Where do artists find inspiration? The answer to that question is virtually endless, as perusing the Archibald Prize finalists every year illustrates. For the acclaimed Australian portraiture award, sometimes actors, musicians, comedians and filmmakers provide a spark. Authors, footballers, the folks doing the painting themselves: they all fit, too. Frequently, though, fellow artists inspire others to get the creative juices flowing. Among recent Archie winners, that was true for Tony Costa with Lindy Lee, Blak Douglas with Karla Dickens and Peter Wegner with Guy Warren, for instance — and, in 2025, it's also the case for Julie Fragar with her likeness of Justene Williams. This year's pick for the prestigious prize, Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene), is also an instance of one Brisbane artist painting another to claim the $100,000 award. Fragar's win makes it three in a row for women at the Archies since 2023, following Laura Jones in 2024 with her portrait of author Tim Winton and Julia Gutman the year prior for a depiction of Montaigne. That said, Fragar is still just the 13th woman to win the 104-year-old art accolade. Even with recipients who've emerged victorious more than once — Judy Cassab in 1960 and 1967, and Del Kathryn Barton in2008 and 2013 — this is still only the 15th time that the prize has gone to a female talent. [caption id="attachment_1003358" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Winner Archibald Prize 2025, Julie Fragar 'Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene)', oil on canvas, 240 x 180.4 cm © the artist, image © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Jenni Carter.[/caption] "You work your whole career imagining this might happen one day. Thinking back to myself as a 17-year-old showing up at the Sydney College of the Arts — a kid from country New South Wales — it's incredible to think I have won the Archibald Prize," said Fragar about her win. "Portrait painting wasn't taken as seriously in the 1990s as it is today. I have always regarded the Archibald Prize as a place that understood the value of portraiture. To be the winner of the Archibald Prize is a point of validation. It means so much to have the respect of my colleagues at the Art Gallery. It doesn't get better than that." Fragar is the Head of Painting at the Queensland College of Art and Design, where Williams is the Head of Sculpture. "Justene is incredible. I feel very fortunate that she allowed me to do this portrait. There is nobody like her. The work is a reflection on the experience of making art to deadlines, and the labour and love of being a mother," said Fragar of her now-Archibald Prize-winning subject. "Here are two of Australia's great artists in conversation about what matters most to them. Julie Fragar has a sumptuous ability to transcend reality and depict her subjects technically but also psychologically. Justene Williams is a larger-than-life character, a performer — cacophonous and joyous," noted Art Gallery of New South Wales Director Maud Page about 2025's pick. "In this work, she is surrounded by her own artworks and, most important of all, her daughter Honore as a tiny figure atop a sculpture. It speaks to me as a powerful rendition of the juggle some of us perform as mothers and professionals." Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene) was selected from a pool of 57 finalists, including another awarded two-artist combination in Abdul Abdullah's portrait of fellow creative Jason Phu, aka 2025's Packing Room Prize recipient. Other contenders included likenesses of Nicole Kidman, Hugo Weaving, Boy Swallows Universe star Felix Cameron, Miranda Otto, Grace Tame, Vincent Namatjira, filmmaker Warwick Thornton and comedian Aaron Chen, as whittled down from a total pool of 904 Archibald Prize entries for 2025. AGNSW also awards the Wynne and Sulman prizes at the same time as the Archibald — and across all three, from 2394 submissions, 2025 marks the first year that there were more finalist works by women artists in the accolades' history. [caption id="attachment_1003359" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Winner Wynne Prize 2025, Jude Rae 'Pre-dawn sky over Port Botany container terminal', oil on linen, 200 x 150.4 cm © the artist, image © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Diana Panuccio.[/caption] For $50,000 Wynne Prize, which is all about landscape painting — and is Australia's oldest art award — Sydney artist Jude Rae's Pre-dawn sky over Port Botany container terminal was picked from 52 finalists and 758 entries. This is the third time that Rae has made the top batch of Wynne contenders. She's also been an Archie finalist four times (in 2014, 2019, 2021 and 2022) and was a Sulman finalist in 2021. "There is something compelling about the constantly flashing gantry lights and the floodlights blasting away in those hours just before dawn. I am up at various times and love to watch the pre-dawn light, when the sky is just starting to change colour. From my bathroom window on the fifth floor of my building, I have a clear view of that scene. There is no way to photograph it — it's too subtle and too fleeting. It's a big sky and we're all really little," Rae said about her piece. [caption id="attachment_1003361" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Winner Sulman Prize 2025, Gene A'Hern 'Sky painting', oil and oil stick on board, 240 x 240 cm © the artist, image © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Diana Panuccio.[/caption] The Sulman rewards genre painting, subject painting and mural projects, with Gene A'Hern 2025's pick for the Blue Mountains-inspired Sky painting, getting the top nod for the $40,000 gong from this year's 30 finalists and 732 entries. "Painted with expansive movements to capture a sense of scale and colour, this painting unfolded as I immersed myself in skywatching, while reflecting on the ceremonial choreography of the surrounding environment. It conveys a sensation of nature's gestures, composed to resonate from within, translating an omnipresence that comes from dust and returns to dust," said A'Hern. "The work draws on charged memories — birds singing in harmony, branches sighing in the wind, the closing curtain of the setting sun, all forming a living landscape that I breathe with and through. For me, the sky and the Blue Mountains intertwine and reveal themselves as a place of origin, deep memory and belonging." 2025's winners and finalists across all three prizes are on display at AGNSW from Saturday, May 10–Sunday, August 17, 2025, before touring to Geelong Gallery, Gosford Regional Gallery, Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, Mudgee Arts Precinct and Shoalhaven Regional Gallery over the 11 months afterwards. Archibald Prize 2025 Exhibition Dates Saturday, May 10–Sunday, August 17, 2025 — Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, NSW Saturday, August 30–Sunday, November 9, 2025 — Geelong Gallery, Victoria Saturday, November 22, 2025–Sunday, January 11, 2026 — Gosford Regional Gallery, NSW Saturday, January 23–Saturday, March 7, 2026 — Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, NSW Friday, March 20–Saturday, May 3, 2026 — Mudgee Arts Precinct, NSW Saturday, May 16–Sunday, July 19, 2026 — Shoalhaven Regional Gallery, NSW 2025's Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prize-winners will display at various locations around the country from Saturday, May 10, 2025. If you can't make it to any of the above exhibition dates, you can check out the winners and finalists of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes on the Art Gallery of NSW website. Top image: Excerpt of winner Archibald Prize 2025, Julie Fragar 'Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene)', oil on canvas, 240 x 180.4 cm © the artist, image © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Jenni Carter. Sitter: Justene Williams. Excerpt of winner Wynne Prize 2025, Jude Rae 'Pre-dawn sky over Port Botany container terminal', oil on linen, 200 x 150.4 cm © the artist, image © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Diana Panuccio. Excerpt of winner Sulman Prize 2025, Gene A'Hern 'Sky painting', oil and oil stick on board, 240 x 240 cm © the artist, image © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Diana Panuccio. Installation images: Installation view, 'Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2025', Art Gallery of New South Wales, photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Diana Panuccio.
From 2025, what will Burleigh Heads have in common with Los Angeles, New York, Cannes, Bordeaux, Ibiza, Singapore, Seoul and Hong Kong? As Miami, Doha and Mexico City boast, too, it'll become home to a Mondrian hotel. Alongside fellow upcoming openings in Tulum and Dubai, the LA-born chain is launching its first-ever Australian outpost, heading to a breezy patch of the Gold Coast. For vacationers, the brand's debut Aussie site will feature 208 hotel rooms — some suites, some studios, some two- and three-bedroom beach houses. Also available for travellers: the venue's Sky House at its apex. Mondrian Gold Coast will also include residential apartments, however, if you're cashed up and looking for luxe new digs. Mondrian calls its hotels creative hives — and values its guests not just swanning in and feeling like they could be anywhere in the world, but becoming immersed in their surroundings. The 24-floor Burleigh Heads address will boast views that do plenty of heavy lifting in that regard; if you're not peering at the pine tree-lined beach, you'll have hinterland vistas. "Australia has long been a strategic focus for Mondrian's growth, and the Gold Coast was a focal point thanks to its phenomenal natural setting, rich cultural landscape and vibrant social scene," said Mondrian Hotels & Residences's Brand Chief Operating Officer Chadi Farhat. "Over the last couple of years, we have seen a rising demand for lifestyle brands, where locals and international guests are looking for authentic, creative and immersive experiences — all the hallmarks of the Mondrian brand. It felt a natural choice to bring Mondrian to the Gold Coast and we believe it will resonate strongly with the local market and lend something entirely new to the hospitality space," Farhat continued. Art, architecture, design and culture are also at the forefront of the chain's approach, with Mondrian Gold Coast skewing sleek courtesy of Australian architects Fraser & Partners and Studio Carter — the latter taking cues from the sand and pandanus shrubs for the hotel's textures and tones. Architecture and design practice Alexander &Co joins in with the as-yet-unnamed ground-floor restaurant, which will be just one of the location's spots to eat. Here, think: a space that sprawls both inside and out, complete with a sunny terrace. Up on the third floor, visitors will be able to eat with a vantage over the ocean, or enjoy kicking back at the hotel's pool club. While there's no menu details as yet, local produce will take the spotlight on the menus across the site. And for relaxing, the hotel will also feature a wellness space and sp. For partying, there'll be an events space as well. Find Mondrian Gold Coast at Burleigh Heads, Queensland, from sometime in 2025 — and head to the hotel's website for more information.
Chef Dany Karam might just be the hardest-working man in Sydney hospitality. Since wrapping a five-year stint as Executive Chef at The Star's fine diner BLACK in 2022, he's taken on several consulting gigs, brand ambassadorships, and even launched a catering business. And come November, the celebrated chef will return to the pass as he brings a taste of the city's high-end dining scene to Southwest Sydney with three new venues in Cabramatta. The first to arrive are Magma, a fire-led fine diner, and Caffè Vicini, a sprawling all-day cafe and bakery, both set to open on Sunday, November 16. They'll be followed in mid-2026 by Primitivo, a Mediterranean-inspired restaurant, completing the Karam-led lineup inside the Cabravale Club Resort — a $230-million redevelopment of the former Cabra-Vale Diggers, anchored by a Novotel hotel with resort-style amenities. The headline act is Magma, an ambitious grill-focused restaurant Karam describes as "four years in the making". Designed around a central open kitchen, the space will put diners front and centre of the action, with dramatic charcoal flames fuelling a menu that brings together premium Australian produce with Karam's Lebanese heritage and Japanese precision. Expect a tight edit of high-quality proteins, boutique vegetables and bold fire-kissed flavours, crafted with Karam's signature flair. Adding to the theatre is The Butchery, a purpose-built facility set within Magma that will service all three venues. Here, meat and seafood will be dry-aged and prepared in-house, ensuring a consistent quality and supply chain across the precinct. While Magma promises the drama, Caffè Vicini — 'neighbours' in Italian — will provide the comfort. The all-day cafe will serve specialty coffee alongside house-baked pastries, focaccia sandwiches and light snacks featuring seasonal produce and meats prepared at The Butchery. The final piece of the puzzle will arrive in 2026 with Primitivo, a Mediterranean-inspired restaurant set to further bolster the precinct's dining credentials. Karam has carefully hand-picked his suppliers and team for the new venues. He's continuing a 12-year partnership with David Blackmore Wagyu, while also collaborating with Appellation Oysters, Caviar Luxe, boutique local farms and artisanal producers like Simon Johnson. He's also reassembled his dream team from BLACK — Executive Chef Sebastien Geray and Restaurant Manager Tim Chen — who helped earn the venue a reputation as one of Sydney's best steak restaurants. "To say I am excited about bringing my home community these new dining experiences is an understatement," says Karam ahead of the openings. "My team is dedicated to creating and delivering a standard of dining that knocks people over. I can't wait to get back on the grill and welcome my guests on the floor." Magma and Caffè Vicini are slated to open on Sunday, November 16 at Cabravale Club Resort, 1 Bartley Street, Canley Vale. Primitivo will open in 2026. For more information, head to the precinct's website.
On the dividing line of two of Sydney's most eclectic suburbs, Newtown's Delhi 'O' Delhi on Erskineville Road brings the fine dining and elegance of the grand hotels of Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata to the Inner West. Opened in 2007 by restaurateur Javed Khan, it owes its success to Javed's keen attention to detail and the nuanced regional cuisine elegantly prepared by head chef Kailash. Staying true to its locale, Delhi 'O' Delhi offers up a vegan and vegetarian menu including cottage cheese and potato dumplings in a spicy spinach sauce, and a vegan butter chicken made of tofu with delicately spiced dry fenugreek leaves, cashew nut and coconut cream. There is also a vegetarian sharing platter that features Achari Paneer, Potli Samosa and Gola Kebab. Elsewhere on the menu is an extensive list of poultry dishes including a butter chicken served with cultured Pepe Saya butter and Assamese duck curry with whole spices, black pepper and ash gourd. The more adventurous amongst us might like to try the Beef Chutney – a seriously spicy serve of braised beef with mint, chilli and ginger, or Achamma's camel curry – diced camel served with coconut, coriander and fenugreek – straight from Kailash's grandmother's kitchen. With the elegance of old-world India infused with contemporary techniques and regional delicacies, this is the kind of Indian restaurant you want to spend an entire evening in. Thankfully there is an extensive drinks list including cocktails such as the Bombay Spritz, a mix of gin, sweet vermouth, rose syrup and sparkling wine, as well as a wine list with a broad selection from Tasmania as well as the Yarra and Hunter valleys, by the glass or bottle. Winner of the Restaurant and Catering Awards for Best Indian Restaurant in NSW four years running, it's no surprise that Javed's dream of bringing the timeless charm of India's iconic hotels has not only survived but thrived across 18 years. The impeccable service doesn't hurt either.
Conscious consumerism and shopping sustainably are hot topics at the moment. That's where independent markets come in handy — aside from the joy of uncovering rare, one-of-a-kind (or, at least, one of a small number) finds, they're also great for discovering quality vendors that specialise in ethical practices and products. And when it comes to rolling out the creme de la creme of local producers every season, the Finders Keepers market knows its stuff. For over a decade, the twice-yearly mini-festival has been championing small-scale producers. So, sustainable shoppers and knick-knack connoisseurs, we've got some good news — Finders Keepers is back for another season. The first stop on its autumn/winter circuit is Sydney, running from Friday, May 3 to Sunday, May 5 — just in time for you to snag the perfect Mother's Day gift. It's then popping up in Brisbane between Friday, June 21 and Sunday, June 23, before wrapping up in Melbourne across Friday, July 12–Sunday, July 14. As always, Finders Keepers has pulled together a high-calibre of art, fashion, beauty and design stalls. And, to help you figure out which ethical vendors to make a beeline towards, we've trawled through the huge Finders Keepers directory to find eight brands doing good for the world — and making even better products. [caption id="attachment_718857" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Finders Keepers. Captured by Mark Lobo.[/caption] YALU APOTHECARY Yalu Apothecary will be gracing the markets this year with its simple ethos — nurture with nature. This philosophy perfectly captures its offerings of sustainable, handmade beauty products. Yalu Apothecary promotes holistic wellness with specialty naturopathic herbal tea blends, crystal-infused botanical perfume oils, face masks and bath products. The products are handcrafted by Rhiannon Mapstone, who sources the finest natural and organic botanicals from local gardens in Australia and from around the globe. Skip the damaging chemicals of mass-produced beauty products and opt for a Yalu perfume, made with pure plant essences, organic infusions and supercharged with crystal healing power. Yalu Apothecary will be at the Sydney and Melbourne markets this season. MISTER TIMBUKTU Secretly hoarding two draws dedicated to activewear for all days of the week? Yep, we're guilty too. Make your yoga tights habit a positive one by grabbing a pair from Mister Timbuktu — an apparel store saving plastics from landfill and the ocean and turning them into outdoor and fitness apparel. A simple yet brilliant idea, Mister Timbuktu began as a crowdfunded debut collection before officially launching in June 2018. In addition to being a recycled and high quality material, these plastics use less energy, water and chemicals to produce compared to traditional fabric. The business ensures ethical and sustainable practices all the way from above-minimum wage for its factory workers in Indonesia to home-compostable bags for deliveries. For stylish and sustainable active threads, Mister Timbuktu will be open at all three city's Finders Keepers markets. CORNER BLOCK STUDIO Avoid scraping Blu Tack off the walls of your rental at the end of each lease and display your favourite artworks in a frame from Corner Block Studio. This modest store combines innovation with handcrafted woodwork to bring you simple and stylish adjustable frames for your artwork. Whether you want to display your band poster, record covers or beautifully illustrated coffee table books, Corner Block Studio has a frame for every purpose. With respect to the planet, all products are made from recycled Australian hardwoods that have been reclaimed from decommissioned buildings. Each piece is crafted in Brisbane and features unique characteristics in the timber, so you'll walk away with a one-of-a-kind frame. Corner Block Studio will be popping up at the Brisbane and Melbourne markets. EARTH FIBRE Take a piece of the gorgeous Australian natural environment home with Earth Fibre. Each handcrafted piece tells a story of the colourful landscape. Creator Michelle Ohara uses various mediums, carefully selected from the Glass House Mountains area in the Sunshine Coast, to produce her collection of eclectic designs. She utilises the local flora to make her goods, including seeds, environmental earth fibres, paper fibres, wood and environmental weeds. You'll find baskets woven from garden waste, small books made from seed pods and botanically dyed scarves made using leaves. Michelle leaves it to nature to put an individual stamp on each of her designs — with no trace of the chemicals or materials that you might find in goods made in a factory. This season, you'll find Earth Fibre at the Brisbane Finders Keepers market. POSIE Posie provides an alternative to the mountains of mass-produced candles packed with chemicals. Co-founders Ashleigh Sampson and Casie Brooker started the brand from a shared passion for travel, design and the simple things in life — and each candle blend is reminiscent of the people, places and paths that they've encountered in their journeys. The candles are designed and made using 100 percent soy wax and their individual scents come from natural fragrances and essential oils. Each candle is hand-poured into a recycled container in Posie's Byron Bay studio. By working and sourcing materials locally, Sampson and Brooker ensure that every Posie candle upholds their core principles of fair, cruelty-free and sustainable trade. You can pick up a Posie candle for your home at the Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane markets. [caption id="attachment_718864" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Homelea Lass via Pintrest[/caption] HOMELEA LASS Baby, it's cold outside. Fight the oncoming winter temperature drop with cosy, snuggly crocheted textiles from Homelea Lass. Pick up a thick blankie to snuggle in on the couch or a gorgeous snood and matching beanie for all your outdoor winter adventures. Or, better yet, you can become your own grandma with a DIY crochet kit and keep warm inside while you make your own woollies. As an Australian farmer and maker, owner Lynda Rennick is passionate about supporting the Aussie farming industry — which is why she uses 100 percent Australian-grown and -processed merino wool. Homelea Lass keeps business sustainable with its use of locally sourced and ethical materials and tools, too. You'll be able to snag these cosy crochets at Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane markets. NZURI ORGANICS Avoid incorporating harsh chemicals into your skincare routine by switching to products by Nzuri Organics. Founder Nadine Shuma ensures that each and every handcrafted product is made with certified organic, raw materials. From body butters to hand creams, Nzuri provides organic solutions for everything from your face to your feet. Nadine is Tanzanian-Australian and her brand incorporates beauty routines and ingredients from Tanzania, along with locally sourced organic ingredients of the highest quality. Accredited by Choose Cruelty Free, Nzuri Organics' products are handmade and all containers are either 100 percent recyclable or biodegradable. Nourish your skin by giving Nzuri Organics a visit at the Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane markets. [caption id="attachment_675445" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Finders Keepers. Captured by Samee Lapham.[/caption] ARCADIA SCOTT Reusable travel cups are all the rage nowadays. They're much better for the environment, a lot of cafes offer a discount on your morning cuppa if you use one, and they just look so much better than a plain disposable cup — it's a win, win, win. If you're yet to jump on the bandwagon, or you just want to upgrade to something more aesthetically pleasing, stop by Arcadia Scott's stall. The self-taught potter creates a range of ceramic pieces in her Melbourne studio including bowls, vases and adorable glazed travel cups. Each item is handmade, giving your purchase a unique edge — which is exactly why you came to an independent art fair, right? Arcadia Scott will be popping at the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane markets. Finders Keepers will be at Sydney on Friday, May 3 – Sunday, May 5, Brisbane on Friday, June 21–Sunday, June 23 and Melbourne on Friday, July 12–Sunday, July 14. Entry is $5 and your ticket is valid across the entire weekend. Visit the website here for more information and to find open hours for your city. Top Image: Finders Keepers. Captured by Samee Lapham.
