanographer that's ever lived. He was also one of the early voices who spoke out about climate change and humanity's impact upon the oceans. He's a rockstar in every field he dived into — and he's Jacques Cousteau, obviously. Becoming Cousteau touches on all of the above — except The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Flight of the Conchords' 'Fou de Fafa', of course — and makes for a a riveting splash into its namesake's life and career. There's just so much to tell, to the point that it frequently feels as if director Liz Garbus (an Oscar-nominee for What Happened, Miss Simone?) could've filled an entire series instead. Her big-screen tribute to Cousteau doesn't suffer from packing so much into its slice of celluloid, however. It simply makes the most of its time, leaving viewers wanting more because they've loved what they've just experienced. Becoming Cousteau is the cinematic equivalent of having a splash, gazing fondly at the sea's blue expanse, or peering deeply at the ocean's underwater wonders, all activities that beg for as much of your attention as possible. This isn't just an affectionate ode, though, even with ample praise floated Cousteau's way. When Garbus includes vision of wide-eyed children beaming up at her subject with wonder splashed across their faces, you could call it a case of a director telling audiences how they should feel — or signalling how she's looking his way, or both. But she knows that Cousteau's achievements, and the glorious archival footage that comes with it, elicits that reaction anyway. She also doesn't shy away from the thornier aspects of his personal and professional lives, tragedies and struggles among them. This is a film about a man who lived a life like no one else's, especially when he kept plunging beneath the sea, but it's also a movie about a man first and foremost. That's why Garbus sticks to a familiar biographical documentary format, as tempting as it might've been to take a more playful route. By chronicling Cousteau's existence in a chronological fashion — from naval officer to icon, with help from his own words as read by French actor Vincent Cassel (The World Is Yours) where footage doesn't exist — she emphasises who he becomes as he spends more and more time in, atop and contemplating the ocean. Yes, her title is that straightforward; however, neither the simplicity of Becoming Cousteau's structure nor the descriptiveness of its moniker can sum up this fascinating and thoughtful documentary. There's nothing standard about the way it charts his evolution or examines how he used his fame, either, or about the glorious way it selects, curates and compiles its wealth of clips — or about the movie's transfixing ebb and flow. THE NIGHT HOUSE The history of cinema is haunted by oh-so-many movies about oh-so-many ghost-riddled abodes, and the often-troubled and bereaved folks dwelling within them. The first clever move The Night House makes is recognising it's floating into busy spectral waters, then ensuring its tension stems from its living, breathing protagonist as much as the frights and fears she's forced to face. The film's second stellar step: casting Rebecca Hall (Godzilla vs Kong) as that central figure. An always-welcome addition to anything she's in — see also: Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, Christine and Tales From the Loop in just the past few years — she plays her tormented part here with brooding sorrow, reluctant vulnerability and a sharp, smart edge. She knows that grappling with loss involves being jolted in many different directions, and being subjected to bumps and jumps of the emotional kind, and that it's never easy to surrender to. Indeed, many of The Night House's surprises come from Hall as Beth, a schoolteacher whose life has been turned upside down by her husband Owen's (Evan Jonigkeit, The Empty Man) unexpected suicide. Clearly normally a no-nonsense type whether she's guiding pupils, dealing with their parents or navigating her personal life, she probes and questions everything that comes her way. As a result, her reactions — including just to herself — are constantly complex, thorny and compelling. Also among The Night House's savvy moves: understanding that grief really does change everything. Not only has Beth's life lost one of its brightest lights, but everything Owen once illuminated now keeps being cloaked in shadows he's not there to extinguish. Since his passing, she's cycled through the familiar stages of mourning. When she returns to work to her colleagues' astonishment, including her close friend Claire's (Sarah Goldberg, Barry), Beth shocks her co-workers by discussing Owen's suicide note, admitting her home now seems different and obsessing over how much she really knew her husband. That last written missive ties back into one of her past traumas, as well as her own dealings with the end that awaits us all. When she's alone at night, she's not sure that she can trust what she sees and hears, or tell whether she's awake or dreaming. Filling her time by sorting through Owen's things, she's also unsure what to make of the eerie sketches and books about the occult that sit among his possessions. And, Beth's thrown even further askew when she finds photos of brunette women that could be her doppelgängers; plans for a home just like hers, but mirrored; and a cascade of tidbits that cast her memories of her marriage into disarray. The Night House has a strong sense of terror about the the fact that life doesn't extended forever, and it's a movie made with meticulous horror style as well as smarts. When it comes to plot twists, though, director David Bruckner (The Ritual) and screenwriting duo Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski (Super Dark Times) are alittle less careful about becoming prey to indulgence. Read our full review. A FIRE INSIDE Some colours only exist in nature, as much as paints, dyes and pixels attempt to pretend otherwise. The raging reds, blazing oranges and burning yellows seen in A Fire Inside's bushfire footage are some such hues — and, away from the safety of a cinema screen, no one should ever want to spy these specific searing tones. They're haunting enough as it is to look at in a movie. Taking up entire frames of on-the-ground footage shot during the summer of 2019–20, they're scorching in their brightness and intensity. This documentary about the national natural disaster just two years ago, when swathes of Australia burned for months, deploys those apocalyptic colours and the imagery containing them sparingly, notably; however, even when they only flicker briefly, those shades aren't easily forgotten. After everything the pandemic has delivered since the beginning of 2020, just as the 'Black Summer' bushfires were cooling, that chapter of history might seem far longer ago than just a couple of years. A Fire Inside is also an act of remembrance, though. Directors Justin Krook (Machine, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead) and Luke Mazzaferro (a producer on Girls Can't Surf and The Meddler) firmly look backwards, pushing these events back to the top of viewers' memories. That said, they also survey the situation since, as the rebuilding effort has been complicated and elongated by COVID-19. This approach also enables them to survey the lingering aftermath, including the homes that still haven't been rebuilt, the people still residing in makeshift setups, and the emotional and mental toll that's set to dwell for much longer still. Accordingly, what could've merely been a record of a catastrophe becomes a portrait of both survival and resilience. Unsurprisingly, interviews drive this Australian doco, focusing on the afflicted and the volunteers. Folks in each group chat about their experiences, and the lines between them frequently blur. Firefighter