In the ongoing trend of activities that are made infinitely more fun with a little liquid courage comes BYO art. Brush and Sip is exactly what the name suggests: visitors enjoy a tipple (or two) as they create their artistic masterpieces. The studio, located in Newtown, encourages guests to bring along some beverages and put their brush skills to the test. Pack a bottle and a few snacks, and Brush and Sip will provide the rest: glassware, brushes, paint, canvas and an apron. Each session runs for three hours under the guidance of an instructor, who will have you painting like Picasso in no time - or so you'll think after a few pinot's.
UPDATE, December 22, 2021: Annette is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Amazon Video. Dreamy and dazzling from its first moments, rock opera Annette bursts onto the screen with a simple question: "so may we start?". As the opening credits roll, the long-awaited latest film from Holy Motors director Leos Carax addresses its audience before it poses that query — via an unseen announcer who tells viewers "you are now kindly requested to keep silent, and to hold your breath until the end of the show" — but the movie doesn't begin to truly kick into gear until the filmmaker himself asks if things can get going. Images of a recording studio flicker, with Carax on one side of the glass and Ron and Russell Mael, of art-pop duo Sparks, on the other. Carax tells his real-life daughter Nastya that the fun is about to commence, and the Mael brothers start singing and playing keyboard, with a band around them. Soon, however, everyone is on their feet and spilling out into the street, with the feature's stars Adam Driver (Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker), Marion Cotillard (We'll End Up Together) and Simon Helberg (The Big Bang Theory) joining them in the glorious, song-fuelled, sing-and-walk scene. No one is playing a character here yet, but they're all still playing a part. They're finally coming together for the big spectacle that is this eagerly anticipated film — which has been in the works since 2016 — and they're setting the vibe in a bold and sensational way. The tune is pure Sparks, with the pair both composing the movie's music and writing the feature itself with Carax. The tone bubbles with the pair's avant-garde sensibilities, too, and the whole song echoes with the promise of remarkable things to come. Grand and resonant despite its low-key staging and setting, Annette's memorable opening number ends with the Maels, Carax and his daughter, and some of the film's supporting cast members farewelling the feature's two protagonists — with Driver and Cotillard putting on clothing their characters will favour during the rest of the movie during the track. "Bye Henry," the crowd exclaims as the standup comic played by Driver zips off on a motorcycle. "Bye Ann," they chirp at the opera star played by Cotillard as she's chauffeured off in a black SUV. The audience is sent tumbling through the looking glass now, and diving in deep. Nine years ago, Carax gave the world a once-in-a-lifetime gem. Annette is a different film to Holy Motors, obviously, but it gleams just as brightly and with the same beguiling, inimitable, all-encompassing allure. There's an ethereal, otherworldly quality to Carax's work — of heightening reality to truly understand how people feel and act, and of experimenting with artforms to interrogate them — and that sensation seeps through every second of his gleefully melodramatic musical, which deservedly won him the Cannes Film Festival's Best Director award. Everything about Annette has been turned up several notches on every setting, from its lush and lavish imagery to its cascade of toe-tapping, sung-through tunes that keep propelling the narrative forward. Every character detail, both external and internalised, has been amplified as well. This is a movie where Driver's Henry wears the same shade of green over and over like a uniform, beaming his envy at every turn. It's a film where sex scenes involve singing, as though they're the only way these characters can really convey their innermost emotions. And, it's a feature where the titular character — the baby born of Henry McHenry and Ann Defrasnoux's mismatched but passionate and all-consuming love — is played by a marionette. This is a tragedy and a fairy tale, in other words, because life so often veers between elements of both. Henry and Ann "love each other so much", as another of Annette's catchy tunes intones repeatedly, but it's apparent from the outset that their chalk-and-cheese affair has its struggles. Early on, the film contrasts their on-stage antics to quickly but effectively express their dissimilarities. In a show called The Ape of God, Henry broods over the microphone as he struts and shakes in nothing but underwear and a bathrobe, and opines about how he loves killing his audiences with his brutal and brusque comedy. He talks about how Ann is always dying in her operas, with cuts to her sweet soprano singing and heartbreaking death scenes underscoring his point. These juxtapositions keep simmering as the paparazzi charts the couple's romance, and as Ann's pregnancy brings Annette into their lives. The girl has an astonishing gift, but her presence can't save the movie's star-crossed lovers — or moonlit paramours, to be more accurate — from continuing to weather stormy seas. The Maels and Carax haven't held back in almost every facet of the feature; that aforementioned delight of an opening number is perhaps the most restrained thing they splash across the screen. The story sprawls, the lively and clever songs keep coming, and this intricately, overtly stylised affair pushes wave after wave of hypnotic imagery, mesmerising music and heated, near-Shakespearean relationship dramas into its frames. Expectedly and welcomely given the melding of creative minds behind it, it's a movie filled with idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. It's so very Carax, as fans of the director's back catalogue will instantly spot. It's so very Sparks as well, which is evident even if you're new to the duo despite their five-decade-plus career, or if you've only just discovered them via stellar documentary The Sparks Brothers. It's "so much" just like Henry and Ann's love, and it adores it — and it happily and vibrantly melds elements of cinema, gigs, opera and live performance, all while weaving in everything from commentary about celebrity culture and stints of singing cunnilingus, and also knowing that it's constantly toeing the line between oh-so-exaggerated and oh-so-heartfelt. Annette is also long, and both looping and sometimes a little loopy. It satirises, unpacks and embraces, and it loves being multiple paradoxes at once. It thrusts forward with its own pull — but once you're caught in the thrall of its exuberance, playfulness, overwhelming emotions and surreal touches, you're as subject to its whims as Henry and Ann. Inhabiting those parts, Driver and Cotillard commit to the ride. The former visibly cycles between resembling both Ron and Russell Mael in one of the film's devilishly joyous small flourishes, and bustles through the movie like a force of nature. The latter always feels like her co-star's delicate counterweight, while also ensuring that Ann's light, grace and yearning shine through. Their strings are being pulled masterfully by Carax and Sparks, as are viewers' — and yes, we want them to start, and then to never stop.
Before the pandemic, when a new-release movie started playing in cinemas, audiences couldn't watch it on streaming, video on demand, DVD or blu-ray for a few months. But with the past few years forcing film industry to make quite a few changes — widespread movie theatre closures will do that, and so will plenty of people staying home because they aren't well — that's no longer always the case. Maybe you haven't had time to make it to your local cinema lately. Perhaps you've been under the weather. Given the hefty amount of titles now releasing each week, maybe you simply missed something. Film distributors have been fast-tracking some of their new releases from cinemas to streaming recently — movies that might still be playing in theatres in some parts of the country, too. In preparation for your next couch session, here are 13 that you can watch right now at home. Wonka Which cravings does Wonka inspire? Chocolate, of course, and also an appetite for more of filmmaker Paul King's blend of the inventive, warm-hearted and surreal. The British writer/director's chocolatier origin story is a sweet treat from its first taste, and firmly popped from the same box as his last two movie delights: Paddington and Paddington 2. Has the helmer used a similar recipe to his talking-bear pictures? Yes. Was it divine with that double dip in marmalade, and now equally so with creative confectionery and the man behind it? Yes again. While it'd be nice to see King and his regular writing partner Simon Farnaby (also an actor, complete with an appearance here) make an original tale again, as they last did with 2009's superb and sublime Bunny and the Bull, watching them cast their spell on childhood favourites dishes up as effervescent an experience as sipping fizzy lifting drinks. It's as uplifting as munching on hover chocs, too, aka the debut creation that Wonka's namesake unveils in his attempt to unleash his chocolates upon the world. Willy Wonka (Timothée Chalamet, Bones and All) has everlasting gobstobbers, golden tickets and a whole factory pumping out a sugary rush in his future, as Roald Dahl first shared in 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, then cinemagoers initially saw in 1971's Gene Wilder-starring all-timer Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Wonka churns up the story before that story, and technically before 2005's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from Tim Burton (Wednesday) as led by Johnny Depp (Minamata) — but the less remembered about that most-recent adaptation, the better. There's no on-the-page precedent for this flick, then. Rather, King and Farnaby use pure imagination, plus what they know works for them, to delectable results. What they welcomely avoid is endeavouring to melt down Dahl's bag of tricks and remould it, and also eschew packing in references to past Chocolate Factory flicks like a cookie that's more chocolate chips than biscuit. Wonka streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Dream Scenario Gushing about Paddington movies, channelling Elvis, screaming about being a vampire, swooning over Cher, kidnapping babies, fighting cults, battling demonic animatronics, driving ambulances, flying with convicts, swapping faces, avenging pet pigs and milking alpacas, Nicolas Cage has gotten himself lodged in many a moviegoer's brain before. Dream Scenario takes that idea to the next level, not with the screen's most-inimitable star as himself — this isn't The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent — but in a film that works as well as it does, and as sharply, because he's its irreplaceable lead. Although writer/director Kristoffer Borgli didn't write his third feature (after DRIB and Sick of Myself) with Cage in mind, there's pure magic in matching his tale of pop-culture virality, fame and its costs to the man born Nicolas Kim Coppola. Who else could play someone so ubiquitous in the collective consciousness that everyone knows him, has deep-seated feelings and opinions about him, and can't stop thinking about him? Albeit for different reasons, it as much a stroke of genius as enlisting Being John Malkovich's namesake. Dream Scenario wears its comparisons to Spike Jonze (Beastie Boys Story) and Charlie Kaufman's (I'm Thinking of Ending Things) masterpiece better than anything else between 1999 and now, other than their subsequent collaboration Adaptation — as starring none other than Cage — and the Kaufman-penned, Michel Gondry (Kidding)-helmed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. David Lynch (Cage's Wild at Heart director) and Ari Aster also come to mind while watching Borgli's film, which blends the surreal and satirical, and also spins a nightmare where dread paints every frame. Aster produces, lending a hand on a movie that pairs well with his own Beau Is Afraid, aka another flick where a schlubby, awkward and unhappy middle-aged man has his life upended in no small part thanks to his own anxiety. Dream Scenario isn't attempting to ape its predecessors, or Borgli's own Sick of Myself, another musing on celebrity, attention and the fact that almost everything about 21st-century existence has become a performance. Rather, the Norwegian filmmaker's latest plays like its title suggests: the product of slumbering while having all of the above swirling, twirling and dancing in your synapses — and with Cage always lurking, of course. Dream Scenario streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. The Iron Claw The Von Erich family's second generation of wrestlers was born ready to rumble, regardless of whether they wanted to or not. After diving into a cult's thrall in Martha Marcy May Marlene, then the idea that money and status can buy happiness in fellow psychological thriller The Nest, writer/director Sean Durkin adds another exceptional and gripping film to his resume with The Iron Claw — a movie that draws upon elements of both, too, as it tells its heartbreaking true tale. Unpacking the weight carried and toll weathered by brothers locked into one future and way of life from the moment that they existed, this is a feature about the shadow cast by power and dominance by those caught in its shade, and the cost of doggedly chasing one concept of triumph and masculinity above all else. The Zac Efron (The Greatest Beer Run Ever)-voiced narration pitches it as a picture about a family curse as well, but the supernatural has nothing on an authoritarian force refusing to let anyone flee his grasp. The Iron Claw introduces the IRL Von Erich sporting dynasty with patriarch Fritz (Holt McCallany, 61st Street) doing the grappling, busting out the trademark grip that gives the movie its name, as his wife Doris (Maura Tierney, American Rust) and two of his boys wait outside. When they all come together after the match, it isn't just the pledge that Fritz will bring the National Wrestling Association's World Heavyweight Championship to their brood, which he's certain will fix their struggling plight, that lingers. Equally inescapable is the unyielding fixation burning in his steely glare, a look that will rarely falter in the film's 132-minute running time — and how his adoring sons (first-timers Grady Wilson and Valentine Newcomer) are already trained to see this world of rings, frays, throws and belts as their home, career path and destiny. With Harris Dickinson (A Murder at the End of the World), The Bear's Emmy- and Golden Globe-winner Jeremy Allen White, and Stanley Simons (Superior) joining Efron in the cast as grown versions of those two boys and two of their brothers, seeing how Fritz's obsession ripples through his family is crushing. The Iron Claw streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Ferrari Michael Mann makes movies like a man haunted. From his 1981 debut Thief to his latest release Ferrari, it's no wonder that his films linger with viewers. Mann's work whirrs with the pursuit of professional greatness, and with the pressures of balancing that relentlessly revving chase with personal ties and desires — quests and woes that aren't his own in his narratives, but always feel intimate. Heat, 1995's Robert De Niro (Killers of the Flower Moon)- and Al Pacino (Hunters)-led crime-thriller that the filmmaker will forever be known for, has proven a spectacular example for nearly three decades. While the skilled burglar and dogged detective caught in its cat-and-mouse game are both experts in their realms, that doesn't make juggling their on-the-job and at-home realities any easier, cleaner or less chaotic. Using that very notion as its road, Ferrari is clearly the product of the same director. Perhaps Mann is speeding down that exact path after all, then, navigating the complexities of getting a film onto screens — his last was 2015's underseen Blackhat — on a mission to master his favourite themes. Mann has helmed several model features already in Thief, Heat, The Insider and Collateral, with Ferrari a worthy addition to his resume. Wheels spin on and off the track in the elegantly and exquisitely crafted slice-of-life biopic, many literally but others via its namesake's personal life. Based on Brock Yates' book Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Cars, The Races, The Machine, as adapted by screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin (the OG The Italian Job) to cover events in the summer of 1957 only, Ferrari is always hurtling — even when it's as patient as cinema in Mann's hands has ever been. The collision between single-minded goals and the messiness of