There's no doubting that Death and Other Details loves whodunnits, or that it's made with a murderers' row of them in mind. Playing "spot the nod" is one of this ten-part Disney+ series' games. Sleuthing along with its plot is the other, obviously. So, as an odd couple with an age discrepancy team up to attempt to solve "a classic locked-room mystery" — the show even calls it such — among the preposterously wealthy on holiday, and on a boat at that, where everyone has a motive and a battle over who'll seize control of a family business is also taking place, gleaning what creators and writers Heidi Cole McAdams and Mike Weiss (who also worked together on Stumptown) have been reading and watching isn't a puzzle. Nudges and references are regularly part of the murder-mystery genre anyway; here, they sail into a tale that's also about what we remember and why. Recalling Agatha Christie's oeuvre, its movie adaptations — complete with Kenneth Branagh's recent spate — and especially Death on the Nile is as blatant as knowing that no one onboard Death and Other Details' SS Varuna will be exactly who they appear. Thinking about Only Murders in the Building, Knives Out, Poker Face and The White Lotus is also instantly easy. So is pondering Succession, with narratives about business empires passing down the reins bound to pop up as frequently as detective capers even now that the HBO hit is over. But when other films and shows earn a wink here, Death and Other Details also digs into the purpose behind the minutiae that sticks in our memories. It's a savvy yet risky gambit, getting viewers ruminating on how they spy patterns and filter their perspectives, too, while chancing coming off as derivative. Mostly the series bobs in the first direction; however, even when it sways in the second, it still intrigues its audience to keep watching. That seemingly mismatched pair: Imogene Scott (Violett Beane, God Friended Me) and the Hercule Poirot-esque Rufus Cotesworth (Mandy Patinkin, Homeland), with the second regularly dubbed "the world's greatest detective". Most folks might believe that label, but Imogene does not. The duo shares a history spanning two decades, from when she was a child (Sophia Reid-Gantzert, Popular Theory) mourning the shock killing of her mother that he couldn't solve. Back then, Rufus was on the case at the behest of the wealthy Colliers, who work in textiles, employed Imogene's mum as a personal assistant to patriarch Lawrence (David Marshall Grant, Spoiler Alert) and took the girl in when she had no one else. Now, both Rufus and Imogene are guests on a cruise chartered by them — she's there as basically a member of the family; he's accompanying the Chuns, with whom the Colliers are in the middle of a billion-dollar business deal. The entire decadent jaunt is in aid of getting crucial signatures, securing the Colliers' future and anointing Lawrence's daughter Anna (Lauren Patten, a Tony-winner for Jagged Little Pill) as the next CEO — she hopes. Death and Other Details doesn't lack in people taking to the seas, though, not only including the aforementioned characters. Chun matriarch Celia (Lisa Lu, American Born Chinese) and her granddaughter Eleanor (Karoline, Dead Ringers), Lawrence's dutiful spouse Katherine (Jayne Atkinson, Baby Ruby) and coked-up son Tripp (Jack Cutmore-Scott, Oppenheimer), Anna's paranoid former-journalist wife Leila (Pardis Saremi, Hell of a Summer) and the Colliers' slimy long-serving manager Llewellyn Mathers (Jere Burns, NCIS: Los Angeles) are all onboard. So is ship owner Sunil Ranja (Rahul Kohli, The Fall of the House of Usher). The unruly Keith Trubitsky (Michael Gladis, The Company You Keep) is also among the passengers, until he's found dead via a harpoon in his cabin. Everyone is eventually a suspect, from a pool that features Washington Governor Alexandra Hochenberg (Tamberla Perry, They Cloned Tyrone), the politically influential Father Toby (Danny Johnson, The Equalizer) and his social-media star son 'That' Derek (debutant Sincere Wilbert), Jules (Hugo Diego Garcia, Touchées) from the vessel's security outfit, and hospitality head Teddy Goh (Angela Zhou, Promising Young Woman) and her sister Winnie (Annie Q Riegel, Kung Fu) as well. But fingers initially point in Imogene's direction, after she's caught on camera in the victim's room not long before he met his end. Rufus, who she's furious to see but has been tasked with looking into the matter until Interpol arrives, can assist — and wants her help cracking the mystery in turn. No one needs to be badged "the world's greatest detective" to pick that their current situation and Imogene's mother's murder have connections. "Pay attention: details matter," advises Rufus early, with Death and Other Details endeavouring to fill its frames with tidbits that prove that notion. And there are tidbits; just like the lengthy list of folks associated with the show's two cases, there's no shortage of backstories, links, twists, detours, motives, secrets, lies, affairs, clues and other finer points. Although not everything convincingly earns its place, the non-stop flow gives Imogene and Rufus plenty to dive into, in the present, common past and much in-between. And while the extravagant ocean liner that the bulk of the current-day timeline is set upon doesn't seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere, the series' plot is pacy and bouncy, never letting a moment drag. Death and Other Details' jumps backwards are always tied to memories and, in another choice that could've sunk or swum — thankfully, it's the latter — often insert Imogene into the recollections. Accordingly, the act of scouring one's brain and scrutinising someone's story for aspects that've might've been overlooked receives a visual representation. The underlying idea isn't just a passing theme, either. That almost everything is subjective isn't a unique revelation, but examining the distortions of our minds, what we choose to see and to block, and what recurs again and again, is particularly potent in unpacking grief and trauma. Such is Imogene's tale, which Death and Other Details never forgets even as it luxuriates on an opulent ship, splashes around sunnily and glossily shot sights, and also steams into the eat-the-rich realm. As the investigators sifting through a motley crew of players with their own idiosyncrasies, Patinkin and Beane unsurprisingly leave the biggest imprint among the cast. Ever-reliably great, he's in classic gumshoe and Columbo-type mode, while she's shrewd and determined. The contrast — as familiar as it is — works a charm. Indeed, as the series coasts entertainingly along, wanting more of Rufus and Imogene sleuthing together, and more of them stepping beyond their present boat-bound scenario, is the main takeaway. For now, their maiden Death and Other Details' voyage boasts much to keep audiences wanting to continue breezing along with them. Check out the trailer for Death and Other Details below: Death and Other Details streams via Disney+ from Tuesday, January 16. Images: Hulu.
Before Snow Machine became everyone's excuse to hit up Queenstown for a stint of music and skiing, the festival launched its mix of tunes in wintry climes in Japan. That was back in 2020 and it hasn't been back there since — until 2024 rolls around. Although Snow Machine Queenstown is still to come for 2023, Snow Machine Japan has locked in its return for Monday, February 26–Saturday, March 2 in Hakuba. On the just-dropped bill: everyone from Diplo and Marc Rebillet to Bob Moses and Todd Terje, plus Japanese talents Risa Taniguchi, Satoshi Tomiie and Shinichi Osawa. Snow Machine Japan might return when summer will be shifting into autumn Down Under, but it's one helluva excuse for a frosty holiday during the northern hemisphere's winter — and Japan's snow season. No matter where it's taking place, this is the hottest festival for the colder months, packed with a snow-filled week of music and adventure. Attendees will be treated to action-packed days on the slopes, après ski events, and a hefty roster of international acts against an idyllic backdrop. And, because this is Japan, onsen trips, sake aplenty and yakitori bites are also on offer. Other than the wintry setting, one of the things that sets Snow Machine apart from other music fests is being able to book your entire getaway with your ticket. Packages span five or seven nights of accommodation, and include a festival ticket across the entire event, plus a four-day lift pass for Goryu & Hakuba 47, Tsugaike, Iwatake and Happo One. A word of warning: unsurprisingly, the packages are popular. Although the Snow Machine Japan 2024 lineup has only just been announced, packages are already 85-percent sold out. If you're keen to take care of your own place to slumber and just nab a festival ticket, that's an option as well. Lift passes, rentals, lessons and activities can be then booked on top at additional cost, and you can opt for VIP access including heating and seating while you party if you're feeling particularly cashed up. SNOW MACHINE JAPAN 2024 LINEUP: Bob Moses (club set) Busy P Claptone Denis Sulta Diplo Ewan McVica George Fitzgerald (DJ set) GG Magree Marc Rebillet Nina Kraviz Risa Taniguchi Satoshi Tomiie Shinichi Osawa Todd Terje (DJ set) Reuben Styles and Danny Clayton present First Base Snow Machine Japan 2024 will be held from Monday, February 26–Saturday, March 2 in Hakuba. Presale tickets go on sale from 12pm AEST on Thursday, August 3, with general tickets available from 12pm AEST on Friday, August 4. For more information, visit the festival's website. Images: Pat Stevenson. Feeling inspired to book a getaway? You can now book your next dream holiday through Concrete Playground Trips with deals on flights, stays and experiences at destinations all around the world.
When Cake Wines Cellar Door closed down in June 2019, it left a sizeable hole in Redfern's Eveleigh Street Creative Precinct. Thankfully, that gap has now been filled by another of the site's tenants, with Henry Lee's opening a new bar and restaurant. While the existing Henry Lee's cafe is still open for brunch and bites daily until 3pm, its sibling venue now serves up share plates and cocktails from 6pm from Thursday–Sunday. Thanks to a soft opening last week, it's already open and trading, with executive chef Antonio Saco (ex-Merivale) overseeing the kitchen. If you're keen on stopping by for a tipple, the three-page drinks list includes 26 vinos (complete with a couple of Cake Wines' tipples), a range of craft beer and ciders, a small selection of spirits and a ten-strong cocktail offering. It's the latter that's a highlight, especially the margarita with a black salt rim and the rhubarb-infused vodka and tonic. For folks having a few beverages with a friend, there's also an absinthe fountain. Food-wise, Saco's menu features both a cheese-heavy grazing board and a charcuterie board, as well as fresh Coffin Bay oysters served with mirin, lemongrass and sake salsa. Or you can get stuck into garlic labneh with rosemary and olive crumb, raw tuna tostadas with avocado mousse, and three-mushroom ravioli with shaved truffles. As for the small dessert range, it includes a whiskey, hazelnut and macadamia crumble with orange sponge and caramel, plus a combination of lime yoghurt mousse, sweet vegetable coulis, raspberry sponge, meringue and mascarpone ice cream. Showcasing local and passionate producers continues to be one of Henry Lee's aims, so while you're tucking into all of the above, you'll be enjoying bread from Brickfields Bakery, brews from The Grifter Brewing Co and Moo Brew, and gin and vodka from Hartshorn. You'll also be soaking up the bar and restaurant's rustic atmosphere, with Atelier Andy Carson charged with making the most of the building's existing character. Think plenty of light, an undone feel, and the use of construction and industry materials. The venue also celebrates a rotating lineup of artists-in-residence, with Margie Doyle doing the honours first up and creating bespoke pieces for the site's launch. Down the track, Henry Lee's Bar & Dining will also join forces with its courtyard counterpart for boozy brunches, with other events also planned once the weather warms up. And if you fancy taking a few drinks home with you after dinner, the venue also has a hotel license, which means that all of its wines and beers are available to takeaway.
A crusty white roll, lashings of smooth pâté, and a generous pile of fresh ingredients, pickled toppings and herbs — it's easy to see why Vietnam's gift to the sandwich world is well-appreciated here in Sydney. The humble banh mi is a lunchtime favourite that's both affordable enough and healthy enough to feel like you could scoff one — or two — every day of the week. All across the city, Vietnamese bakeries and other eateries are serving up top-notch iterations of the classic sandwich, ranging from the tried-and-true to more contemporary reworkings. Everyone has their own favourite banh mi spot in Sydney and, with so many great options tucked around the entire city, its hard to pin down the best of the best — so we've put together a list of some of our favourites to get you started. BANH MI BAY NGO, BANKSTOWN Family-owned and operated, Bay Ngo has been serving up packed-full rolls of tender pork and crisp salad to the residents of Bankstown for over thirty years. Here, the traditional banh mi thit reigns supreme, layering multiple types of pork on top of a thick spread of pate for just $6. If you're not one for red meat, you're in luck, as the fried egg banh mi is a hit with local vegetarians and a perfect breakfast sandwich if you're swinging by before work. While it may be missing the layers of pork, the fried egg sandwich still comes overflowing with all the salads, coriander and chilli needed for a truly great banh mi. Or, you can add the fried egg to a pork roll for the best of both worlds for $7.50. BOOTH STREET BAKERY, ANNANDALE The lemongrass pork banh mi at Booth Street Bakery is one of the juiciest, most satisfying meals a sandwich lover can have for under a tenner. The unassuming Vietnamese bakery does a selection of cakes, flaky throw-back desserts (think Neenish tarts and day-glow green meringue frogs) and very decent pies, but the banh mi reigns supreme here. You can go for the classic pork sausage, lemongrass pork or chicken, or really push the boat out and do roast pork with a slab of crackling. Like all of Sydney's best banh mi shops, Booth Street Bakery is a no-frills affair. But, it has spurned decor and detail for a focus on flavour. And when it comes to a meat-stuffed baguette, that's all you can really ask for. [caption id="attachment_800473" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Darlingharbour.com[/caption] MARRICKVILLE PORK ROLL, MARRICKVILLE A true Sydney stalwart, Marrickville Pork Roll has long been considered one of Sydney's best banh mi shops. It's well worth the wait in that inevitable queue, which often wraps around the block outside this hole-in-the-wall spot. Open daily from 7:30am, the shop bakes its baguettes fresh every morning. That fluffy-yet-crunchy baguette is smeared with pâté and mayo, then loaded with your choice of meat, fresh herbs, pickled veg, salad and chilli. While the traditional pork is the go-to, we rate the barbecue pork and crackling pork belly. Meatball, chicken, salad and veg varieties are also up for grabs — and all for just a few bucks ($6–8). For those closer to the CBD, Marrickville Pork Roll also has locations in Darling Square's Steam Mill Lane and along Pitt Street. TOP RYDE BAKER'S HOUSE, RYDE Make your way to Top Ryde City Shopping Centre and you'll find some of the best pork you can find stuffed into a soft white baguette in this city. Top Ryde Baker's House is known for its packed its banh mi full to the point of overflowing with an abundance of juicy pork and crispy pork crackling. Here, the banh mi is really taken to the next level, with the fresh mix of salad smothered by a mountain of meat. Despite the heaped serving sizes, the price of this Sydney banh mi remains low. The only catch? You may have to line up for a while, as the bakery is known to get busy around lunchtime. [caption id="attachment_825700" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Jemsweb[/caption] HONG HA, MASCOT Hong Ha has managed to carve out a spot as one of Sydney's best banh mi joints, all thanks to the fresh and affordable rolls it's been serving up for over three decades. Situated on Botany Road in Mascot — so with multiple other Vietnamese bakeries close by — the pork roll specialist remains a go-to for locals and those travelling through the area. While a line snaking around the block isn't uncommon here, the wait is worth it for the barbecue pork variety which piles three types of pork into a crispy roll filled with plenty of fresh salad. The chicken and meatball rolls are both fan-favourites here as well but, whichever filling you end up going with, you're guaranteed a good time. VINATA'S HOT BREAD, CABRAMATTA Located in Cabramatta Plaza, Vinata's Hot Bread is one of the most beloved banh mi spots in southwest Sydney. Here, you'll pay just $5 for your classic pork variety, which comes packed into fresh-baked white bread rolls, smothered in pork pâté, and covered in salad, coriander and chill. If you feel like venturing from the tried-and-tested path, you can also opt for meatball, chicken or salad rolls — all for under $7. Plus, there's a range of bakery classics on hand such as meat pies, sausage rolls, and cheese and bacon rolls. Despite the hot competition in Cabramatta for the best banh mi, Vinata's has cemented itself as one of the area's standouts. ALEX 'N' ROLLS, MARRICKVILLE Challenging Marrickville Pork Roll for best banh mi in the inner west is Alex 'N' Rolls. This is an unassuming hole-in-the-wall sandwich spot on Illawarra Road — it operates from inside an inner west townhouse — but the rolls here pack a punch. You can choose between barbecue, caramelised or traditional slow-cooked pulled pork, each packed into a bun with chicken pâté, mayonnaise, picked carrot, radish and a heaping of salad. The rolls have a good amount of crunch, and the pork is packed with flavour. If you're feeling more like chicken, Alex 'N' Rolls has you covered as well. Plus, there are a heap of vegetarian banh mi on offer if you're tired of the tried-and-true salad roll. BOON TABLE, SYDNEY Hidden in a food court in the lower floor of The Galleries, next-level takeaway outpost Boon Table opened in 2019. The majority of its menu is made up of tasty and health-conscious bowls — think: miso salmon, kale and broccoli, plus karaage chicken, red cabbage and spicy mayo. The real big hitters on the menu, however, are the 'Boon Mi', Boon Table's take on the classic Vietnamese roll. While they're slightly pricier than your local pork roll joint at between $10.90–12.90, these banh mi are packed into a soft and sweet brown roll, providing a unique experience. There are four options here, including the classic pork, plus crispy pork belly, grilled chicken and tofu. And, they all come equipped with all the fresh salads and pickled vegetables you'd expect as well as mayo, pâté and seasoning sauce. KING'S HOT BREAD, HURSTVILLE Open 6am–6pm daily, King's Hot Bread has been a Hurstville mainstay since 1995. The Forrest Road spot specialises in banh mi, with a huge range of options to be found here. If you're in the mood for pork, you can choose between classic pork, pork crackling, roasted pork or sausage. Chicken, seafood and vegetarian rolls are all on offer too, with some of the more out-there options including stay prawn, chicken and dim sim, and egg salad rolls. All the banh mi sit between $7 and $10.50, price-wise, with crunchy chicken wings and spring rolls available if a heaped baguette isn't enough to satisfy your hunger. Swing by to pick up some lunch, or you can also order via UberEats and Menulog. SUNNY VI HUONG HOT BREAD, GLADESVILLE The unassuming Sunny Hot Bread sits next to a Persian rug store on Victoria Road, providing the perfect pit stop if you're driving between the west and inner city. It's easy to miss on the busy main road, but nab a park nearby and it'll be worth your while. The Gladesville bakery doesn't deviate too far from your classic selection of rolls, with the classic pork, chicken and salad rolls all on offer for between $4.50 and $7. The surprise highlight of the menu is the chicken schnitzel roll, which comes heaped with salad, crispy pieces of golden brown schnitzel and just the right amount of chilli. The typical range of bread, cakes and pastries are all on offer alongside the banh mi selection as well. GREAT AUNTY THREE, ENMORE When Michael Le was a child, his grandmother would often serve caramelised pork belly with rice on the family dinner table. Le now does a revised version of this dish in the form of a Vietnamese pork roll in his restaurant, Great Aunty Three. The caramelised pork roll captures the essence of what Le and his wife Mai are trying to achieve: fresh, authentic, quality Vietnamese street food. The pork, slow-cooked in coconut juice for up to five hours, is tender and juicy, combined with fresh vegetables in a crusty Vietnamese roll. The rolls are a bit different here, with apple pieces and big chucks of crunchy salty pork crackling stuffed inside. You can also venture into more adventurous territory with roast pork and duck rolls. Best of all, you don't even have to get up from your couch to order from Great Aunty Three, with the Enmore Road eatery available on UberEats and Menulog — although the takeaway menu does vary.
When Lorde announced that she'd be bringing her Ultrasound world tour to Australia in 2026, Sydneysiders and Melburnians embraced the green light to buy presale tickets. In fact, the demand for the Aotearoan star's Qudos Bank Arena and Rod Laver Arena gigs has been so huge that new shows in both cities have already been announced — before general tickets to the originally locked-in concerts even go on sale. In February 2026, the 'Royals', 'Solar Power' and 'What Was That' singer-songwriter will hit the stage across both Australia and New Zealand, making dates with arenas at every stop across a six-city run. Sydney and Melbourne are now hosting not one gig apiece, but two. Ella Yelich-O'Connor is playing the Harbour City on Wednesday, February 18 and again on Thursday, February 19, then the Victorian capital on Saturday, February 21 as well as Sunday, February 22. These are the final Sydney and Melbourne dates that'll be added to the tour. [caption id="attachment_1012905" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Joseph Okpako/WireImage[/caption] Lorde last took her Solar Power tour to Australia in 2023. Her new series of concerts begins in September 2025 in the US — and also includes gigs in Canada, the UK and across Europe before this year is out. When the initial Australian and NZ dates were revealed, they came fresh from Yelich-O'Connor's surprise 2025 Glastonbury set, as well as her fourth album Virgin releasing at the end of June. The latter debuted at number one in Australia and New Zealand alike. This is Lorde's biggest tour of her career in general, too, with nights at the likes of Madison Square Garden in New York City and O2 Arena in London already sold out. [caption id="attachment_1012901" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Thistle Brown[/caption] Featuring the aforementioned 'What Was That' — her first original new track in four years — alongside 'Man of the Year', 'Hammer', 'Favourite Daughter' and 'Shapeshifter', Virgin also hit number one in the UK and number two on the Billboard 200 chart in the US. There might be a three-year gap between Lorde's last Down Under shows and her upcoming Ultrasound tour concerts; however, in addition to writing and recording Virgin, she's been busy making a surprise Sydney club appearance back in May 2025 at a Lorde-themed night. Since 2013, when her debut record Pure Heroine arrived, Yelich-O'Connor has also released 2017's Melodrama and 2021's Solar Power, won two Grammys, picked up a Golden Globe nomination for 'Yellow Flicker Beat' from the soundtrack for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 and notched up over 18 billion streams worldwide. [caption id="attachment_1012904" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Joseph Okpako/WireImage[/caption] Lorde Ultrasound World Tour 2026 Australian Dates Monday, February 16 — Brisbane Entertainment Centre, Brisbane Wednesday, February 18–Thursday, February 19 — Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney Saturday, February 21–Sunday, February 22 — Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne Wednesday, February 25 — Perth Arena, Perth Lorde is touring Australia and New Zealand in February 2026, with ticket presales for the new shows from 2pm local time on Thursday, July 17, 2025 and general sales for all shows from 2pm on Friday, July 18, 2025 — head to the tour website for more details. Top image: Thistle Brown.
On a Saturday morning, nabbing a table at Contessa Balmain proves an almighty challenge. The Sydney cafe has been an institution on Darling Street since 1992 — making it one of the suburb's oldest residents. And its popularity comes with good reason. The menu fuses American classics with traditional Italian flavours. Expect freshly baked bread alongside Contessa's take on Sydney's brunch staples. For those looking to indulge after a big Friday night, the 'ultimate' hickory-smoked bacon and egg roll will do the trick. As the day rolls on, the house-made pasta, burgers, and salads are sure to keep you fuelled and firing. From the dedicated omelette section of the menu, order a classic smoked salmon omelette with shallots, caramelised onion, Tasmanian salmon and fresh dill. For something a little larger, either opt for a big tuna salad, a burger from the cafe's quartet of a protein options, or one of the particularly insane meatball melts which only the brave should attempt to conquer. There is also a really decent range of pastas, toasties and cocktails on offer. Contessa's got the lot. And it never fails to do it all well. Images: Arvin Prem Kumar Appears in: Where to Find the Best Breakfast in Sydney
Melbourne's cultural tapestry weaves some of its most dynamic colours in South Melbourne where the pulse of the city's south beats with a rhythm that promises something truly stunning for every hour. About 12,000 people call South Melbourne home and lucky them, they get to experience the joys of an Albert Park lake stroll and a South Melbourne dim sim every day. But as for the rest of us, we'll have to settle for just visiting. But what if you only had one day? How would you make the most of your time? Well, let's find out. MORNING If the early bird gets the worm and the second mouse gets the cheese, the South Melbourne visitor needn't worry about any of that, because chances are if you're reading this, you're a human. However, no matter your species, it is recommended to rise just before the sun so you can be at Albert Park Lake as that giant fireball in the sky says good morning to the planet. Yes, waking that early sucks, but if you can do it, the reward will be immense. The lake and its surrounds are stunning at all times of day but with a dynamic pastel backdrop of orange sky and brightening light it is particularly special. Next, we need coffee. A morning is only as good as the coffee that accompanies it — cue The Kettle Black, where baristas craft seriously decent coffee. Stick around for a while and take in the vibe, the airy sun-drenched space is worth lingering over. [caption id="attachment_925199" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Oven-fresh croissants at Chez Dre[/caption] Next, head to the Austro Bakery and nab yourself a giant pretzel, loaf of sourdough or anything else your heart desires. You really can't go wrong here as the bakery effortlessly blends tradition of centuries-old European baking inspiration with a modern twist. Speaking of baked goods, you might also want to swing by Chez Dre, a French-inspired cafe serving cakes and brunch that will transport you to Paris with every flaky bite of its chocolate croissants. Finally, round off the morning with a visit to See Yup Temple, built originally in 1856 then rebuilt and expanded a decade later. The oldest Chinese temple in Australia is a real historical treat right here in Melbourne and the perfect place to take a quiet moment before things start ramping up for the rest of the day. AFTERNOON By afternoon, South Melbourne Market beckons with the siren call of a South Melbourne dim sim — it would be a crime and an affront to all things good and holy not to. This is a sacred place for dim sim lovers the world over, a place of deep historical and spiritual significance. To taste the South Melbourne dim sim is to experience a little piece of delicious Australian history. So go on, grab one, or grab a few, and let's get going. Next up? Get in loser, we're going shopping. Check out Clarendon, Coventry, Cecil and Park streets for a little bit of retail therapy at some of Melbourne's coolest boutiques. If you're into good design, cute homewares and anything even remotely fashion-related, this is your time to shine as you hunt for a hidden gem in South Melbourne's leafy shopping streets. To keep the artisanal vibe going, pop into the Australian Tapestry Workshop on Park Street. It's been spinning some of Australia's most stunning tapestries since 1976 and is the only one of its kind in Australia, as well as among just a handful around the world. Guests can check out its two galleries, which showcase exhibitions of tapestries and modern art on a rotating basis. It also runs tapestry classes and workshops regularly. And finally, for a laidback interlude, pop into Westside Ale Works — a cosy laneway brewpub hidden on Alfred Street just begging you to stay for a while and enjoy a nice afternoon pint (or several). EVENING As the sun dips and evening colours the sky, a stroll along Port Melbourne Beach offers the perfect canvas for a sunset walk — bonus points if you're with that special someone, this is seriously romantic. And if you don't have that special someone, you'll find someone one day, or maybe you won't! Either way, a sunset stroll on the beach is lovely. Next, follow the scent of a woodfired grill to Half Acre, a once dilapidated mill that's been transformed into a fine spot to enjoy a hearty feast of great, simple food with Middle Eastern and Euro influences amid an instantly warm atmosphere that feels like elevated dining at a friend's place. Afterwards, head to Bellota Wine Bar and enjoy a glass of red, or white, or orange — given it is home to literally thousands of wine bottles. Whether you're sitting at the bar, the tables, or in the courtyard, the vibe is sure to be immaculate. LATE-NIGHT FUN The night is still young; it's only natural we go bar hopping. Head to gorgeous Hatted bistro James for a European wine bar feeling with hints of Japanese inspiration on its fantastic degustation menu. Or for something more casual venture up to The Albion Rooftop to enjoy the spectacular cityscape vista, or pop by The Montague in the leafy backstreets for a nice cocktail in the inviting outdoor seating. Obviously, we suggest all three, as well as any more you might encounter on your journey. South Melbourne is your oyster, and all its bars lead to a good time. And now for the best part of the night. Head to Dessertopia for some of the most visually pleasing desserts you'll ever see. Seriously, they look so good you'll almost feel bad eating them (almost). Don't take our word for it, check out its Insta. Yes, that's right, glow-in-the-dark cupcakes. What a time to be alive. Enjoy and bask in the sweet glow, you had the ultimate day (and night) in South Melbourne. Now go get some rest, you must be exhausted. Looking to make the most of your next city break? Explore more of your city this summer with the City of Port Phillip.