Nathan Barnden provides the first and clearest instance; the film's key early subject, he saved seven strangers and retained his own life in an inferno on the very first night that the fires reached New South Wales' far south coast, but also lost his cousin and uncle to the blazes the same evening. Barnden claims Krook and Mazzaferro's attention for multiple reasons, including his initial youthful eagerness to pick up a hose — following his father, who had done the same — as well as his candour about his distress in the months and now years afterwards. Often overlooked in tales of such events, that kind of emotion sears itself onto the screen with unshakeable power, too. A Fire Inside spends time with others affected, residents and volunteers alike. RFS captain Brendan O'Connor saved his community, alongside his crew, but suffered in his personal life — and his is just one of the film's stories. Krook and Mazzaferro don't loiter on the same kinds of details over and over again, but whether talking to food bank staff, backpackers helping with re-fencing damaged farms or locals who saw everything they belonged succumb to the flames, the duelling sensations of both endurance and loss remain throughout their doco. The mood: careful, caring, sensitive and poignant. This is a movie that conjures up every sentiment expected, but also one that earns every reaction. Heartbreak and hope seesaw, and recognising that back-and-forth ride is one of the film's canny touches. Read our full review. THE KILLING OF TWO LOVERS If you stare at something long enough, you don't just see the obvious. You notice everything, from the details that fail to immediately catch your attention to the way things can change instantly right in front of your eyes. The Killing of Two Lovers is all about this idea, and on two fronts. It puts a fractured marriage before its lens, ensuring its struggles and troubles can't be ignored. It also takes its time to peer at its protagonist, the separated-and-unhappy-about-it David (Clayne Crawford, Rectify), and at all that his new life now entails. In a sparse small town — with the film shot in Kanosh, Utah — its central figure attempts to adjust to living with his ailing widower father (Bruce Graham, Forty Years From Yesterday). His wife Niki (Sepideh Moafi, The L Word: Generation Q) remains in their home with their four children, as they've agreed while they take a break to work through their problems. David isn't coping, though, a fact that's apparent long before his teenage daughter Jess (Avery Pizzuto, We Fall Down) gets angry because she thinks he isn't fighting hard enough to save their family. He's trying, but as Crawford conveys in a brooding but nervy performance — and as writer/director/editor Robert Machoian (When She Runs) and cinematographer Oscar Ignacio Jiménez (Immanence) can't stop looking at in lengthy and patient takes — he can't quite adapt to the idea of losing everything he knows. There's an element of Scenes From a Marriage at play here, although The Killing of Two Lovers pre-dates the new remake — and so much of the feeling in this gorgeously shot movie comes from its imagery. When it's hard to look away from such rich and enticing visuals, it's impossible not to spot and soak in everything they depict. Each frame is postcard-perfect, not that those pieces of cardboard ever capture such everyday sights, but wide vistas and the snowy mountains hovering in the background are just the beginning. With its long takes, The Killing of Two Lovers forces its audience to glean the naturalistic lighting that never casts David and Niki's hometown in either a warm glow or grim glower. Repeated images of David alone, especially in his car, also leave a firm impression of a man moving and solo. And, presenting most of its frames in the 4:3 aspect ratio, the film also possesses an astonishing and telling sense of space. Nothing is bluntly boxed in here, but everyone is trying to roam within the claustrophobic patch of turf they've scratched out. And, within the feature's square-shaped visuals springs an added fountain of intimacy that cuts to the heart of such close relationships, such as when David and the kids all pile into his truck, or during one of David and Niki's car-bound dates. Read our full review. Melbourne cinephiles are currently being spoiled for choice — and while we've outlined ten must-see options newly hitting the big screen when indoor cinemas reopen on Friday, October 29, there are plenty more flicks now gracing the city's silver screens. When outdoor cinemas relaunched, we highlighted Candyman, Nitram, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Malignant and The Last Duel, for instance — films now showing in indoor cinemas as well. Also opening in Melbourne cinemas on Friday, October 29 — and also only available to watch in cinemas — are Halloween Kills, Antlers, Ron's Gone Wrong, Respect, Eiffel, Ride the Eagle, Joe Bell and Don't Breathe 2. And, a number of movies that've been fast-tracked to digital in recent months are also hitting the big screen in Melbourne now that cinemas have reopened. So, you can also head out to see Pig, Free Guy, Annette and Summer of Soul Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). Plus, after showing on Melbourne's silver screens for short spells before lockdown, Nine Days, Perfumes, Shiva Baby, Some Kind of Heaven, The Sparks Brothers, Fanny Lye Deliver'd, The Toll, Rosa's Wedding, Dating Amber, Three Summers, Little Joe, Black Widow, Jungle Cruise, The Suicide Squad, Space Jam: A New Legacy and In the Heights have returned to cinemas as well.
This week, enter the charming little dream world of Lucy Folk and make her covetable candy-hued cocktail clutches and wearable works of art yours. And all for a fraction of the price, because the Melbourne-based jewellery designer is hosting a sample sale from April 19–21. Huzzah! Older styles, past collections and samples will be available at a reduced price. So does this mean we'll find those peppercorn earrings and caviar rings from the 2014 food-inspired Appeteaser collection? We sure hope so. Plus, even though it's a sample sale, there's no need to worry about being sample sized, because we're talking eyewear, clutches and jewellery. Double huzzah. The sale will run from 8am–7pm on Thursday and Friday, and 10am–5pm on Saturday at the Lucy Folk studio in Windsor. As we move into cooler weather and shorter days, future you will thank Lucy Folk (and your shopping habits) for adding a little bit of colour to your everyday Melbourne black.
If there's one thing that can get a Sydneysiding burger fiend all jittery, it's a Mary's burger. Opened in an old Newtown warehouse in 2013, this humble burger joint has developed a cult-like following in Sydney over the last couple of years — they've even opened a second chapter in the CBD and made our ten best burgers in Sydney list. But now it's time for Melburnians to take a bite of the Mary's hype, putting aside our Huxtaburgers for a day and heading down to a one-day-only pop-up at fellow Americana lovers, Belle's Hot Chicken. On Sunday, May 24, Mary's will be making 200 burgers (that's right, 200 only) at BHC in Fitzroy, kicking off at around 4pm. We're guessing all focus will be on their famous Mary's burger, renowned for its mouth-wateringly tender med-rare beef patty slathered in liquefied cheese — whether the top notch veggie burger makes it down remains to be seen. But you're going to want to get there early; you can't pre-book a spot and these are seriously sought-after burgs. This marks the second Sydney/Melbourne swapsie for Belle's Hot Chicken, who took a pop-up to Bondi Icebergs earlier this year. Mary's Burgers pops up at Belle's Hot Chicken, 150 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, Sunday, May 24 from around 4pm. Get. There. Early. Via Good Food.