existing constantly gives his pictures urgency, no matter how steady the gaze and stoic the character. And make no mistake, Adam Driver's (65) gravitas-dripping portrayal of race car driver-turned-sports car entrepreneur Enzo Ferrari (and Italian-accented but speaking in English, just as he did in House of Gucci) is as serious and determined as Mann's protagonists get, too. Ferrari streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. The Holdovers Melancholy, cantankerousness, angst, hurt and snow: all five blanket Barton Academy in Alexander Payne's The Holdovers. It's Christmas in the New England-set latest film from the Election, About Schmidt and Nebraska director, but festive cheer is in short supply among the students and staff that give the movie its moniker. The five pupils all want to be anywhere but stuck at their exclusive boarding school over the yuletide break, with going home off the cards for an array of reasons. Then four get their wish, leaving just Angus Tully (debutant Dominic Sessa), who thought he'd be holidaying in Saint Kitts until his mother told him not to come so that she could have more time alone with his new stepdad. His sole company among the faculty: curmudgeonly classics professor Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti, Billions), who's being punished for failing the son of a wealthy donor, but would be hanging around campus anyway; plus grieving head cook Mary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Only Murders in the Building), who is weathering her first Christmas after losing her son — a Barton alum — in the Vietnam War. The year is 1970 in Payne's long-awaited return behind the lens after 2017's Downsizing, as the film reinforces from its opening seconds with retro studio credits. The Holdovers continues that period-appropriate look in every frame afterwards — with kudos to cinematographer Eigil Bryld (No Hard Feelings), who perfects not only the hues and grain but the light and softness in his imagery — and matches it with the same mood and air, as if it's a lost feature unearthed from the era. Cat Stevens on the soundtrack, a focus on character and emotional truths, zero ties to franchises, a thoughtful story given room to breathe and build: that's this moving and funny dramedy. Christmas flicks regularly come trimmed with empty, easy nostalgia, but The Holdovers earns its wistfulness from a filmmaker who's no stranger to making movies that feel like throwbacks to the decade when he was a teen. The Holdovers streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Anyone But You Greenlighting Anyone But You with Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell as its leads must've been among Hollywood's easiest decisions. One of the rom-com's stars has been everywhere from Euphoria and The White Lotus to Reality of late, while the other is fresh off feeling the need for speed in Top Gun: Maverick. They both drip charisma. If this was the 80s, 90s or 00s, they each would have an entire segment of their filmographies dedicated to breezy romantic comedies like this Sydney-shot film, and probably more than a few together. Indeed, regardless of his gleaming casting, Anyone But You director and co-writer Will Gluck makes his first adult-oriented flick in 12 years — since Friends with Benefits, with Annie and the two Peter Rabbit movies since — as if it's still two, three or four decades back. The gimmick-fuelled plot, the scenic setting, swinging between stock-standard and OTT supporting characters: even amid overt riffs on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, they're all formulaically present and accounted for. So is the fact that Anyone But You's story always comes second to Sweeney and Powell's smouldering chemistry, and that most of its obvious jokes that only land because the pair sell them, as well as the whole movie. Bea (Sweeney) and Ben (Powell) meet-cute over a bathroom key in a busy cafe. That first dreamy day ends badly the next morning, however, with more pain in store when Bea's sister Halle (Hadley Robinson, The Boys in the Boat) gets engaged to Ben's best friend Pete's (GaTa, Dave) sister Claudia (Alexandra Shipp, Barbie). Cue their feud going international at the destination wedding in Australia, then getting a twist when Bea and Ben pretend that they're together. They're trying stop their fighting ruining the nuptials, get her parents to back off from pushing for a reunion with her ex (Darren Barnet, Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story) and make his own past love (model-turned-acting debutant Charlee Fraser) jealous. Every expected narrative beat is struck, then, while nodding to other rom-com wedding flicks — My Best Friend's Wedding co-stars Dermot Mulroney and Rachel Griffiths play Bea's mum and dad, with the latter also a Muriel's Wedding alum — and getting cheesily Aussie via koalas, endless shots of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House, and Bryan Brown (Boy Swallows Universe) and Joe Davidson (Neighbours) playing the stereotypical parts. And yet, Sweeney and Powell ace their performances and rapport, and also couldn't be more watchable. Anyone But You streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Bottoms The first rule of making a movie about a high-school lesbian fight club is that there are no rules, other than embracing the concept and giving it your all. So punches Bottoms, a film where the gleefully cartoonish energy is always as important as the plot, and a feature that knows it's entering a big-screen ring that wouldn't even exist if Heathers, Clueless, Bring It On, Mean Girls, But I'm a Cheerleader, Easy A and Booksmart hadn't hopped over the ropes first. Three years after Shiva Baby, writer/director Emma Seligman and actor Rachel Sennott (Bodies Bodies Bodies) reunite, with the pair collaborating on the script this time around. Also crucial: bringing in The Bear's Ayo Edebiri, a friend from the duo's student days, to co-star. In a picture that values being stronger together, Seligman, Sennott and Edebiri make a knockout team. Bottoms' vibe could only spring from IRL pals, too, playing it loose and ridiculous like this crew is simply hanging out. The setup: Sennott and Edebiri are PJ and Josie, who return to Rockbridge Falls High School after summer break keen to finally turn their love for popular cheerleaders Isabel (Havana Rose Liu, No Exit) and Brittany (Kaia Gerber, Babylon) into sex and romance. The best friends know that their social standing is anything but high — "gay, untalented and ugly" is how they describe themselves — but two queer girls can dream that this is their moment, then do their utmost to make their fantasies a reality. So, when the semester starts with PJ and Josie still stuck as outcasts, they conjure up a plan. Their gymnasium-based group is officially known as a women's self-defense class and is sold to their teachers as an act of female solidarity; however, no matter what they tell the principal (Wayne Pére, Your Honor), as well as the history teacher (Marshawn Lynch, Westworld) that they convince to be their advisor, there's really only one aim: not feminism and support, but getting laid. Bottoms streams via Prime Video. Read our full review. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom The DC Extended Universe is dead. With Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, the comic book-to-screen franchise hardly swims out with a memorable farewell, hasn't washed up on a high and shouldn't have many tearful over its demise. More movies based on the company's superheroes are still on the way. They'll be badged the DC Universe instead, and start largely afresh; 2025's Superman: Legacy will be the first, with Pearl's David Corenswet as the eponymous figure, as directed by new DC Studios co-chairman and co-CEO James Gunn (The Suicide Squad). Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom ends up the old regime about as expected, however: soggily, unable to make the most of its star, and stuck treading water between what it really wants to be and box-ticking saga formula. Led by Jason Momoa (Fast X), the first Aquaman knew that it was goofy, playful fun. Its main man, plus filmmaker James Wan (Malignant), didn't splash around self-importance or sink into seriousness. Rather, they made a giddily irreverent underwater space opera — and, while it ebbed and flowed between colouring by numbers and getting entertainingly silly, the latter usually won out. Alas, exuberance loses the same battle in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Having spent its existence playing catch-up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the DCEU does exactly that for a final time here. As with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, there's such a large debt owed to Star Wars that elements seem to be lifted wholesale; just try not to laugh at Jabba the Hutt as a sea creature. 2018's initial Aquaman used past intergalactic flicks as a diving-off point, too, but with its own personality — no trace of which bobs up this time around. Wan helms again, switching to workman-like mode. He's co-credited on the story with returning screenwriter David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick (Orphan: First Kill), Momoa and Thomas Pa'a Sibbett (The Last Manhunt), but there's little but being dragged out with the prevailing tide, tonal chaos and a CGI mess on show. Now king of Atlantis and a father, Arthur Curry has another tussle with Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Ambulance) to face, with his enemy aided by dark magic and exacerbating climate change. Only Aquaman teaming up with his imprisoned half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson, Insidious: The Red Door) will give the world a chance to survive. Even with an octopus spy and Nicole Kidman (Expats) riding a robot shark, a shipwreck results. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. One Life Nicholas Winton's "British Schindler" label wasn't invented for One Life, the rousing biopic that tells his story; however, it's a handy two-word description that couldn't better fit both him and the film. In the late 1930s, when the then-Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland was occupied by Nazi Germany, the London-born banker spearheaded a rescue mission to get children — mostly Jewish — out of the country. After being encouraged to visit Prague in 1938 by friends assisting refugees, he was so moved to stop as many kids as possible from falling victim to the Holocaust that he and a group of fellow humanitarians arranged trains to take them to England. The immense effort was dubbed kindertransport, with Winton assisting in saving 669 children. Then, in the decades that followed, his heroic feat was almost lost to history. In fact, it only returned to public knowledge in 1988 when his wife Grete Gjelstrup encouraged him to show his scrapbook from the time to Holocaust researcher Elizabeth Maxwell, who was married to media mogul Robert Maxwell. Smartly, One Life captures both remarkable aspects to Winton's story, flitting between them as it tells its powerful and stirring true tale. The film's jumps backwards and forward also allow room for two excellent performances, enlisting Anthony Hopkins as the older Winton and Johnny Flynn (Operation Mincemeat) to do the honours in his younger years. With The Two Popes, his Oscar win for The Father, Armageddon Time and now this, Hopkins has been enjoying a stellar run in his 80s. If matching one of Hopkins' great portrayals in a period filled with them — a career, too, of course — was daunting for Flynn, he doesn't show it. As with Kurt and Wyatt Russell on the small screen's Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, they're playing the same man but also someone who changes, as everyone does, through his experiences. Accordingly, a lively Flynn captures Winton's zeal and determination, while a patient Hopkins wears the haunted disappointment of someone who has spent half of their life thinking that he hasn't done enough. When he finally realises the full impact of his efforts, it's a devastatingly touching moment in a potent feature that looks the standard sombre part, but also knows that flashiness isn't what leaves an imprint in a story as important as this. One Life streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Migration It mightn't seem like Migration and Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget should be twin films. The first is Illumination's latest non-Minions effort. The second is the long-awaited sequel to 2000 claymation favourite Chicken Run. But this pair of animated movies is definitely the newest example of the long-running cinematic déjà vu trend. Past birds of a feather have included Antz and A Bug's Life, Deep Impact and Armageddon, Churchill and Darkest Hour, and Ben Is Back and Beautiful Boy — and oh-so-many more — aka pictures with similar plots releasing at around the same time. The current additions to the list both arrived in December 2023, focus on anthropomorphised poultry, and initially find their clucking and quacking critters happy in their own safe, insular idylls, only to be forced out into the scary wider world largely due to their kids. Chaos with humans in the food industry ensues, including a life-or-death quest to avoid being eaten, plus lessons about being willing to break out of your comfort zone/nest/pond. Famous voices help bring the avian protagonists to the screen, too — Elizabeth Banks (The Beanie Bubble) and Kumail Nanjiani (Welcome to Chippendales) are the parents in Migration, for instance, and Thandiwe Newton (Westworld) and Zachary Levi (Shazam! Fury of the Gods) in Dawn of the Nugget — although that's long been the industry standard in animation in general. If you've seen Chicken Run's return, then, Migration will instantly feel familiar. This is an instance of two studios hatching near-identical films that both have their own charms, however. With Migration, a voice cast that also spans Awkwafina (Quiz Lady), Keegan-Michael Key (Wonka), Danny DeVito (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and Carol Kane (Hunters) brings plenty of energy. As the key behind-the-camera talents, director Benjamin Renner (Ernest & Celestine) and screenwriter Mike White (yes, The White Lotus' Mike White) know how to enliven the narrative. That tale tells of mallards Mack (Nanjiani) and Pam (Banks), one nervous and the other adventurous, who follow another family from New England to Jamaica via New York City with their eager ducklings Dax (Caspar Jennings, Operation Mincemeat) and Gwen (first-timer Tresi Gazal), and cantankerous uncle (DeVito). But the Big Apple brings a run-in which a chef, after initially falling afoul of a flock of pigeons, befriending their leader (Awkwafina) and endeavouring to rescue the homesick parrot (Key) who knows the way to their sunny winter getaway. Migration streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Wish Hitting cinemas in 2023, the year that Walt Disney Animation Studios celebrated its 100th birthday, shouldn't have meant that Wish needed to live up to a century's worth of beloved classics. And it wouldn't for viewers, even with the Mouse House's anniversary celebrations everywhere, if the company's latest film didn't bluntly draw attention to Disney hits gone by. Parts are cobbled together from Cinderella, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio. Not just fellow animated efforts get referenced; alongside shoutouts to Bambi and Peter Pan, Mary Poppins earns the nod well. Overtly elbowing rather than winking, directors Chris Buck (Frozen and Frozen II) and Fawn Veerasunthorn (head of story on Raya and the Last Dragon) plus screenwriters Jennifer Lee (another Frozen alum) and Allison Moore (Beacon 23) ensure that their audience has the mega media corporation's other fare in their heads. It's a dangerous strategy, calling out other movies if the feature doing the calling out is by-the-numbers at best, and it does Wish no favours. No one might've been actively thinking "I wish I was watching a different Disney movie instead" if they weren't pushed in that direction by the flick itself, but once that idea sweeps in it never floats away. While the importance and power of dreams is Wish's main theme, the film forgot to have many itself. If it hoped to be a generic inspiration-touting fairy-tale musical, however, that fantasy was granted. Ariana DeBose (Argylle) and Chris Pine (Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves) star as teenager Asha and all-powerful sorcerer Magnifico, respectively. The latter created the kingdom of Rosas as a sanctuary to protect people's wishes, which hover in his castle — but he's stingy with granting them. When Asha discovers that the land's sovereign isn't as benevolent as he seems, then wishes on a star that becomes her beaming friend (and makes her goat Valentino talk, sporting the voice of Peter Pan & Wendy's Alan Tudyk), she decides to topple