Summer nights mean warm air, good vibes and great company shared longer and later. One iconic summer experience is food markets, treasured events for communities around Sydney, and some experts in that field are launching a new series of markets this summer in Canterbury Park. Taking place at Kia Friday Racing in Canterbury Park, the Canterbury Summer Night Markets are the latest project of Cambridge Markets — organisers of similar events, day and night, year-round across Sydney. Now, the team is coming to Canterbury for this evening offering alongside events at the park. The markets are kicking off on Friday, November 17, and will run sporadically at Canterbury Park until Friday, February 23. Coinciding with the summer racing calendar, attendees will be able to take advantage of both events simultaneously. Expect free activities for the kiddos, like face painting, a petting zoo and a jumping castle. Plus, for all ages — there'll be local (and delicious) hot food, decadent desserts and cool drinks to beat the summer heat. The Canterbury Summer Night Markets will run alongside Kia Friday Night Racing throughout summer. For more information, visit the Cambridge Markets website.
It's hard to say when it started, but the bubble tea craze in Sydney has well and truly taken over. What originated as a Taiwanese sweet treat has grown into a global phenomenon, and Sydneysiders are all too happy to embrace the trend. Our deep love of tapioca balls in milky or fruity teas has taken on a force all of its own. The ever-growing list of boba shops in our city is astounding. To help you find the best of the best, we've put together our list of the best bubble tea stores in Sydney. From mega chains and traditional Taiwanese operators to homegrown Sydney talent and all the cheese foam you could ask for, this list has you covered.
Put a little spice in your life with our list of the 12 best Central and South American restaurants in the city. This is the cream of the crop as far as Latin food goes; you won't find a single sloppy taco in the midst. All that's missing is that bright, equatorial sun and a cool tequila cocktail in your hand. 1. Porteño Where: 358 Cleveland Street, Surry Hills This Argentinean barbeque has put Cleveland Street on the map, Lebanese restaurants aside. Quirky and retro, stepping inside Porteno is like entering a themed party. The staff members have donned their rockabilly garb. The fit out is impeccable. The crowd is young, hip and hungry. The focus, however, is still on the food and drinks, which surely won't disappoint. Find out more 2. Morena Where: 5/425 Bourke Street, Surry Hills Sitting at the fancier end of the spectrum, Morena offers Latin American fine dining with a strong lean towards Peruvian. Perhaps the nicest part about this restaurant is that fancy doesn't come at the price of fun. The dishes are playful, particularly in their presentation, and plates are generally served up with a cheeky grin. While South American food doesn't quite feel unfamiliar, this menu is still a bit of a challenge for first-time diners. It's the perfect opportunity to go all-out and try the 'Taste of Peru' degustation menu. Find out more 3. Boteco Where: 421 Cleveland Street, Surry Hills A little out of place amongst Bollywood posters, the dimly lit bar de ‘petiscos’ (the Brazilian tapas equivalent) sits on the Indian stretch of Cleveland Street. The specials of the day are scrawled in colours on the blackboard walls whilst cheer-inducing Brazilian beats supply the soundtrack. You may be a little skeptical of cuisine from a country best known for its controversial hair-removal methods, but not to worry. Try the 'Lula Frita' or 'Brazilian Fry' and banish all of your doubts. Find out more 4. Jah Bar Where: Shop 7, 9-15 Central Avenue, Manly Take a typical tapas bar in Barcelona then polish slightly, adding cut crystal glasses and a pinch of Almodóvar references. Add one chef with a talent for experimentation, a selection of well-sourced, top notch ingredients and a crowd willing to stay all night, then mix well. Serve up atop a plate in the shape of a leaf, and you have Jah Bar: one of the best of Manly's new breed. Find out more 5. Barrio Chino Where: 28-30 Bayswater Road, Kings Cross As it turns out, there’s only one thing better than a pitcher of margarita – and that’s a margarita with cucumber, agave and jalapeno chilli salt. The people responsible for these dangerously good concoctions (and for your 3-day hangover) are the owners of Barrio Chino, the newest thing in Mexican to hit the Cross. And don't expect any run-of-the-mill Mexi fare here, either. Find out more 6. La Paula Where: 1/9 Barbara Street, Fairfield Most of us are familiar with the wonderful empanada and the delightful churro (never mind heath food stores' obsession with quinoa), but this little Chilean bakery in Fairfield has much much more to offer. La Paula is full of plastic chairs and tables, white tiles, and Chilean pride everywhere. We're talking coloured streamers that stay up all year, flags, plastic streamers of flags, and Chilean television buzzing away at the end of the room. Soak it all up and munch on one of their to-die-for empanadas. Find out more 7. Bodega Where: 216 Commonwealth Street, Surry Hills If you’re after some soggy patatas bravas and a sticky glass of sangria then Bodega may disappoint. In an area of Surry Hills once flocked with wholesale garment stores you’ll find quality Spanish food with style to burn. A series of small plates give you the best chance to pick your way through. You’ll kick yourself later if you don’t introduce yourself to the chorizo with soffrito or the sassy salad of silver beet, chickpea and fried cauliflower. Find out more 8. The Carrington Where: 538 Bourke Street, Surry Hills Tapas is only one small part of what the newly renovated Carrington has to offer. Instead, Pintxos and Xampanyerias are opening up a whole new world to patrons. And what exactly is a Pintxos, you ask? Pintxos are associated with the seasides of San Sebastian in northern Spain, the Basque equivalent of tapas which is typically served in bars. Stop in to sample from the vego and pescaterian friendly menu; it is definitely worth a visit. Find out more 9. Miss Marley's Where: 31 Belgrave Street, Manly Retro furniture sits scattered outside the doors of a discreet shopfront on Manly's Belgrave Street. Step inside, and you'll find yourself surrounded by silver patterned wallpaper, amber lampshades and a cosy atmosphere. At the far end of the room sits the bar, with a glowing wall of tequila bottles set behind it. Welcome to Miss Marley's. The cocktail options are dizzying, the Central and South American food is worth fighting for, and the tequila list would satisfy even the fussiest aficionado. Find out more 10. El Capo Where: 52 Waterloo Street, Surry Hills This ain't nice food. Taking the 'dude food' craze that one extra step, El Capo is delicious - but real nasty. In the best way possible, of course. Enjoy fare from the kitchen of ex-guerilla chef Omar Andrade, now ganging up with Joey Astorga, amidst the irreverent decor of El Capo. Tables are built up on what looks like stacks of American bank notes. The walls are adorned with graffiti from Numskull and Roach: guns, knives and a bikini clad woman with the head of a chicken. Find out more 11. Cantinero Where: 18 Sydney Road, Manly Something about Cantinero feels a little bit... illegal. It could be the fact that this is a coffee house by day, occupied by this underground crowd only in the late hours. Or it might be the makeshift film projector, which shows Mexican gangsters flickering across the back wall. Either way, we like it. The bunker atmosphere and a relaxed courtyard combine into something that feels like an Alice in Wonderland-style rabbit hole in the Manly landscape. Don't miss this authentically delicious Mexican food. Find out more 12. El Loco Where: 64 Foveaux Street, Surry Hills El Loco is a temporary solution to the reinvention of this venue, a prequel to a fully blown Mexican restaurant. But we think the wild mishmash of this whirlwind transition is the best part about it. While there's a few options on the menu, this place is all about the soft tacos (all $5). Don't expect an entirely traditional offering, however. While this place is conceptually Mexican, the food's strength is its subtle Asian twist. Find out more
Lately Tasmania has been at the top of our list of destinations where food, wine, spirits and scenery are at the heart of the holiday. It is, after all, home to many of Australia's finest producers and makers. In fact, we've been so inspired that we've curated a special travel package to Hobart that's dedicated to culinary indulgence — and you can snap it up now at Concrete Playground Trips. Alternatively, you can just win your way there. All you need to do is enter below right now. We're giving away this fantastic holiday for two in beautiful south Tassie and its many wineries, distilleries and farms (flights excluded). The itinerary includes a tasting experience at Ewenique Tasting House, a signature wine, cider, beer and whiskey tour of the Huon and Coal River Valleys, and a full-day tour sampling your way around Bruny Island, known for producing world-class seafood, cheese, honey and spectacular views. You'll also score four nights' accommodation at the impressive Vibe Hotel Hobart, as well as all-inclusive car rental to make getting around a breeze. Want to win a holiday in Tasmania for you and your best mate, partner or parent? Enter below. [competition]873504[/competition]
A new series of advertisements by Education First, a language-school network based in over fifty countries, makes the case for learning another language in a wonderfully unique light. Not a single word is spoken in the ads, nor do they pitch the school. Instead, you follow the adventures of four students touching down in Paris, Barcelona, London and Beijing respectively. Without speech, they manage to express perfectly how learning a new language helps you experience it. Specially-designed typography accompanies the film, accompanied by phonetic pronunciation underneath, and while there is no translation, they work perfectly. Niklas Johansson's cinematography envelops you in the adventures of the protagonists as they wander through the cities, while Albin Holmqvist's deftly designed original typography and typefaces beautifully reflect the languages of Paris, Barcelona, Beijing and London, and tell you more about the words than dull verb charts ever could. The films don't belabour the process of learning a language, but the benefits of being able to lose yourself in a different culture - the things you discover, the different things to see and do, and the attractive strangers that may or may not come your way. If these films don't make you want to jump on a plane straight away, I don't know what will. https://youtube.com/watch?v=1_QO8LoGNpc https://youtube.com/watch?v=p9isboDgxMM https://youtube.com/watch?v=Nr3gdVkkWzc https://youtube.com/watch?v=QLluxHOOXSw [Via ModCloth]
When National Tim Tam Day hit earlier this year, biscuit brand Arnott's gave Australians something we didn't know we wanted: the opportunity to smell like Tim Tams all day long. That chocolate biscuit-scented perfume was a limited-time-only affair, however, but there's now an option for your home, too — or for your mum's, because this a Mother's Day special. To mark 2022's celebration of mums, Arnott's doesn't simply want you to simply give your mother Tim Tams — although it clearly does still want you to do exactly that. To really get everyone's tastebuds in a tizzy, the biscuit brand has also just launched gift packs filled with Tim Tam-smelling candles and diffusers. Try getting a whiff of that and not having instant bikkie cravings. Yes, if Victoria Bitter can make a fragrance inspired by beer, The Louvre can drop perfumes that take their cues from its famous artworks and Messina can release gelato-scented candles, then making the air around you smell like Tim Tams really isn't that outlandish at all. It's the aroma that'll make you hungry all day, and features not only cocoa notes, but also caramel, tonka bean and a hint of sandalwood as well. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Tim Tam (@timtam) The Melbourne-made, cruelty-free and vegan packs cost $100 a pop and are only on sale until Thursday, April 28, and include a 200-millilitre Tim Tam-scented reed diffuser and a 300-gram Tim Tam-scented candle, as well as packs of original and salted caramel brownie Tim Tams. So, if you're buying this as a gift, that means you won't need to take a dessert along to Mother's Day lunch. And if you're purchasing it for yourself instead, well, you're only human. Stocks are limited, though — but delivery is free Australia-wide. The Tim Tam Mother's Day gift boxes are available to purchase until Thursday, April 28.
When it makes its debut this June, Sydney's huge new arts and food festival will help kickstart winter in a big way. Live music paired with stargazing, country tunes in Newtown and moonlit kayaking from Darling Harbour are just some of the highlights among the just-revealed Sydney Solstice program, with the previously announced event slotting into Vivid's usual early-winter berth between Tuesday, June 8–Sunday, June 20. Aiming to reinvigorate the city's hospitality, music, arts and culture sectors after a tough 12 months, the new event will take place across four city precincts. Spaces across the CBD, Darling Harbour, Newtown and Oxford Street will host more than 200 events — in restaurants, bars, galleries, museums, music venues and outdoor areas. In the CBD, highlights include music, dance and theatre events in the YCK Laneways precinct; dancing and late-night dim sum at Mr Wong; International Pride Month events at Metro Theatre; and art installations and dance pop-ups in Chinatown. There'll also be after-dark parties at Sea Life Aquarium, where more than just the aquatic creatures will glow; a world-premiere work by celebrated composer and producer William Barton, which will soundtrack an evening of stargazing at Sydney Observatory; and Queen's Feast, Heaps Gay's multi-sensory dining and art experience at Sydney Town Hall. The latter will feature an all-female chef lineup, including Masterchef alum Sarah Tiong, pastry maven Anna Polyviou, Southside Charmers' Georgia Woodyard and Claire Van Vuuren of Newtown fave Bloodwood. The Sydney Opera House forecourt will become a hub of live music, talks and poetry readings for each night of Sydney Solstice. Head along at sunset, and you'll see this year's Badu Gili, too — a six-minute projection on the structure's eastern Bennelong sails. Or, for two food-filled days, make a date with Opera Kitchen and its Italian- and Japanese-focused festival. Nearby, Darling Harbour will be transformed into a winter wonderland, complete with an ice-skating rink and German-themed chalets. If you'd prefer to hop onto the water, you'll be able to kayak by moonlight as well. Also making great use of the waterfront location: Harbour Garden, an installation of inflatables that's designed for attendees of all ages. Just outside of the CBD, Newtown will host the inaugural (and adorably named) Country and Inner Western Festival, which'll pop up in small bars, pubs and other venues to showcase emerging and established country, alternative country, bluegrass, folk, Americana and blues musicians. And, over at South Eveleigh, a big (and free) street festival will celebrate the growing food precinct — just as Kylie Kwong launches her new restaurant onsite. Meanwhile, fermentation will be in the spotlight on Oxford Street, with Bitter Phew celebrating brewers, winemakers, bakers and cheesemakers for the duration of Sydney Solstice. Plus, Hotel Harry's Altar Danceteria will throw a series of genre-hopping parties — so fingers crossed that dancing is back again by June. And, no, you won't be bored across the festival's 13-day run. Sydney Solstice will take place from Tuesday, June 8–Sunday, June 20. We'll update you with further details when they're announced — and you can keep an eye on the festival's website, too. Images: Destination NSW
Since Iron Man first flew onto cinema screens back in 2008, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has banded its movies together in phases, with each group of films telling a particular part of the broader story. The initial phase ran through until the first Avengers movie, the second spanned Iron Man 3 to Ant-Man, and the third kicked off with Captain America: Civil War and ended with Spider-Man: Far From Home. Now, the fourth phase is upon us — and it includes TV shows as well. So far, you might've been watching WandaVision; however, it's about to have company on streaming platform Disney+. Once the Mouse House is done telling Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision's (Paul Bettany) story (and nodding to classic sitcoms in the process), it's moving on to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Clearly, no one at Marvel and Disney+ has been taxing themselves while naming these series — so you instantly know who this one is about. Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan reprise the eponymous characters, with their characters teaming up and heading off on a global adventure. That tests their patience — as the initial sneak peek back in 2020 illustrated, and the just-dropped full trailer for the series now shows in more detail. The pair's exploits will span six episodes, and will bring back Daniel Brühl as Baron Zemo and Emily VanCamp as Sharon Carter. Wyatt Russell (The Good Lord Bird) will also join the MCU as John Walker. As for when you'll be able to see all of the above in action, the series starts streaming on Friday, March 19, just after WandaVision wraps up its nine-episode run. And yes, the MCU's fourth phase will include more TV shows — such as Loki, which hits in May; Secret Invasion, starring Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury; and a series set in Wakanda. It'll kick off the film side of things with 2021 movies Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Eternals. Check out the new full trailer for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWBsDaFWyTE The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will hit Disney+ on Friday, March 19. Top image: Chuck Zlotnick, ©Marvel Studios 2020. All Rights Reserved.
UPDATE: SEPTEMBER 23, 2020 — Due to COVID-19 restrictions, Norfolk is currently only operating Wednesdays to Sundays. But never fear, it's temporarily moved its Taco Tuesday offer to Wednesdays so you won't miss out on three buck snacks. Happy hour specials — tap beers and house wine for a fiver — are available from 3–6pm from Wednesday to Friday. The Norfolk Hotel has all the elements of a loved local: a lively and varied crowd, food and drink deals that are actually value for money and somewhere comfy to sit. The pub, located on the corner of Cleveland and Walker Streets, has a bright and ecletic fit-out that spans from the buzzy beer garden, to the sports bar and the 'trophy room'. The main agenda food-wise is casual Mexican fare — but you'll also find pub favourites like schnitzels, steaks and burgers — and Taco Tuesdays offer the best value for money. Here you'll find $3 tacos from 6-10pm and 15-minute $1 taco 'flash sales' happening twice a night when the bell rings. Behind the bar, the team sticks to the Mexican theme with Tecate tinnies and a hefty tequila offering. The cocktail menu isn't overly ambitious, although quirky touches are evident, like the Bloody Marys served in tinned tomato cans. And just like the food, the price is right: tap beers, house wines and basic spirits are $7 all day, every day.
Given that The Simpsons Australia episode was more of a Fosters ad than anything else, it sounds clunky to claim 'beer is back Down Under'. When did it leave? So let's settle for the idea that brewers have lifted their socks in the wake of the return of cocktail culture. Hell, the Old Growler is pretty much a hops-filled speakeasy, beer festivals seem to be going off like fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day and home brewing is slowly being wrestled from the cold, dead hands of the river folk. Oh, and Coles now owns a microbrewery, Steamrail, that's exclusively stocked at their Liquorlands across the country. The times they are a-changing. But, with a flood in the market, where should you be directing your attention before the sun cuts back its working hours and we're all staring down those few unmentionable months of winter? Here is a list of (mostly) local beers you've probably glanced over on a menu but may not have taken the risk, forgone your beloved Coopers and forked over those extra $3 for a taste. Let's try them together. Robot Ninja Lager Rice lager is a great way to ease into the wonderful world of craft beer — fruity, light and round, this offering from the Victorian brewery Kooinda is inspired by Tokyo City and the proof is on the palate. Plus, it is something new. You can pretty much taste everything in this tipple (the website even claims a bubble-gum finish), but it is surprisingly smooth and a go-to on those hot afternoons. Though, be warned: this one masks its 4.6 percent booze content with a ricey backbone and shouldn't be treated lightly. For a more traditional rice lager, try out the Koshihikari Echigo Beer. Four Pines American Pale Ale Four Pines comes out of Manly, and offhand there is nothing in their range that isn't worth a look. The kolsch is an absolute winner, but their pale gets on here by virtue of its wide appeal. They use an unusual amount of hops in here, so expect a mouth-filling flavour, but the softness of the pine and bite of the grapefruit wrangle it in and make it a very versatile food match… Admittedly I'm thinking pub food here, but heck go with it. Murrays Angry Man If you are looking for something a little bit more familiar (yes I'm talking to all of you smashing-Sierra-Nevadas-like-its-going-out-of-fashion people) in a pale ale but still interested in broadening those horizons, try out the Murrays Angry Man. It's got a bit more punch and hop, aka bitterness, and will suit a blokier pallet — I swear I am not just running with their ridiculously awesome strong man versus kangaroo label here — but there is still plenty of complexity to the flavour. Keep a few in your fridge and order some unadvisedly hot Thai curry for your next Thursday in. Emerson's Pilsner New Zealand does do a few things well, and one of them is pilsner — in this case German pilsner. Emerson's is a well-balanced beer with a healthy smack of nectarine and then (which those of you easily overwhelmed by ales will appreciate) a long, dry finish that makes this one taste like… well... beer, essentially, which is nice. A clean, crisp mouth-wetter with a few surprising flavour notes to get your tongue wagging. Stone & Wood Jasper Ale It is still an ale, but its not going to blow your socks off with an overwhelming burst of vanilla or pineapple. The Jasper is a great crowd pleasingly thirst quencher, and it is sold in pints which is good news for everyone! Most people who identify as non-beer-likers are actually just not that into hops, but that doesn't mean you have to forgo the whole drink. Plenty of people enjoy peat free whisky, and in the same vein beers that let the malt sing and tone down the hops, like this one, will make a convert of you in no time. For the rest of us, true believers, this deep-red Jasper Ale kicks off fruity, finishes nutty and is very restrained on the carbonation front so it won't fill you up. Young Henrys Newtowner An Australian pale (i.e. they use Australian hops), this critter came out for the 150 years of Newtown celebrations and remains only available in the Inner West — which makes it the perfect excuse for a trip to King Street. Young Henrys is easily one of the most talked about local breweries and this English summer ale is a fair bit drier than their other regular pours, with a golden look and refreshing finish. Head over to The Courthouse for a long lunch with this one before summer's end. Murray's Moon Boy Golden Ale This is a beautifully gentle beer that should have spent all summer teamed up with your favourite pineapple-filled burger. It didn't did it? Do not mistake gentle for wishy-washy or tasteless; there is a lot of wheat in this baby, so expect a dry finish, and there is fruit there too. And if the option to drink a beer with a maroon-sweated, bespectacled werewolf man for a logo doesn't get you high-tailing it to the Trinity Bar on Crown Street, then I feel like I don't even know who you are anymore, man. Feral Brewing Hop Hog If this was 'Ten Beer Names to Appreciate Before the End of Summer', all of them would be from Feral Brewing. These WA beer freaks don't stop at making great beer, no, no; they then give them names like The Raging Flem, Runt and a whole selection of hogs. The Hop Hog is simply a great beer, but there is nothing simple about it: big on the hops, well balanced by malt, and somehow the whole room smells like pine when the top's off. Feral reminds us that some tastes can't be luck and someone, somewhere must know exactly what they are doing. Seriously, hop on a hog. Hargreaves Hill ESB Serious beer drinkers need only apply for this one, an Aussie twist on the Extra Special Bitter (this is normally an English speciality) that brought this Victorian brewery some serious international attention a few years ago. There are hops aplenty, a rich toffee-like malt and tropical wonders on the nose. Yes, I am an unabashed fan of this beer. If you're looking for a bit more oomph, pair it up with sherry casked single malt and sip away the next 45 minutes of your day. Sinha Stout Okay, so stouts aren't particularly summery, but they also aren't particularly Sri Lankan, which is where this mochaccino-worthy bevvy hails from, so go with it. First up, it is smooth (look at how this thing pours into a glass; it's like they've managed to bottle the voice of Laurence Fishburne), and then you sip it and suddenly you've gone to that place Irish Coffee promised but never delivered. It is 8 percent, but honestly, you don't even notice. Well, not while you're drinking it at least. Try this one out for a flavour kick at the end of your next dumpling session at Uncle Mings. Like anything, your appreciation of beer grows in direct proportion to the amount you pop in your gob, so get yourself off to an upcoming beer festival or check out the website of a brewery near you for the grand tour. Yes, it will smell like yeast. Yes, that is pretty much the smell of warm horse feed. Yes, you'll love it. Or else, we'll see you in the beer garden.