Slinging fast-paced rhymes with a feisty attitude to match, Patricia Dombrowski (Danielle Macdonald) isn't naively chasing fame in Patti Cake$. With "mylifesfuckinawesome" one of her spirited rap anthems penned under the stage name of Killa P, she's certain that her music dreams will come true. The fact that she's stuck in New Jersey stringing together dead-end jobs to take care of her boozing mother (Bridget Everett) and ailing grandmother (Cathy Moriarty) might make it seem like her confidence is misplaced. But Patti's determination is as big as her smile. As quick as you can say "gender-swapped 8 Mile", Patti Cake$ takes its eager protagonist down the expected path, with her working-class background and plus-size shape thrown in as roadblocks. She's also got the requisite support from her old pal Jheri (Siddharth Dhananjay), as well as a new friend and collaborator in anti-establishment punk Basterd (Mamoudou Athie). They're soon laying down tunes, fighting for attention and eventually catching a few lucky breaks. It's all a bit predictable, but what this first feature from writer-director Geremy Jasper lacks in surprises, it makes up for in detail, heart and a stellar lead performance. With Jasper himself a Jersey native chasing dreams of his own, Patti Cake$ is filled with the kind of specificity that can only be plucked from real life. As a result, it has more than a few tricks up its sleeves. Audiences may be tempted to judge the movie prematurely due to its familiar narrative and slick-meets-gritty aesthetic. And yet, as the characters who underestimate Patti discover, there's a difference between appearances and reality. Just as there's more to Macdonald's protagonist than cruel nicknames like "Dumbo" and "white Precious", there's more to the film as well. Lurking within this standard underdog story is a clear-eyed portrait of small-town existence — from the sense of restlessness evident at every turn, to the need to seek escape by belting out tunes or taking to the bottle, to the distinct blend of hip hop and white working-class subcultures. Whenever the formula kicks in, the sights and sounds of Patti's mundane life don't quite counteract the obviousness of the plot, but they do give the film's feel-good trajectory weight and authenticity. There's bleak truth and an almost documentary-like spirit that accompanies every convenient twist and turn. Accordingly, when the big, crowd-pleasing moments come, the emotion that swells with them feels well and truly earned. The same can be said of Macdonald's efforts, with the Aussie actress dazzling in a way that would make her on-screen alter ego both proud and jealous. In her hands, Patti relishes the highs she has toiled for with the knowing smile of someone who has weathered the lows, and remains well aware that fantasies don't really come true overnight. It's a star-making turn in a movie that's all about chasing star-making chances, and it comes with excellent support from Everett and Moriarty. All that plus a catchy soundtrack will have your toes tapping even if Killa P's beats aren't your usual jam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLUqLITumZA
The story behind Melbourne folk foursome Husky's new song, 'I'm Not Coming Back', sounds pretty damn cute. It's something to do with looking up at the stars in the night sky, seeing the lights of airplanes gliding under them and the universal need to leave parts of ourselves behind. Swoon. This whimsically starry-eyed vision fits perfectly with the soaring sounds of the track itself. But contrary to the song's title, Husky are indeed coming back — with a show at The Hi-Fi on November 29. The folk-fuelled whiz kids stole our hearts back in 2011 with their debut LP Forever So. Husky then became the first Aussie band to be signed to Seattle label and arbiters of cool Sub Pop, then toured pretty much non-stop around Australia, the USA and Europe for a couple of years. It's a good thing they stopped to take a break, because now we're privvy to a whole lot of new Husky — as well as promising to play much-loved tracks from Forever So, they'll be showing off their new album Ruckers Hill. Half a decade later and we're still swooning. https://youtube.com/watch?v=FkkSw4HM0_8
More than three decades since it was first published, the Watchmen series of comics is still considered one of the all-time greats of the medium. Brought to the page by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons, the premise says plenty: in an alternative version of the world we all live in, superheroes definitely exist — but their presence has drastically altered history. Here, the Cold War turned out differently, caped crusaders largely work for the government and anyone else enforcing law and order while wearing a costume has been outlawed. Now, imagine that tale told with a satirical edge that deconstructs the superhero phenomenon, and you can see why it has hordes of devotees. Back in 2009 when comic book flicks were just starting to pick up steam — and when 23-film franchises were a mere dream — Watchmen was turned into a movie by Zack Snyder (who was fresh from 300, but hadn't made the jump to Batman v Superman or Justice League yet). Sequels clearly didn't follow; however, HBO is now hoping that the story will flourish on the small screen, enlisting Lost and The Leftovers co-creator Damon Lindelof to make it happen. Obviously, with Game of Thrones all done and dusted (at least until its prequels start hitting the screen), the network is in the market for a new pop culture phenomenon. This isn't just a straight adaptation. Apparently the ten-part series "embraces the nostalgia of the original groundbreaking graphic novel of the same name while attempting to break new ground of its own," according to HBO. If you're wondering just how that'll play out, the program's trailers might help. Building on the first teaser from a few months back, the latest trailer serves up murky mysteries, complicated heroes and villains, and a fine line between the two — plus "a vast and insidious conspiracy". To help bring the above to the small screen, Watchmen boasts quite the stacked cast, which includes Jeremy Irons, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, this year's Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner Regina King, Hong Chau, Louis Gossett Jr and Aussie actress Adelaide Clemens. The big names don't stop there, with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross providing the score. Check out the new trailer below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-33JCGEGzwU Watchmen launches on October 21, Australian and New Zealand time — with the series airing weekly from that date on Foxtel in Australia. Image: Mark Hill/HBO
Last month felt particular steamy and uncomfortable (even for Australian summer) and it was — January was Australia's hottest month ever recorded. The Bureau of Meteorology this morning released its monthly climate summary, reporting that, for the first time ever in Australia, the mean temperature for a month exceeded 30 degrees. NSW, ACT, Victoria and the NT all had their hottest Januarys ever recorded, while other states had unusually hot weather and very little rain. If you're currently sitting at your desk — after running through rain in Sydney, waking up to 14 degrees in Melbourne or commuting in low-20s in Brisbane — and thinking, it didn't seem that bad, here's a quick summary of some of the weather we endured last month. The year kicked off with a country-wide heatwave, with the mercury hitting the 30s in every capital city and Canberra sweltering through four days of 40-degrees. By mid-January, the heatwave was causing record-breaking high temperatures across the country — including 48.9 in SA and high-40s across Victoria's North — with Sydney's west copping dangerously high levels of ozone gas. And, just last week, Melbourne survived its hottest day in ten years. Here's how hot our country looked at one point: https://twitter.com/BOM_au/status/1084218154782478337 Phew. We're sure you're happy to see the back of January. According to the BOM's senior climatologist Dr Andrew Watkins, the unprecedented heat was due to a "a persistent high pressure system in the Tasman sea which was blocking any cold fronts and cooler air from impacting the south of the country." Dr Watkins also said in a statement that Australia looks to continue getting hotter, too. "The warming trend which has seen Australian temperatures increase by more than 1 degree in the last 100 years also contributed to the unusually warm conditions." Unfortunately for our farmers, last month was also extremely dry. In NSW, where 100 percent of the state has been in drought, the northeast experienced one of the driest Januarys on record, while most of Victoria and Brisbane received less than 20 percent of their average January rainfall. Tasmania had its driest Jan on record and SA, which experienced some of the highest temperatures, also had very little-to-no rain — the Bureau's Adelaide city site recorded no rainfall for the month for the first time since 1957. So far, it looks like February is going to be less spicy. But if you'd rather not risk it, it might be time to book a trip to the northern hemisphere. Image: Visit Victoria.
It has been my personal experience that most galleries tend to have a pretty stringent ‘No Jumping On The Art’ policy. This seems unfair, I know, especially when so much contemporary art would probably improved by a good old double bounce, but I don’t make the rules! Fortunately, Melbourne based artists Brooke Williams and Henry Madin share our dismay at the un-jumpability of most art works, and have developed an installation piece to satisfy our taboo desires. Finding its home in Fort Delta gallery, JUMP relies on human interaction and movement to realise its full capacity. Fifty-five hand crafted wooden boxes are aligned in a semi-haphazard grid, and respond to weight bearing with a click-clack sound similar to the sound of wooden clapping sticks you probably last used in year 5 music class. Described by the artists as a facilitation of physical expression through movement and sound, the installation is designed to be navigated sock footed gallery goers, moving between coloured boxes to create a somewhat disjointed, yet undoubtedly cheery, soundtrack to the experiential piece. The exhibition runs August 9 – 23, so if you’d like to make sweet music with your body, hot foot it down to Fort Delta gallery (located downstairs at the back of the Capitol Arcade on Swanston Street). Take a friend or two along for the ultimate year 5 music class nostalgia.