his rule and free the deepest desires of her fellow townsfolk. West Side Story Oscar-winner DeBose brings her best to the movie's songs, which would've fallen flat and proven forgettable in anyone else's hands, but they're the most vivid part of a film that starts with the storybook cliche, leans too heavily on chattering critters and can't match its classic look with an instant-classic picture. Wish streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Night Swim James Wan didn't direct Night Swim, nor write it. Instead, the Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring and Malignant filmmaker is one of its producers alongside Get Out, Five Nights at Freddy's, and the recent Halloween and The Exorcist revivals' Jason Blum. So, the pair haven't quite gone the M3GAN route given that Wan earned a story credit on that 2023 hit — but surely the Australian had a hand in one specific detail. Marking the feature helming debut of writer/director Bryce McGuire, the Baghead scribe who adapts his 2014 short film with Rod Blackhurst (Blood for Dust), Night Swim includes a school named after Harold Holt. It's a movie about a haunted swimming pool that namechecks the Aussie Prime Minister who disappeared and has been presumed dead since failing to return after a swim in the sea in 1967. The cheeky early reference is a portentous Easter egg, not that ocean paddles are a part of this tale. Other than stars Wyatt Russell (Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) and Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin) trying to do what they can with the predictable material, including the former nodding to his family's baseballing history (his father Kurt and grandfather Bing, each also actors, both played), it's one of the movie's most notable aspects. Russell steps into the shoes of Ray Waller, who has retired from doing the only thing he's ever loved due to illness. That move away from professional sports sends the ex-athlete, his wife Eve (Condon) and their children children Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes) and Elliot (Gavin Warren, Fear the Walking Dead) in search of a new home — and Ray feels a particular pull towards one specific abode and its groundwater-filled pool, even after tumbling unexpectedly into it. The paddling spot is meant to be helpful for his ailments, too. As viewers already know before this big decision, courtesy of a girl (Ayazhan Dalabayeva, Miracle Workers) having a traumatic splash in the 1992-set prologue, this isn't just any old backyard place for a dip. The evening pool scenes are fittingly hauntingly shot, but this is a movie where close to every element wades in from other flicks — The Shining, Poltergeist and The Ring among them — and sparking a sinking feeling about how derivative it is isn't the same as being suspenseful or scary. Night Swim streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. The Beekeeper In the Jason Statham cinematic universe, all that a movie needs is a profession as a moniker, its star scowling fiercely and the flimsiest of narratives propping up routine action scenes. So goes The Transporter, The Mechanic and now The Beekeeper (Crank doesn't quite fit, because the title doesn't describe Statham's character's job). The lead actor shared by all of these films can do and has done better. The Autopilot could be a name for his mode here, then. Directed by Suicide Squad's David Ayer, written by The Expendables 4's Kurt Wimmer and crediting Statham as a producer with them as well as a star, The Beekeeper doesn't attempt to get its main man doing anything that he couldn't do in his sleep, in fact — well, that and put him in a John Wick-esque scenario if it was written as a Gerard Butler (Plane) flick instead. Statham plays an ex-secret operative from a clandestine group called The Beekeepers, who is now literally keeping bees in his quiet life, but gets drawn back in after the kindly retired schoolteacher Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad, Creed III) that he rents a barn from is scammed by a ruthless operation. The Beekeepers are all about justice. In its pursuit, they're also not beholden to the usual law. In fact, their remit is swarming in to protect the hive when the legal forces that everyone knows about don't do their job. (Plenty of bee nods and puns are also The Beekeeper's remit, unsurprisingly, even as it manages never to be intentionally amusing for a second, or show any desire to want to). So when there's no satisfactory resolution to the swindle and its aftermath, including with Parker's daughter Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman, The Umbrella Academy) an agent on the case, Statham's Adam Clay gets a-stinging. Wimmer has indeed scripted Gerard Butler movies before, but his lead here can't make this more than a woefully clichéd mess that screams to use his knack for comedy, yet doesn't. Looking grimly trashy aesthetics-wise, working in oh-so-rote conspiracies, roping in Josh Hutcherson (Five Nights at Freddy's) and Jeremy Irons (The Flash) as well as Minnie Driver (Uproar): none give this any trace of a buzz, either, or turn it into B- (or bee-)movie honey. The Beekeeper streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Looking for more viewing options? Take a look at our monthly streaming recommendations across new straight-to-digital films and TV shows — and fast-tracked highlights from January 2024 (and also January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2023, too). We keep a running list of must-stream TV from across 2024 as well, complete with full reviews. And, we've also rounded up 2023's 15 best films, 15 best straight-to-streaming movies, 15 top flicks hardly anyone saw, 30 other films to catch up with, 15 best new TV series of 2023, another 15 excellent new TV shows that you might've missed and 15 best returning shows.
Something delightful has been happening in cinemas in some parts of the country. After numerous periods spent empty during the pandemic, with projectors silent, theatres bare and the smell of popcorn fading, picture palaces in many Australian regions are back in business — including both big chains and smaller independent sites in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. During COVID-19 lockdowns, no one was short on things to watch, of course. In fact, you probably feel like you've streamed every movie ever made, including new releases, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent all your time of late glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of new films are hitting cinemas so that you can do just that — and we've rounded up, watched and reviewed everything on offer this week. FIRESTARTER Would the latest big-screen adaptation of Stephen King's Firestarter have been better or worse if it had included The Prodigy's hit of the same name, aka the most obvious needle-drop that could've been chosen? Although we'll never know, it's hard to imagine a film with less personality than this page-to-screen remake. Using the 1996 dance-floor filler would've been a choice and a vibe — and a cliched one, whether gleefully or lazily — but it might've been preferable to the dull ashes of by-the-numbers genre filmmaking that's hit screens instead. Zac Efron looking so bored that blood drips from his eyes, dressing up King's 1980 story as a superhero tale (because of course) and having its pyrokinetic protagonist say "liar liar, pants on fire" when she's torching someone aren't a recipe for igniting movie magic, or for even occasionally just lighting a spark. That said, the best thing about Firestarter circa 2022 is actually its 'Firestarter'-free score, and with good reason. It hails from legendary original Halloween director John Carpenter, plus his son Cody Carpenter and regular collaborators Daniel A Davies (all fresh from 2018's Halloween and its follow-up Halloween Kills). It's a savvy touch not merely for the kind of atmospheric, eerie, mood-defining electro-synth sounds that only the elder Carpenter can deliver, but because he was originally slated to direct the first version of Firestarter in 1984, only to be ditched because The Thing — now a stone-cold sci-fi/horror classic — didn't do well enough at the box office. While both features could've desperately used Carpenter behind the lens, at least the initial flick didn't feel like all it was burning was the audience's time and patience. Then, now and in King's book, Firestarter follows the McGee family, whose lives would blaze brighter if they didn't have abilities most folks don't. After volunteering for a clinical trial in college, Andy (Efron, Gold) and his wife Vicky (Sydney Lemmon, Fear the Walking Dead) have telepathic and telekinetic powers; being experimented on with mind-altering chemical compounds will do that. And, from birth, their now 11-year-old daughter Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong, It: Chapter Two) has been able to start fires with her mind. How director Keith Thomas (The Vigil) establishes this backstory says more than it should about the movie, how blandly it turns out and what it might've been with more flair. A flashback to Charlie getting fiery as a baby is laughable, and kindles exactly zero thrills, scares or unease. But, flickering over the opening credits as old video footage, Andy and Vicky's time as test subjects ripples with tension and creepiness — that's swiftly extinguished and never felt again. Unsurprisingly, the McGees have spent years attempting to blend in, hiding their powers and fleeing the shady government department, The Shop, that's responsible for their situation — and now sports a keen interest in using Charlie as a weapon. Alas, as the girl grows, holding her abilities back is becoming harder. Andy and Vicky argue about what's better: training her to suppress the flames or teaching her how to harness them. Then she literally explodes at school, The Shop head honcho Captain Hollister (Gloria Reuben, City on a Hill) puts bounty hunter John Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes, Rutherford Falls) on their trail and the heat is on. (No, that track from Beverly Hills Cop, which reached cinemas the same year that the OG Firestarter did, doesn't feature here either.) Read our full review. OPERATION MINCEMEAT A twisty tale of high-stakes British espionage — one that spans secret identities, torrid affairs, country-hopping missions and a world-in-peril situation, too — Operation Mincemeat desperately wants its audience to know about its 007 ties. When it introduces a man by the name of Ian Fleming (Johnny Flynn, The Dig), it lets the moment linger. It drops more than a few mentions of his fondness for writing about spy intrigue as well. And, when he refers to his boss Admiral John Godfrey (Jason Isaacs, Streamline) as M, the film even has him explain why. Fleming is also the movie's narrator, literally spinning a cloak-and-dagger story from the get-go. Plus, seeing him tapping away at a typewriter is a common image. Every single touch forms part of the feature's warm, well-meaning nod to the Bond, James Bond author's early years; however, it's also a tad distracting and unnecessary. Fleming is immersed in the IRL covert mission that Operation Mincemeat explores, and removing him would've been inaccurate, but the details themselves are fascinating enough without getting viewers thinking about tuxedos and shaken-not-stirred martinis. Operation Mincemeat is a war film, set in the darkening days of 1943. It's also just as much a heist film. Whether you've only ever seen one Ocean's flick, have memorised every single word of Reservoir Dogs, or loved Baby Driver or Widows in recent years, if you've seen one caper movie you know the setup: gather a gang together, work out the nitty gritty of a bold but tricky plan, endeavour to put the scheme into action, then weather whatever comes (be it success, failure or a bit of both). Adapting Ben Macintyre's book, which also spawned a 2010 documentary, screenwriter Michelle Ashford (Masters of Sex) is well aware of this formula. With director John Madden (Miss Sloane) behind the lens, Operation Mincemeat doesn't shy away from all of the heist basics for a second. But as with all the gratuitous Bond nods, a cracking real-life tale remains a cracking real-life tale — the kind that no one, not even Fleming, could convincingly make up. The titular gambit came about as much of the Allies' efforts in World War II did: as an effort to do whatever was needed to defeat Hitler. Britain needed to make its way into occupied Europe, but everyone involved knew it — including the Germans — ensuring that any standard move would've been oh-so-easy for the Nazis to predict. Enter the operation that might've been codenamed 'Trojan Horse', except that that label would've been much too obvious. The plan: getting documents about the Allies' purported and wholly fictional scheme to invade Greece to their enemies, misdirecting them, so that the invasion of Sicily could proceed with little resistance. The crucial detail: drifting those papers into Spain, where they could be reasonably expected to end up in German hands, by placing them with a corpse dressed up to look like a British military officer. Making that ruse stick — ensuring that the Nazis didn't smell a plant, specifically — was never going to be a straightforward move. It's one thing to nail the logistics of transporting the cadaver and its faux materials to the right place, and another completely to find a body that works, forge all the necessary documentation and build up a backstory so believable that it'd stand up to enemy scrutiny. As a result, Godfrey isn't keen on the operation, which was reportedly conjured up by Fleming, but it still gets the go-ahead anyway. Tasked with both fleshing and carrying it out are Naval Intelligence officers Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth, Supernova) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen, Succession), who amass a team of helpers including Fleming, Montagu's trusty chief secretary Hester Leggett (Penelope Wilton, Downton Abbey: A New Era), plus MI5 clerk Jean Leslie (Kelly Macdonald, Line of Duty). Read our full review. TO CHIARA Lurking behind every 18th birthday, beyond the alcohol legally drunk and nightclubs gleefully danced through, is an unspoken truth: life only gets more chaotic from here. That realisation doesn't usually spring during the celebrations, toasts and happy speeches of the big day itself — or necessarily within weeks, months or even a few years afterwards, either — however, it's inescapable nonetheless. In To Chiara, it blazes brightly for the movie's eponymous teenager (Swamy Rotolo). It shatters her sense of normality, too. But she isn't the one hitting the milestone that every adolescent yearns for. Instead, the party that helps start this Italian drama is actually for the 15-year-old's elder sister Giulia (Grecia Rotolo), with the pair's friends and relatives alike marking the occasion as countless other families have: with dinner, festivities and delighted emotions. As captured with a raw, fluid and naturalistic style like everything that both precedes it and follows, Giulia's birthday is a portrait of exuberance — until, for Chiara, it isn't. She plays up a garden-variety case of sibling rivalry, including during a performative dance contest. She revels in still being her doting dad Claudio's (Claudio Rotolo) favourite. And she thinks nothing of sneaking outside to have a smoke, only slightly worrying if her father will find out. But it's there, cigarette in hand, that Chiara watches her uncles get into a verbal scuffle outside. Then, in the aftermath, she spies her doting dad rushing off to deal with the fallout. Also, later that evening, perturbed by the feeling that something isn't quite right, it's Chiara who witnesses the family car explode outside their home, and spots Claudio fleeing under the cloak of darkness. The newest neo-realist film by Italian American writer/director Jonas Carpignano, To Chiara is also his third set in the Calabrian region, in the small coastal town of Gioia Tauro. It's the latest entry in a series that explores the area's mix of residents, segueing from refugees from North Africa in 2015's Mediterranea to the Romani community in 2017's A Ciambra, and now to the 'Ndrangheta. Call the latter the mafia, call them an organised crime syndicate, call them just part of living Southern Italy — whichever you pick, Chiara has always just considered them her loved ones without knowing it. Learning how her dad pays the bills and why he's now a fugitive, gleaning that her mother (Carmela Fumo) must be aware, trying to uncover where Giulia stands, attempting to cope with everything she thought she knew crumbling in an instant: that's what this gripping and moving film has in store for its young, headstrong, understandably destabilised protagonist from here. From the moment that Chiara begins to make her big discovery — piecing together the details stubbornly, despite