If you've spent the past year with your nose buried in a book, that's about to pay off beyond the everyday joys and thrills of reading. Sydney Writers' Festival's 2023 lineup is here another hefty catalogue of thought-provoking events — 226 of them, with almost 300 writers and thinkers involved. From the recipients of the literary world's brightest honours to some of Australia's household names and faces, a wealth of talent is descending upon the Harbour City, and being streamed nationally thanks to SWF's online program. Every writers' festival converges around an annual theme, with Sydney's focusing on 'Stories for the Future' for its 2023 iteration from Monday, May 22–Sunday, May 28 at various venues around the city — and also beamed digitally. Thinking about what's to come has been an inescapable part of living through the pandemic era, which SWF knows, curating a bill of talks that'll contemplate moving through the chaos of the past few years and into in a different tomorrow. [caption id="attachment_893384" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Eleanor Catton by Murdo MacLeod[/caption] Today's most current Booker Prize-winner, plus three from past years as well, top the lineup: Shehan Karunatilaka, who won in 2022 for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida; The Luminaries' Eleanor Catton; The Narrow Road to The Deep North's Richard Flanagan and Girl Woman Other's Bernardine Evaristo. Still on highly applauded attendees, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist Colson Whitehead — for The Underground Railroad, which was then adapted into a TV series, and for The Nickel Boys — also leads the bill, arriving between Harlem Shuffle's 2021 publication and sequel Crook Manifesto's arrival this July. Among the international names, the above headliners have ample company. When Trinidad-born UK musician Anthony Joseph isn't talking poetry — he is 2022's TS Eliot Prize for Poetry winner — London restauranteur Asma Khan from Darjeeling Express, and also seen on Chef's Table, will chat about comfort food; Daniel Lavery from Slate, who penned the Dear Prudence column from 2016–21, will run through his best advice; and Vietnamese author Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai will introduce her new novel Dust Child. [caption id="attachment_893383" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Colson Whitehead by Chris Close[/caption] On the local front, get ready for two iconic pairings: former Prime Minister Julia Gillard being interviewed by Indira Naidoo, plus Jurassic Park favourite Sam Neill discussing work, life and writing with his Sweet Country, Dean Spanley, Dirty Deeds and Palm Beach co-star Bryan Brown. Also on the must-attend list: Grace Tame chatting about The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner: A Memoir, Heartbreak High's Chloé Hayden doing the same with Different, Not Less: A neurodivergent's guide to embracing your true self and finding your happily ever after, and Stan Grant on The Queen Is Dead. Also, on Monday, May 15 before the main festival, Tim Winton will discuss writing the ABC TV documentary Love Letter to Ningaloo. Under first-time Artistic Director Ann Mossop, opening night will feature Evaristo, Benjamin Law and Miles Franklin-winner Alexis Wright working through the impact that the past has on the present, as well as poet Madison Godfrey performing. At the other end of the fest, novelist Richard Flanagan will look forward, exploring why we need to tell our own tales to shape the future. [caption id="attachment_893385" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Grace Tame by Kishka Jensen[/caption] And, if your main relationship with the printed word is through recipe books, the 2023 festival is going all in on the topic for one day at Carriageworks Farmers Market. Stephanie Alexander and Maggie Beer will talk with Adam Liaw, while fixing the food system and family recipes will also nab chats by culinary talent. Capping off the bill will be foodie gala The Dinner That Changed My Life, with everyone from Nat's What I Reckon and Jennifer Wong to Alice Zaslavsky and Colombo Social's Shaun Christie-David involved. Among the rest of the program, other highlights include a tribute to Archie Roach and Jack Charles; comedians Wil Anderson and Laurence Mooney; the All Day YA lineup; a deep dive into crime podcasting with journalists Patrick Abboud, Kate McClymont and Hedley Thomas; and The Book Thief and The Messenger's Markus Zusak on bringing the latter to TV. Adaptations in general earn their own session, Shane Jenek aka Courtney Act is part of SWF's stint of Queerstories, Tom Ballard pops up on an OK Boomer panel, Australia's war on hip hop gets its time in the spotlight, and there's a look at AI in the age of ChatGPT. As always free events are a big part of the program as well, with more than 80 on year. And, also in the same category, the spread of venues is hefty — including Carriageworks, Town Hall, and 25 suburban venues and libraries across the Sydney. Sydney Writers' Festival runs at various venues across Sydney from Monday, May 22–Sunday, May 28. Tickets go on sale at 10am on Friday, March 17 via www.swf.org.au.
When he penned The Beach, the 90s-era must-read novel that became a Leonardo DiCaprio (Killers of the Flower Moon)-led movie and started his own working relationship with filmmaker Danny Boyle (Yesterday), Alex Garland told a tale of shattering the Thai holiday idyll. As his backpacker protagonist travelled to Asia, pure shores gleamed, but the supposedly utopian community on a hidden coastline that he sought, and found, was never destined to fulfil the promise of beyond-the-postcard perfection. Garland soon moved to screenwriting, kicking off the 28 Days Later franchise with Boyle and reteaming with the director on the also Cillian Murphy (Small Things Like These)-starring sci-fi gem Sunshine. Grim realities lurk in both, after an escaped virus sparks a zombie pandemic that shatters life as everyone knows it, and on a space mission to attempt to reignite the dying sun. Warfare, Garland's sixth project as a director himself, also has that familiar idea in its sights: that grasped-onto perceptions, facades and status quos always crumble or conceal horrors, or both, as driven by human nature. The same concept has proven a part of his other works as a filmmaker, starting with 2014's tech nightmare Ex Machina, then continuing through fellow movies Annihilation, Men and Civil War, plus TV series Devs — and before them, on screenplays for Never Let Me Go and Dredd. It's reasonable to expect Garland and Boyle's upcoming 28 Years Later, as well as its sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (written by Garland but helmed by The Marvels' Nia DaCosta), to continue the trend. Warfare is that idea put into action, however, by the feature's entire existence and purpose. Co-directed with former Navy SEAL and Iraq War veteran Ray Mendoza, drawing solely upon the latter's memories and those of his platoon during a 2006 mission in Ramadi, unfurling in real time and playing out as almost one entire hellish scene, it is as committed to depicting the nightmare reality of combat, and immersing its cast and audience in it, as is cinematically possible. The picture's singular focus and sensory saturation relies upon a valid assumption: no one is watching this in a vacuum, so no one needs the feature to spell out the context, let alone overtly express anything but total realism. The latter conveys everything anyway, and anything more vocally pointed would be beside the point. Warfare is "simply us accumulating memories, accumulating bits of information and trying to piece together what happened", Garland tells Concrete Playground. "The intention is to try to understand what happened in a sequence of events. There is no hero. There is no protagonist, because at different times different people are doing different things, and sometimes they're doing it concurrently." For D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (Reservation Dogs), who portrays Mendoza as the film follows his unit on a surveillance mission surrounded by insurgents, it's pivotal that "we don't glorify anything, romanticise, make anything up. Almost all the words you hear in there are from actual memory. Everything is basically from memory," he shares. "The audience is an adult. This is not a film for children. It's a film for grownups, right? It's a film for people who live in the fucking world, right? And any adult who does not have an understanding of the Iraq War and why it happened and how it happened is an idiot. It is all available to them to find out. It's a huge global event, and if they have no historical and intellectual curiosity, that is on them. That's not on the film," Garland says, chatting about his second movie in a row, after Civil War, where the justified lack of an all-caps-style, shouting, hand-holding agenda has become a talking point, much to his frustration "I think that the concept behind that is so lazy, and it comes from a culture that we exist in at the moment where you are not allowed to offer something into the world unless you're making your private agenda clear. And I don't like that. I object to it. Because what it means is all information that is put out into the world is attached to an ideology, which means that either people are being reassured or they're feeling attacked. And some people like to be reassured and some people like to feel angry that they're being attacked, and it's juvenile, it's childish," Garland continues. "It's important: if you're going to understand something about how horrific war is, you need to be able to look at it and you need to be able to trust the information. And if we attached an agenda to it, it would make the information untrustworthy, and then we would have failed in our objective. It was the same dreary, whiny bullshit with Civil War as well, and I thought it was lazy, I thought it was unsophisticated and I thought it was dishonest. It was effectively people saying 'why aren't you agreeing with me?' — and that is the same [here]. That is what our polarised state is." For Warfare's cast, enlisting for the movie was as close to that — enlisting — as a film production can get. Before the cameras began rolling for the impressive lineup of Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter (Death of a Unicorn), Cosmo Jarvis (The Alto Knights), Joseph Quinn (Gladiator II), Charles Melton (May December), Kit Connor (Heartstopper), Michael Gandolfini (Daredevil: Born Again), Noah Centineo (The Recruit) and more, they went through a Mendoza-led three-week boot camp. During that phase, the group spent every moment together, even when they weren't specifically training. Speaking with us, Woon-A-Tai and Poulter stress how crucial the bond that the actors formed during that experience was, for them and for the picture. Mendoza is equally as adamant. His dedication to authentically recreating what he went through, plus his fellow soldiers like Elliott Miller (who can't remember it due to the traumas of the incident, as viewers witness, and who Jarvis plays), couldn't be more apparent. Enforcing the hierarchies of their characters in the film, mirroring leadership positions and communication channels, shaving each other's heads: that was all built into the boot camp. "Quickly, I think it was very unique and very different on this set compared to others," explains Woon-A-Tai. "First and foremost, I haven't played a soldier prior. I haven't been on a set that had a war — a war set — before. So I'm new and I don't understand it. But what was different that I do acknowledge is that the position that Will Poulter here, and Charles Melton and Joseph Quinn, were in," he continues. "They knew our schedule, which is not common. If I wanted to know what we're shooting that day or when's lunch or et cetera, even to ask to use the restroom, I would go to Will. And that was set up perfectly by Ray and by Alex, and also these gentlemen right over here, who I just said before, who filled in those shoes very quickly, to keep that leadership position going on-screen and off-screen. And that was beautiful." Not its stars, not Garland, not Mendoza — who worked as the military advisor on Civil War, following technical advisor jobs on the likes of Lone Survivor, Jurassic World, Mile 22, The Outpost and The Terminal List — and not audiences: no one should quickly shake Warfare, its like-you're-there naturalism and its distressing-by-reality portrait of war after viewing. With Woon-A-Tai, Poulter and its two directors, we also unpacked that key preparation process, the film's long-take visual style, why its vision of battle stands out, human nature and physically demanding productions, among other subjects, including Civil War's potential premonitions. On the Importance of Warfare's Pre-Shoot Boot Camp in Cementing a Bond Among the Cast and Helping Them Respond Authentically to Such a Testing Experience On-Screen Will: "Absolutely pivotal and central to everything that we did. And the boot camp was really the environment that fostered those bonds and allowed us to develop very sincere, authentic and real relationships and understandings between each other. I think the boot camp really served two purposes as far as us being able to execute the objective of this project. First was the emotional side of things, and those bonds that I mentioned. And then, second I think was the development of a skill set to be able to put our best foot forward as far as accurately representing Navy SEALs. And as actors, we were under no illusions about the massive gulf between us and the real individuals who serve, and the women and men who operate at that level. But Ray is a fantastic instructor — both a great teacher and a great director — and so he really couldn't have put us in a in better stead to replicate seal culture to the best of our abilities." D'Pharaoh: "And plus, if we didn't prioritise working on this bond from the jump, you would honestly see a different result on-screen, I'm sure." Ray: "It was extremely important, actually. It was one of my three critical nodes of what I wanted to do, not only just for the practicality of what you mentioned, and as it contributed to the brotherhood and what we would eventually see on film or on the screen, but I just wanted them to experience something that they could take away for the rest of their lives as well. Just the concept of the team before self, what it means to sacrifice, the burden of leadership, identifying everyone's weaknesses and strengths, and how they can help each other, essentially. There's a concept that we're only as fast or as strong as our slowest or weakest person. And then, applying those principles, all that stuff is what they were using to draw on in regards to their performances, as you mentioned. So it was a super important. It was one of the things I focused on the most." Will: "I think the guys, obviously from the point of signing on, began to just engage in even more physical conditioning and whatnot to make sure that we're all showing up to boot camp in the best shape possible. But, really, I think what we all experienced — at the risk of speaking for anyone, but I feel like I can safely generalise in this by saying that I think physically and mentally, especially, it pushed us all further than we were even necessarily prepared for. And that was absolutely necessary. A fundamental part of the story is a response to things going wrong and loss, and the reaction to that. And it's typical of Navy SEAL training to analyse how people respond to duress, and how they respond to things going wrong, and what their reaction is to things being especially difficult, and that was integrated into the training. So regardless of what individual preparation we've done, the boot camp really became defined by how we'd respond to things that Ray knew would lead us to fail." On Woon-a-Tai's Task Portraying Mendoza — While Mendoza Was Co-Directing the Film D'Pharaoh: "Of course I have a sense of responsibility that I represent this man on-screen for countless of people to watch it. And but in all honesty, though, he had way more pressure on his shoulders than I could ever have. So I don't really want to sit here and tell you how much pressure I had because, yeah I did, but it was also very much a gift. The fact that I was the only one to have to have my guy be there every single day, I can't complain. And as much pressure as it was, I wouldn't have did it any other way or wanted to do it any other way. But really, Ray had way more pressure on his shoulders than I could have ever had. He's telling the story on behalf of his personal story and the people, their personal stories who were there, but also countless other veterans who served in multiple different wars who can relate to that exact same story. And sadly, maybe in Hollywood, the depiction of a lot of stereotypes in the military community that he was breaking down with this film." On How Garland and Mendoza Came to Reunite for Warfare After Civil War Alex: "We got to know each other during the shooting of Civil War. Ray was a military advisor, and the idea to work together in a really concrete way arrived in post-production with Civil War. Ray and I had stayed in touch. Ray had some project he was working on and we discussed it — and I was very interested in some of the sequences that Ray had choreographed, and some of the qualities of realism that Ray introduces because of his experience prior to working in the film industry. And so I approached him saying 'would you be interested in working together to make a real-time movie that attempted to be forensically accurate about combat and removed some of the tricks and devices of cinema?'." On the Cast's Experience Working with Co-Directors with Completely Different Backgrounds and Skill Sets Will: "It's very, very cool to see two very authoritative leaders practise the humility and self-awareness that is required to co-lead a project like this, while never stepping on each other's toes — and both, I suppose, leading in their own ways and based on their own areas of expertise. Alex will be the first to say that Ray naturally ought to lead on anything that related to the experience of being at war, and anything that we were doing, I would say, sort of from an emotional standpoint — and anything that pertained to operating like a SEAL. And then I think Ray would also readily admit that Alex took slightly more of a lead when it came to the camerawork and things that related to technical direction. And they were a brilliant complement to one another." On Using Long Takes, and the Pros and Cons of How One-Shot Scenes Can Immerse Audiences and Create an Unrelenting Sense of Tension Alex: "Right or wrong, that would be, in a way, for other people to decide. But what I would say is that me personally — this is just me — I find that, for example, scenes that are all shot in a oner, where there's no cuts, I find I start to think about the filmmaking more than what is happening on-screen. So I get detached from the characters. I get detached from the narrative. And I start thinking 'where are the secret cut points?' or 'how did they orchestrate this movement through the door or over the car?' or whatever it happens to be. So I find it distancing. And what I think is, while we're talking to each other now, at the moment I'm looking at the screen, so in a way that's a close-up — but sometimes I might look over here and then it's a wide. And actually the grammar of cinema, with edits between mids and close-ups and wides, is very like our experience walking down the street or talking to someone in a room. You're sat opposite someone in a restaurant, but then you see the waiter approach, it's turned from a close-up to a wide. You blink. There are these little sort of interruptions, which are very like edits. So for me, the most truthful version is actually the classical film version of moving between close-ups, mids and wides — whereas a oner, I find slightly artificial, and not how I experience the world, paradoxically." On the Difference in How Warfare Approaches the Depiction of War Compared to Other Films, How It Continues Activist Work and Why It Should Start Conversations Will: "I think one of the things that attracted me to this project was that it seeks to break with the conventions around how war is often depicted in Hollywood. I think the tendency within Hollywood when it comes to war is to mine warfare environments for entertainment. And a lot of the time in the depiction of war, American soldiers and British soldiers especially, their place in warfare environments and their actions are glorified and romanticised. And I was excited to be part of a project that sought to go against the grain in that respect, and really focus more on depicting the real-life events with a degree of objectivity that that rarely, rarely is seen in Hollywood. So that was a process that was too exciting to turn down. I think as a civilian, a lot of our understanding of war is based in these Hollywood recreations, and they don't necessarily optimise for truth and accuracy. So we stand to learn something potentially a bit new and a bit more truthful by watching a film like Warfare. And then also my hope is that veterans feel more accurately represented, and therefore at less risk of being misunderstood by the general public in respect of what they do and why they do it." D'Pharaoh: "So with this film, what I loved about it so much when I was reading the script and while we were shooting it is that we didn't romanticise anything. We didn't make anything up or make anything look cool. And one thing that I hope people will see with this is a sparked conversation on what happened in Iraq. I think that this is a film that doesn't have a bias. I feel like this film is more like a transcript. It just states what happened and that's it. And as audience members, we should leave the theatre talking about what happened over there — yeah, talking about what happened over there. So to answer your question about activism or et cetera, this a good part of that. I don't think I'm steering away from my activism at all. I think this is sparking conversation of what happened in Iraq. It's an important conversation to have. And to have a film that doesn't have a bias or doesn't make a stance, if you may, is a perfect example to have those conversations. Because we didn't glorify anything. We didn't make anything look cool. In my opinion and in my personal opinion only, it makes it seem like this film may not want people to join the military. I don't when I watched that movie." On How Mendoza Looks Back at the Iraq War with Everything That the World Knows About It Now, Including the Claims Used to Justify It Ray: "I think when I first heard, yeah, I mean I felt a little heartbroken about it for sure. Like, I did ask myself 'what was it all for?'. There's a lot of good we did there — besides the mission set of, like 'all right, we're a direct-action force, we get tasks given that we do missions'. But there's a lot of humanitarian effort when you coexist with the people of that country. There's a lot of good humanity. You see the full spectrum, of the worst side of humanity to the best side of humanity, on both sides. And we took a lot of autonomy to do, outside of the scope of our mission, to do as much good as we could. Because when you're there and you see people that are in need — there were people that were being oppressed, whether you agree with me or not; I was there and we saw it — and we helped a lot people. Didn't have to. It wasn't something that was passed down as a policy. We're occupying their country. We would go into these people's homes — and not there for them, but just using it as depicted in the movie, as a position to use, to observe or to operate out of, and you learn a lot about them. I'm not there to hurt them. It's just we're using the home for what we need it for. And so yeah, you just learn and you want to help where you can. And there's a lot of assets we have — or whether it's just providing water or colouring books, or aid stations for battered women or battered children or foster children. So there's a lot of good we did, and that's the only salvageable thing coming out of that. Even though ISIS came back in and took it over, there's a lot of good done there. I guess that's the only way I can really live with it." On What Garland Has Learned About Human Nature Through Interrogating It On-Screen and on the Page Across His Career Alex: "I would say that part one of the answer is in what Ray just said, which is that Ray is speaking from the point of view of someone who's seen a lot of combat, and spent a lot of time at war and involved in the military. But what you can hear is — I can hear, I'm sure you can hear — is a concern for compassion and a desire to have done something good, even amidst a dreadful, horrific situation. Ray said 'this is what I can salvage from this in order to live with it, is that some good was done'. And I think that one crucial part of the human condition is that most people have a desire for goodness. And I think the other part that I've observed is that we seem to all suffer from a kind of Alzheimer's-like dementia, where we are unable to remember things for very long. So important lessons can be learned. I was born in 1970. I thought there were some lessons that were learned from the Second World War that would never be forgotten, and now I'm 55 and many of them have clearly been forgotten. There were lessons learned from Vietnam that should never have been forgotten, and then they were forgotten. And there will be lessons learned from Iraq, should be remembered, have been forgotten. And so it goes on. So a good example for me right now is that you have the leader of the most-powerful democracy in the world rather casually talking about militarily owning their sovereign peaceful neighbour, as Greenland. To me, a world leader, particularly an American world leader, in the immediate memory space of some of these things, would simply never talk like that. You could only talk like that if you've forgotten many important lessons. So goodness and dementia would be my takeaway." On Whether Poulter Enjoys Taking on Parts in Physically Demanding Productions, with Warfare Joining The Revenant on His Resume Will: "I think I do. I've been very fortunate to have those opportunities first and foremost, so I'm grateful for them. That's, I suppose, the overbearing feeling around it. But where possible, I do like to expose myself to those sort of challenges — and comparable in the sense that I guess it definitely was a test from a mental and physical standpoint. And I think that, to a degree, I couldn't necessarily have done this had I not gone through certain challenges prior. But this is totally unique in respect of what a team-orientated and collectivist process it was, and that's what I'm most grateful for. I think that we all practise this idea that we were all a team before we were individuals, and the bonds that we formed are truly unlike anything else I've experienced. So that's what I'm most grateful with in respects of Warfare, and it's the feeling that I'm left with — and I imagine will be left with long after this film was released." On If Anything Else on Woon-A-Tai and Poulter's Resumes Helped Them Prepare for Warfare D'Pharoah: "No. This is such a completely different role for me, and the fact that I had Ray Mendoza there for me by my side throughout the whole process, it would have felt very disrespectful to do anything opposite of what he wanted." Will: "There was only one other role that comes to mind for me. I was involved in a sort of satirical film that was kind of a critique, I suppose, of war, and it was called War Machine. And I played a US Marine and took part in a boot camp. And that was certainly helpful as far as being able to predict, to some degree, how close we would all get over the process and what would be required of me in a leadership position. But also to echo D'Pharaoh's point, this film broke with convention in so many ways and was so unique that really, it sort of exists in a category of its own, both as an experience and as a film." On Whether Garland Feels Like Civil War Was a Premonition — and If It That Was the Sense While Making It Alex: "At the point of writing it, it felt to me like many people were having the concerns that were reflected in the script. At the point of making it, then January the 6th that happened, where American law-enforcement officers were attacked brutally, and the seat of government was attacked brutally by someone who was denying an electoral result. And now that person is floating, in a sort of mischievous but also serious way, about a third electoral term, which means changing the constitution. It's not exactly that it's changed — it's more that it hasn't changed. So all of these conditions existed back then and they still exist now. I think they probably have gotten more serious. I think they probably have gotten more dangerous. The strange thing for me is that the fever hasn't broken. That something as basic as wanting to stick up for Capitol law-enforcement officers is somehow not possible in these conditions. It's a very, very strange situation." Warfare opened in cinemas Down Under on Thursday, April 17, 2025. Images: Murray Close/A24.