Some desserts always tempt the tastebuds, because there's going wrong with a classic. As well as tasting great every time you bite into them, some of those same sweet treats have inspired a heap of creative takes, too. If you've ever sipped a lamington-flavoured milkshake or plunged a scoop into some Iced VoVo gelato, then you know exactly what we're talking about. The next dessert mashups on offer hail from chocolatier Koko Black — and, if you're particularly fond of nostalgic Aussie favourites, your stomach might just start growling. As part of its new Australian Classics Collection, the Melbourne-founded company is making chocolate versions of plenty of your childhood staples. Think honey joys, chocolate crackles and Golden Gaytimes, plus the perennial go-tos that are Iced VoVos and lamingtons. The artisanal range turns some of the above sweets into separate bars sold in three-packs, and some into slabs of chocolate. So, you can tuck into Gaytime Goldies, which combine vanilla and malted caramel ganache, then dip the bar in dark chocolate, before covering it with hazelnuts — or opt for a block of Koko Crackles, which features rice bubbles, caramelised coconut and white chocolate, as then dipped in dark chocolate. Also available: a Lamington Slice slab, combining chocolate marshmallow and raspberry jelly, as covered in dark chocolate and dusted with coconut; bars of Koko Vovo, aka milk chocolate-coated biscuits topped with strawberry rosewater marshmallow, raspberry jelly and coconut; and Jam Wagons, which top biscuits topped with marshmallow and raspberry jam, then coat them in milk chocolate. Or, there's also Honey Joys, if you like your cornflakes drizzled with honey, then mixed with either milk chocolate or dark chocolate. The Australian Classics Collection is available separately or as one big hamper, with prices ranging from $15.90–$169. If you're keen, they've already hit Koko Black's online store — with delivery available nationally — and will show up in its physical shops from September 24. For more information about Koko Black's Australian Classics Collection, visit the store's website. Images: Studio Round.
Something delightful has been happening in cinemas in some parts of the country. After numerous periods spent empty during the pandemic, with projectors silent, theatres bare and the smell of popcorn fading, picture palaces in many Australian regions are back in business — including both big chains and smaller independent sites in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. During COVID-19 lockdowns, no one was short on things to watch, of course. In fact, you probably feel like you've streamed every movie ever made, including new releases, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent all your time of late glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of new films are hitting cinemas so that you can do just that — and we've rounded up, watched and reviewed everything on offer this week. SCREAM 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. That'd be Ghostface, who terrorises 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. The same happened in Scream 4, 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. Read our full review. KING RICHARD In King Richard, Will Smith does more acting than expected with his back to the on-screen action. He does more acting in general — while the Ali and Concussion star can be a transformative performer, here he feels like he's overtly playing a part rather than disappearing into a role — but the way his eponymous figure handles his daughters' matches instantly stands out. Richard Williams is a tennis parent who despises the usual tennis parent histrionics. At the time the film is set, in the early 90s, he has also coached Venus (Saniyya Sidney, Fences) and Serena (Demi Singleton, Godfather of Harlem) since they were four years old, and penned a 78-page plan mapping out their futures before they were born. He's dedicated his life to their success; however, he's so restless when they're volleying and backhanding that he can't bring himself to watch. These scenes in King Richard are among Smith's best. He's anxious yet determined, and lives the feeling like he's breathing it, in some of the movie's least blatantly showy and most quietly complex scenes as well. The Williams family patriarch has wisdom for all occasions, forged from a tough childhood in America's south, plus the hard work and hustle of turning Venus and Serena into budding champions, so he'd likely have something to say about the insights gleaned here: that you can tell oh-so-much about a person when they're under pressure but nobody's watching. If he was actively imparting this lesson to his daughters — five of them, not just the two that now have 30 Grand Slam singles titles between them — and they didn't glean it, he'd make them watch again. When they see Cinderella in the film, that's exactly what happens. But his courtside demeanour is teachable anyway, recognising how all the preparation and effort in the world will still see you tested over and over. King Richard mostly lobs around smaller moments, though — still life-defining for the aforementioned trio, matriarch Oracene (Aunjanue Ellis, Lovecraft Country) and the rest of the Williams brood, but before Venus and Serena became women's tennis superstars. It unpacks the effort put in to even get them a game, set or match and be taken seriously in a sport that's whiter than the lines marking out its courts, and the chances, sacrifices and wins of their formative years. From cracked Compton courts and homemade hype videos to seizing every hard-earned opportunity: that's the tale that King Richard tells. But, despite making a clear effort to pose this as a family portrait rather than a dad biopic, it still shares an approach with Joe Bell, director Reinaldo Marcus Green's prior film. It bears one man's name, celebrates him first and makes him the centre of someone else's exceptional story. In screenwriter Zach Baylin's debut script, Richard's aim is simple: get Venus and Serena to racquet-swinging glory by any means. His DIY tapes are bait for a professional coach, but attracting one is easier said than done for a working-class Black family without country club connections facing America's inbuilt racism and class clashes, and tennis' snobbery — even if Richard knows his daughters will reach their goals. A turning point comes when, after strolling into a practice match between Pete Sampras and John McEnroe, Richard convinces renowned coach Paul Cohen (Tony Goldwyn, Scandal) to watch his kids play and take on Venus for free. While she's swiftly impressing on the junior circuit, her dad becomes concerned about her psychological and emotional wellbeing, so he next works his persuasive act on Florida-based coach Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal, The Many Saints of Newark) — with a strict no-competition rule. Read our full review. LIMBO 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. Read our full review. GOLD Gold's title doubles as an exclamation that Australian filmmakers might've made when Zac Efron decamped to our shores at the beginning of the pandemic. Only this outback-set thriller has put the High School Musical, Bad Neighbours and Baywatch star to work Down Under, however, and he definitely isn't in Hollywood anymore. Instead, he's stuck in "some time, some place, not far from now…", as all-caps text advises in the movie's opening moments. He's caught in a post-Mad Max-style dystopia, where sweltering heat, a visible lack of shelter, a cut-throat attitude, water rationing, and nothing but dirt and dust as far as the eye can see greets survivors navigating a rusty wasteland. But then his character, Man One, spots a glint, and all that glisters is indeed gold — and he must guard it while Man Two (Anthony Hayes, also the film's director) seeks out an excavator. Exactly who stays and who goes is the subject of heated discussion, but Gold is an economical movie, mirroring how its on-screen figures need to be careful about every move they make in such unforgiving surroundings. As a filmmaker, helming his first feature since 2008's Ten Empty, Hayes knows his star attraction — and he's also well-aware of the survivalist genre, and its history, that he's plonking Efron into. Almost every male actor has been in one such flick or so it can seem, whether Tom Hanks is talking to a volleyball in Castaway, Liam Neeson is communing with wolves in The Grey or Mads Mikkelsen is facing frosty climes in Arctic. Although Gold purposefully never names its setting, Australia's vast expanse is no stranger to testing its visitors, too, but Hayes' version slips in nicely alongside the likes of Wake in Fright, The Rover and Cargo, rather than rips them off. The reason such tales persist is pure human nature — we're always battling against the world around us, even if everyday folks are rarely in such extreme situations — and, on-screen, because of the performances they evoke. Efron isn't even the first import to get stranded in sunburnt country in 2022, after Jamie Dornan did the same in TV miniseries The Tourist, but he puts in a compellingly internalised performance. Man One's minutes, hours and days guarding an oversized nugget pass with sparing sips of H20, attempts