being warned that her questions won't have welcome answers — it's easy to recognise why such a tale fascinates Carpignano. It's the story that sits in the shadows of other gangster flicks and shows, because so many are also about the bonds of blood; in decades gone by, it could've been Mary Corleone facing the same situation in The Godfather franchise or Meadow Soprano doing the same in The Sopranos. To Chiara also unfurls the ultimate tale of innocence lost, forever fracturing the bubble of an idyll that Chiara has spent her life inhabiting without ever realising, and causing her to now see the parent she has always adored in a completely different light. Nothing signals leaving childhood behind, no matter your age, more than having the entire foundation for your existence shift, after all. As gleams fiercely in its phenomenal lead's eyes, nothing is more devastating, either. Read our full review. THIS MUCH I KNOW TO BE TRUE How do you make a concert film when no concerts can be held to film? Australian director Andrew Dominik (Chopper, Killing Them Softly) and his now two-time subjects Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have the answer. How do you create a personal documentary that cuts to the heart of these Aussie music icons when, whether stated or implied in their vibe, both are hardly enamoured with having their lives recorded? Again, see: Dominik's new Cave and Ellis-focused This Much I Know to Be True. Performances in cavernous empty British spaces fill the movie's frames but, via stunning lighting, staging and lensing, they're as dazzling as any IRL gig. The interludes between tunes are brief, and also intimate and revealing. The result: a phenomenal doco that's a portrait of expression, a musing on an exceptional collaboration and a rumination upon existence, as well as a piece of haunting cinematic heaven whether you're an existing Cave and Ellis devotee, a newcomer or something in-between. Dominik, Cave and Ellis initially teamed up when the latter duo scored the former's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Later this year, when upcoming Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde hits screens, the same arrangement will provide its soundtrack. But in the middle sits 2016 doco One More Time with Feeling and now This Much I Know to Be True, as entrancing a pair as the music documentary genre has gifted viewers. The first factual flick found Cave and Ellis recording the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album Skeleton Tree, as Cave also grappled with the death of one of his sons. Here, its follow-up is shaped by the first performances of Cave and Ellis' latest albums — the Bad Seeds 2019 release Ghosteen, and Cave and Ellis' 2021 record Carnage — plus the pandemic and the lingering effects of grief. Chatter precedes tunes to begin This Much I Know to Be True — talk, a revelation and a mini art exhibition, in fact. To the camera, Cave quips that he's "retrained as a ceramicist, because it's no longer viable to be a musician, a touring artist". He's joking about giving up music, of course, but serious about his foray into porcelain. Donning a white lab coat, he walks the audience through his workshop, sharing a series he's dubbed The Story of the Devil in 18 Figurines. That'd make a phenomenal title for one of his tracks, but it isn't. One piece's individual moniker, The Devil's Last Dance, also sounds like a song title. Unsurprisingly, Cave unfurls the same kinds of tales while explaining his ceramics — about a figure he's clearly long been fascinated with, and about choices, family, loss, redemption and mourning — as he always has behind the microphone. This attention-grabbing introduction serves several purposes, from pointing out the English government's patently ridiculous advice to artists during COVID-19 to setting the film's tone. There's always been a bewitching blend of the ethereal, mysterious and dark to Cave's music, and a sense of poetic preaching to his lyrics; his early musings here about the devil at various moments in his life earn the same description, and establish the movie as a type of spiritual experience. Fans of any star are guilty of seeing their hero's work in that light. It's especially true of musicians, who innately turn concert venues into altars for their disciples to worship their output. Still, when This Much I Know to Be True hones in on Cave at his piano, or behind the mic, spotlights casting him in a hypnotic glow while bathing his surroundings in blackness, that feeling couldn't be more blatant — and earned. Read our full review. FATHER STU The last time that Mark Wahlberg played a real-life boxer, The Fighter was the end result. The last time that Mel Gibson played the burger-chain owner's father, the world was forced to suffer through Daddy's Home 2. Combine this mismatched pair and you don't quite get Father Stu, the former Marky Mark's first step into faith-based films — but even watching the latter, the second instalment in his woeful comedy franchise with Will Ferrell, is preferable to this mawkish true tale. Drawn from the IRL Stuart Long's life, it's meant to be an inspirational affair, covering the familiar religious-favourite beats about sinners being redeemed, wayward souls seizing second chances and learning to accept physical suffering as a chance to get closer to the divine. First-time feature writer/director Rosalind Ross is earnest about those messages, and her film visibly looks more competent than most sermon-delivering recent cinema releases, but what preaching-to-the-choir sentiments they are. How ableist they are as well. When Wahlberg (Uncharted) first graces the screen as Long, he could've stepped in from plenty of his other movies. In his younger days, the titular future priest is a foul-mouthed amateur boxer from Montana, but he has big dreams — and when he hits Los Angeles with acting stars in his eyes, viewers can be forgiven for thinking of Boogie Nights. Porn isn't Long's calling, of course, although salacious propositions do come his way in the City of Angels, in one of the film's hardly subtle efforts to equate the secular and the sordid. It's actually lust that pushes the feature's protagonist on the path to the priesthood, however, after he spies volunteer Sunday school teacher Carmen (Teresa Ruiz, The Marksman) while he's working in a grocery store. To have a chance with her, he even gets baptised. Then, a drink-driving accident brings a vision of the Virgin Mary, sparking Long's determination to make Catholicism his calling. Next, a shock health diagnosis both tests and cements his faith. Father Stu is filled details that instantly seem too neat, contrived and poised to make the movie's point, even knowing that this is a biopic. Perhaps they wouldn't feel so calculating if Ross did more than simply connect the dots between events that push her central figure towards his spiritual awakening with big "and then this happened" energy. If exactly why the church appealed to Long so strongly was meant to be conveyed via Wahlberg's performance, that's lost in an always-superficial portrayal. The actor gained the necessary weight needed in Long's later years, and is happy to show off his brawn in his younger boxing and wannabe actor days, but that isn't the same as fleshing a character out. Here, Long is merely a symbol; Father Stu may recreate the real counterpart's experiences, but on-screen, the leap from swearing, drinking and abhorring religion, to putting on a show of devotion (and a spate of stalking) to get laid, to accepting his health woes in the name of the Lord, is quick, easy and unconvincing. Indeed, there's a big "Poochie died on the way back to his home planet" vibe to Father Stu's storytelling again and again, as the film favours the bland and broad over the detailed and textured. That includes the entire roster of performances, with Wahlberg basically typecasting himself — he's one of the movie's producers, driven by his own deep and well-publicised Catholic faith — as the wise-cracking tough-guy pugilist, thespian and holy man, and Jacki Weaver (Back to the Outback) stuck in a thankless part as Long's mother. Gibson's involvement is hardly surprising given he has The Passion of the Christ on his resume, and filmmaker Ross is his current real-life partner, but his work here is still as stereotypical as can be. That all still pales in comparison to the idea that serious health woes are "a gift from God", an atrocious notion that isn't the testament to accepting one's lot in life that Father Stu thinks it is. If you're wondering what else is currently screening in Australian cinemas — or has been lately — check out our rundown of new films released in Australia on February 3, February 10, February 17 and February 24; and March 3, March 10, March 17, March 24 and March 31; April 7, April 14, April 21 and April 28; and May 5. You can also read our full reviews of a heap of recent movies, such as Belfast, Here Out West, Jackass Forever, Benedetta, Drive My Car, Death on the Nile, C'mon C'mon, Flee, Uncharted, Quo Vadis, Aida?, Cyrano, Hive, Studio 666, The Batman, Blind Ambition, Bergman Island, Wash My Soul in the River's Flow, The Souvenir: Part II, Dog, Anonymous Club, X, River, Nowhere Special, RRR, Morbius, The Duke, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Fantastic Beasts and the Secrets of Dumbledore, Ambulance, Memoria, The Lost City, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Happening, The Good Boss, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, The Northman, Ithaka, After Yang, Downton Abbey: A New Era, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Petite Maman, The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Interesting individuals and modern historical settings are just what the doctor has ordered for Australia's opera industry — Sydney Chamber Opera (Owen Wingrave, Exil) are dutifully doing their bit to inject some oxygen back into the cultural form. Sydney composer Michael Smetanin and librettist Alison Croggon combine brainpowers for Mayakovsky, their third opera together. Staying true to their taste for tales with an artistic protagonist (previous figures under the duo's microscope have included Franz Kafka and Paul Gauguin), Mayakovsky tells the turbulent but brief life of Russian revolutionary and poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. Mayakovsky, dubbed Stalin's favourite poet, will be played by English National Opera regular Simon Lobelson, as part of an all-Australian cast. This world premiere is Sydney Chamber Opera's main production for 2014 and is the only new opera by a living composer that you'll be able to catch in Sydney all year. With the versatile walls of Carriageworks as a backdrop, there's no better time than now to dip your toes into Australian opera.
Based on Eric Lomax's bestselling memoir, The Railway Man is the story of a former prisoner's struggle to come to terms with the horror of his time being forced to work on the Thai/Burma railway during World War II. Set to be released in Australia on Boxing Day, The Railway Man boasts a stellar cast, including Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Stellan Skarsgård and Jeremy Irvine and is directed by Australian Jonathan Teplitzky, who's 2011 film Burning Man made a big impression. After the war, Lomax returned home and fell in love with Patti. However, he continues to be haunted by the memories of torture at the hands of a particular Japanese officer who discovers the radio that Lomax has built. When, years later, Patti discovers that her husband's tormentor is still alive, she must decide whether or not she should tell her husband, and what the consequences of her decision might be. Thanks to Transmission Films, we've got five double passes to a special preview screening of The Railway Man at the newly renovated Palace Cinemas Norton Street on Monday, December 16, at 6.45pm to give away. To be in the running, subscribe to the Concrete Playground newsletter (if you haven't already), then email win.sydney@concreteplayground.com.au with your name and address. https://youtube.com/watch?v=px04904hm88
Pack your bags, book a flight, grab your winter woolies, and get ready to head to Hobart. For yet another year running, the Museum of Old and New Art is making Tasmania the place to be with events more weird and more wonderful than ever before. Yep, they've unveiled their stellar Dark Mofo 2016 lineup. From June 10 to 21, the museum every mainlander wishes was in their home city is unleashing its unique brand of large-scale art, food, film, music and just general light, noise and mayhem upon the apple isle. It's the kind of cultural pandemonium that has inspired more than 130,000 people to make the trek to Tassie in previous years. Now that's how you celebrate the winter solstice. One-off installation Asylum, set inside a historic mental institution, includes a 72-hour, non-stop performance by artist Mike Parr — and it only accepts mirrors (yes, those shiny things you can see your own reflection in) as an entry fee. It's the type of event most festivals can only dream of, so, naturally, it's on the Dark Mofo program. So is Ryoji Ikeda's supersymmetry [experience], which springs from his 2014-15 residence at the European Council for Nuclear Research, the home of the Large Hadron Collider, and will become the latest addition to the MONA collection. With the Juliana Engberg-curated exhibition Tempest bringing a blend of piracy and wild weather to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery at the same time, that's part of the Dark Mofo shenanigans as well. And it includes Event for a Stage: the Australian premiere of a new stage-to-film exploration of the acting and the creative process made by Turner Prize-winning Young British Artist Tacita Dean OBE, starring Game of Thrones' Stephen Dillane, and shot live during the nineteenth Biennale of Sydney. If that's not enough to inspire a mid-year pilgrimage, then perhaps a public art playground filled everything from swinging pendulums to LED light drawings that transcribe the patterns of the wind will be. Yep, the dockside Dark Park is the place to find Divination, Nancy Mauro-Flude's thirties-era cabaret crossed with a cypherpunk internet cafe; A Galaxy of Suns, where Michaela Gleave and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra Chorus turn constellations into scores; and the disorienting chamber of kaleidoscopic reflections that is Christian Wagstaff and Keith Courtney's House of Mirrors, too. We're noticing a theme here. [caption id="attachment_567185" align="aligncenter" width="1280"] The Bacchae. Image: Pia Johnson.[/caption] And really, that's just the beginning. Performance-wise, pop-up space Block Box will play host to a whole heap of pieces — although it depends if Lustmord's dark ambient tunes or hallucinatory theatrical event The Bacchae, a dream-like invocation of excess and violence as told through the eyes of teenage girls, is your kind of thing. Music fans will want to flock to Hymns to the Dead, where death metal gets its due, or to Rivers and Streams, the only Aussie show by Ukrainian maestro Lubomyr Melnyk, aka the fastest concert pianist in the world. Anyone fond of costume balls can don their best gothic threads for The Funeral Party — and given that it's set at Turnbull Family Funerals, it's certain to be as dark as it sounds. Plus, film buffs should expect another fright-inducing feast of sinister cinematic delights, such as heavy metal horror effort The Devil's Candy. Dark Mofo isn't just about all things new and exciting, though, with a couple of old favourites also returning. Late-night event Blacklist will turn both weekends into an art party, and the Winter Feast will serve up another communal banquet. Don't forget to purge your fears with the annual burning ritual of the ogoh-ogohs, and take part in the Nude Solstice Swim after the longest night of the year. Basically, whatever type of activity floats your boat, you'd best get on one — or another type of landmass-hopping transport — to take part. With a lineup this killer, you know you're going to kick yourself if you miss it. Dark Mofo runs June 10 to 21 in various locations across Hobart, Tasmania. Tickets are on sale from 10am on Monday, April 20 from the festival website.
If anyone was due for a Shakespearian adaptation it's Tarantino. The razor sharp wit, the conniving, the blood — he has it all. Now, as the Bards Bastards prepare to reimagine some of today's most famous stories, the moment has arrived. They're about to turn Quentin Tarantino's classic Reservoir Dogs into a Shakespearean tragedy. Written for the stage by Steven Hopley, their debut parody show is said to include excessive amounts of blood and death. Something that should come as no surprise for fans of either Shakespeare or Tarantino. To get you in the spirit, The Vanguard are offering a number of ticketing, dinner and cocktail packages. Nothing says macabre mashup like dinner and a show.