Facebook might have spawned its fair share of hook-ups over the years, but now the site's taking the whole matchmaking thing to the next level. As announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the company's annual F8 developer conference, a new Facebook feature for dating and relationships is just around the corner. According to Facebook's blog post about its latest technology announcements, the dating service is designed to improve the experience of meeting new people. You'll be able to use it to create a dating profile (separate to your regular one, thankfully), which will then throw you potential love matches, based on information about your mutual friends, preferences and things you might have in common. Users will also be able to scout out compatible matches through Facebook's 'Groups' and 'Events' features. The service is being built as we speak, with testing slated to kick off later this year. Other nifty new Facebook services announced at the F8 conference include a blood donations registrations feature for communities in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and new ways of sharing to your 'Stories'. Also in development is a 'Clear History' feature, which will show you what websites and apps send Facebook your information, and enable you to switch off the process going forward. It's a feature that might make users feel more secure after the Cambridge Analytica privacy breach.
From continually churning out top professional surfers to scoring a mention in the best surfing heist film ever made, aka Point Break, Australia's surfing prowess is well recognised around the world. Now our island continent has another wave-riding feather in our cap, with a stretch of Sunshine Coast coastline being named the latest World Surfing Reserve. Spanning a four-kilometre area at Noosa — including the beaches and five surf breaks between Sunshine Beach and the Noosa River — it's only the tenth spot on the planet to earn such honours. And, as a land girt by sea (as our anthem reminds us), it's Australia's third entry on the list. Sydney's Manly beach was selected in 2010, while the Gold Coast joined the swell in 2016. World Surfing Reserve status is awarded by the Save The Waves Coalition, with partners National Surfing Reserves Australia and the International Surfing Association, after launching the initiative in 2009. As well as aiming to preserving wave breaks and their surrounding areas, the scheme recognises and works to protect the surfing reserves on an environmental, cultural, economic and community level. It was Noosa's "beautiful pointbreaks and visionary coastal conservation," that got it over the line, according to the WSR announcement made at the dedication ceremony for the ninth reserve in Punta de Lobos, Chile. If heading to the popular Queensland spot wasn't already on your summer itinerary, you now have another reason to channel your inner Johnny Utah and head north for a splash in the sun. Via the ABC. Image: Yun Huang Yong via Flickr
Two Succession brothers facing off in the same category. A musical crime melodrama making history, earning more nominations than any film not in the English language ever has. Brazil's second contender for Best Actress ever — the daughter of its first, in fact. A female filmmaker in the running for Best Director for only the tenth time in 97 years. They're some of the big stories among the 2025 Oscar nominations, involving A Real Pain, The Apprentice, Emilia Pérez, I'm Still Here and The Substance. There's more where they came from — but which of those movies, and the talents involved, will earn shiny statuettes on Monday, March 3, Down Under time? And will Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, Nickel Boys and Wicked have any luck, too? Just like in 2022, 2023 and 2024, we've watched everything — many of which you can as well in Australia right now — and singled out who and what will likely be credited as an "Oscar-winner" moving forward. Surveying 11 categories, we've also named which nominees deserve to, and what else might be in with a chance. Best Motion Picture The nominees: Anora The Brutalist A Complete Unknown Conclave Dune: Part Two Emilia Pérez I'm Still Here Nickel Boys The Substance Wicked Should win: The Brutalist Could win: Conclave Will win: Anora What a field. Worthy films will always miss the cut among the ten Best Picture nominees each and every year (Love Lies Bleeding, A Different Man, The Apprentice, I Saw the TV Glow, A Real Pain, Challengers, Babygirl, Hard Truths, All We Imagine as Light, Kneecap, La Chimera and Kinds of Kindness are just some absences in 2025), but the current batch nominees still showcase a staggering variety of movies. Sandy sci-fi blockbusters, hit musical adaptations, body-horror, papal thrillers, multiple features that show how stunning that filmmaking ambition and an unflinching vision can prove: they're all there. Brady Corbet's The Brutalist is a towering achievement. It could repeat its Golden Globes glory at the Oscars. It should. But Anora won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, then top gongs from America's Directors Guild and Writers Guild, and is also a tremendous winner. Conclave emerging victorious wouldn't be a miracle, though, after its BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild wins. Best Director The nominees: Anora, Sean Baker The Brutalist, Brady Corbet A Complete Unknown, James Mangold Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard The Substance, Coralie Fargeat Should win: Coralie Fargeat, The Substance Could win: Sean Baker, Anora Will win: Brady Corbet, The Brutalist Some films feel like a force of nature — and like a vision ripped from a filmmaker's mind wholesale to dance and strut across the screen, too — and Coralie Fargeat's The Substance is one such movie. Jane Campion is the only woman to have been nominated for Best Director twice so far (for The Piano and The Power of the Dog), but this shouldn't prove the only nod in Fargeat's career. Likely down to Brady Corbet and Sean Baker, where the field actually goes might depend on which of the pair's features win Best Picture — and if the Academy is in the mood to share the love or consolidate it. Awarding Corbet's achievement for a three-and-a-half-hour film that's had audiences glued to the screen, was made using a format in VistaVision that was favoured by Alfred Hitchcock on masterpieces such as North by Northwest and Vertigo, and brings back intermissions seems the most probable — and well-deserved — bet. Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role The nominees: Cynthia Erivo, Wicked Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez Mikey Madison, Anora Demi Moore, The Substance Fernanda Torres, I'm Still Here Should win: Demi Moore, The Substance Could win: Mikey Madison, Anora Will win: Demi Moore, The Substance She's been giving stunning speeches around Hollywood, and Golden Globe- and Screen Actors Guild-winner Demi Moore best have another prepared. Rewarding her for a deeply committed performance more than four decades into her acting career, and after a significant time lacking substantial roles, also rewards The Substance's hefty and blatant fight against women being deemed past their prime when they hit a certain age. If Mikey Madison repeats her BAFTA feat, the Anora star will join the top-ten youngest-ever Best Actress-winner's ranking, knocking Gone with the Wind's Vivien Leigh off the list. The film's final scene alone, in all of its emotional glory after Ani's rollercoaster ride, could nab her the accolade alone. Had Marianne Jean-Baptiste been nominated for Hard Truths, however, it'd be hard to see how anyone else could grasp the accolade. Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role The nominees: Adrien Brody, The Brutalist Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown Colman Domingo, Sing Sing Ralph Fiennes, Conclave Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice Should win: Adrien Brody, The Brutalist Could win: Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown Will win: Adrien Brody, The Brutalist Will the youngest-ever winner of the Best Actor Oscar make history again 22 years later, joining the incredibly small list of two-time victors (only ten other performers have one this accolade twice or more)? Or will someone else not only grasp this year's prize, but also that spot as the gong's freshest-faced recipient? The Brutalist's Adrien Brody is the former. A Complete Unknown's Timothée Chalamet is the latter. Neither of their movies would be the films that they are without either actor leading the charge. Intensity simmers in their respective performances alike. Either could take it — but Brody's portrayal wouldn't just be a once-in-a-lifetime piece of work for another actor; it'd be impossible. As for the rest of the field, in other years Colman Domingo for Sing Sing, Ralph Fiennes for Conclave and Sebastian Stan for The Apprentice (or for A Different Man, which he won the Golden Globe for) would be certain winners. Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role The nominees: Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown Ariana Grande, Wicked Felicity Jones, The Brutalist Isabella Rossellini, Conclave Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez Should win: Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez Could win: Isabella Rossellini, Conclave Will win: Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez Emilia Pérez will always be the first non-English-language film to receive 13 Oscar nominations, but its chances of scoring a big bag of trophies have dwindled courtesy of lead actress Karla Sofía Gascón's awful past tweets. As a result, the excellent Zoe Saldaña, portraying the eponymous character's conflicted lawyer, might end up being the movie's only winner — and hers is a powerhouse performance. Or, Emilia Pérez mightn't even be a lock here, despite Saldaña winning the Golden Globe, BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild Award in the lead up. Isabella Rossellini is exceptional in Conclave as Sister Agnes, the nun that's also the Head Caterer for the bickering cardinals — and it'd recognise her for her entire career, and redress the fact that she wasn't nominated for David Lynch's Blue Velvet. Ingrid Bergman, her mother, won three, including in this category in 1974 for Murder on the Orient Express. Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role The nominees: Yura Borisov, Anora Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown Guy Pearce, The Brutalist Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice Should win: Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain Could win: Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain Will win: Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain There's no bad picks in the Best Supporting Actor field. There's the vulnerable yet irreverent portrayal that's clearly going to win — the recipient of accolades at the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, Screen Actors Guild Awards and Film Independent Spirit Awards as well — and there's also the spur-of-the-moment speech that everyone will get to enjoy when Kieran Culkin does, but each one of the five nominated performances is outstanding, including from first-time Australian nominee Guy Pearce for The Brutalist. Jeremy Strong is on another level even for him in The Apprentice. The lifelong Oscar fan will win one of the coveted awards before his career out. He knows what it's like to lose out to Culkin, though, and not just on-screen in Succession — the only time that they were both nominated for the Best Actor in a Drama Emmy in the same year, Culkin won (beating Roy family patriarch Brian Cox, too). Best Original Screenplay The nominees: Anora, Sean Baker The Brutalist, Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg September 5, Moritz Binder, Tim Fehlbaum and Alex David The Substance, Coralie Fargeat Should win: A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg Could win: The Brutalist, Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold Will win: A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg Sean Baker took out this category for Anora at the Writers Guild Awards, where Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold weren't nominated for The Brutalist. But at the Oscars, A Real Pain should go home a winner in every field — two in total — that it's up for. The Academy does have a history of pairing the winner of Best Original Screenplay with Best Supporting Actor, including with Django Unchained and Green Book. As a performer, Jesse Eisenberg has only been in the running for an Oscar once, in 2011 for Best Actor for The Social Network — and in a different year, he could've been nominated for starring in A Real Pain as well. His script for the film makes the personal universal, and understands existential angst and anxiety, and how it manifests in different manners, with both intensity and humour. That said, this could also be where Coralie Fargeat gets some love for The Substance. Best Adapted Screenplay The nominees: A Complete Unknown, James Mangold and Jay Cocks Conclave, Peter Straughan Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard in collaboration with Thomas Bidegain, Léa Mysius and Nicolas Livecchi Nickel Boys, RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes Sing Sing, Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin and John 'Divine G' Whitfield Should win: Sing Sing, Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin and John 'Divine G' Whitfield Could win: Nickel Boys, RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes Will win: Conclave, Peter Straughan The possibility that either or both of Nickel Boys or Sing Sing could go home empty-handed from this year's Oscars is a travesty. Each 2025 releases in Australia, where the former sadly didn't get the big-screen date that it deserves, they're already among the year's best for viewers Down Under. Both possess screenplays of deep feeling — one adapting a Pulitzer Prize-winner, the other drawing from a helluva slice of real life. Nickel Boys emerged victorious at the Writers Guild Awards, but over A Complete Unknown, plus three films not in the running here: Dune: Part Two, Hit Man and Wicked. Here, this looks like Conclave's guaranteed time to shine, and the Vatican City-set script based on Robert Harris' novel about electing a new pope after the sudden death of the last one — and what the manoeuvring around it says about faith — is indeed a gem. Best International Feature The nominees: I'm Still Here The Girl with the Needle Emilia Pérez The Seed of the Sacred Fig Flow Should win: The Seed of the Sacred Fig Could win: The Seed of the Sacred Fig Will win: I'm Still Here Once a near lock for Emilia Pérez, Best International Feature now has fellow multiple-nominee — and fellow Best Picture and Best Actress contender — I'm Still Here in its sights. Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles has notched up two nods in this category over his career, and winning for his Fernanda Torres-led account of love, loss and holding onto life under the shadow of a dictatorship would be an extra-nice feat given he was last in contention for Central Station starring Torres' mother Fernanda Montenegro. Dialogue-free animated marvel Flow deserves to win every award that it's nominated for, so this and Best Animated Feature, but The Seed of the Sacred Fig is as powerful as filmmaking gets — with Mohammad Rasoulof (There Is No Evil) fighting on- and off-screen against the regime that's long tried to silence his voice. Best Animated Feature The nominees: Flow Inside Out 2 Memoir of a Snail Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl The Wild Robot Should win: Flow Could win: The Wild Robot Will win: Flow Flow's title couldn't be more perfect. To watch Latvia's first-ever film to be nominated for an Oscar is to swirl, surge and sweep along with the gorgeous dialogue-free feature, and with the animals — a cat, some dogs, birds, a capybara, a lemur and more — that are trying to survive, and learn how to heal together, when a flood gushes in. It's astonishing. The Wild Robot doesn't scrap chatter, but it too is heartfelt and wondrous as it watches animals carve out an existence — here, with the sudden arrival of a robot (voiced wonderfully by Lupita Nyong'o) disrupting the usual status quo, and also redefining what makes a family. Australian claymation Memoir of a Snail would easily win in many previous years, deservedly so. For big-name animation studios Pixar and Aardman, it doesn't look likely that Inside Out 2 and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl will back up Inside Out and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit's past Oscars. Best Documentary Feature The nominees: Black Box Diaries No Other Land Porcelain War Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat Sugarcane Should win: Black Box Diaries Could win: Porcelain War Will win: No Other Land Fury or hope? What takes home 2025's Best Documentary Feature prize might come down to how voters want to feel. There's no escaping anger while watching No Other Land or Black Box Diaries, both deeply personal docos featuring their filmmakers and telling their stories — one about the Israeli campaign of displacement in the West Bank region of Masafer Yatta, the other about a Japanese sexual-assault survivor taking on the system that won't punish her attacker. In Sugarcane, too, digging into the abuse experienced at a Catholic Church-run mission school isn't just a job for Julian Brave NoiseCat, nor an outrage-free watch for audiences. Porcelain War heads to Ukraine, as 2024's victor 20 Days in Mariupol did — but there's more optimism in its heroing the power of art, even in small acts, amid the fight. It's also among Australia's Oscar hopes for 2025, as an Aussie co-production. The winners of the 2025 Oscars will be announced on Monday, March 3, Australian time. For further details, head to the awards' website. Wondering where to watch this year's Oscar contenders? We've put together a rundown for Australia.
Our city is constantly changing and evolving, with longstanding Sydney streets being treated to makeovers, new pavilions being built and multi-million dollar snow resorts coming to Penrith. Among all these big infrastructure changes, small and carefully designed spaces are always popping up as well. 2021 has seen an awe-inspiring concert venue open in Chippendale, a new food and drink precinct finally welcome in patrons in South Eveleigh and two new multi-storey venues add new bars and restaurants to historic buildings. We've compiled a list of our six favourite spaces that have emerged in Sydney this year. These are the spaces that are pushing things forward with breathtaking visuals, sustainable community spaces or exciting new areas to explore.
It's bloody hard to get anywhere from Australia, so we Aussies tend to take our holidays seriously. A new survey from travel consultancy Forward Travel has analysed data from the Department of Home Affairs' Overseas Arrivals and Departures to reveal where Australians have been travelling since 2021. The report ranks global destinations, clearly outlining the winners and losers in attracting Australian tourists. Unsurprisingly, the top spots remained consistent. As expected, Indonesia continues to dominate Australian travel trends. With Bali's beautiful landscapes, proximity, and affordability, Indonesia remains one of the top travel destinations for Australians. Likewise, New Zealand maintains its strong standing due to family ties and its proximity to Australia, it would be shocking to see it fall from favour. Singapore also features prominently, serving as both a central transit hub and a destination in its own right. The USA, UAE, Thailand, and Fiji remain solid contenders. These destinations have remained relatively stable in rankings, serving as "comfort corridors" for Australians, places we trust and return to, even as other destinations gain popularity. Surging up the rankings, Japan, Vietnam, and India have emerged as some of the most-travelled destinations since 2021. Driven by culture, food, ski tourism, safety, and a favourable exchange rate, Japan has experienced the most dramatic rise, jumping from 20th in 2021–22 to fourth in 2024–25, attracting over one million Australian visitors. Vietnam has also seen remarkable growth, positioning itself as an affordable alternative to Thailand. From roughly 6,000 Australian visitors in 2021–22, the number skyrocketed to over 200,000 in 2024–25. Although Malaysia briefly overtook Vietnam in 2022–24, Vietnam reclaimed its lead by 2024–25, reflecting a developing rivalry between the two destinations. India represents the most unpredictable trajectory, dipping in and out of the top 20 before returning in 2024–25. As traveller confidence increased, many Australians chose India for its profound cultural immersion and transformative travel experiences. Australians continue to favour destinations that are familiar, affordable, and easily accessible, while rewarding countries that actively invest in tourism marketing and infrastructure. At the bottom of the rankings are countries such as Samoa, Syria, Guinea, Montenegro, Uruguay, and Zimbabwe. Political instability, limited flight connectivity, and inadequate tourism promotion pushed these countries to the bottom of the rankings. However, Uruguay and Zimbabwe have shown some improvement in recent years, climbing out of the lowest tier, suggesting signs of stabilisation. Countries that once held mid-tier positions but have since fallen into obscurity include Mexico and Peru, likely due to increased competition and a decline in their appeal to Australian travellers. Other countries such as Oman, Dominica, and Malawi have remained consistently in the lower tiers, showing minimal movement. Oman's ranking has fluctuated, particularly appearing in the bottom tier in 2021–22, disappearing entirely, then re-emerging in 2024–25. Across regions, African nations struggle due to a lack of direct flights, higher travel costs, and political instability. Latin America and the Caribbean face the challenge of long travel times and distance. Meanwhile, the Asia-Pacific's lesser-known destinations and parts of Central Asia have yet to capitalise on their transit potential and translate it into tourism demand. As a result, these regions remain anchored toward the bottom of the rankings. Now that we've entered spring, it's not too early to start planning for the travel trends of 2026. So the question is: where will you be headed next? Ready for your next getaway? Dive into Forward Travel's expert report and see which destinations are topping travellers' lists. Images: Suratman Alimuddin, RuslanKaln, Drazen Zigic, Mikolajn, Igor Kovalev, Wiley Wilkins
After opening 90 bars over the past eight years, bringing its worldwide footprint to 94, Scottish brewery BrewDog has finally set up shop in Australia. And, sprawled across a hefty parcel of land by the banks of the Brisbane River, it has arrived with a splash. That said, while a brand new jetty has just been built right next to the company's Murarrie site — which has been dubbed DogTap Brisbane — don't go planning on pairing your brew with a dip in the ol' Brown Snake. Brisbanites, you really do know better than that. Still, Calvin McDonald, BrewDog's operations manager for Australia, isn't ruling out making the most of DogTap's impressive location. "There aren't many bars in the world that are totally accessible by jet ski," he notes, without giving away what fun activities the company might have in store down the line. If you've been following the brand, you'll know that it has engaged beer-lovers in many inventive ways over the years, including launching a craft beer hotel in the US, brewing up a Subwoofer IPA for pooches and taking to the skies in the world's first craft beer airline. [caption id="attachment_751722" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Pandora Photography[/caption] In Brisbane, brew aficionados can look forward to the BrewDog basics when DogTap opens to the public on Thursday, November 21. Acting as the brand's Australian base, the brewery will pump out beer that'll get shipped around the country. It'll also have a huge taproom with food and plenty of opportunities to learn more about craft beer. There'll be tours of the facility, once the fully automated four-vessel 25-hectolitre brewing system and accompanying canning line is completely up and running in January, while eager drinkers can also enrol in Beer School — aka two-hour guided tasting sessions where one of BrewDog's Cicerone-certified staff will talk you through the BrewDog and craft beer basics. First announced in 2018, and only the company's fourth taproom directly attached to one of its breweries, BrewDog's $30-million street art-covered Brisbane site boasts a range of other reasons to drop by. Heading to the end of a Murarrie industrial estate hasn't ever been high on locals' to-do lists, but making the journey to sip freshly poured cold ones on a 485-square-metre riverside patio soon should be. The sizeable outdoor area comes with views towards Hamilton and the Gateway Bridge, as well as ample seating. There's also a selection of games, such as giant Jenga, giant chess and giant Connect Four. And, both the public and staff car parks are licensed too, so beer festivals and other events could be in DogTap's future. [caption id="attachment_751727" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Pandora Photography[/caption] If you're coming by for the beer, BrewDog's headliners (including its famed Punk IPA) sit alongside a heap of small-batch brews. Nodding to the growing local craft beer scene — one of the reasons that BrewDog chose Brisbane as its Aussie base, McDonald advises — is a rotating range of guest tipples from other Queensland breweries, such as Range Brewing, Currumbin Valley Brewing, Balter, Aether, Brouhaha and Black Hops. All-Australian wines, an Aussie-heavy spirits list and local soft drinks are also on offer, should you want something other than beer. Of course, if you fall into that category, McDonald hopes that BrewDog will convert you. He's adamant that there's a craft beer for everyone, and that anyone who says they don't like beer just hasn't tried the right brew for them yet. Food-wise, it's a lineup of familiar bar favourites. Think 11 types of burgers and eight kinds of pizza — plus Korean-style chicken wings, crispy pork, baby squid and barramundi fritters. On weekends, a brunch menu will feature chicken and waffles, eggs benedict and other classic meals, while you can tuck into two-for-one vegan dishes on Mondays. In addition to 16 blue leather booths and high-top tables, DogTap's industrial indoor area also has arcade games, including Addams Family and The Munsters-themed pinball machines. [caption id="attachment_751728" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Pandora Photography[/caption] Really love BrewDog? There's a merchandise stall that's already been selling items before DogTap even opens. Want a few brews to take home? Stop by the takeaway area on the way out the door. And if you're an interstate BrewDog fan hoping that it'll be coming your way soon, McDonald explains that the plan is to open five Aussie venues in the next five years (then, hopefully, another five before the brewery marks a decade in Australia). Find DogTap Brisbane at 77 Metroplex Avenue, Murarrie from Thursday, November 21. It's open from 12pm–midnight daily. Images: Pandora Photography
Get ready to see 23 words get engraved on a pivotal piece of jewellery: "one ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them". The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has been renewed for a third season, and Sauron's efforts to make the One Ring will be its focus. Yes, Prime Video's prequel series will move closer to the events of The Hobbit movie adaptations and OG live-action Lord of the Rings films. And yes, to do so, there'll be a time jump in its narrative. The streaming platform has announced that the fantasy hit will return for a third season, which is currently in pre-production. To The Hollywood Reporter, it also revealed where the story will head. The War of the Elves and Sauron will be in full swing, as will the Dark Lord's efforts to forge an item to help in his quest for dominance: the ring that becomes so crucial in the books penned by JRR Tolkien. When the new season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will arrive hasn't yet been revealed. Whenever it shows up, the season will continue exploring Middle-earth's history — telling a tale that's taken the elves, dwarves, orcs, wizards and harfoots to everyone's streaming queue, and also featured talking and walking trees, giant spiders and Sauron's chaos. Set in the fantasy realm conjured up by Tolkien — as unrelated animated movie The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, which hit cinemas in late 2024, also is — The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power dives into Middle-earth's Second Age. In season one, a young Galadriel (Morfydd Clark, Saint Maud) had a mission to hunt the enemy, after her brother gave his life doing the same. She saw fighting for fate and destiny as the work for something greater. A young Elrond (Robert Aramayo, The King's Man) was part of that journey, and the big bad who needed staving off was indeed Sauron (Charlie Vickers, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart). Since then, the show has started charting how the rings were forged, as well as Sauron's rise and the impact across Middle-earth. So, it's a battle between good and ascending evil, then, as the Dark Lord keeps pushing his shadowy influence. If you're a little rusty on your LOTR lore, the Second Age lasted for 3441 years, and saw the initial emergence and fall of Sauron, as well as a spate of wars over the coveted rings. Elves feature prominently, and there's plenty to cover, even if Tolkien's works didn't spend that much time on the period — largely outlining the main events in an appendix to the popular trilogy. The Rings of Power remains separate to the big-screen Lord of the Rings revival that was first announced in 2023 and now has new movie Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum in the works. If you're a LoTR fan, there's no such thing as too much for this franchise, though — like breakfast for hobbits. There's obviously no trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season three yet, but check out the trailer for season two below: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power streams via Prime Video. Season three doesn't yet have a release date. Read our review of season one.