to build a shelter and altercations with the locals, including of the two-legged, canine, insect and arachnid varieties, and the toll of all this time alone builds in Efron's eyes and posture. His face crackles from the sun, heat and muck, but his portrayal is as much about enduring as reacting, as both Efron and Hayes savvily recognise. Writing with costumer-turned-scribe Polly Smyth as well as directing solo, Hayes puts more than just survival on Gold's mind, though: when the titular yellow precious metal is involved, greed is rarely good. Here, staying alive at any cost is all about striking it rich at any cost, and also about the paranoia festering between two new acquaintances who've randomly stumbled upon a life-changing windfall — as heightened by the film's stark, harsh, post-apocalyptic setup. When a third person (Susie Porter, Ladies in Black) enters the scenario, Gold grimly lets its life-or-death and lucky break elements keep clashing, but also pairs Man One's desperation with the mental decline that blistering in the sun, being parched with thirst and starving with hunger all bring. Greed proves perilous in a plethora of ways in the film's frames, including inside its main character's head. Read our full review. THE 355 They're globe-hopping, ass-kicking, world-saving spies, but women: that's it, that's The 355. When those formidable ladies are played by a dream international cast of Jessica Chastain (Scenes From a Marriage), Lupita Nyong'o (Us), Penélope Cruz (Pain and Glory), Diane Kruger (In the Fade) and Fan Bingbing (I Am Not Madame Bovary), the tickets should sell themselves — and Chastain, who suggested the concept and produces, wasn't wrong for hoping that. Giving espionage moves the female-fronted spin that Bond and Mission: Impossible never have isn't just this action-thriller's quest alone, of course, and nothing has done so better than Atomic Blonde recently, but there's always room for more. What The 355 offers is an average affair, though, rather than a game-changer, even if it so evidently wants to do for its genre what Widows did for heist flicks. The film still starts with men, too, causing all the globe's problems — aka threatening to end life as we know it via a gadget that can let anyone hack anything online. One nefarious and bland mercenary (Jason Flemyng, Boiling Point) wants it, but the CIA's gung-ho Mason 'Mace' Browne (Chastain) and her partner Nick Fowler (Sebastian Stan, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) head to Paris to get it from Colombian intelligence officer Luis Rojas (Édgar Ramírez, Jungle Cruise), who's gone rogue and is happy to sell; however, German operative Marie Schmidt (Kruger) is also on its trail. The French connection goes wrong, the two women get in each other's ways, but it's apparent — begrudgingly to both — that they're better off together. They need ex-MI6 cyber whiz Khadijah Adiyeme (Nyong'o) to help, while Colombian psychologist Graciela Rivera (Cruz) gets drawn in after making the trip to stop Luis going off the books. No stranger to covert affairs or formidable women after penning Mr and Mrs Smith, but helming only his second movie following the awful X-Men: Dark Phoenix, director/co-writer Simon Kinberg spreads the action across several continents — including a foot chase in Marrakesh and an auction in Shanghai, which is where Lin Mi Sheng (Fan) joins the story. Scripting with TV veteran Theresa Rebeck (Smash), his big setpieces all play with the film's gender focus, mostly dissecting how women are so often overlooked in various situations; the indifference given wait staff, the invisibility of women in male-dominated societies and the way they're meant to be pure eye candy at black-tie occasions all earn the movie's ire. But these sentiments, like everything else in the feature, are blatant and straightforward at best. The mood the movie vibes with: "James Bond never had to deal with real life," as Cruz is given the misfortune of uttering. The 355 should be better — with its dialogue, clearly; with its girl-power, girl-boss, girls-can-do-anything messaging; and at celebrating more than five women, or even showing them. (If you were going to pick five ladies to do the job, though, this casting is spot-on.) It could use a sense of style and charm beyond Nyong'o's suits and the gang's personality-matched auction outfits, and its over-edited action scenes put Kinsberg two for two with tanking a crucial part of his directorial efforts to-date. Women can star in mediocre action movies as well, however. That isn't meant to be the picture's big push for gender parity, but The 355 is also exactly what seemingly millions of bland men-led actioners have been serving up for decades upon decades. It packages it up in an Ocean's 8-meets-Bourne approach, or a more self-serious Charlie's Angels, but these run-of-the-mill flicks have long been everywhere, just without as much oestrogen. The Bond and Mission: Impossible franchises have their own, too. Read our full review. If you're wondering what else is currently screening in Australian cinemas — or has been lately — check out our rundown of new films released in Australia on September 2, September 9, September 16, September 23 and September 30; October 7, October 14, October 21 and October 28; November 4, November 11, November 18 and November 25; December 2, December 9, December 16 and December 26; and January 1 and January 6. You can also read our full reviews of a heap of recent movies, such as Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Streamline, Coming Home in the Dark, Pig, Big Deal, The Killing of Two Lovers, Nitram, Riders of Justice, The Alpinist, A Fire Inside, Lamb, The Last Duel, Malignant, The Harder They Fall, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, Halloween Kills, Passing, Eternals, The Many Saints of Newark, Julia, No Time to Die, The Power of the Dog, Tick, Tick... Boom!, Zola, Last Night in Soho, Blue Bayou, The Rescue, Titane, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, Dune, Encanto, The Card Counter, The Lost Leonardo, The French Dispatch, Don't Look Up, Dear Evan Hansen, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Lost Daughter, The Scary of Sixty-First, West Side Story, Licorice Pizza, The Matrix Resurrections, The Tragedy of Macbeth, The Worst Person in the World, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, House of Gucci, The King's Man and Red Rocket.
The place: earth in the near future. The situation: a frozen planet chilling at a frosty -119 degrees celsius, as caused by humanity's attempts to combat climate change. The only solution: a constantly hurtling 1001-car train that plays host to the world's only remaining people. But, instead of banding together on the speeding locomotive, the residents of Snowpiercer have transported society's class structure into the carriages of their new home. That's the story that drives Snowpiercer — on both the big screen and on TV. First came Bong Joon-ho's 2013 film, which marked the acclaimed South Korean writer/director's first English-language film, and one of the movies that brought him to broader fame before Netflix's Okja and 2019's Cannes Palme d'Or-winning and Oscar-winning Parasite. Then, unsurprisingly, came a US-made television series, which was first announced back in 2016, and then finally started speeding across screens — including Down Under, where it's available via Netflix — from May this year. In both forms, Snowpiercer boasts a smart, immersive and all-too-timely concept — and unpacks its underlying idea in a thrilling and involving manner. While the TV version isn't as great as Bong's film (because, honestly, how could it be?), it takes the same dystopian concept, heightens the suspense and drama, and serves up both a class warfare-fuelled survivalist thriller and a murder-mystery. Think constant twists, reveals and reversals, cliffhangers at the end of almost every scene, and a 'Murder on the Snowpiercer Express' kind of vibe. Indeed, it's rather addictive — and, after just wrapping up its first season, the show has dropped its first teaser for its second batch of episodes. Once again, Hamilton's Tony Award-winning Daveed Diggs leads the charge, playing an ex-detective who has spent seven years in the tail end of the train and is dedicated to overthrowing the status quo to achieve equality for all. Also aboard is Jennifer Connelly as the engine's all-seeing, ever-present head of hospitality, with the likes of Frances Ha's Mickey Sumner, Slender Man's Annalise Basso and The Americans' Alison Wright all part of Snowpiercer's new world order as well. And, in the new trailer, they're all facing a significant change. They're also about to meet a new adversary, as played by none other than Game of Thrones' Sean Bean. Just when Snowpiercer's second season will arrive is yet to be revealed — although it's safe to say it won't start dropping until 2021 at the earliest. Just how long Bean will survive in his latest role, well, that's something you can start pondering right now. Watch the Snowpiercer season two trailer below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xEFQpBc3Nc Snowpiercer's second season will hit Netflix Down Under at a yet-to-be-revealed date — we'll update you with further details when they come to hand.