Wellington is heaven for gourmands, combining all the ingredients that make for a brilliant culinary getaway. There are laneways crammed with cool, little artisanal producers; clandestine cocktail bars behind unmarked doorways; quiet suburbs hiding excellent, casual and international restaurants; centre-city breweries in abundance and a pack of wineries just over the hills. And then there's the fact that the city is wedged between a picturesque harbour and sprawling farmland, so the produce scene is very, very local. Wellington is a physically small city, so it's best explored on foot. This not only helps mitigate some of the effects of a food-filled holiday, but means there's also no stress about arranging transport or planning too far in advance. Just follow your nose and tastebuds. It's often said that Wellington has more bars and restaurants per capita than New York City. Whether or not there's any truth in this, it'll surely feel like it as you explore the many beaut spots, tasting your way through the city's unique culinary ethos. SHEPHERD Tucked away down Hannahs Laneway, Shepherd features framed botanical posters, taxidermy draped with fairy lights and jars of preserves used as decoration. And this unexpected and playful, yet refined decor is mirrored in its food. This is fine dining-quality fare in a wonderfully fun atmosphere where the staff know the origins of every ingredient. Expect plenty of local seafood, Asian condiments, fermented and pickled ingredients and some of the most creative desserts you'll ever taste. The pumpkin cardamom doughnut with peanut butter popcorn and whiskey anglaise is a favourite, but the menu is seasonal and changes almost daily so expect to find a new favourite each time you stop in. [caption id="attachment_635862" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Facebook / Fix & Fogg.[/caption] FIX & FOGG What started as a hobby for then-lawyers Roman and Andrea Jewell has turned into a bit of a peanut butter empire. Fix & Fogg was born from the couple's desire to learn new skills, and it quickly became one of the most delicious products coming out of Wellington. Swing by Hannahs Laneway, and if the peanut butter flag is out — you'll know it when you see it — then the PB will be flowing. The adorable shop window is literally tucked under a staircase and offers tastings, gourmet toast and the occasional peanut butter donut. [caption id="attachment_635860" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Facebook / Husk.[/caption] HUSK Another spot hidden down an alley, another spot that's the result of a collaboration between Wellington hospo stalwarts — HUSK is a lot of things: a cafe, a bar, a brewery, a coffee roastery and a restaurant. With true dedication, the coffee and beer venture is open from 8 or 9am till late every day. Swing by for a breakfast of sardines on toast and a Karamu Coffee flat white (with beans roasted onsite), lunch featuring pork shoulder tacos and a pint of Reet Petite, a stem ginger red IPA by Choice Bros (brewed onsite) and for cheeseburger spring rolls and a barrel-aged negroni for dinner. LAMASON BREW BAR Wellington runs on strong coffee, and Lamason is where you can try the best of it in a safe environment. You won't be mocked here if you're not really sure what the difference is between V60 and Swiss Gold. Lamason does do traditional espresso and they do serve a small selection of food, but what you really want to visit for is the specialty coffee. If you're a newbie, don't be afraid to ask the staff what they recommend. Their single origin beans each have their own unique flavour profiles, and they're beautifully profiled by siphon brewing — which is basically vacuum coffee extraction, otherwise known as magic. [caption id="attachment_635861" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Facebook / Harbourside Market.[/caption] HARBOURSIDE MARKET In Wellington, you bend the knee and swear allegiance to one of the weekend produce markets. There are a handful to choose from, but Harbourside Market is the true ruler of this realm. Every Sunday from sunrise to early arvo, locals and visitors flock to the market to get their week's fruit and veg, as well as bread, cheese, meat, fish, tofu, honey, eggs, peanut butter and so on. The markets also feature a bunch of food trucks and buskers. The roti wraps and cold brew coffee are a perfect cure to a foggy Sunday head, the waterfront vista is stunning and the people watching is excellent. Maybe you've been to Auckland, maybe you've gone to the snow in Queensland, but now it's time to set your sights on Wellington. The harbourside city may be compact, but that only makes for excellent walkability from its excellent restaurants, cafes and bars to its cultural hot spots and around the great outdoors. Use our planning guide to book your trip, then sort out your Wellington hit list with our food and drink, culture and outdoor guides.
Eternal award-winner Maybe Sammy is about to add an exciting new venue to its impressive roster of Sydney bars, launching the team's first Mexican-inspired haunt in the form of El Primo Sanchez. The Paddington opening will join the likes of the original Maybe Sammy, as well as Dean & Nancy on 22, Sammy Junior and Maybe Frank, as part of The Maybe Group when it opens on Oxford Street in December. El Primo Sanchez will take over the ground floor of The Rose Hotel, bringing a heavy dose of agave, mezcal and tequila to Maybe Sammy's world-renowned cocktails. At the street-level bar, these cocktails will highlight Mexican and Latin American produce, and will be served in traditional handmade clay jarrito jugs. "You can still expect the same high level of hospitality, playful energy, brilliant cocktails and attention to detail as our other bars. It will just be wrapped up into a Mexican environment with more of a laidback pub vibe than a high-end cocktail bar," says The Maybe Group co-founder Vince Lombardo. Complimenting the cocktails will be an array of contemporary Mexican eats. While the menu is yet to be revealed, there will be options for a range of different occasions. If you're popping in for a catch-up over a drink, you can opt for bar snacks and lighter dishes like tacos, or if you're arriving on an empty stomach, heartier lunch and dinner choices will be available. The bar comes in collaboration with Public Hospitality, who recently opened Paddington's new boutique hotel, restaurant and bar Oxford House just down the road from The Rose Hotel. "We are excited to begin our journey with The Maybe Group in our beloved Rose Hotel in Paddington. The Maybe team have developed world acclaimed products which we have admired for some time. El Primo Sanchez will complement our newly opened lifestyle hotel, Oxford House and add further energy to Oxford Street," says Anna Touhy, Group General Manager F&B for Public Hospitality. Maybe Sammy was recently named in The World's 50 Best Bars list for 2022 for the fourth year in a row. The innovative bar in The Rocks took out 29th place in the list, a drop from 2021 when it came in 22nd, and from 2020's 11th spot, but higher than in 2019 when it sat at 43rd. El Primo Sanchez will open at 27–33 Oxford Street, Paddington. It will initially be open five nights and two days a week. We'll update you when an exact opening date is announced.
Skip the gym tonight and get your endorphin rush with one of the incredible dance classes at Sydney Dance Company. Whether your skills end at a little two-step or you can channel your inner Beyoncé with ease, you'll be sure to find a class that suits. Choose from over 65 options — including ballet, jazz, Latin funk and hip-hop — and get ready to shake that bod for a good hour. While classes ($24) are run on a drop-in basis, they're understandably pretty popular, so make sure to book your space online beforehand. You can also become a member which gives you unlimited classes for $55 a week. And if you're feeling shy, there are intro short courses in a number of styles to get you dance floor ready.
Eight days of free festivities are coming to Darling Harbour as part of SXSW Sydney. Whether you're a Platinum Badge-holder, just heading along to the music or screen festival, or sans-SXSW tickets entirely, you're invited to head down to Tumbalong Park between Sunday, October 15–Sunday, October 22 for the festival's huge program of free events. Sydneysiders and visitors will be given the chance to dip their toes in the many different aspects of SXSW at the vibrant inner-city hub. Leading the program is Adam Spencer's Big Questions panel with special guest Dr Karl Kruszelnicki. Yiying Lu and Chef Martin Yan will also be appearing on stage, teaming up on World Food Day to conduct a live cooking class. Young Henrys is the official sponsor of SXSW Sydney's music festival, and the beloved Sydney brewery is getting involved in the Tumbalong Park activation in a couple of different ways. Firstly, you'll be able to get your hands on a Newtowner at the Young Henrys pop-up bar. Plus, the YH crew is pulling some strings with a few acts on the festival lineup, running the Rock n Roll Circus where mystery artists will be appearing on stage to cover iconic rock songs. [caption id="attachment_918603" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Vivid 2023, Destination NSW[/caption] The first day of the festival, Sunday, October 15, will feature a jam-packed program featuring an opening ceremony, a presentation from the music festival featuring performances from artists on the lineup, an augmented reality demonstration, a break-dancing activation and an opening night party for SXSW Sydney's screen festival. Elsewhere on the lineup: an outdoor cinema screening classic films that have premiered at SXSW Austin over the years, an afternoon of esports, a live broadcast of FBi Radio's Arvos with Jaimee Taylor-Nielsen, a robotics demonstration and a live playthrough of the murder-mystery game Blood on the Clocktower. On top of all of this, there will also be food trucks, plus pop-up activations from Suntory -196, CommBank, Channel Seven, Snapchat and Uber. [caption id="attachment_912030" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Tumbalong Park during the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup, Destination NSW[/caption] SXSW Sydney is the first time that the world-famous festival is popping up anywhere outside the US. The festival will boast a 700-plus strong bill of talent, covering over 300 sessions. The event will feature more than 300 gigs across 25 venues, too, and has been dropping its music highlights and must-attend parties since earlier in 2023. Its dedicated gaming strand will include a tabletop game expo. And, the SXSW Sydney Screen Festival will open with The Royal Hotel, and host the world premiere of Hot Potato: The Story of the Wiggles. The entire event — the festivals within the bigger fest, exhibitions, talks, networking opportunities and streetside activations — will happen within a walkable precinct in the Sydney CBD, Haymarket, Darling Harbour, Ultimo, Chippendale and more, with the SXSW Sydney's footprint operating as a huge hub. Other venues named so far include Powerhouse Museum, ICC Sydney, UTS, Central Park Mall, the Goods Line Walk, The Abercrombie and Lansdowne Hotel. View this post on Instagram A post shared by sxswsydney (@sxswsydney) SXSW Sydney's free festival hub will take over Tumbalong Park, 11 Harbour Street, Sydney between Sunday, October 15–Sunday, October 22 Top image: Tumbalong Park, Vivid, Destination NSW. If you're keen to make the most of Australia's first SXSW, take advantage of our special reader offer. Purchase your SXSW Sydney 2023 Official Badge via Concrete Playground Trips and you'll score a $150 credit to use on your choice of Sydney accommodation. Book now via the website.
Bookshops come and go, but Gould's has stood its ground in Newtown since 1988. That's possibly because shifting the titles anywhere else would require the Army, Navy and Air Force. But the more likely key to its longevity is its second-hand book collection being not only the biggest in Australia, but also one of the most extraordinary anywhere. Forget everything primary school taught you about alphabetical order and the Dewey Decimal system. The whole point of the Gould's experience is to get lost. Whether you're looking for a specific book or simply browsing, you'll be wandering down book-lined alleys, picking your way through stacks and coming across rarities and out-of-print editions. Expect to bump shoulders with at least a few frazzled uni students. Image: Jesse Jaco.
After spending almost four months in lockdown, heading out of the house is finally back on the agenda for double-vaccinated Sydneysiders. And, as announced today, Thursday, October 14, the New South Wales Government is giving everyone an extra incentive to hit up hospitality, arts and recreation venues — by adding two extra vouchers to the Dine & Discover program. It's been almost a year since the $25 voucher scheme was first announced, with the initiative giving the state's residents access to vouchers to use at at restaurants, cafés, bars, wineries, pubs and clubs, cultural institutions, and live music and arts venues. Over that time, the program has been forced to change and adapt multiple times, especially since it initially rolled out statewide from mid-March. The scheme's end date has been pushed back again and again, and the initiative also widened to include takeaways in response to Greater Sydney's lockdown. Now, with NSW's roadmap to reopening kicking into gear, Premier Dominic Perrottet has announced that Dine & Discover will add two more $25 vouchers — which, just like the existing four vouchers, will be valid until June 2022. They'll be available via the Service NSW app, as part of an additional $250 million in funding for the program. Exactly when they'll be accessible hasn't yet been revealed, other than that they'll be on offer in time for summer. "We know that Dine & Discover vouchers have been incredibly successful, incredibly positive, and used by close to five million people right across our state. So today, we are doubling down on Dine & Discover. We're offering two additional $25 vouchers. We know that these vouchers have injected close to $500 million into the New South Wales economy. They have been incredibly successful and popular, from Ballina to Balmain, from Byron to Broken Hill," said the Premier. "People right across the state have gone out and used the voucher, and importantly, spent more. It's driven economic activity in New South Wales. It's got people back into work. We know that they're popular. We said as we were going through the economic recovery period that we'd look at those programs that worked and we would expand them if we could. That's exactly what we've done in relation to this," Perrottet continued. If you need a refresher on how the vouchers work, the Dine & Discover program hands out the $25 food and entertainment vouchers to NSW residents — all in an effort to boost patronage at hospitality businesses and cultural institutions that've suffered during the pandemic. Across the entire life of the scheme, six vouchers will now be available to everyone in NSW over the age of 18 — three $25 vouchers to use at restaurants, cafes, clubs and other food venues, and another three $25 vouchers specifically for performing arts, cinemas, amusement parks and the like. The vouchers can be used at a hefty number of participating COVID-safe registered businesses, with the full list available on the Service NSW website. That said, you can't use them on tobacco, alcohol or gambling, and you can only use each voucher once, including if your transaction totals less than $25. Also, you'll need to use all of your vouchers separately. To access the vouchers, you'll need a MyServiceNSW account — and the corresponding Service NSW app, so you can use the vouchers digitally. The NSW Government's Dine & Discover scheme runs until Thursday, June 30, 2022. For more information, visit the government's website. Top image: Kitti Gould
There's the parade, yes. But before that, nearly a month of cultural and celebratory events of all stripes makes up the festival of Sydney Mardi Gras, and there's something for everybody, even Straighty McStraight-Straight. Who relates absolutely and 100 percent to the social expectations of their gender and sexuality? Nobody, probably. And that's something to love, savour, and take away from this most iconic of Sydney events. This year, there's a push to establish a Mardi Gras Museum, starting off with a temporary exhibition of Sydney's queer history. Then there's family-friendly fair day, art, roller derby, and one of New York's premier cabaret artists, among all the parties between February 8 and March 3. With gay marriage rights so firmly on the agenda at the moment, 2013's Mardi Gras will definitely be one that's remembered. Have a look at our picks of the ten best things to do this Mardi Gras season.