After extensive renovations, South Coogee Bowls Club has reopened, introducing a new casual restaurant straightforwardly dubbed Bistro on the Greens. Appropriately titled not only for its location overlooking a bowling green, the design, courtesy of David Veksler's team at Guru Projects (nel., Harry's Bondi, Charlotte's Little Sister), features banana leaf wallpaper, lime coloured cushions and vines cascading from the ceiling. It's kind of like The Greens meets Coogee Pavilion. The space is open and light, flowing seamlessly from indoors to out, making the most of its beachside location. The inspiration, according to Veksler, was "a desire to make the space versatile, flexible and something the community could be proud of." Restaurateurs Filomena and Gary Di Paola (Bankstown's La Piazza) have also refreshed the menu, with pretty old school bistro fare mostly designed for sharing. The usual suspects include caprese salad, a selection of classic pastas, arancini di zucca, well as bistro staples like beef nachos, grilled salmon and parmigiana. But considering its nearness to the ocean, there are also plenty of seafood options, such as chilli mussels, barbecue octopus and garlic prawns. If you're feeling particularly peckish, there's also the Greens Mega Burger with black Angus beef pattie, caramelised onion, pineapple, bacon and Swiss cheese — and it's a bistro, so pair it with sweet potato fries in a mini deep fry basket (you know). And for pizza heads, you'll find an extensive list of options, including the Bistro on the Greens special featuring mozzarella, mushroom, artichokes, sundried tomato, 22 bocconcini, ricotta, wild rocket and prosciutto.
If it's a big blockbuster franchise, it stars Harrison Ford, and it debuted in the 70s or 80s, then it's always coming back to the screen. In 2008, before Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens and its sequels, as well as Blade Runner 2049, that actually first proved true for the Indiana Jones series. Alas, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull wasn't the adventure saga's best effort, but that isn't stopping it from coming back for another go. Cue the fifth Indy flick, aka Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny — and yes, Ford is donning the famous hat once more. Hitting cinemas in late June 2023, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny heads back to the 60s, and uses the Space Race between the US and the Soviet Union as a backdrop. And, it serves up two different looks at Ford, as the just-dropped first trailer shows: Indy in the film's present day and Indy in the past, with the movie using digital de-aging technology. Harrison Ford? Check. Dr Henry Walton 'Indiana' Jones Jr's famous headwear? Check again. That whip? Yep, check. A tale that includes Nazis? Just keep checking those boxes. And yes, the famous John Williams-composed theme tune gets a whirl in the first sneak peek, because it wouldn't be an Indy movie otherwise. Indeed, the icon takes care of the whole score again. The archaeologist's latest outing will bring in a few changes to the series, however. Firstly, Steven Spielberg isn't in the director's chair for the first time ever, handing over the reins to Logan and Ford v Ferrari's James Mangold. And, George Lucas doesn't have a part in the script, either with Mangold co-scripting with Ford v Ferrari's Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth. Cast-wise, expect the return of John Rhys-Davies as Sallah, as well as a heap of new faces. Fleabag's Phoebe Waller-Bridge looks set to keep Indy in step, playing his goddaughter, while Antonio Banderas (Official Competition), Mads Mikkelsen (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore), Thomas Kretschmann (Das Boot), Toby Jones (The English), Boyd Holbrook (The Sandman) also feature — alongside Shaunette Renee Wilson (Black Panther), Oliver Richters (The King's Man) and Ethann Isidore (Mortel) . When it crusades across the big screen, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will arrive a whopping 42 years after Raiders of the Lost Ark, 39 since Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and 34 since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Check out the trailer for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny below: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny releases in cinemas Down Under on June 29, 2023. ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
When a restaurant is named after a dish, you can be pretty sure that it's going to live up to its name. Set beneath an inviting red brick archway, 1915 Lanzhou Beef Noodles is something of a Burwood institution. And it's no surprise its eponymous signature dish — a rich, hearty, aromatic broth with tender beef slices, delicate egg noodles and plenty of coriander and spice — continues to gain legions of new fans with every bowl. The beef-based broth is rich and spicy, as befits its origins from China's frosty northwest. The option is also available for you to customise the noodle saturation levels, shape and width and the spice level of the broth in order to best suit your cravings.
If wild tales about peculiar characters from the early days of circus life intrigue you, perhaps you should take another look at the history behind travelling performers from a First Nations' perspective. Natives Go Wild reveals a dark truth behind the stage and screen versions of so-called pioneering circus purveyors such as PT Barnum — the founder of Barnum & Bailey Circus, which began in 1871. If you don't recognise his name, maybe you'll have heard of 'the greatest showman'? Barnum gave audiences a peculiar mix of what was considered 'exotic', and he became a household name in the process, which has since been celebrated by one of the best selling musicals of all time. This new First Nations cabaret — premiering at the Sydney Opera House from October 22-27 — aims to set the record straight, and entertain you with a touch of darkly comic storytelling and spectacular cabaret performances. In this world-first production, prepare to be amazed not only by the skills of the acrobats but also by the real-life stories of the performers who were coerced — and some kidnapped — to appear in Barnum's 'Ethnological Congress of Strange Tribes'. We've picked out some of the stories you should know about the people who performed for PT Barnum that'll make you think twice about 'the greatest showman'. Read on, then go and see the show for yourself. [caption id="attachment_743514" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Niuean acrobat and aerial contortionist Josephine Mailisi.[/caption] SEE THE REAL 'FIJIAN MERMAID' Still have 'Rewrite the Stars' ringing in your ears from The Greatest Showman? Zendaya and Zac Efron's moves during their love song might have been Hollywood-level impressive, but Niuean acrobat and aerial contortionist Josephine Mailisi can go one better. Mailisi will bring to life the story of a Polynesian performer, who, after falling victim to pneumonia not long after being recruited to the circus, made Barnum realise the power of the 'exotic'. On the passing of his female star, he created an exhibit comprising the torso and head of a juvenile monkey sewn to the back half of a fish, and billed it as 'The Fiji Mermaid' (also Feejee Mermaid). Presented to audiences as 'caught off the coast of Fiji', this creature became a worldwide spectacle and has since been replicated several times over. See Mailisi, a trained dancer, aerial artist and contortionist, take on this fascinatingly morbid tale with mesmerising moves and a whole lot of respect. [caption id="attachment_743517" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Mununjali circus artist Beau James.[/caption] MEASURE UP TO THE 'LITTLE NUGGET' Mununjali circus artist Beau James will play one of the most well-known Aboriginal circus performers, William 'Billy' Jones, AKA 'Little Nugget'. At nine years old, Little Nugget was performing great acts of agility and versatility in the circus — and later he became famous for leaping over 20 horses and "walking a tightrope stretched from the centre pole of the big top down to a tree stump." Originally from Dubbo, Jones travelled all around the country with the circus, and it was the only life he knew. His talent with horses kept him in the business into his later life, and James — an accomplished physical theatre and circus performer — will honour that long career with a few cheeky stunts of their own. [caption id="attachment_744533" align="alignnone" width="1920"] An 1880s poster for 'Australian Cannibal Boomerang Throwers' at PT Barnum's circus.[/caption] HEAR ABOUT THE KIDNAPPED 'CHIEF CANNIBAL' Fans of the 2017 movie The Greatest Showman will know that very tall actor Timothy Hughes played the Strongman — a role based on the real-life story of a Scottish-Canadian giant. In reality, people with physical differences (like the Strongman) weren't recruited into PT Barnum's circus as willingly as the movie suggests. Tambo, a senior Aboriginal man from Palm Island, was kidnapped by one of PT Barnum's henchman. Billed as part of an act called the Aboriginal Cannibal Boomerang Throwers, the 'chief cannibal' became a spectacle even after his death (from pneumonia only a few months after his arrival in the circus). Barnum embalmed Tambo's body and wheeled him out in front of curious audiences, as a way to continue the success of one of his drawcard performers. Sadly, Tambo's body was left behind in Chicago and only uncovered by chance in 1994, when he was brought back to his home country to have proper funeral rites performed. In Natives Go Wild, you'll hear Tambo's story with searing social commentary and more humour than you might expect. [caption id="attachment_744533" align="alignnone" width="1920"] A 1945 poster for 'The Wizard of the High Wire' featuring Con Colleano; performer Waangenga Blanco.[/caption] MEET THE 'SPANISH' SOMERSAULTER Con Colleano — who will be played by Waangenga Blanco (a Bangarra dance who you might know from films Bran Nue Dae and Spear) — was the first person to successfully perform the forward somersault on a tightrope. The Wizard of the High Wire, as he became known, eventually became one of the highest paid and most celebrated circus acts in the 1920s. But Colleano, who adopted a Spanish bullfighter appearance, was actually an Aboriginal man from Lismore. The new persona wasn't a decision made by fancy, but one of survival. He concealed his identity as a way to give him freedom to travel around the world and become successful, independent of the Aborigines Protection Ban that prohibited Indigenous people to earn money. 'Natives Go Wild' (October 22-27) features the incredible talents of First Nations performers, and is a celebration of the resilience and strength of First Peoples. Tickets start from $39. Book now, right here.
When Disney revealed that it was moving into streaming, it also announced a slew of high-profile titles designed to keep everyone's eyes glued to the company's new platform. Naturally, that included Marvel, with a number of new Disney+ series commissioned to broaden out the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If you loved Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), Sam Wilson/Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Vision (Paul Bettany) and Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) on the big screen, you'll now get to enjoy more of each in a variety of spinoff shows. So far, in typical Mouse House style, details have been kept close to Disney's chest. We know that The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and WandaVision are due to release later in 2020, with Loki set to follow in 2021. Thanks to their titles, we obviously also know who they're about. And, we know that they'll all star the familiar faces that brought the characters to big-screen fame — and that they'll each run for six episodes apiece. Broadly, we know the premise for each series, too. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will take place after the aforementioned huge blockbuster, following its eponymous characters as they team up in the aftermath. As for WandaVision, it's a sitcom-style series exploring the home lives of Wanda and Vision, although there's undoubtedly more to it. And when Loki hits next year, it'll see the God of Mischief return — and it'll be set after Endgame. Until now, however, we haven't seen any footage from any of the three shows — but, during this year's Super Bowl, Marvel dropped its first sneak peek. The company released a combined teaser for the trio of series, so there's still not much in the way of substantial detail. That said, if you've been hanging out to see what's in store post-Avengers: Endgame, a quick glimpse is better than nothing. Check out the teaser below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=62EB4JniuTc&feature=emb_logo The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and WandaVision will hit Disney+ sometime later in 2020, with Loki due to premiere in 2021 — we'll update you with release dates when they're announced.
While you'll want to visit specialty roasters Sample Coffee's Chippendale spot to try its coffee and croissants, you'll also want to check out its digs. Dubbed Old Gold, the cafe is located inside a converted MacRobertson's confectionery factory — the OG makers of Cherry Ripe, Freddo Frogs and, yes, Old Gold. All the coffee beans come from Sample's St Peters roastery, and are put to the test through the cafe's brewing a selection of single origin black brews and a house-blend dubbed 'Sweet Tooth' for all your flat whites. Keeping within the history of the building, the cafe has been filled with brass trimmings, dark timber and curved lines, matching with the pre-existing exposed brick walls and concrete floors. Fittings come from many of Sample's St Peters neighbours, like a ten-seat custom table from Jonathan West, plant pots from Inartisan, and dry flowers from florists The Wilds and Sweet Pea & Honey Bee. Local suppliers are keeping the kitchen well stocked, too, with fresh produce coming from The Vege Box, Leichhardt patisserie Penny Fours whipping up the croissants and bakers ThoroughBread supplying sourdough baguettes and bagels. The former owner of Camperdown's Little Lord cafe, Graeme Alexander, is responsible for the menu, which is heavy on plant-based dishes for breakfast and lunch. The all-day menu houses cafe classics such as the (renowned) breakfast roll with a smashed poached egg, fresh slaw, cheese, onion relish, house-made pickles, & Big Heart's hot sauce, the (beloved) avo on toast with roast cherry tomatoes and garlic oil, to which you can add feta for an extra $2, and the (classic?) house-made granola which comes with yogurt & seasonal fruit. Other tempting treats featured on the menu include toasties, croissants, bruschetta and salads. There is also an array of drinks to choose from, including various coffees, teas, hot chocolates and juices — even beer if you're up for it. For a drink without the caffeine, there are a few herbal teas from Lidcombe specialists Tea Craft, some specialty fruity sodas and single origin hot chocolates from Aussie chocolate producers. Appears in: The Best Cafes in Sydney
Something delightful has been happening in cinemas across the country. After months spent empty, with projectors silent, theatres bare and the smell of popcorn fading, Australian picture palaces are back in business — spanning 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, comedies, music documentaries, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent all your time of late glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of new films are hitting cinemas so that you can do just that — and we've rounded up, watched and reviewed everything on offer this week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wnmC7uLTNQ THE DISSIDENT If you know even the slightest thing about the circumstances surrounding Jamal Khashoggi's death, it's impossible to watch The Dissident without feeling angry. That's most viewers' starting mood, given that the Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist's assassination has garnered ample media attention — and Oscar-winning director Brian Fogel (Icarus) is well aware of how much coverage the subject has received, and of how the world feels about the situation. Indeed, his thorough and exacting documentary both feeds upon and fuels that shock and ire. The mood is tense, the commentary is pointed and the prevailing sentiment is savage. Both rage and outrage permeate each frame, unsurprisingly so, as the film lays bare the brutal facts surrounding Khashoggi's murder, its lead-up and its aftermath. No other tone would be acceptable. Nothing other than dismay, abhorrence and anger would be either. When you're making a movie about a man who entered his nation's embassy to obtain paperwork so that he could get married, then left it in dismembered pieces while his bride-to-be waited outside, how could anything other than fury, horror and alarm eventuate? Although the details have already been well-documented since October 2, 2018, they're still reassembled in The Dissident. Accordingly, the doco tells of Khashoggi's visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul just over a year after fleeing his country, after which he was never seen alive again. He wanted to marry academic Hatice Cengiz, his Turkish fiancée. To do so, he needed a document certifying that he was no longer wed to his prior wife. He'd first sought that necessary certification from the embassy just a few days earlier, so they knew that he'd be returning — and once he stepped inside once more, he was ambushed, attacked and killed by a newly arrived team of Saudi agents. Cengiz contacted the authorities when the man she thought she'd be spending the rest of her life with didn't surface, but the Saudi government claimed that the exiled reporter had left via a back entrance. It didn't take long to ascertain the truth, as was suspected from the moment he failed to reemerge. The official story changed several times, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman denied any knowledge of a premeditated plot, but the fact remains that Khashoggi was slaughtered by operatives from his homeland. Read our full review. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGLmTd8q3Ec&t=7s THE UNITED STATES VS BILLIE HOLIDAY More than 80 years after it was first sung and heard, Billie Holiday's 'Strange Fruit' still isn't easily forgotten. Drawn from a poem penned to protest lynchings, it's meant to shock and haunt. It's designed to galvanise and mobilise, too, as drawing attention to the extrajudicial killings of Black Americans should. Indeed, so vivid is the song in its language — "Black bodies swingin' in the southern breeze" describes the third line — US authorities demanded that Holiday stop performing it. She refused repeatedly, so there were repercussions. Concerned that the track would spark change, inspire Holiday's fans to fight for civil rights and justice, and perhaps motivate riots against against oppression and discrimination as well, the US Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics went after the musician for her drug use. If it couldn't get her to cease crooning the controversial tune via other means, such as overt warnings and a prominent police presence at her shows, it'd do whatever it could to keep her from reaching the stage night after night. With Andra Day (Marshall) turning in an intense, impassioned, career-defining portrayal as its eponymous figure (and in her first lead film role, too), so tells The United States vs Billie Holiday, the latest Oscar-nominated biopic to step through its namesake's life. Back in 1972, Lady Sings the Blues loosely adapted Holiday's autobiography of the same name, enlisting Diana Ross to play the singer — but, in taking inspiration instead from Johann Hari's non-fiction book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, this latest big-screen vision of the music icon's story adopts its own angle. Holiday's troubled childhood and youth has its part in this tale, which is scripted for the screen by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. Her addiction, and the personal woes that she tried to blot out, clearly don't escape filmmaker Lee Daniels' (The Butler) attention, either. But The United States vs Billie Holiday also falls in alongside Seberg, MLK/FBI and Judas and the Black Messiah in interrogating bleak truths about mid-20th century America. In a film that manages to be both rousing and standard, that includes surveying the misplaced priorities of its government during multiple administrations, and the blatant determination shown by an array of agencies under various presidents to undermine, persecute and silence those considered a supposedly un-American threat to the status quo. Read our full review. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNE7ap2lOnU MORTAL KOMBAT No one enjoys watching someone else mash buttons. While it's a passable way to spend a few minutes, losing interest quickly simply comes with the territory. That's how viewing Mortal Kombat feels as well, except that watching your friends play any of the martial arts video game franchise's 22 different arcade and console titles since 1992 (or any game at all) would be far more entertaining. Shot in South Australia and marking the feature debut of filmmaker Simon McQuoid, the latest attempt to bring the popular series to the big screen — following a first try in 1995 and a sequel in 1997 — feels like watching cosplay, too. The movie's cast literally dresses up in the outfits needed to recreate the game's characters, of course, but the film shouldn't so overtly resemble fans donning costumes at a pop culture convention. And yet, Mortal Kombat evokes this situation from the moment its 17th century Japan-set prologue, which is also its best scene, comes to an end. After establishing a mythic and bloody backstory for the movie's narrative as a whole, the character that'll become an undead ninja ghost called Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada, Westworld) and his prophecised descendants, this B-grade flick is happy to, in fact. It's not just the violence that's cartoonish here; it's every glare exchanged and word uttered, with much of the script trading in cliches, dramatic pauses and catchphrases. Mortal Kombat's gaming fanbase may be eager to see their beloved characters given flesh and blood, face off against each other and spout lines that usually emanate from a much smaller screen, but that doesn't make a movie engaging. Nor can a flimsy screenplay by first-timer Greg Russo and Wonder Woman 1984's Dave Callaham, which follows the battle between Earthrealm and Outworld — one that'll be lost by the former if an MMA fighter named Cole Young (Lewis Tan, Wu Assassins), who bears a dragon birthmark, doesn't team up with the other figures with the same marking to stop humanity from losing for the tenth time. That's where the no-nonsense Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee, Black Water: Abyss) comes in, and also the grating, wisecracking Kano (Josh Lawson, Long Story Short). The villainous Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim, Warrior) might be threatening to freeze all of earth's champions so that Outworld's Shang Tsung (Chin Han, Skyscraper) can rig the tournament before it even happens, but Mortal Kombat still has time — and far too much of it — to spend pondering supernatural destinies and letting an over-acting, always grating Lawson mug for attempted laughs. The end result is intentionally ridiculous, and presumably unintentionally dull, all while setting up an unearned sequel. And although brutal enough amidst the silliness for an R rating, even the film's fight scenes merely go through the motions, especially given the heights that films like The Raid and John Wick have scaled in with their eye-popping action choreography over the past decade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YZuNQLSJlQ EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE In The Nightingale, Sam Claflin wasn't charming, kindly or gallant. He was worlds away from his roles in rom-com Love, Rosie, weepie drama Me Before You and the page-to-screen Hunger Games franchise — and, playing a supporting but still key part in the exceptional 2019 film, he was excellent. Alas, while he remains in darker territory with Every Breath You Take, this psychological thriller isn't a highlight on his or anyone's resume. The good news: it doesn't feature the 1983 single by The Police that shares the film's title. The not-so-great news: it is indeed about someone surveilling others, so it must've taken the production's entire reserves of restraint not to include that song. Little subtlety seems to be displayed elsewhere, including by Claflin, and little intelligence, either. In development for almost a decade, once set to be directed by Misery's Rob Reiner, and also slated to star Harrison Ford and Zac Efron over the years, the film focuses on the fallout from a psychologist's decision to talk to one of his patients about his own problems. Not long after gushing to a lecture hall filled with students about his successful new technique, however, he finds himself the target of a vindictive stalker who is intent on destroying his entire family's lives. Debut screenwriter David Murray has clearly seen Fatal Attraction, Unfaithful, Cape Fear and Fear, and The Silence of the Lambs as well, and he's not afraid to mash pieces of each together here. Looking pensive, grappling with family woes again but worlds away from his Oscar-winning performance in Manchester by the Sea, Casey Affleck (The Old Man and the Gun) plays Philip, the analyst in question. He crosses paths with James (Claflin, Enola Holmes) at the scene of a tragedy, then finds him knocking on his door — and soon his wife Grace (Michelle Monaghan, The Craft: Legacy) and teenage daughter Lucy (India Eisley, Dead Reckoning) are both bumping into the newcomer seemingly everywhere they go. In an already tense household thanks to an accident years earlier, James easily upsets the status quo. When Philip starts having professional problems as well, the trio's struggles only deepen. It's hard to guess what attracted this starry cast to such a routine film, but it definitely isn't the pulpy script or Vaughn Stein's (Inheritance) overboiled direction. Indeed, in a movie that somehow thinks that being as blatant as possible will ramp up the suspense — which, unsurprisingly, it doesn't — only the icy visuals by cinematographer Michael Merriman (another Inheritance alum) garner much attention. Well, that and the screechy score by Marlon Espino (also returning from Inheritance), although the latter does so with the same obviousness that characterises almost everything about the feature. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COLOJaM3k_M SISTER More than once during Sister, An Ran (Zhang Zifeng, Detective Chinatown 3) is reminded that her status as a sibling — and as a woman — is burdened with strong expectations in China. With her much-younger brother An Ziheng (Kim Darren Yowon) earning pride of place in her parents' hearts, and in Chinese society's patriarchal hierarchy in general, she's meant to defer her dreams and desires in favour of her family's male heir. That's just what's done, and always has been. And, after the pair's mother and father are killed in a car accident, no one can quite understand why An Ran is determined to buck convention. But, after weathering a childhood coloured by her dad's disappointment about her gender, she has spent years trying to break free from her past. A nurse hoping to gain acceptance into medical school so that she can become a doctor, and so distanced from her parents and brother that she doesn't even know the latter, she doesn't just vehemently disagree with the idea that she should now devote her life to An Ziheng; she refuses to abide by it. Instead, An Ran wants to sell the family apartment, find adoptive parents for her sibling and continue working towards her own future. Neither director Yin Ruoxin (Farewell, My Lad) nor screenwriter You Xiaoying (Love Education) shies away from the harsh reality facing their protagonist in Sister, or from the fact that her plight is emblematic of the nation's women in a much broader sense. And, for most of its duration, their sensitive but clear-eyed drama firmly and unflinchingly tackles the ramifications of simply being born female in China. The continued pressure directed An Ran's way and the treatment she receives for not toeing the line aren't the film's only sources of conflict, with class differences and the way that power structures play out both domestically and professionally also playing their part in the movie's layered narrative. They're aided by Zhang's weighty performance, too — a portrayal that segues seamlessly back and forth from defiant and committed to exhausted and exasperated, and shows both the will to eschew norms and the weariness from the constant battle on multiple levels. The film's boldness is eventually undercut, though. Budding within its naturalistically lit imagery and its often roving and restless frames is an awareness that the bonds of blood will eventually pull at An Ran. The script ensures that her growing bond with her brother feels genuine; however, it's also a far more sentimental turn of events than Sister indulges otherwise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SodO2VN0iYY SIX MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT Eddie Izzard takes inspiration from her home town of Bexhill-on-Sea in Six Minutes to Midnight, using its pre-World War II history as the basis for an intriguing but also muddled thriller. Before the conflict broke out, the coastal spot was home to the Augusta Victoria College, where the daughters of high-ranking Germans were sent to finish their education. In Izzard's hands as the film's star, executive producer and co-writer — the latter with Celyn Jones (The Vanishing) and director Andy Goddard (A Kind of Murder) — this real-life scenario gives rise to espionage antics. She plays Thomas Miller, the school's new teacher, and also a spy sent to keep tabs on the students' whereabouts for British intelligence. Headmistress Miss Rocholl (Judi Dench, Blithe Spirit) dotes on the girls, and naively sees only camaraderie in the college's existence, but Miller and his superiors are concerned that the institution's pupils could be smuggled out in secret. It doesn't help that Ilse Keller (Carla Juri, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit), the school's only German employee, hardly seems trustworthy. The pro-Nazi ideology infused into her lessons is hardly a promising sign, but soon it's Miller that is the object of suspicion, despite his efforts to uncover just who in English society has been pledging their allegiance abroad. No one can fault Izzard's interest in Augusta Victoria College, or her eagerness to bring its little-known place in Britain's past to the screen. But Six Minutes to Midnight is so caught up in being a spy film — and one that takes its cues from Alfred Hitchcock at that — that it serves up a paper-thin story that's on the verge of blowing over in the East Sussex breeze. Twists, double crosses, wavering loyalty, murder, chases, interrogations and clandestine plots all ensue, but with few surprises, and with exactly why the students' possible return to Germany would be so catastrophic never fully fleshed out. Handsome seaside scenery does abound, though, and so does a committed performance from Izzard. She spends much of her screen-time running, as she often does in reality — completing 43 marathons in 51 days in 2009, 27 in 27 days in 2016 and 32 in 31 days earlier this year — but her wit and charisma are always evident. Saddled with a one-note role, Dench is less convincing, but supporting players Jim Broadbent (King of Thieves) and James D'Arcy (Avengers: Endgame) make the most of their small parts as a kindly bus driver and a wily detective respectively. As for the young women, the fact that they're primarily regarded as a group, rather than given the time and space to convey their personalities, speaks volumes about their function as the feature's MacGuffin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xXFm78O6P8 MOON ROCK FOR MONDAY Kurt Martin, the first-time feature writer/director behind Moon Rock for Monday, must owe much of his film education to Australian cinema of the 90s. His road-trip drama — which is also a coming-of-age tale and a crime thriller, and happens to be set in the 90s, too — takes clearcut cues from The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Two Hands. Here, though, a 12-year-old girl and an older teen sit at the centre of the narrative. Thankfully, while the nods towards other prominent homegrown movies are obvious, these sources of inspiration don't cast an overbearing shadow. There isn't much about Moon Rock for Monday that proves overtly novel, but it doesn't simply trudge in other films' footsteps, either. The importance of the feature's canny casting can't be understated, with fellow debutant Ashlyn Louden-Gamble a winsome presence as the titular pre-teen and George Pullar (Playing for Keeps) infusing his wayward but well-meaning jewellery store thief-turned-fugitive with more depth than might be expected. Indeed, their rapport as their characters first evade the police on Sydney's streets, then take to the highway towards the Northern Territory, gives this warm-hearted movie enough charm to do more than simply coast by. Named for the day she was born, Monday's (Louden-Gamble) entire life has revolved around an illness that requires frequent medical treatment. But, despite the lived-in weariness and worry perennially plastered across the face of her dad Bob (Aaron Jeffrey, The Flood), she handles the situation with a sunny disposition, an eagerness to see the world and an obsession with Uluru — or Moon Rock, as she calls it. Then, this father-daughter duo stumble into Tyler's (Pullar) orbit. Soon Monday is by the latter's side, indulging her thirst for adventure and tagging along as he hightails it out of town. Bob isn't the only one desperate to find them, with Detective Lionell (David Field, Mortal Kombat) also on their trail in the aftermath of Tyler's light-fingered ways. From the outset, even before Monday and Tyler start heading west, there's an episodic feel to Moon Rock for Monday; however, flitting from one narrative incident to the next suits the road-trip premise. When nothing but landscape surrounds its central pair, that dusty red expanse does plenty of heavy lifting — a scene outside of Coober Pedy is particularly striking, both visually and emotionally — but this is still a promising big-screen start for its director and leads alike. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyopYXVJNmQ THIS LITTLE LOVE OF MINE Blatantly formulaic rom-coms are cinema's version of junk food, as Netflix has been trying to use to its advantage. Scroll through the platform's catalogue, especially around Christmas, and a wealth of straight-to-streaming movies that eagerly play up every trope and cliche await — but being easy to make and undemanding to consume isn't the same as being worth watching. This Little Love of Mine is debuting in cinemas; however, it'll feel at home when it does find its way into a streaming service's lineup. Its story is that predictable and its dialogue is that hoary. The setup: ambitious workaholic lawyer Laura (Saskia Hampele, The Heights) is certain that she'll finally make partner and be able to start doing worthwhile work helping small business owners if she convinces a building magnate's (Martin Portus, Home and Away) island-dwelling boat captain grandson Chip (Liam McIntyre, Them) to take over his billion-dollar development company. The catch: the island, Sapphire Cove, is where she grew up before she left for her high-powered, big-city life in San Francisco, and Chip is the childhood best friend she's thought of fondly over the years, but hasn't seen since she departed. Romantic comedies don't need to trade in surprises. When you're just aiming to bring two characters together so that they can presumably live happily ever after, twists aren't a necessary feature. But viewers should enjoy their time watching said central figures overcome the obligatory obstacles that come their way on the inevitable path to becoming a couple. They should get invested in their plights, be charmed by their personalities and care about their fates —and, even with the ultimate outcome remaining obvious to anyone and everyone, no one should feel as if they're just peering on as a movie works through a checklist. While Hampele and McIntyre do their best to liven up Georgia Harrison's (Rip Tide) rote script, they can't nudge This Little Love of Mine into engaging waters. The same applies to Lynn Gilmartin (How Do You Know Chris?) as Laura and Chip's fellow lifelong friend Gem, who proves the kind of dutiful sidekick-slash-trusty confidant character that could've strolled out of almost every rom-com ever made. Also unable to lift the material: the eye-catching Far North Queensland backdrop, which sets a suitably swoon-worthy scene; however, the repeated palm tree and beach shots peppered throughout the film by first-time director Christine Luby and cinematographer Simon Harding (Ruben Guthrie) begin to feel like filler quickly. If you're wondering what else is currently screening in cinemas — or has been lately — check out our rundown of new films released in Australia on January 1, January 7, January 14, January 21 and January 28; February 4, February 11, February 18 and February 25; March 4, March 11, March 18 and March 25; and April 1 and April 8. You can also read our full reviews of a heap of recent movies, such as Nomadland, Pieces of a Woman, The Dry, Promising Young Woman, Summerland, Ammonite, The Dig, The White Tiger, Only the Animals, Malcolm & Marie, News of the World, High Ground, Earwig and the Witch, The Nest, Assassins, Synchronic, Another Round, Minari, Firestarter — The Story of Bangarra, The Truffle Hunters, The Little Things, Chaos Walking, Raya and the Last Dragon, Max Richter's Sleep, Judas and the Black Messiah, Girls Can't Surf, French Exit, Saint Maud, Godzilla vs Kong, The Painter and the Thief, Nobody, The Father, Willy's Wonderland, Collective, Voyagers, Gunda and Supernova. Top image: Takashi Seida.
Something delightful is happening in cinemas across the country. After months spent empty, with projectors silent, theatres bare and the smell of popcorn fading, Australian picture palaces are starting to reopen — spanning both big chains and smaller independent sites in Sydney and Brisbane (and, until the newly reinstated stay-at-home orders, Melbourne as well). 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 over the past three months, including new releases, comedies, music documentaries, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent all your time of late glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of new films are hitting cinemas so that you can do just that — and we've rounded up, watched and reviewed everything on offer this week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQqiDZQScVA&feature=youtu.be THE KING OF STATEN ISLAND Judd Apatow's latest lengthy arrested development-fuelled comedy (see also: The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Funny People and Trainwreck), The King of Staten Island unsurprisingly meanders. Loosely inspired by Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson's life, it's also thankfully candid, raw, funny and exceptionally well-cast. Oozing a different kind of BDE — that'd be big daddy's boy energy here, and even big deadbeat energy — Davidson plays 24-year-old Staten Island resident Scott. A high-school dropout who dreams of opening a combined tattoo parlour and restaurant, he still lives at home with his overworked nurse mother Margie (Marisa Tomei) and his college-bound younger sister Claire (Maude Apatow), and he still can't quite cope with the death of his firefighter father on the job 17 years earlier. Then, after making a poor decision involving a tattoo gun and a nine-year-old, he ends up with irate firey Ray (Bill Burr) first yelling on his doorstep, then dating his mum. Born and raised in Staten Island himself, 26-year-old Davidson lost his own firefighter dad in 2001's September 11 attacks — and, unsurprisingly, he co-wrote The King of Staten Island's script. Hanging out with someone who is playing a part, but has also mostly been there and done plenty of what viewers see on-screen, the movie always sports a lived-in vibe as a result. This is an Apatow movie, so the usual manchild escapades and humour do apply. But, more importantly, The King of Staten Island is a Pete Davidson movie — and that has a considerable impact. Apatow often shapes his films around his stars; however, in a flick that undeniably relies upon a formula but also boasts rougher edges, the loose, lanky, brutally self-aware Davidson might be his best lead yet. Read our full review. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjQKlZzNPtw&feature=youtu.be WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE If you'd ever wondered what might happen if Dazed and Confused, Boyhood and the Before trilogy filmmaker Richard Linklater channelled his inner Wes Anderson, well, wonder no more. Where'd You Go, Bernadette answers that question, albeit without a hefty dose of visual symmetry. A quirky collection of characters remains present, though, as does a dysfunctional family dynamic, structural playfulness, eye-catching decor and ample whimsy. But, despite the efforts of both Linklater and his cast — as led by Cate Blanchett in a forceful, fussy but still compelling performance as the eponymous former hotshot architect who's been stuck in a creative rut for 20 years, and also featuring Billy Crudup, Kristen Wiig, Laurence Fishburne and impressive newcomer Emma Nelson — this page-to-screen comedy-drama largely proves far less offbeat, and far more bland and conventional, than it intends. Adapted from Maria Semple's novel of the same name, Where'd You Go, Bernadette first introduces its central figure as she's kayaking around Antarctica, then jumps back five weeks to her regular Seattle life. She dotes on her teenage daughter (Nelson), is accustomed to her computer animator husband (Crudup) being too busy with his work at Microsoft and keeps trying to transform the sprawling ex-schoolhouse they call home. She also argues with her busybody neighbour (Wiig) and dictates emails to her virtual assistant in India. But, Bernadette struggles to sleep, is generally anxious and is far from thrilled about the family's impending trip south. Enigmatic, peppery and reclusive, she's a woman in crisis, even if she doesn't completely realise it — and yet, as the film slowly explains why and gives her a new awakening, it frequently plays as simplistic and cliched rather textured and complex. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5JMeVw2zxA RESISTANCE The horrors of the Second World War are undeniable and should never be forgotten. But those horrors have been brought to the big screen so many times now — and, often, in much the same kind of soft-toned historical dramas that tell their narratives in basically the same way — that movies about the conflict and the atrocious actions of the Nazis don't always hit as hard as they should. Take Resistance, for example. It not only relays an intrinsically emotive story about the fightback in occupied France and the immense efforts to save orphaned Jewish children, but draws upon a remarkable true tale involving the teenage actions of famous actor and mime Marcel Marceau. And yet, although it serves up a heartfelt tribute to the latter, as well chronicling a chapter of the well-documented war that definitely stands out, the end result still feels as by-the-numbers as World War II films come. With Jesse Eisenberg stepping into the late, great Marceau's shoes, the movie heads back to the performer's adolescence — with his butcher father (Karl Markovics) disapproving of his choice of career, France on the cusp of invasion and his cousin (Son of Saul's Géza Röhrig) overseeing a local effort to help kids in need. The idea of 36-year-old Eisenberg playing a teen doesn't just sound like a stretch, but proves it on-screen, although it's one of the least generic elements of the feature. Written and directed by Venezuelan filmmaker Jonathan Jakubowicz (Hands of Stone), Resistance ticks every expected box narratively, thematically and stylistically, even when it's championing the life-saving importance of art and showcasing expressive mime work. It also makes little use of the rest of its acting lineup, including Harry Potter's Clémence Poésy, Game of Thrones' Bella Ramsey and Edgar Ramírez. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAUeZAO-Klw FOLLOW ME We've long since reached the point where formulaic, thoroughly forgettable horror movies combine social media-driven storylines with heavy lashings of blood-splattered torture porn — and in Follow Me, it's as terrible as it sounds. Written and directed by Escape Room's Will Wernick, this routine Moscow-set shocker jumps on another bandwagon, too, with the filmmaker clearly quite fond of folks trying to puzzle their way out of locked spaces in a limited amount of time (and with death the punishment for failing). The movie's protagonist, Cole (Keegan Allen), is an attention-seeking vlogger who records and streams almost every moment of his existence. He has turned his antics into a career, putting himself in extreme situations with an 'escape real life' angle and motto (shortened to #ERL, naturally), with more than 12 million viewers watching on. Looking to up the ante for his next clip, he jets off to Russia with his pals (Holland Roden, Denzel Whitaker, George Janko and Siya) — where a connected friend of a friend (Ronen Rubinstein) has arranged a grim and gruelling escape room experience that's been tailored specifically to Cole. Surprises aren't Follow Me's strong suit. Indeed, the film is so laden with cliches and tropes, it's easy to predict where the narrative is headed from the very first frame — even as it tries to trade in twists and tension. Accordingly, the movie becomes an exercise in watching grating characters make stupid decisions that lead to gory altercations, all while running around a series of dark, gritty places that could've been ripped from the Saw or Hostel franchises. To the astonishment of no one, the end result is never as unsettling or entertaining as Wernick thinks, or even unsettling or entertaining at all. And an attempt to serve up a message about the always-on, always-performing nature of social media — and about obnoxious American tourists abroad as well — is as well-worn as the rest of the film. If you're wondering what else is currently screening in cinemas, check out our rundown of new films released in Australia on July 2 and July 9 — and our full reviews of The Personal History of David Copperfield and Waves. Top images: Where'd You Go, Bernadette © 2019 ANNAPURNA PICTURES, LLC. All Rights Reserved; The King of Staten Island © 2020 UNIVERSAL STUDIOS. All Rights Reserved.
Fans of weighty Australian fare that reckons with the country's past are fans of the Mystery Road franchise, spanning both the big and small screens. They're fans, then, of the way that the outback-set saga surveys the nation's distinctive ochre-hued landscape from above in picturesque drone shots, all while contemplating the racist ills waged to live and work upon it. Stan's new six-part series Black Snow borrows much that's made Mystery Road such a hit, including a shock murder in a small town, a cop riding in to solve the mystery it heralds, a grim look at Aussie history and a bird's-eye view of its setting. But when this instantly compelling show peers down, it spies fields of green sugar cane fields far and wide. And, when it explores the country's traumas, it focuses on the treatment of the Australian South Sea Islander community. Seventeen-year-old Isabel Baker (talented debutant Talijah Blackman-Corowa) is the first person seen in Black Snow's opening moments, riding her bike hurriedly through the cane in the thick of night, making a frantic call from a remote phone booth and getting spooked by a music-blaring car's sudden appearance. The year is 1994, and the evening is the high schooler's Year 12 formal, as well as her last alive. Black Snow's second face belongs to James Cormack (Travis Fimmel, Raised by Wolves), a Brisbane-based Cold Case Unit police officer trying his luck in 2019 at a claw machine in a pub. He's troubled in a different way, haunted by emotional pain he attempts to deaden by paying for a Fight Club-style beating in the bar's back alley, and he'll swiftly be on Isabel's trail. Flitting between the two timeframes — hopping back and forth so heartily that Isabel is as much Black Snow's protagonist as Cormack, meaningfully so — this series isn't short on 90s touchstones. VHS stores, mix tapes, camcorders, Smashing Pumpkins and You Am I on the soundtrack, a Thelma & Louise video, teen chat about piking and being cut, a mention of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: they're all covered. The best TV show of that decade, Twin Peaks, doesn't get an overt shoutout; however, David Lynch's influential masterpiece springs to mind while watching as clearly as Mystery Road does. Ashford, Black Snow's setting, is indeed a quaint locale centred around a mill and populated by inhabitants who all know each other. And, due to the murder of its most promising daughter, the town's secrets start to spill. As simple maths makes plain, Ashford's 90s tragedy bubbles up again a quarter-century later, in one of creator Lucas Taylor (Harrow) and co-writers Beatrix Christian (Hearts and Bones) and Boyd Quakawoot's (Black Comedy) sharpest moves. In what's supposed to be a moment of celebration to mark the local school's centenary, the town gathers to unearth a time capsule buried by Isabel and her classmates, with the blasts from the pasts that result spanning far beyond nostalgia. In addition to providing the series with an immediate point of difference — outsider detectives dropping by to solve dead-girl crimes is a well-worn on-screen trope — the excavated box also signals Black Snow's devotion to looking backwards. Fields like the fictional Ashford's have been blighted by blackbirding, the exploitation of South Sea Islanders involving forced relocation, severe underpayment and brutal working conditions, a grim form of slavery that isn't forgotten here. In the show's 2019 timeline, Cormack heads north to sweaty heat, an unwelcoming Senior Sergeant Turner (Kim Gyngell, Wakefield) — who originally led the case, and is adamant a passerby was responsible — and a mixed reaction from Isabel's sister Hazel (potent first-timer Jemmason Power), mother Glenda (Seini Willett), aunt Rosa (Lisa Blackman) and pastor father Joe (Jimi Bani, Mabo). His job: to find the murderer by "finding out who people really were back then", he notes, with his enquiries also involving Isabel's boyfriend Anton Bianchi (Alexander England, How to Please a Woman) and best friend Chloe Walcott (Brooke Satchwell, The Twelve), the former a farmer's (Rob Carlton, Bali 2002) son and the latter gifted every advantage courtesy of her mill-owning father (Erik Thomson, Blueback). Back in 1994, Isabel wades through her own chaos, with the younger Hazel (Molly Fatnowna) watching on. Her parents are strict, so much so that she's scared to tell her dad about plans for a pre-university road trip to Sydney with Chloe (played by The Unlisted's Annabel Wolfe as a teen). Anton (Josh Macqueen, Significant Others) is hardly reliable, but he is jealous of the time she's spending with the picked-on Hector Ford (Fraser Anderson, Rock Island Mysteries). Plus, Isabel soon has her own investigation causing waves around town, tied to fresh-faced Vanuatu newcomer Ezekiel Iesul (musician Ziggy Ramo), absent visas, hellish abuse and missing people. Without its leaps backwards, Black Snow would still be gripping and well-acted, with Fimmel giving the series an expectedly dogged but quietly magnetic cop — one so breezily spoken that he stands out from every other detective that's ever chased comparable cases — and Power living up to her name as a woman that's spent more than half her life in a tragedy's shadow. Still, it can't be overstated how essential the 1994 segments prove. They gift Isabel a voice and presence past being a mere victim; showcase Blackman-Corowa's luminous performance in the process; and inescapably anchor Black Snow's narrative in colonial crimes, horrors waged for centuries since, the deep-seated intergenerational traumas they've caused, Australian South Sea Islander culture and telling class clashes. Come for Australia's latest must-stream crime drama, and the first of 2023, then, but stay for a show that embraces and interrogates much more than its recognisable basic setup typically indicates. Stay, too, for taught and tense direction from helmers Sian Davies (Spreadsheet) and Matthew Saville (A Month of Sundays), an emotive score by Ramo with Jed Palmer (Animals), and eye-catching cinematography from Eric Murray Lui (We Are Still Here) — scenic sights lush with greenery but as stained with hurt, woe and sorrow as Australia's reddest soil. Check out the trailer for Black Snow below: Black Snow streams via Stan.
Do you have a whole shrine filled with gin? A shelf? A decent section of your liquor cabinet? If so, it's likely that many of those bottles hail from Australia's own Four Pillars. And, thanks to the gin-making superstars' next two tipples, you might be about to add to them. The latest additions to the award-winning brand's range both play with its original gin — and one that has quite the following. So, if you've sipped Four Pillars' Rare Dry Gin, you'll want to try its new Rarer Dry Gin and Rarest Dry Gin. The first is made with yuzu, the second features bergamot, and obviously no one stretched themselves too much thinking of these gins' names. Still citrus-heavy like the OG tipple, Rarer Dry Gin and Rarest Dry Gin came about after the Four Pillars' team discovered some locally grown yellow yuzu and green bergamot — and then started tinkering. Where the Rare Dry Gin uses nine botanicals in the pot and oranges in the vapour basket that sits above the pot, these two newbies swap in their different types of citrus. That's it, that's the change. While Four Pillars still recommends that you drink the original in G&Ts, it's suggesting that these two newcomers also suit the cocktail — or you can add the Rarer Dry Gin to a gin and soda highball if you're after something different. Rarer Dry Gin and Rarest Dry Gin will be available from Saturday, September 11 from the distillery's website, costing $75 each per bottle. And, because Four Pillars likes to put the bi-products from the distillation process to good use, this time it has whipped up a Made from Gin Yuzu & Bergamot Shred Marmalade that'll be available for $12 for a 160-gram jar. For more information about Four Pillars' Rarer Dry Gin and Rarest Dry Gin, or to buy them from Saturday, September 11, head to the distillery's website.