Something delightful has been happening in cinemas in some parts of the country. After numerous periods spent empty during the pandemic, with projectors silent, theatres bare and the smell of popcorn fading, picture palaces in many Australian regions are back in business — including both big chains and smaller independent sites in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. During COVID-19 lockdowns, no one was short on things to watch, of course. In fact, you probably feel like you've streamed every movie ever made, including new releases, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent all your time of late glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of new films are hitting cinemas so that you can do just that — and we've rounded up, watched and reviewed everything on offer this week. THE FORGIVEN Patience is somewhat of a virtue with The Forgiven. It would be in it, too, if any of its wealthy white characters hedonistically holidaying in Morocco were willing to display the trait for even a second. Another addition to the getaways-gone-wrong genre, this thorny satirical drama gleefully savages the well-to-do, proving as eager to eat the rich as can be, and also lays bare the despicable coveting of exoticism that the moneyed think is an acceptable way to splash plentiful wads of cash. There's patently plenty going on in this latest release from writer/director John Michael McDonagh, as there typically is in features by the filmmaker behind The Guard, Calvary and War on Everyone. Here, he adapts Lawrence Osborne's 2012 novel, but the movie that results takes time to build and cohere, and even then seems only partially interested in both. Still, that patience is rewarded by The Forgiven's stellar lead performance by Ralph Fiennes, playing one of his most entitled and repugnant characters yet. Sympathies aren't meant to flow David Henninger's (Fiennes, The King's Man) way, or towards his wife Jo (Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye). Together, the spiky Londoners abroad bicker like it's a sport — and the only thing fuelling their marriage. Cruelty taints their words: "why am I thinking harpy?", "why am I thinking shrill?" are among his, while she counters "why am I thinking high-functioning alcoholic?". He's a drunken surgeon, she's a bored children's author, and they're venturing past the Atlas Mountains to frolic in debauchery at the village their decadent pal Richard (Matt Smith, Morbius) and his own barbed American spouse Dally (Caleb Landry Jones, Nitram) have turned into a holiday home. Sympathy isn't designed to head that pair's way, either; "we couldn't have done it without our little Moroccan friends," Richard announces to kick off their weekend-long housewarming party. But when the Hennigers arrive late after tragically hitting a local boy, Driss (Omar Ghazaoui, American Odyssey), en route, the mood shifts — but also doesn't. The wicked turns of phrase that David slings at Jo have nothing on his disdain for the place and people around him, and he doesn't care who hears it. His assessment of the desert vista: "it's very picturesque, I suppose, in a banal sort of way". He drips with the prejudice of privilege, whether offensively spouting Islamophobic remarks or making homophobic comments about his hosts — and he doesn't, nay won't, rein himself in when Richard calls the police, reports the boy's death, pays the appropriate bribes and proclaims that their bacchanal won't otherwise be disturbed. The arrival of Driss' father Abdellah (Ismael Kanater, Queen of the Desert), and his request that David accompanies him home to bury his son, complicates matters, however. While David begrudgingly agrees, insultingly contending that it's a shakedown, Jo helps keep the party going, enjoying time alone to flirt with hedge fund manager Tom (Christopher Abbott, Possessor). John Michael McDonagh hasn't ever co-helmed a feature with his filmmaker brother Martin, but actors have jumped between the duo's respective works, with Fiennes — who starred in Martin's memorable In Bruges — among the latest. The siblings share something else, too, and not just a knack for assembling impressive casts; they're equally ace at fleshing out the characters inhabited by their dazzling on-screen cohorts via witty and telling dialogue. The Forgiven plays like it's in autopilot, though, but having Fiennes, Chastain, Smith and Jones (who appeared in Martin's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) utter its lines is a gift. Indeed, here it's the attitudes captured while they're speaking, and the behaviours and mannerisms made plain in how they're speaking, that add layer upon layer to this murky affair. That'd ring true even if Driss, Abdellah and the tense journey with the latter to inter the former weren't even in the narrative. Read our full review. FULL TIME Perhaps the greatest trick the devil ever pulled — the devil that is time, the fact that we all have to get out of bed each and every morning, and the sleep-killing noise signalling that a new day is here — was to create alarm clocks in a variety of sounds. Some are quiet, soft, calming and even welcoming, rather than emitting a juddering screech, but the effect always remains the same. Whatever echoes from which device, if your daily routine is a treadmill of relentless havoc, that din isn't going to herald smiles or spark a spring in anyone's step. The alarm that kickstarts each morning in Full Time isn't unusual or soothing. It isn't overly obnoxious or horrifying either. But the look on Laure Calamy's face each time that it goes off, in the split second when her character is remembering everything that her day will bring, is one of pure exhaustion and exasperation — and it'd love to murder that unwanted wake-up siren. That expression couldn't be more relatable, as much in Full Time is, even if you've never been a single mother living on the outskirts of Paris, navigating a train strike, endeavouring to trade up one job for another for a better future, and juggling kids, bills, and just getting to and from work. At the 2021 Venice International Film Festival, Antoinette in the Cévennes and Call My Agent! star Calamy won the Best Actress award in the event's Horizons strand for her efforts here — and while the accolade didn't come her way for a single gaze, albeit repeated throughout the movie, it easily could've. Mere minutes into Full Time, it's plain to see why she earned herself such a prize beyond that withering gape, however. Calamy is that phenomenal in this portrait of a weary market researcher-turned-hotel chambermaid's hectic life, playing the part like she's living it. In our own ways, most of us are. The first time the alarm sounds, Julie Roy (Calamy) is already lethargic and frustrated; indeed, writer/director Eric Gravel (Crash Test Aglaé), who won the Venice Horizons Best Director gong himself, charts the ups and downs of his protagonist's professional and personal situation like he's making an unflagging thriller. In fact, he is. Julie is stretched to breaking point from the get-go, and every moment of every day seems to bring a new source of stress. For starters, her job overseeing the cleaning at a five-star hotel in the city is both chaotic and constantly throwing up challenges, and the hints dropped by her boss (Anne Suarez, Black Spot) about the punishment for not living up to her demands — aka being fired — don't help. Julie has put all her hopes on returning to market research anyway, but getting time off for the interview is easier said than done, especially when the French capital is in the middle of a transport strike that makes commuting in and out from the countryside close to impossible. Also adding to Julie's troubles is well, everything. The childcare arrangement she has in place with a neighbour (Geneviève Mnich, Change of Heart) is also precarious, thanks to threats of quitting and calling social services. Having any energy to spend meaningful time with her children at the end of her busy days is nothing but a fantasy, too. Trying to get financial support out of her absent ex is a constant battle, especially given he won't answer the phone — and the bank won't stop calling about her overdue mortgage payments. It's also her son Nolan's (J'ai tué mon mari) birthday, so there are gifts to buy, plus a party to organise and throw. Julie is so frazzled that having a drink with her best friend is a luxury she doesn't have time for, because some other task always beckons. And when a father from her village, the kindly Vincent (Cyril Gueï, The Perfect Mother), helps her out not once but