The review of Sydney's controversial lockout laws has been a long time coming. After asking for the public's feedback back in March, the NSW Government received over 1800 submissions from Sydneysiders and has interviewed over 50 people (including Lord Mayor Clover Moore). The report was released to the public yesterday — and while some 'relaxation' of the lockout laws is considered, it doesn't recommend the changes many campaigners were hoping for. The findings have been handed down by former High Court Judge Ian Callinan in a 151-page Review of Amendments to the Liquor Act 2007. In the report, Callinan finds that a trialling "staged relaxation" of the laws could be "considered" by extending the lockout time at "genuine entertainment venues" (presumably live music venues and strip clubs, although this isn't specified in the report) until 2am and last drinks until 3.30am — that is, by a whole half an hour (the current lockout time is 1.30am and last drinks is at 3am). Gee, thanks. In another small concession, the report recommends that the sale of takeaway alcohol could be extended by an hour until 11pm, finding that the "sale of takeaway alcohol, whether before or after 10pm, makes little or no contribution to violence and anti-social behaviour". While these recommendations are at least a small step in the right direction, on the whole, the report seems resistant to change. It cites that all-night trains and extra policing would come at an extra cost and that "cultural attitudes are difficult and slow to change". Bear in mind the report is just that — a report. It's a non-binding set of recommendations that the NSW Government may or may not take on board. Here's what Sydneysiders are saying about it. That's what you get when you ask a retired high court judge who last went out when The Beatles toured Australia #keepsydneyopen — *An Horse* (@jonnoseidler) September 13, 2016 Callinan so thoroughly misunderstands culture and the objectives of the nightlife industry that it's unclear whether he listened at all. — very earnest tweets (@adam_lewis) September 13, 2016 I just read the Callinan report. I found the report to be sloppily written and unbelievably biased. Call this rigorous?!? #nswpol #auspol — Matt Barrie (@matt_barrie) September 13, 2016 The fact that clubs can be considered as not live music venues is an insult to the many artists who play live in those clubs #keepsydneyopen — Caitlin (@dedicaited) September 13, 2016
Australia is getting its first Pride Centre. About time. After announcing the idea as part of the 2016/17 budget, the Victorian Government has revealed the centre's location: St Kilda. 79-81 Fitzroy Street will become a community hub dedicated to highlighting queer art and history; bringing together advisory, health and support services; providing community spaces and offering a safe environment. It'll be modelled after San Francisco's LGBTI Community Centre, though that's just a starting point. In fact, the government is thinking bigger than its US predecessor when it comes to size. The St Kilda spot was chosen after extensive consultation with the LGBTI community to find the right site, although, given that the suburb has played host to the annual Pride March since 1996, it shouldn't come as a surprise. Currently vacant, it has been secured for at least the next 20 years. The government has pledged $15 million towards what'll be called the Victorian Pride Centre, with work expected to begin in the next 12 months. "We will own this site in perpetuity — and march by it every Pride March knowing it is ours," offered Victorian Pride Centre Board Jude Munro AO. "The Pride Centre is long overdue — it is exciting news for the LGBTI community and yet another welcome addition to St Kilda," said Victorian Minister for Equality Martin Foley. "Our LGBTI community has a lot to be proud of, I congratulate everyone involved and we looking forward to see the site come to life."
Summer means long days, beach outings and lively nights, but when the heat makes it unbearable to even venture outside, create your own slice of paradise in the comfort of your home. With the festive season around the corner and no sign of the cost-of-living crisis slowing down, turn your balcony into a vibrant destination for leisurely catch-ups over home-cooked spreads and refreshing tipples. With the help of Weber, we've pulled together five ways to elevate your outdoor living space, so you can while away the hot summer days without working up a sweat. The Weber Lumin A good barbecue is a quintessential summer experience, but it's often too tricky to turn that dream into a reality when you're stuck on an apartment balcony. Legendary barbecue brand Weber has you covered with the Lumin — a compact electric barbecue designed to be set up in smaller spaces. Don't let its size or lack of gas fool you. The multi-functional Lumin packs a punch and is able to deliver a range of cooking methods, from grilling to steaming and smoking. Simply plug the barbecue into any electrical outlet and you're ready to don your apron, crack open a cold one and get barbecuing. Pillow Loungers If you're living in the vicinity of the city, it's unlikely that you'll have space for anything bigger than a single recliner (if you're lucky). But you can still bring the beach to your balcony with Business & Pleasure Co's pillow loungers. Crafted from UV and weather-resistant Pleasuretex fabric, the Reclining Pillow Lounger boasts five adjustable settings and is easily transportable for any picnic, pool or beach needs. If you have a little more room to play with, the Modular Pillow Stack is the versatile hero to solve all your outdoor comfort needs. Arrange the pillows to suit any occasion, whether it's a cosy sofa, reading nook, sun-bathing deck or additional seating for guests. Both loungers come in a variety of sunny colours to bring a dash of Euro summer to your home and can be folded flat for storage. Cocktail Trolley Between cooking and lounging, you won't want to make the long trek back into your apartment for drinks. Round out your outdoor set-up with a cocktail trolley, which can double as storage, a counter for meal prep or a display shelf. Brighten up your aperitivo hour with Fenton & Fenton's all-weather aluminium and powder-coated outdoor bar cart, or keep things fresh with the Heller Alfresco Cooler from Temple & Webster. The latter comes complete with an 80-litre capacity for ice and drinks, as well as a drainage plug and tube for easy cleaning. To really impress your guests, we'd even recommend grilling or smoking fruit on your Lumin to create a seasonal cocktail with a smoky twist. Outdoor Rugs An outdoor rug might seem counterintuitive, but Ruggable's garden and patio rugs are a colourful way to tie your space together. The outdoor range is stain, water, fade, mould and mildew-resistant. The best part? Your rug can be thrown into the washing machine when it inevitably gets a little dirty. Whether you're looking to create a Mediterranean escape, jungle oasis or coastal haven, there's a print and style to suit every aesthetic. Greenery Experience the great outdoors, no matter your outdoor dimensions. Make even the smallest balcony feel ever-so-slightly bigger with some lush greenery. Don't have any semblance of a green thumb? Opt for artificial plants, like these click-and-fix artificial turf tiles from IKEA, luxe faux botanicals from Pottery Barn, or smaller hanging plants from The Plants Project. You won't ever have to worry about killing a fiddle leaf again. Find out more about the Lumin at the Weber website.
If you were looking to seriously impress a special someone this winter, here's a little giveaway just for you. Three seriously dramatic acts are joining forces for French Baroque, a show that promises to turn your preconceived notions of circus and baroque music inside-out, upside-down and back-to-front. The first is acclaimed acrobatic troupe Circa, who have been travelling the world with their take on circus as stunning, mobile contemporary art. The second is French soprano Claire Lefilliâtre, who has been starring on stages all over Europe. And the third is the five-time ARIA Award-winning Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, home to some of our nation’s best interpreters of 16th- and 17th-century music. With the music of French composers Rameau, Lully and Marais as inspiration, Circa’s artistic director, Yaron Lifschitz, describes the pasticcio of selected music as combining “the longing of the night with the playful side of French baroque”. He's choreographed a performance to meet this mood. “I have responded by creating a river of moonlight that divides the stage, reflecting singer and acrobat, musician and vocalist,” he says. “In the interplay between delight and desire, between pleasure and abandonment, we see a world created where bodies seamlessly meld into song, where lives and loves intermingle and where the simple magic of singing speaks clearly to the heart.” French Baroque will be performed at Sydney’s City Recital Hall from July 22 to August 8, and at Melbourne Recital Centre from July 25 to 26. Tickets range from $20 -166, but thanks to the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, we have two A-reserve double passes for to give away to both the Sydney and Melbourne opening nights, on July 22 and July 25 respectively. If you can't make the opening night (which you really should), you can pick your date. To be in the running, subscribe to our mailing list and then email us with your name and address. Sydney: win.sydney@concreteplayground.com.au Melbourne: win.melbourne@concreteplayground.com.au
If it's a sailor's life for you, Sail Port Stephens is calling your name. The annual yachting regatta is held in the gorgeous waterways of Port Stephens Marine Park, where you'll sail on aquamarine water and, if you're lucky, maybe even spot a dolphin or three. Races include the main Commodores Cup, as well as the NSW IRC Championships, Australian Sport Boat Nationals, Ports Stephens Trophy and, for the littlies, the Junior One-Sail Series. The three days of sailing at the Commodores Cup will also culminate in The Beach Buoys Commodores Cup Ball, where sailors and their supporters will gather at Broughtons at the Bay at d'Albora Marinas in Nelson Bay to drink, dine and dance the night away. Outside of the ball, there's a detailed social schedule including the Women Who Sail Australia conference, a welcome celebration with bubbly courtesy of Wild Oats and the end-of-season 'Sallebration'.
Free meals, free movies, free trips to cultural institutions: New South Wales residents, these are all on your summer agenda. As first announced back in October, the NSW Government is expanding its Dine & Discover program by giving everyone two extra $25 vouchers — and those additional freebies are being rolled out from today, Friday, November 26, Premier Dominic Perrottet has just revealed. The aim of the initiative is to give everyone an extra incentive to hit up hospitality, arts and recreation venues, to help support them after what's been a struggling couple of years — to say the least. And yes, the arrival of the two new vouchers is timed just in time for summer. If you've already registered for the program and have received your first four vouchers under the scheme, you'll start seeing the two extras in the Service NSW app from today — and they'll be in the app by next Friday, December 3, at the latest. If you haven't yet registered, you'll nab all six when you do. Two more Dine & Discover vouchers will be hitting wallets from today. If you've not registered yet, you'll get all six vouchers once you sign up in the @ServiceNSW app. It's part of our economic recovery package and we know it works, so get out and support a local business. pic.twitter.com/us7eN3pNCo — Dom Perrottet (@Dom_Perrottet) November 26, 2021 The new vouchers arrive more than a year after the $25 voucher scheme was first announced, with the initiative giving the state's residents access to vouchers to use at at restaurants, cafés, bars, wineries, pubs and clubs, cultural institutions, and live music and arts venues. Over the past 12 months, the program has been forced to change and adapt multiple times, especially since it initially rolled out statewide from mid-March. The scheme's end date has also been pushed back again and again, and the initiative also widened to include takeaways midyear in response to Greater Sydney's lockdown. If you need a refresher on how the vouchers work, the full Dine & Discover program now spans six vouchers in total (including these two newbies), which are available to everyone in NSW over the age of 18 until June 30, 2022. Three $25 vouchers can be used at restaurants, cafes, clubs and other food venues, and another three $25 vouchers are specifically for performing arts, cinemas, amusement parks and the like. The vouchers can be used at a hefty number of participating COVID-safe registered businesses, with the full list available on the Service NSW website. [caption id="attachment_780365" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Kitti Gould[/caption] That said, you can't use them on tobacco, alcohol or gambling, and you can only use each voucher once, including if your transaction totals less than $25. Also, you'll need to use all of your vouchers separately. To access the vouchers, you'll need a MyServiceNSW account — and the corresponding Service NSW app, so you can use the vouchers digitally. The NSW Government's Dine & Discover scheme runs until Thursday, June 30, 2022. For more information, visit the government's website. Top image: Cassandra Hannagan.
I remember seeing one of Liam Finn's first solo Australian gigs at the Crown Hotel a few years back. He was then fresh from his main songwriting duties in his band Betchadupa and was showcasing new pop tunes experimental but intensely personal. A performance on David Letterman would follow and elevate his popularity, leading to support slots with Eddie Vedder and a hectic overseas touring schedule to promote his debut album I'll Be Lightning. Finn uses different effect pedals to sample and loop bass, guitar and drums, layering these with live elements. Eliza-Jane Barnes also performs with him, offering an amazing voice and sweet Autoharp flourishes. "I think that doing this looping, one-man-band sort of thing really keeps you on your toes and keeps it fresh," says Finn. "The more you mess up, the more you’re forced to turn it into a good mess and people seem to respond more. I find it really stimulating, I just love the danger of it."Finn and Barnes have teamed up to write and record Champagne in Seashells, a five-track collection that dabbles in '80s power pop, softer ballads and Finn’s inspired brand of songwriting, and the pair will launch it at the Gaelic Club in September.https://youtube.com/watch?v=oGZ-1d2rH_w
"I saw discharge. It's on the table." These seven words, spoken by one Dr Waterman, go a long way toward summing up Griffin Theatre's Quack. It's a gross-out fest of the sort that has a long history in theatre but is rarely seen in these days of restrained living-room dramedy. For inspiration playwright Ian Wilding clearly watched Deadwood and judged it to be missing some zombies (of the Shaun more than Dawn of the Dead mould). He has both veins intersect in an outback mining town, where debased old Dr Littlewood (Chris Haywood) and young overachiever Dr Waterman (Charlie Garber) are battling approaches to treating the sickness that has overcome the town. Soon, symptoms progress to telltale shuffling, brain-eating and rapid contagion, and the uninfected doctors are joined in panic, plotting and occasional battle by cooped-up scribe and suffragette Fanny (Aimee Horne), her shrill guardian Nancy (Jeanette Cronin) and the all-round-offensive newspaper editor Gunner (Cronin again). It's hard to build tension without the physical imposition of lurching zombie bodies, but the four frantic actors, groaning sound design (courtesy of David Heinrich) and fake blood, guts and fluids get you part of the way there. The performers are hilarious and brilliant at bringing to life their contrasting characters. They grapple on a set that's built askew (by designer William Bobbie Stewart), a burlesque, pirateish deck that slopes towards the audience, absorbing you in its wonder and facilitating the free flow of fluids in your direction. Framing it, curtains that emulate red velvet deserve to be looked at askance: they're thin, crusty and patchily dyed blood-red. It's the perfect set; it even smells discomfiting. The focus and great success of Wilding's script is its language, with dialogue as fast as a zombie isn't (unless you're talking 28 Days Later zombies — possibly as fast as those), unrelenting slapstick, thick puns and wordplay furnished by the fullness of the Victorian era, the modern age and the made-up in-between. There's satire in it, but it's painted in the broadest of brushstrokes. Quack is fun, but for a play that's entire purpose is to entertain, it's not quite fun enough. It lacks for plot and poetry and drags in a couple of places — before being saved by its secretions. Sit in the front row at your own peril. Add another dimension to your theatre-going experience: Go Between the Lines at Griffin. https://youtube.com/watch?v=bvdUqYDTJDY
This is Not Art, Newcastle's independent arts festival, will once again descend on the NSW city for the October long weekend. The festival — which will this year run from Thursday, September 29 until the Sunday, October 2 — sets its focus on experimental art and blurring the lines between artistic mediums. An umbrella sheltering a number of festivals, this year TiNA is home to the Crack Theatre Festival, National Young Writers' Festival and Critical Animals. The National Young Writers' Festival has managed to net over 100 writers from all over the country and New Zealand for a series of panels, workshops, readings and debates. Rapper and poet Omar Musa, Jennifer Down, whose Our Magic Hour took the 2014 Victorian Premier's Literary Award, and Stella Prize shortlisted Ellen van Neerven are just a few of the featured writers expected to storm Newcastle throughout the four-day fest.