If the end times were coming, and the antichrist as well, how would an angel and a demon on earth cope? That's the question that fantasy authors Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman explored in 1990 novel Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, winning awards and plenty of fans as a result. Now, what'd happen if Michael Sheen (Quiz) was that heavenly figure and David Tennant (Doctor Who) his demonic counterpart? That's exactly what the Good Omens streaming series dived into when it initially arrived back in 2019. Four years later, the Prime Video show is finally returning for season two. With Sheen back as Aziraphale and Tennant as Crowley, that key casting remains intact. Jon Hamm (Confess, Fletch) also returns as Gabriel, this time showing up at Aziraphale's bookshop with zero memory of who he is — sparking the show's new mystery. Cue hiding the archangel from all interested parties — below and above — and, as is Good Omens' custom, getting Aziraphale and Crowley leaning on each other. Cue jumping from before The Beginning through to modern times as well, including stops in the biblical and Victorian eras, and the Blitz in 1940s England. As the trailer for season two shows, divine chaos ensues, even though Aziraphale and Crowley thwarted the apocalypse in season one. How it all turns out, other than amusingly, will be revealed when the series hits streaming again on Friday, July 28. Also back for a second go-around are Doon Mackichan (Toast of Tinseltown) as archangel Michael, plus Gloria Obianyo (Dune) as archangel Uriel, while Miranda Richardson (Rams), Maggie Service (Life) and Nina Sosanya (His Dark Materials) return as well — but in different parts. They're all joined by series newcomers Liz Carr (This Is Going to Hurt), Quelin Sepulveda (The Man Who Fell to Earth) and Shelley Conn (Bridgerton), the latter as Beelzebub. And Neil Gaiman is back as executive producer and co-showrunner, helping guide a season that now expands past its source material. Check out the trailer for Good Omens season two below: Good Omens returns for season two from Friday, July 28 via Prime Video.
A new 94-seat bar and restaurant serving Mediterranean eats and oysters with ocean views has officially opened its doors in Bondi. Lola's Level 1 is the venture of Sydney hospitality mainstays Marco Ambrosino (Fratelli Paradiso) and Manny Spinola, and will serve a mix of small and large plates along with a cocktail and wine-heavy drinks menu, breathing delicious new life into Bondi's Pacific Building. Ambrosino and Spinola have pulled together an all-star team for Lola's. Running the pass is head chef Paula Pantano, who has previously played a key role in the kitchen at five-star hotels like Crown Sydney and the Mandarin Oriental Group. To quench your thirst, Louis West (Bentley Restaurant Group) and Mon Ditbunjong (Dear Sainte Eloise and Ragazzi) are joining forces as sommeliers. "Lola's is all about fun and we've assembled one of the best restaurant teams in Sydney that will be able to deliver that," Ambrosino says. "We want Lola's to be approachable – a place where you can drop in for a drink and some oysters; a place for a dinner with the family; or a long lunch on the balcony overlooking Bondi." Oysters ($6.50) are a big focus of the menu, with three types on the menu (natural, with vermouth granita or with Lola's mignonette), all shucked at the bar. If you're dropping in for a drink and you're looking for a snack, you'll find citrus and basil burrata ($21), pan tumaca ($15), and Pioik sourdough with 25-year aged balsamic vinegar and Alro Evoo olive oil ($7.50) on the small plates menu. For more filling feeds, spiced lamb skewers ($15 each) and peri-peri chicken ($34) prepared on the plancha grill can satisfy your carnivorous yearnings, and large plates like saffron socarrat ($30) and lasagnetta topped with osso buco ragu and gremolata ($29). A tightly edited wine list mixes artisanal producers from warmer European climates alongside local Australian drops. And those looking for something stronger can hit the cocktail list which features two type of martinis ($23) and twists on the Bloody Mary and Rosita ($22). Lola's location in the Pacific Building means balcony-seating promises a panoramic view of Bondi Beach and the surrounding park. So, come summer, its sure to be a hit with beachgoers for a pre- or post-swim drink (and then some).
When Nathan Sasi isn't cooking up a storm as the head chef at inner-city fine-dining restaurant Mercado, he's overseeing Good Times Artisan Ice Cream. When he's not doing that, he's collaborating with Lynx and designer Felix Chan to design accessories for Lynx's Find Your Magic collection. That's quite a number of hats to wear. And that's what makes him Sydney's renaissance man – he's clever, detail-focused, enthusiastic and can take on as many projects as he likes. He gets things done, and he gets them done well. Whether he's working in the kitchen, whipping up imaginative flavours in his ice cream shop or dabbling in the sartorial world, Sasi's entire existence focuses on showcasing his own personal style. We wondered, how does he balance so many projects? And how does he ensures that he expresses his individuality in everything he does? "You have to be passionate," he says. "Having a sense of confidence – not arrogance – with your style helps you pull of your look." Whether it's fashion, food, or life in general, Sasi says your style has to suit your personality. He says being passionate about what you do helps you to be persistent and reach your goals, and it also helps with the ability to juggle several different projects somewhat easier, or at least worthwhile. "Just go for it," is the advice he followed when it came to realising his childhood dream of selling everyone's favourite frozen sweet treat at Good Times. "Growing up I actually wanted to be a dentist or a lawyer," Sasi notes. But, "I always dreamt of having my own ice cream parlour, really so I could have an endless supply of ice cream." Sasi didn't just dream big though. He was also practical and thorough, and knew what worked best for him. His two food-focused roles are all about perfecting every element of the eating experience in a creative and unique way, from the Spanish-style dishes available at the former to hand-made ice cream served at the latter. "Becoming a chef was something I knew I was going to work towards actually becoming," he advises. "Once I developed my style of cooking with learning the art of making everything from scratch — charcuterie, cheese, vinegars, you name it — I knew that I wanted to extend that outside of the kitchen and typical restaurant setting. That's where the dream of really owning an ice cream parlour came about." [caption id="attachment_586645" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Sasi's collaboration with Lynx.[/caption] It was while he was waiting for Mercado to come to fruition that Good Times became a reality, with Sasi forging ahead — or just going for it — when the opportunity arose. "I was waiting for the build of Mercado Restaurant to be completed, and with time up my sleeve and a vacant space in a prime location in Potts Point, I decided I would give it a crack," he says. Give it a crack, he did. Good Times made a splash as soon as it opened its doors back in February. Sasi makes all the bases from scratch with pure cream and milk rather than pre-made powered mixes, along with using top quality ingredients for the garnishes. He found his inner magic and infused it into Good Times — and it's that outlook that inspired Lynx to come calling for a collaboration. He often alters his own clothes to create a little uniqueness, saying "people own the right to express themselves through their fashion choices, through their accessories and personal style." His own look is a blend of "old school gentlemen with a touch of rock and roll," which shines through in his collaboration with Chan. The line of silk pocket squares, checked socks and patterned ties they've designed together doesn't just try to convey Sasi's particular style, but aims to share his way of looking at the world. "I think to some degree, cooking and fashion go hand in hand. Chefs are putting what they create with heart and soul onto a plate for restaurant reviewers and diners to critique, so they tend to just do what they love, what feels right — and don't fuss too much about what others think, providing they are doing what is true to them." "You learn early on that you aren't always going to please everyone, and I think the same goes with fashion," he says. "If we didn't take risks and love being creative in the kitchen then we probably wouldn't be chefs." Or in Sasi's case, chefs, ice cream parlour owners and accessory designers. The Find Your Magic collection is available to purchase at Men In This Town, all proceeds will go to I-Manifest.
If September weather still isn't hitting compared to a tropical holiday, then maybe it's time to book a short-haul flight with Virgin Australia's happy hour sale. From now until 11pm today (AEST), score international flights for as little as $419 return. But be quick, because you've only got until 11pm tonight to nab these deals. Travel anywhere from Queenstown and Vanuatu to Bali, Samoa and Fiji, to make the most of this limited-time offer. Deals include a Melbourne to Bali flight for as little as $419 return, or Sydney to Fiji from $489 return. Book your economy flights between October 22, 2025 and March 31, 2026, to be eligible for these red-hot deals. If you're a Velocity Frequent Flyer, then these deals are even better, because sale fares still go towards your Velocity Points and Status Credits. Just make sure to pack light, as these fares do not include baggage and seat reservations. For more information about Virgin Australia's Happy Hour Flights Sale, head to the website. Images: iStock
No matter when your birthday is, you're getting a present this week — as long as you're keen on booking a getaway and you get in quick. Jetstar turns 21 this year, and the Australian airline is celebrating. First, it announced a LARPing tournament in Melbourne with $50,000 in flights up for grabs. Next comes the latest return of its always-popular return-for-free sale. Your dream vacation plans can now include jetting off to Tokyo, Seoul, Phuket, Bali, Singapore and more, then flying home for free — or holidaying in Australia while scoring the same deal for getaways to Cairns, the Gold Coast, Byron Bay and other locations. Here's how it works, if you're new to the concept: you buy a ticket to your chosen destination across more than 80 routes, with 95,000-plus fares available, then the carrier covers the cost of you coming home. For free flights back to Australia from international spots, Osaka and Vanuatu are also on the list. Sticking with Down Under destinations, so are Hobart, Margaret River, Adelaide and Perth. Wherever you'd like to venture, the key part of this sale is making your way back without paying for the return flight, which'll also make your holiday oh-so-much cheaper. The special runs from 12am AEST on Wednesday, May 7–11.59pm AEST on Thursday, May 8, 2025 or until sold out if that happens earlier — with Jetstar members getting an extra 12 hours to access the sale from 12pm AEST on Tuesday, May 6, 2025. And yes, it really is as straightforward as it sounds. Whatever flights you opt for as part of the sale, you'll get the return fare for nothing. Prices obviously vary depending on where you're flying from and to, but some include Brisbane to Tokyo from $373, Cairns to Osaka from $285, Melbourne to Singapore from $209, Perth to Bali from $154, Sydney to Port Vila from $209, Sydney to Phuket from $299 and Brisbane to Seoul from $309. Domestic fares span deals such as Sydney to Ballina/Byron from $38, Newcastle to the Gold Coast from $59, Melbourne to Hobart from $69 and Cairns to Brisbane from $89. You'll be travelling within Australia from September 2025–March 2026, and from late-May 2025 to late-March 2026 if you're going global. The caveats that are always in place with this Jetstar deal remain this around. So, you need to book an outbound fare, then you'll get the return fare for free — and the deal only applies to Starter fares, and only on selected flights. Also, checked baggage is not included, so you'll want to travel super light or pay extra to take a suitcase. Plus, you have to use the same arrival and departure ports for your flights — which means that you can go from Brisbane to Tokyo and back, for instance, but can't return via another place or to another city. Jetstar's 21st birthday 'return for free' sale runs from 12am AEST on Wednesday, May 7–11.59pm AEST on Thursday, May 8, 2025 — or until sold out if prior. Jetstar members get an extra 12 hours access to the sale from 12pm AEST on Tuesday, May 6, 2025. Feeling inspired to book a getaway? You can now book your next dream holiday through Concrete Playground Trips with deals on flights, stays and experiences at destinations all around the world.
This year, Australia's leading Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander performing company, Bangarra Dance Theatre, is inviting audiences to experience a connection to Country in a whole new way. The company's newest stage production, Illume, will tour nationally from June to September 2025, bringing Bard-Bardi Jawi culture and storytelling to the stage. Developed by Mirning woman and Bangarra Artistic Director and Co-CEO Frances Rings, the show is an exciting kaleidoscope of images, music and movement. It explores light as a bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds, the impacts of light pollution, and puts forward the question: 'Is the deep wisdom passed down from elders enough to illuminate a path forward from the shadows of a dark future?'. [caption id="attachment_1007624" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Daniel Boud[/caption] It's also the first time a Bangarra mainstage production has been created in partnership with a First Nations visual artist – Goolarrgon Bard man, Darrell Sibosado. Sibosado is known for his pearl shell carvings and large-scale geometric installations, with works shown at the Biennale of Sydney and QAGOMA, and held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and Art Gallery of South Australia. In Illume, his visual language shapes the entire production, from costume and set design to lighting patterns that ripple across the stage, creating a shimmering world that draws directly from his Bard-Bardi Jawi heritage. "I think [Frances' work] and my work will work very well together, there is a similar energy," Sibosado says. "It's always about the rhythm and everything of my own Country." [caption id="attachment_1002105" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Cass Eipper[/caption] On top of Sibosado's artistic influence, what makes the production special is the way it came to life through Bangarra's Cultural Creation Lifecycle, a process that involves years of community engagement, transfers of knowledge, and on-Country visits. This unique Cultural Creation Lifecycle is the foundation of all Bangarra's work and can take anywhere from 3 to 4 years from start to finish. With each production, the process begins with people, place and story, then involves multiple stages of research, development and input from cultural leaders. [caption id="attachment_1002103" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Cass Eipper[/caption] For Illume, the Bangarra creative team made multiple trips to draw inspiration, including travelling to Lombadina on the Dampier Peninsula in Western Australia. There, they met with local cultural consultants, spent time listening and observing, and sought permission to bring elements of their stories into the work. Rings and her collaborators consider the Cultural Creation Lifecycle an essential part of the creative process. Rather than drawing from archives or second-hand sources, the company builds work through lived experience. By being on Country, surrounded by the landscape and people who shape the story, they're able to create something that's authentic and respectful. [caption id="attachment_1002106" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Daniel Boud[/caption] In Illume, that deep connection to Country is felt in every moment, from the stunning set details to the choreography led by Rings, and the score by Brendon Boney, an Wiradjuri/Gamilaroi man and longtime Bangarra collaborator. The end result is a performance that's immersive, powerful and grounded in place. It promises to bring audiences closer to the stories of Bard-Bardi Jawi Country in a way that's creative and entirely original. Bangarra will tour Illume nationally from June to September 2025, with stops in Sydney, Perth, Albany, Canberra, Brisbane, Darwin and Melbourne. Whether you've followed Bangarra's work for years or you're seeing the company for the first time, Illume is a chance to experience a unique creative collaboration that brings Country to the stage in your city. Illume tour dates: Gadigal Country Sydney Opera House – Wednesday, June 4 to Saturday, June 14 Whadjuk Noongar Boodja Heath Ledger Theatre, Perth – Tuesday, July 10 to Sunday, July 13 Kinjarling Albany Entertainment Centre – Friday, July 18 Ngunnawal Country Canberra Theatre Centre – Friday, July 25 to Saturday, July 26 Meanjin QPAC, Brisbane – Friday, August 1 to Saturday, August 9 Garramilla Darwin Entertainment Centre – Friday, August 15 to Saturday, August 16 Wurundjeri Country Arts Centre Melbourne – Thursday, September 4 to Saturday, September 13 Bangarra's 'Illume' tours nationally from June to September 2025. Head to the website for more information or to book your tickets. Images courtesy of Bangarra Dance Theatre By Jacque Kennedy
As a kid, your checklist for treehouse essentials would have likely included a tin can telephone and a retractable ladder to keep out those awful adults. And while you may have thought that as you matured your treehouse ambitions would diminish, the opposite is true. While once you would have been content with a setup that rivalled that of Bart Simpson or the Stand by Me crew, as an adult you expect to be perched among the treetops with all the creature comforts of a high-end hotel. Lucky for us, there are adults in Australia who have let their imaginations run wild, and they've put their own dream treehouses up for rent. SECRET TREEHOUSE When your treehouse rivals that dreamt up by Walt Disney, arguably the forefather of imagination, you know you've got a winner. More specifically, winner of Airbnb's best place to stay on the planet in 2016. Perched above the treetops overlooking 600 acres of world heritage Blue Mountains bushland, Love Cabins' Secret Treehouse is one of the only places where nature is better enjoyed from indoors. Floor to ceiling windows allow for uninterrupted views of the rainforest from the comfort of your bed, when curled up in front of the fire or while enjoying a wine on the balcony. Not just there for show, the branches intersecting the room have a real structural role to play, making this the truest incarnation of a treehouse since the handy work of the Swiss Family Robinson themselves. It's seasonally sound too, as one of our go-to cabins for winter. SILKY OAKS LODGE Giving the actual rainforest a run for its money, Silky Oaks Lodge is about as lush as it gets — with a price tag to match. Built on the banks of the Mossman River in the Daintree National Park, the rooms at Silky Oaks are the epitome of jungle luxury. All rooms are surrounded by rainforest, but the cream of the crop are the Billabong Suites which look out across the river. Spoilt for choice, if you stay in the Billabong Suite you can enjoy river views from either a hammock or a day bed. And if peace and tranquility does grow tiresome, you can always move to the marble ensuite to soak in a spa bath or rinse off in the rain shower. With rosewood and silky oak timber featuring predominantly throughout the rooms, the beauty of the Daintree extends from the outside in. CANOPY TREEHOUSES On the banks of the Ithaca River in tropical North Queensland you'll find five treehouses that come close to blending into the rainforest canopy. Surrounded by lush rainforest you'll feel completely secluded. That is, until the therapist arrives to give you a private in-house bamboo massage, foot therapy or facial. And if there's such a thing as your average treehouse, this is larger than most, boasting two bedrooms, a full kitchen, spa bath, balcony, barbecue and hammock. This is the kind of place you would visit with friends only to sit in silence staring out over the treetops. GIRAFFE TREEHOUSES While not the true definition of a treehouse, the fact that you're high up enough for a giraffe to tuck their head over your balcony for a feed makes this worthy of a mention. And when Humbekhali, the resident giraffe at Jamala Wildlife Lodge has had his fill, you can kick back on the balcony and watch him galavant around his enclosure, wine in hand. If hand-feeding a giraffe wasn't special enough, the generally African-inspired accommodation will have you feeling like you're on a high-end safari. The kind where you have a bathtub, TV and a king-size four-poster bed. And here's a sentence you've likely never heard before, "Please join us in the cave for some pre-dinner drinks with our exotic residents". DAINTREE JUNGLE HOUSE Deep inside the world's oldest rainforest you'll find the Daintree Jungle House. Built three metres up in the rainforest canopy, you stay here because you have a sense of adventure and want to feel like you're cut off from the rest of the world — even though in reality there's a boat that leaves twice daily for a snorkel tour of the Great Barrier Reef at the end of the street. Facilities are basic so you'll be using a compost toilet and a hot outdoor shower, but it's not the creature comforts you came for. The two-storey open design houses a bed, hammocks, a breakfast bar and basic kitchen facilities, but on the other side of those walls is an acre of rainforest to explore. There's a freshwater creek right next to the Jungle House that you can swim in and an abundance of wildlife to keep you company. This is a taste of true(ish) jungle life. NOTABLE AIRBNB OPTIONS This one in Main Arm, NSW. This one in Musk, Victoria.
Wine lovers visiting New Zealand's biggest city are truly spoilt for choice. A cluster of award-winning and family-owned vineyards sit less than an hour's drive from the CBD, making it the perfect destination for your next short break. Dotted among the hillsides and bays of northern Auckland, Matakana has a warm climate that produces elegant reds — there are 28 varieties planted in the region, which makes it one of the most diverse wine growing areas in New Zealand. Here you'll find the only vineyard in the country to specialise solely in Italian grapes, French-inspired drops and an elaborate 'if you build it, they will come' sculpture park. Flights to Auckland from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane are super short — around three-and-a-half hours on average — and Air New Zealand flies direct from all three cities and offers great everyday fares. SCULPTUREUM A Nike-wearing alligator, inspirational quotes from Steve Jobs, an exotic bird aviary and an 80-seat restaurant — Sculptureum isn't your average vineyard. After 12 years of design and development, Auckland-based lawyers Anthony and Sandra Grant opened the doors to their elaborate 'if you build it, they will come' space. The 25-acre site is located less than five minutes' drive from the Matakana village en route to Omaha (north of Auckland). After strolling through art-filled gardens, seeing a massive chandelier created by American glass artist Dale Chihuly and spotting large rabbits in a grassy arena named Rabbiton, it'll finally be time to sit down for a wine. On a sun-soaked hill beyond the gardens is the vineyard that produces Sculptureum's award-winning wines. Current varietals available include chardonnay, Bordeaux blend, syrah and rosé. They're best enjoyed by the glass with a meal at on-site restaurant Rothko — though you can always grab a bottle for later, too. BRICK BAY WINERY Brick Bay is another spot that incorporates boutique wines, a sculpture trail and a top-notch restaurant. Nestled amidst a patchwork of native bush and farmland, the winery is a magical setting for a short break out of the city. For a little over 32 years, the brand has made a name for itself crafting sustainable wines, notably the classic pinot gris and berry-driven rosé. If you want to see what all the fuss is about, tastings are held any time at on-site restaurant The Glasshouse for $8. Designed by respected architect Noel Lane, the building is exactly as the name suggests — a light-filled glass box, which sits over a lily-filled pond. For an additional fee, you'll also be given the opportunity to stroll around the sculpture trail and see work by some of New Zealand's top contemporary sculptors, including Paul Dibble, Terry Stringer and Judy Darraugh. The full trail takes around an hour to complete. HERON'S FLIGHT Heron's Flight is the only vineyard in New Zealand to specialise solely in Italian grapes. The winery was established 31 years ago by David Hoskins, whose work as a chemist, philosopher and winemaker makes him quite the renaissance man. Heron's Flight has been consistently committed to sustainable winemaking and can be found in the wine lists of top restaurants up and down New Zealand. Heron's Flight works with two grape varieties: sangiovese, which translates to 'the blood of Jupiter', and dolcetto, a variety which is often both dry and full-bodied. Tastings are available seven days a week, excluding public holidays. MATAKANA ESTATE Matakana Estate has been around since the boutique wine region first sprung to light more than 30 years ago. Under the care of Australian winemaker Richard Robson, the estate produces stylish, full-bodied chardonnay, syrah and pinot gris. With expansive views over the vineyard — the largest in the region — the tasting room is one of the most popular to visit for an afternoon of sniffing and swirling. That said, it's recommended to call ahead if you're looking to try a specific varietal. If you haven't sorted transportation for your return journey, the estate boasts a luxury lodge, which stands proudly on a ridge overlooking the Matakana valley and hills. It has room for up to eight merry guests. RUNNER DUCK ESTATE Runner Duck Estate is a boutique vineyard nestled in the Matakana valley, specialising in small quantities of French-inspired syrah, Bordeaux blends, pinot gris, sangiovese and rosé. After leaving behind a successful business in Mumbai and purchasing the estate, it was the objective of owners Clyde and Farida to produce a small amount of iconic red wine that would impress the world's most discerning wine drinkers. Staying true to their word, the pair will not produce wine under the label unless the year been outstanding. The estate's cellar door can be found at celebrated vineyard restaurant, Plume, which offers tastings of any five wines for $7 per person. Alternatively, tastings are free with any bottled purchased. Book your flights to Auckland with Air New Zealand and start planning your next long weekend away. Plus, Vinomofo has released a case of wine featuring six delicious wines representing the diverse and unique sub-regions of Waiheke, Kumeu and Matakana. Every case has a one in 50 chance of winning return flights to Auckland (from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane). T&Cs apply.