twice, she's so starved of affection that she instantly misreads his intentions. Read our full review. MURDER PARTY With apologies to William Shakespeare, all the world isn't just a stage in French farce Murder Party. Instead, it's a game, then another one, then yet another after that. This candy-coloured murder-mystery takes perhaps the ultimate high-concept setup and hones in on a crucial fact: that audiences love whodunnits, whether they're watching them on the screen or reading them on the page, because charting the unravelling details entails sleuthing along. In other words, when we're wondering who killed who in which room and why (and with what weapon), we're playing. The board game Cluedo also nailed this truth, as have murder-mystery parties, plus the increasing array of other interactive shows and events that thrust paying participants into the middle of such puzzle-laden predicaments. And while Murder Party acknowledges this idea in a variety of manners, here's the first and simplest: it's set among a family famed for making best-selling board games themselves. First-time feature writer/director Nicolas Pleskof and his co-scribe Elsa Marpeau (Prof T) kickstart the film with a killer setup: that eccentric crew of relatives, their brightly hued home on a sprawling country estate, an usual task given to a newcomer and, naturally, a sudden passing. Architect Jeanne Chardon-Spitzer (Alice Pol, Labor Day) is asked to pitch a big renovation project to the Daguerre family, transforming their impressive abode so that living there always feels like playing a game (or several). Patriarch César (Eddy Mitchell, The Middleman) already encourages his brood to enjoy their daily existence with that in mind anyway, including dedicating entire days to letting loose and walking, talking and breathing gameplay. But he's looking for a particularly bold next step. He's unimpressed by Jeanne's routine proposal, in fact. Then he drops dead, the property's doors slam shut and a voice over the intercom tells the architect, plus everyone else onsite, to undertake a series of challenges to ascertain the culprit among them — or be murdered themselves. Also thrust into the high-stakes game, which'll dispense with anyone who refuses to take part or guesses incorrectly: César's son Théo (Pablo Pauly, The French Dispatch), daughter Léna (Sarah Stern, Into the World) and nudgingly named youngest boy Hercule (Adrien Guionnet, Le Bazar de la Charité). Yes, sibling rivalry complicates the hypothesising, as well as the attempts to stay alive. Théo is particularly friendly towards workaholic Jeanne, adding another complexity to the already-chaotic situation. Similarly at hand is the dead man's younger wife Salomé (Pascale Arbillot, Haute Couture) — a mystery writer herself — and his no-nonsense offsider sister Joséphine (Miou-Miou, The Last Mercenary). And, because a home this immense was always going to have some help hovering around, butler Armand (Gustave Kervern, Love Song for Tough Guys) gets drawn in, too. If Amelie and Knives Out combined, the end result would look like Murder Party. If Wes Anderson and Agatha Christie joined forces, the outcome would be the same. It's highly unlikely that Pleskof was ever going to call his feature Murder in the Game-Filled Mansion or Death While Rolling the Dice, but that's the overwhelming vibe. There's an escape room element, too — thankfully, though, nodding towards the Escape Room franchise isn't on the agenda. Murder Party's characters get stuck in intricately designed locked spaces and forced to piece together clues to secure their freedom, and are only permitted to remain breathing by keeping their wits about them, but no one's in a horror movie here. Read our full review. THE REEF: STALKED In the crowded waters of cinema's shark-attack genre, which first took a hefty bite out of the box office with mega hit Jaws and then spawned plenty of imitators since, a low-budget Australian effort held its own back in 2010. The second movie from writer/director Andrew Traucki after his crocodile-attack flick Black Water, The Reef wasn't ever going to rake in enough takings to threaten the larger fish, but the stripped-back survival-thriller was grippingly effective. As Black Water did with 2020's Black Water: Abyss, the creature-feature helmer's shark film has now be given a sequel — and like Traucki's other franchise, this followup is a routine splash. The filmmaker keeps most of the basics the same, casting out a remakequel, aka a movie about basically the same scenario but with different faces. No, Traucki isn't seeking a bigger boat, or even to rock the one he has. The Reef: Stalked does make one curious new choice, however, stemming from its nine-months-earlier prologue. The film's opening sequences set up quite the harrowing source of trauma for protagonist Nic (Teressa Liane, The Vampire Diaries), and also clumsily equate domestic violence with the ocean's predators in the process. The aim is to show how Nic and her youngest sister Annie (debutant Saskia Archer) refuse to become victims after their other sibling Cathy (Bridget Burt, Camp-Off) is stalked and savaged in a different way, devastatingly and fatally so, at the hands of her partner Greg (Tim Ross, Dive Club). Drawing attention to assaults against women and femicide is a worthy mission, but it lacks bite here. Traucki's metaphor is as clear as the sky on a cloud-free day, and yet the domestic abuse plot point primarily plays as a way to complicate Nic as a character — PTSD flashes and all — rather than make a meaningful statement about violence within intimate relationships. After finding Cathy herself, Nic is so understandably distressed that she heads as far away as she can, but returns from overseas for a big diving and kayaking trip that was important to her sister. With friends Jodie (Ann Truong, Cowboy Bebop) and Lisa (Kate Lister, Clickbait), as well as Annie — who isn't known for enjoying the water, let alone for handling herself on it — they embark on a multi-day paddle. It isn't long until a different sinister force terrorises their getaway, though; even if you don't already know what "the man in the grey suit" refers to in surfer slang, this is a shark-attack sequel, after all. Aside from the haunting shots taking Nic back to Cathy's last moments, everything about The Reef: Stalked plays out as expected from the moment the quartet set off from north Queensland. Cue the obligatory waves of jump scares, many efficiently staged but their impact lessening as they just keep coming in increasingly predictable ways (when shark flicks are happy to swim by the numbers, if you've seen one movie like The Reef, 47 Metres Down, The Shallows, Bait, The Meg and the like, it feels like you've seen them all). Cue the tension that springs from the film's characters rarely being close enough to the shore to escape — but, when it's convenient, being close enough for kids playing on the beach to become potential fodder. Cue a score by Mark Smythe (Love You Like That) that tells viewers exactly how to react at every moment, too, and dampens the thrills and frights as a result. Still, Traucki has cast The Reef: Stalked well, enough that buying Nic and company's life-or-death stress comes easily. Trusting them, rather than clunkily overcomplicating the setup — no matter how well-intentioned — might've resulted in a better return to The Reef. If you're wondering what else is currently screening in Australian cinemas — or has been lately — check out our rundown of new films released in Australia on April 7, April 14, April 21 and April 28; and May 5, May 12, May 19 and May 26; June 2, June 9, June 16, June 23 and June 30; and July 7, July 14 and July 21. You can also read our full reviews of a heap of recent movies, such as Fantastic Beasts and the Secrets of Dumbledore, Ambulance, Memoria, The Lost City, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Happening, The Good Boss, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, The Northman, Ithaka, After Yang, Downton Abbey: A New Era, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Petite Maman, The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Firestarter, Operation Mincemeat, To Chiara, This Much I Know to Be True, The Innocents, Top Gun: Maverick, The Bob's Burgers Movie, Ablaze, Hatching, Mothering Sunday, Jurassic World Dominion, A Hero, Benediction, Lightyear, Men, Elvis, Lost Illusions, Nude Tuesday, Ali & Ava, Thor: Love and Thunder, Compartment No. 6, Sundown, The Gray Man, The Phantom of the Open, The Black Phone, Where the Crawdads Sing and Official Competition.