There’s a lot I love about literary classics. The language, the traditions, and yes, the adaptations. District 01 in Darlinghurst is home to the Sydney debut premiere season of Polly Teale’s adaptation of Jane Eyre,, with a talented young cast under the direction of NIDA graduate Fiona Pulford. There are a lot of things that the crew got right about this production, and only a few that didn’t sit quite as neatly. The story, if you don’t know it, is of course about love. Jane Eyre, an outspoken and hard-skinned orphan, lives with her spiteful aunt. From here, she moves on to boarding school, then becoming a governess in Thornfield Hall, owned by the one and only Mr Rochester. Charlotte Bronte’s literary classic is held dearly by most, and Fukunaga’s 2011 film adaptation satisfied many. Teale’s adaptation takes a different angle on the original, and whether it holistically pleased me I’m not quite sure. For one thing, Jane has an embodied subconscious onstage who, confusingly enough, is played by Coralie Bywater who also plays Rochester’s lunatic wife. A strange device that seemed to confuse a couple of audience members throughout. Another device that didn’t quite sit well with me was transforming Ryan Gibson, who played multiple characters very well, into Rochester’s dog. Some laughed at its frivolity, while others furrowed their brow at its inconsistency with the rest of the piece. I was a bit of both, but felt it sort of cheapened an overall great production. The costumes were great, the hair was wonderful, each performer was strong and consistent: whether they played one role or five. Laura Huxley, as Jane Eyre was beautiful, and her chemistry with Eli King as Mr Rochester was palpable at times. Shame about the space’s sight lines, however, with their first kiss being hidden behind a pole from where I was sitting. The space is great though; stark white, with minimalist props. Cheryl Ward as Bessie was a great choice, it was almost as if she walked out of a period ABC series. Tallay Wickham as Adele was sweet, if not distracting at times with the almost-there French accent. Coralie Bywater was strong but sometimes her screaming was a teeny tiny bit too shrill for the space. And finally Beth Aubrey as Bertha and Lady Ingram was great. At times it felt a tad bit slow, and the running time seemed a bit long, but overall it's a wonderful independent production that injects Bronte’s work with fervour and heart.A classic tale, a modern twist and a strong cast – Polly Teale’s Jane Eyre brought together by Pulford is a compelling production.
Theatre lovers, prepare for a busy 2017. Belvoir has revealed their next season — and whether you're keen to see the newest productions, witness welcome returns once again treading the company's boards or check out a few old favourites, there's something in the lineup for all stage aficionados. When it comes to the former in Artistic Director Eamon Flack's second year in charge, his own directorial efforts rank among the most exciting announcements. Based on a 1677 play by Aphra Behn, a contemporary of Shakespeare who is widely considered the first woman to make a successful career from playwriting, The Rover is a battle of the sexes comedy that also brings actor Toby Schmitz back to Belvoir. And for something completely different, Ghosts revives Henrik Ibsen's revered work, as well as the creative team behind 2014's acclaimed The Glass Menagerie. Next on the must-see list is Anne Washburn's Mr Burns, a Post-Electric Play — and yes, the title of the post-apocalyptic musical extravaganza is a reference to The Simpsons' character. It follows a troupe of wanderers acting out classic episodes of the animated sitcom we all know and love, and comes to Sydney from New York's Playwrights Horizons, as does performance artist Taylor Mac's new take on a dysfunctional family play, Hir. Falling into the reunions category is Mark Colvin's Kidney, which is set in the world of phone hacking and marks the long-awaited re-teaming of Holding the Man's Tommy Murphy and David Berthold. As far as new stagings of beloved productions are concerned, prepare for an encore of The Dog / The Cat, the rom-com two-parter penned by Brendan Cowell and Lally Katz that's not just for pet owners. And that's not all, with all-ages fave Jasper Jones returns after opening the 2016 season. Given that a film based on Craig Silvery's best-selling novel is also due to hit cinemas next year, the timing couldn't be better. For audiences keen to experience the rest of the program, 2015 Brisbane Festival thriller Prize Fighter aims to knock out crowds down south, actor and playwright Katie Beckett embarks on a road trip in Which Way Home, and Guru of Chai tells the tale of a tea-seller in a story that's loosely based on an Indian fairytale. Tom Ballard will also be stopping by to give a comedic lecture about the history, cost and future of Australia's asylum seeker and immigration policies, former Australian Idol winner Casey Donavan stars in Barbara and the Camp Dogs, and Lally Katz pops up again with the personal exploration Atlantis, as directed by Girl Asleep helmer Rosemary Myers. Yep, expect to spend a whole heap of the next year at Belvoir. To see the full Belvoir 2017 program and to book tickets, visit the Belvoir website. Images: Daniel Boud.
Imagine if Ferris Bueller's Day Off was a horror movie, with the eponymous truant skipping class, flitting around Chicago and narrowly avoiding hordes of zombies that start shuffling around on the same day. Or, maybe Dirty Dancing could get the spooky treatment. No one puts Baby in the corner unless they need to help her combat a demon conjured up by the repressive reaction to all that fancy footwork, perhaps? We should probably stop listing these ideas, because Blumhouse Productions might end up making them a reality. Already, the film company has turned Groundhog Day into a horror flick via Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2U. It gave 70s TV series Fantasy Island an unsettling makeover, too, to downright awful results. Now, it's Freaky Friday's turn. Body-swap movies span far beyond films starring Jodie Foster (in 1976) and Lindsay Lohan (in 2003), but given that Freaky sets the bulk of its action on a Friday, it's clearly nodding in the obvious direction. The movie begins with a prelude on Wednesday the 11th (yes, not only will most of the chaos go down on a Friday, but it'll happen on Friday the 13th). In the opening scene, four small-town high schoolers do what teens do in the first moments of slasher flicks: talk, party and make out in an empty old mansion, then get killed by a mask-wearing psychopath. Before the quartet meets that fate, its members explain who is responsible. The Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn) is known to have terrorised the area but, due to a lack of recent murders, the serial killer has mostly become an urban legend of late. Writer/director Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day and its sequel) and his co-scribe Michael Kennedy (Bordertown) know that they're sticking to a formula here, and that any viewer who has seen any number of other frightening franchises knows it as well. They're being playful, though, a trait they try to keep up for the rest of the film. Not only is the Butcher real, but he steals a cursed Aztec dagger that lets him swap bodies with his next victim. So, when Millie (Kathryn Newton, Big Little Lies) crosses his path, she wakes up in his very tall and very male guise the next morning — and vice versa. For the Butcher, who instantly kits out Millie's petite frame in an uncharacteristic red leather jacket and tight jeans, it's a dream. He's already known for offing adolescents, and now he can blend in as one of them. For Millie, it takes some explaining to get her besties (The Goldfinch's Misha Osherovich and Selah and the Spades' Celeste O'Connor) not to scream at her new manly form. And, with the entire town is on the lookout for the Butcher, she's forced to run and hide while she's trying to track down her actual body. Shy, bullied and still mourning the death of her father a year ago, Millie also notices the changes that come with her masculine appearance. She can impose her might on her tormenters (although the Butcher has them in his sights, too), and comments on feeling strong and commanding. As Millie explains this strangely empowering sensation — after gags about what's now in her pants, expectedly — Freaky adds some depth to its high-concept horror-comedy idea. It calls out society's accepted notions of male power, and makes it plain that women are never seen in the same forceful fashion. Later, Millie shares a tender exchange with her also grief-stricken, often wine-drinking mother (Katie Finneran, Why Women Kill), showing how it's often easier to unburden your problems upon strangers than loved ones. These are astute and accurate observations, as paired with savvy moments. In a far more lived-in way than fellow recent release The Craft: Legacy, the film eagerly inhabits a progressive and accepting world. But not every aspect lands as intended. Another sequence that sees Millie connect with her crush (Uriah Shelton, Girl Meets World) while also still stuck in the Butcher's body too overtly tries to evoke laughs when they kiss, for example. That patchwork outcome — sometimes things fall into place entertainingly, sometimes they don't — applies to Freaky overall. Given that it sports a big twist right there in its premise, no one should expect a surprise-laden narrative. Still, even though Landon and Kennedy wink and nod as they borrow from other body swap and slasher fare, a movie can be aware of what it's doing, deliver standout moments and elements, and flit between fun and average as well. Freaky is glossily shot, swiftly paced and boasts a memorable graphic match, segueing from a head being slammed by a toilet seat to two teens getting intimate. It's particularly engaging when it ramps up either the gore-splattered horror or the over-the-top comedy. But it also swaps a heap of competing pieces into one package, then appears mostly content to play by the numbers when it comes to relentless serial killers plucking off teens and folks ending up in each other's bodies alike. Oh, and it's mighty keen to make its franchise aspirations well and truly known, too. As a result, Freaky always feels heavily indebted to its lead casting choices, both of which are top-notch. Without either Vaughn or Newton, the film might've resembled The Hot Chick meets the worst Nightmare on Elm Street sequels rather than Freaky Friday meets Friday the 13th. Vaughn gets the showier role, and demonstrates how shrewdly he's considered what it's like to be a teenage girl, with his version of Millie occasionally proving more fleshed out than the real thing. Newton embraces her fierce and fearsome side as the Butcher and, consequently, it's easy to see why Millie herself is a little impressed by her confidence. Both actors do more than just stick to the movie's clearcut concept, crucially — but Freaky itself could've taken their lead more often, and taken note of its titular term far more as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-M4qEmF268
For all those word worms, stellar spellers, and puzzle fanatics out there, the Surry Hills Late Night Library is hosting an event that you should be sure not to miss: their Inaugural Adult Spelling Bee. After a huge success last year, the 2013 competitors will be returning with their swords drawn and ready to spell their way to the top, letter by letter. As the only official Spelling Bee held in Sydney (they prefer to claim it as the most official), the Late Night Library (LNL) will host the most nail-biting and tense competition this city has seen yet. The Spelling Bee is one of the larger events of the LNL initiative and will certainly attract a sizable crowd. The competition is being held at the Surry Hills Library next Thursday and is free for both spectators and competitors, so you've got no excuse not to drop on by and put your wordsmith skills to the test. Image by Howard County Library System.
The brainchild of comedian Rhys Nicholson and triple j host Kyran Wheatley, Comedy(ish) is a night for new comedy from experienced comedians. Every iconic joke you can think of started off as a lump of coal, only to be relentlessly polished and refined into the comedic diamond that gets the laughs. And this is the place to see it happen, and watch today's headliners writing tomorrow's punchlines. Also a decent bet for big name drop-ins; Reggie Watts stopped off unannounced at last month's show.