If you've never been interested in silent films, this Spanish production might change your mind — and if they are your taste, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Blancanieves, which translates to 'Snow White', is a unique interpretation of the classic Grimm Brothers fantasy. Set in Andalusia, Spain during the early 1900s when bull fighting, flamenco and romance were at their best, the film expresses all the gusto and passion of Spanish culture — even without those sultry words. The protagonist of the story is Carmen (Macarena García), the daughter of famed matador Antonio Villalta (Daniel Giménez Cacho). On the same fateful day, Antonio is injured in a bullfight and Carmen's mother dies whilst giving birth to her. Carmen, who is raised by her grandmother until her death, goes to live with the paralysed Antonio, and his nurse-turned-wife, Encarna (Maribel Verdú). As her evocative name implicates, Encarna runs a house of horrors, treating her husband and stepdaughter with cruelty while masking her own bizarre fetishes. According to the traditional story, the stepmother is insanely jealous of the budding beauty and tries to do away her. Of course, our heroine survives (with a little amnesia) and is taken in by a group of travelling dwarves who nickname her 'Blancanieves'. By accident, it is discovered that Carmen has her father's knack for bullfighting. They travel around Spain as she stares down bulls in a gladiatorial yet glamorous fashion, most notably in an emotive last torero. Dubbed "a love letter to European silent cinema", by director Pablo Berger, Blancanieves had been in his heart for quite some time. Inspired by a photograph of bullfighting dwarves, Berger started on the project in 2003. Eight years later, he got wind that The Artist, another black-and white silent film, had premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. "I almost threw my phone against the wall," he told the Guardian. The high concept was gone." If he worried that Blancanieves would look like a copycat of the Oscar winning Artist, I disagree. As do copious others; the film received ten Goya awards (the equivalent of the Spanish Oscars). Blancanieves has all the qualities of a classic silent film but with a fresh twist that keeps our modern minds guessing. By incorporating Hitchcock-type cinematography, Berger crafts a beguiling version of the traditional story that is in turns melancholy, eerie and erotic. His cast of devastatingly beautiful Spanish beauties, such as Verdú (from Y Tu Mamá Tambien and Pan's Labyrinth), makes us swoon with every lash bat and tear roll. The roles of the dwarves are also unexpected — possibilities for betrayal and even romance can be found. So if you're looking forward to a debonair don of a prince charming in this story, forget it. But with a fantastically ambiguous ending that will have you wanting more, his is a part that's hardly missed. https://youtube.com/watch?v=HanTDiiZLpg
Despite recently launching an all-day breakfast menu and ice cream sandwiches, we still think fries are the best thing about Lord of the Fries. And this Friday, March 8, and Sunday, March 17, the vegan fast food joint is giving away free serves of 'em. Free. Fries. To snag free fries on the Friday, head down to the new King Street store in the CBD between 12 and 1pm and you'll be gifted a bucket of deliciousness. You don't even have to purchase any vego nuggets to redeem them. If one bucket of fries is not enough for you fry fanatics, head back to the CBD store at 3pm, when the first 250 people will receive a bottomless chip cup — for endless free refills. The following Sunday, you'll need to head across to the new Docklands store between 12 and 2pm, when it'll be slinging free fries for all (once again, no purchase necessary). The first 250 customers will also receive a bottomless chip cup. You know the drill. Lord of the Fries is giving away free fries from midday–1pm on Friday, March 8, at 184 King Street, Melbourne; and from midday–2pm on Sunday, March 17, at 8 Star Circus, Shop G05, Docklands.
A Noel Coward play, a series of Haydn string quartets, a concert by Clannad — wait, is this Melbourne Festival? It is, but it's the new-look Melbourne Festival, now in its first year under new artistic director Josephine Ridge. Ridge's goal with her first program has been to broaden the festival's appeal. While there will as always be a range of offerings on the weirder side of wonderful, from an epic dramatisation of a verbatim phone conversation (Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Life and Times), to an artist who makes playable musical instruments out of disarmed assault weapons (Pedro Reyes), the 2013 program is also aiming to draw in audiences who may normally have seen Melbourne Festival as not their thing. An expanded music program is a big part of that, bringing an eclectic range of acts from pop bands such as British India and Polyphonic Spree to a celebration of ska, a classical program put together with the help of the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s Richard Tognetti and a concert in the dark by blind artists Amadou and Mariam. This year also sees a greater focus on commissioned works, both from local artists such as Eddie Perfect and Daniel Schlusser and from big international names such as British choreographer Hofesh Shechter. Other guests of note include much-loved Indigenous singer Archie Roach, who will be playing in a grand welcome to country to kick the festival off, Hollywood legend John Landis and celebrated French ballerina Sylvie Guillem. There’s plenty for free and even if you can’t get yourself to a single film screening, gallery exhibit, concert or performance, the art will be coming to you anyway, via a series of decorative 'art trams'. Ridge has just come from nine years working on the Sydney Festival, an event which she says seems to draw more emotional engagement from its audience, compared to the intellectualised response typical of Melbourne. She’s hoping this year to bring a bit of that passion south, with a program that truly gets into Melbourne's heart. Tickets for the Melbourne Festival are on sale on Friday, 16 August. For tickets and the full program, see the festival website.
Melbourne's in for a certifiable scorcher of a day today, with the mercury forecast to tip a whopping 44 degrees by 3pm. That's the hottest we've seen since Black Saturday's top of 46.4, close to a decade ago, on February 7, 2009. Yep, the air temperature had already clocked in at 31 degrees by 8am, a total fire ban is in place, and the Bureau of Meteorology is warning of some pretty intense weather to come, predicting the UV to reach a high 12. But before you crank that air con, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has warned all this extreme weather will be putting some serious pressure on the state's power system, especially during peak usage time between 4–7pm. In an effort to avoid mass power blackouts, the operator's called in reserves to supply extra power across Victoria and South Australia if needed. The AEMO has also outlined ways in which consumers can better manage their energy usage, including keeping blinds down when not at home, running large appliances earlier in the day, and switching that air con to between 20 and 24 degrees. Vic Emergency has shared its own advice for surviving the fiery temperatures, including drinking stacks of water, dressing in light, loose clothes, and avoiding being outside during the hottest part of the day. It's also reminded people that the temperature inside a parked car can double in minutes and that those most at risk of the severe weather are children, the elderly and those with medical conditions. Meanwhile, Metro Trains is warning commuters to allow for extra travel time, due to possible heat-induced speed restrictions and system delays. Four-legged mates are also in for a hot one and the RSPCA's put out its own reminders about keeping pets cool and safe. Remember to keep yourself and your pets cool during the hot weather over the next few days 🐾 pic.twitter.com/3mY5gjGruh — RSPCA Victoria (@RSPCAVIC) January 23, 2019 And if you're heading somewhere for lunch or coffee, best check if your destination is actually open. Some venues have changed up their opening times due to the heat, including Footscray's Bad Love Club, which will shut between 12pm and 5pm, and both Shop Ramen stores, which are ditching lunch and opening at 5.30pm. Queen Victoria Market stalls also have the choice to close at 1pm and Grub Fitzroy has decided to keep its doors firmly shut until Saturday morning. It looks like we'll all be hanging out for some serious relief at around 3pm, which is when the BOM's forecast Melbourne's temperatures to plummet by around 15 degrees. Relief is in sight Vic! Temperatures will drop around 15 degrees very quickly post-change along the coast, however the drop will be more gradual inland. Check out the current oberservations on the #BomApp or website: https://t.co/gvDhvHRuhl #VicCoolChange #Vicweather #Melbweather pic.twitter.com/2S3rnAHBD0 — Bureau of Meteorology, Victoria (@BOM_Vic) January 24, 2019 Image: St Kilda Beach, Visit Victoria.