Going into Scream VI, viewers know who the killer definitely isn't: the horror franchise's OG final girl Sidney Prescott. Neve Campbell's (The Lincoln Lawyer) character has been a pivotal part of every Ghostface-stalked flick from 1996's initial Scream through to 2022's fifth entry Scream, but famously isn't in the stab-happy saga's latest chapter due to a pay dispute. That's one big change for returning filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett to grapple with in their second slice of the blood-splattering, scary movie-loving action. À la Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan — which gets an early nod, naturally — they also move said action to New York. But even if you take Ghostface and the murderer's targets out of Woodsboro, and shake up who the masked maniac swings a knife at, Scream is going to Scream in a screamingly familiar fashion. It has before in Ohio in Scream 2 and Hollywood in Scream 3, and the series knows it. New movie, new city, same setup, same gravelly Roger L Jackson voice, same 'Red Right Hand' needle drop, same overall formula: throw in the same winking, nodding, self-referential attitude, plus the same penchant for mentioning horror movies, their tropes and cliches, and general film theory, and that's Scream VI's easy cut. Once again, someone dons Ghostface's ghost face, of course, and uses whichever blade happens to be in the vicinity (and a shotgun) to terrorise teens and long-victimised targets. Murder Mystery's James Vanderbilt and Ready or Not's Guy Busick haven't taxed themselves with the screenplay — their second Scream effort, after the previous flick — but the franchise's pattern keeps making a comeback for a reason. While intrepid reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox, Shining Vale) notes the world's current "true-crime limited series" obsession, whodunnits and murder-mysteries date back further, and that's where every Scream instalment has also carved a niche since the late, great Wes Craven and Dawson's Creek creator Kevin Williamson started things off. With Sidney happily explained away, Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera, In the Heights) is Ghostface's present obsession. She was last time, too, which didn't end well for some of her friends and acquaintances. A year later, she's in the Big Apple because that's where younger sister Tara (Jenna Ortega, Wednesday) goes to college, and Sam isn't keen to let her out of her sight. Horror movie fanatic Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown, Yellowjackets) and her twin Chad (Mason Gooding, Love, Victor) are also new-ish ex-Woodsboro kids on campus. And, when bodies start piling up, starting with the saga's obligatory and engagingly effective cold open — with Samara Weaving (Babylon) reuniting with her Ready or Not directors to follow in Drew Barrymore (Santa Clarita Diet), Jada Pinkett Smith (The Matrix Resurrections) and the like's footsteps — Scream VI's core four have another date with a psychopath. Sam, Tara, Mindy and Chad also have fresh-faced NYC company, adding to the suspect pool. Sam and Tara are bunking with sex-positive roommate Quinn Bailey (Liana Liberato, A Million Little Things), who has a police detective (Dermot Mulroney, Umma) for an overprotective father. Chad does the same with the studious Ethan Landry (Jack Champion, Avatar: The Way of Water), while Mindy is dating Anika Kayoko (Devyn Nekoda, Sneakerella). Plus, Sam is enjoying a secret fling with neighbour Danny Brackett (Josh Segarra, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law). Because they're all well and truly in a franchise — when Mindy gives her obligatory lecture about what movie conventions dictate should happen next, she expands beyond just horror films to ever-sprawling sagas — Gale hightails it to campus when murders start occurring, and Scream 4's Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere, Nashville) also finds reason to drop by. Sadly, when Mindy does get a-babbling about "the rules", she mentions a word that no one who saw 2022's Scream should ever want to hear again: requel. At least that term for do-overs that stick with an established timeline, bring back legacy characters, but pump in new blood to also give the original a remake doesn't then get splashed around as frenetically as Ghostface splashes gore in this followup. Scream VI doesn't get to insufferable levels of geeking out, either — that its predecessor did even for the most adoring horror-movie fans, aka the series' main audience, was an unwanted feat but a feat nonetheless — instead satirising itself by literally asking "who gives a fuck about movies?". Still, Mindy's whole speech, surveying her pals, assessing who is likely to kill or be killed, and waxing irreverent about scary film and franchise lore, shows how beholden Scream VI is to the saga's standard formula. Accordingly, don't believe Mindy when she says this isn't a requel sequel: it is. Also don't believe her when she states that old rules no longer apply: they patently do. Don't believe Mindy when she starts talking about subverting expectations as well, claiming that franchises will only keep on keeping on if they do just that. The horror genre gushes with ongoing series — some namechecked in Scream VI — that've proven the exact opposite because viewers showed up anyway, and little in this Scream entry upends the saga's basics. In fact, the big reveal is dispiritingly by-the-numbers, lacking the smart and savage commentary that helped improve the last Scream's choice of culprit in the process. Noting the wearing nature of living with trauma is a meaningful touch, but never deeply explored. The shoutout to franchise fatigue is also far more superficial than any Ghostface-caused gash. Plus, though focusing on Sam's inner turmoil has the potential to get the inevitable seventh flick to truly try something different, the callback that comes with the storyline is already clunky and played out. Scream VI is still fun enough as a slasher-comedy-slash-whodunnit; staging that slashing, plus the suspense and sleuthing around it, remains Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett's best Scream-relevant skill. That was never in doubt after Ready or Not, and their aforementioned cold open here is entertaining, playful and expertly executed. The New York setting sparks stabbings in alleyways, subways and bodegas, all impressively and tensely shot — although Montreal makes a particularly unconvincing Big Apple. And if you're going to stick with business as usual no matter what the sassy dialogue promises, Barrera, Savoy Brown, stalwart Cox, eagerly anticipated returnee Panettiere, and especially growing scream queen (see also: X and Studio 666) Ortega and always-welcome The Other Two star Segarra, are killer company.
Gelato Messina, nostalgia and limited-edition desserts: that's the sweet-treat holy trinity. The cult-favourite ice creamery not only loves making one-off specials in general — it adores whipping up delights based on the dishes you loved as a kid. The latest: a honey joy version of its bake-at-home sticky scroll. Scrolls — or snails, as Messina calls them — are no strangers to the brand's range. Neither are honey joy treats, after it made a honey joy cookie pie in 2022. But combining the two is indeed a new development. Yes, it'll take you all the way back to your tuckshop days, and ensure that you can skip your next cereal breakfast. So, what exactly is a honey joy sticky snail? It's a scroll-like dish that's made to feed several people — four-to-six is Messina's recommendation — as filled with vanilla crème pâtissière. On top, you'll find honey joy clusters and honey caramel. And to go with it, because Messina is all about frosty desserts, is cereal milk gelato. Yes, this is another of the chain's Frankenstein's monster-style indulgences — and the entire pack includes the snail and a one-litre tub of gelato. If you're keen to get yourself a piece, they're available to preorder online on Tuesday, September 19. And, because Messina's specials always prove popular, the brand staggers its on-sale times. Accordingly, folks in Queensland and the ACT are able to purchase at 9am, Victorians at 9.15am, and New South Wales customers are split across three times (between 9.30–10am) depending on the store. You'll then need to head to your local Messina store to collect your order between Friday, September 22–Sunday, September 24. You can preorder Gelato Messina's honey joy sticky snail pack from Tuesday, September 19, to pick up from all stores in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland between Friday, September 22–Sunday, September 24.
Spring has only just begun, but Sydneysiders can be forgiven for thinking that it already feels like summer. An unseasonably warm day was predicted for Saturday, September 15 — and it has not only come to fruition, but seen the day rank among the hottest temperatures ever recorded in early September. Some parts of the Sydney area reached 34 degrees, with the airport topping out at 33.3 degrees and Penrith hitting 33.2. As Weatherzone noted on September 12, Penrith and Richmond had already recorded their earliest September day when temperatures hit 30.2 and 30.7 respectively — figures they've now both beaten. And the Sydney Morning Herald reports that these widespread 30-plus figures mark just the tenth time in 160 years that the city has exceeded 30 degrees prior to or on September 15. The hottest September day on record actually reached 34.6 back in 1965; however to put that and today's temps in context, the average for the month is a very mild 21.2. It seems that the weather is starting this warm season as it finished the last, with autumn seeing a wave of late heat take the March mercury past 40 degrees. And, of course, the 2017–18 summer saw the city experience its second hottest day ever, so sunny, sultry days have been proving a trend. At present, this scorcher will be short-lived. While it's still over 30 degrees at the time of writing, a cool change is expected, with temperatures plummeting sharply. On Sunday, September 16, the sun will be out but a maximum of just 17 degrees is forecast, with the coming week climbing up to 25 degrees before dropping down to a top of 18 on Friday. Via Sydney Morning Herald / Weatherzone.
70s-era porn, but make it a slasher flick: when Ti West's X marked the big-screen spot in 2022, that's one of the tricks it pulled. The playful, smart and gory horror standout also arrived with an extra spurt of good news, with West debuting it as part of a trilogy. 30s- and 40s-period technicolour, plus 50s musicals and melodramas, but splatter them with kills, genre thrills and ample blood spills: that's what the filmmaker behind cult favourites The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers now serves up with X prequel Pearl. Shot back to back with its predecessor, sharing mesmerising star Mia Goth (Emma), and co-written by her and West — penned during their two-week COVID-19 quarantine period getting into New Zealand to make the initial movie, in fact — it's a gleaming companion piece. It's also a savvy deepening and recontextualising of a must-see scary-movie franchise that's as much about desire, dreams and determination as notching up deaths. In one of her X roles, Goth was magnetic as aspiring adult-film actor Maxine Minx, a part she'll reprise in the trilogy's upcoming third instalment MaXXXine. As she proved first up and does again in Pearl, she plays nascent, yearning, shrewd and resolute with not just potency, but with a pivotal clash between fortitude and vulnerability; when one of Goth's youthful X Universe characters says that they're special or have the X factor, they do so with an astute blend of certainty, good ol' fashioned wishing and hoping, and naked self-convincing. This second effort's namesake, who Goth also brought to the screen in her elder years in X, wants to make it in the pictures, too. Looking to dance on her feet instead of horizontally, stardom is an escape (again), but Pearl's cruel mother Ruth (Tandi Wright, Creamerie), a religiously devout immigrant from Germany turned bitter from looking after her ailing husband (Mathew Sunderland, The Stranger), laughs at the idea. This franchise hones in women who know what they want, aren't afraid to attempt to get it and snap after their fantasies as hungrily as an alligator (handily, the Texan ranch that both films so far are set on sports a lake with a large ravenous reptile). That said, the X-Pearl-MaXXXine realm also focuses on women who aren't just one thing, not for a second — being adamant about what they'd like to with their lives included. That's a key reason why X and Pearl alike offer more than merely well-executed carnage, although they each deliver that in visceral spades. West's screenplays, no matter who he is or isn't scripting with, see innocence and insidiousness lurking in the same pools, and spot them with the same clear eyes. In Pearl, they see them peering out from the same peepers as well. Indeed, this saga unpacks the fine line between competing forces, impulses, emotions and outcomes whenever and however it can. One such conflict: the existence that Pearl is told she should be happy with versus the lure of being a chorus girl that she can't shake. Actually, to say that Ruth wants her to be content with her lot in life is overstating it: Pearl's mum doesn't care if her daughter finds any joy in dutiful drudgery. So, the young woman steals away to the local cinema when she can, where the projectionist (David Corenswet, We Own This City) screens the dancers that she wants to be. When they're alone — when she warms to a rare dose of attention — he also screens an early skin flick. And, at home, Pearl works through her sexual appetite with a scarecrow (The Wizard of Oz, this isn't) and her bloodlust by feeding farm animals to said gator. But it's news of auditions for a travelling dance revue, which she pledges to try out for with her sister-in-law Mitsy (Emma Jenkins-Purro, One of Us Is Lying), that truly gets her desires pumping. Like X before it, Pearl's narrative is deeply steeped in its chosen era. This time around, it's 1918 rather than six decades later — a choice of year that isn't just about the maths needed to link to X. As the COVID-19 pandemic ensured that everyone knows, influenza was wreaking havoc. In a detail that mightn't be as well known, it was first recorded just two states up from Pearl's homestead. Also, the First World War was still being waged until November. Pearl's life is touched by both, with sickness an ever-present worry in her town — face masks are sighted — and its men, her husband Howard (Alistair Sewell, The Power of the Dog) among them, off in combat. Confronted by life's grimness several times over, and by a persistent fantasy of breaking free, how's a repressed and downtrodden gal to cope? This one does so with murder and mayhem. Back in the 50s, Douglas Sirk made an art out of 'women's pictures', as they were derisively called — pictures that surveyed the emotional turmoil simmering within unfulfilled female protagonists, and understood how such complex inner chaos could be tied to the times, class and societal structures, and the expectations and restrictions placed upon the fairer sex. The legacy that films like All That Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life have left is immense, and Pearl slots right in beside everything that's followed in those footsteps. Sirk definitely didn't make slashers, though. Neither did Carol's Todd Haynes when he crafted 2002's wonderful Far From Heaven, a drama firmly in the Sirkian mould. West and Goth pay loving tribute to all that cinema has allowed in these past greats, while also getting savagely subversive; their portrait of Pearl's namesake is a horror movie and a tragedy. Pearl is glorious on both Goth and returning X cinematographer Eliot Rockett's parts, too, with a lead performance and a look that could've wowed audiences in the mid-20th century. Goth isn't just the feature's star — she's its pulse, with every electrifying change of mood, expression and pace, often within the same scene, rippling through the film like a gusty farmyard breeze. Rockett unsurprisingly adores staring her way, making Goth as sumptuous a sight as the saturated colour palette around her (not that the High Life, Suspiria and A Cure for Wellness talent needs any help). Composers Tyler Bates (the John Wick films) and Tim Williams (Brightburn) provide a sweeping orchestral score that's equally as rich, harking back to old Hollywood in its swelling notes. West, doing his own editing as he usually does, winks with his use of retro wipes and dissolves as much as the movie's title font. There's grit to this flick, of course, thanks to its devilish rampages and making-of-a-villain origin story, but this is indeed a gem.
When you're in lockdown, a couple of months is a long time in a pandemic. When cities and states are opening back up, the opposite proves true. That's the situation in New South Wales, which is about to lift a heap of its current COVID-19 restrictions — just two months after coming out of this year's lengthy stretch of stay-at-home rules. NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has announced that the state has updated its reopening roadmap, loosening the conditions that'll be in place once NSW hits the 95-percent double-dose vaccination target — or on Wednesday, December 15, whichever one comes first. At that point, all density limits will be removed, and masks and check-ins won't be required in most settings. Also, NSW's Public Health Orders will no longer require proof of vaccination for most activities. An update on the further easing of restrictions in NSW. #Auspol2021 #nswpol #COVID19Aus pic.twitter.com/9PVAUyPMaM — Dom Perrottet (@Dom_Perrottet) November 25, 2021 Firstly, those venue caps: they'll drop from the current one person per two-square-metres rule, and that'll be the case at all venues. Regarding masks, you'll only need to wear them on public transport, on planes and at airports, and if you're working front-of-house in hospitality in an indoor space and you're not double-vaccinated. Otherwise, they'll just be strongly recommended in places where you can't social distance. Although you've probably become accustomed to whipping out your phone to check in everywhere you go, you'll now only have to do so at select places — such as hairdressers, beauty salons and other personal services providers; pubs, small bars, registered clubs and nightclubs in the hospitality sector; and gyms. It'll also apply at indoor music festivals with more than 1000 people. And, it'll still cover hospitals, and aged and disability care facilities, unsurprisingly, plus places of worship, funerals and memorial services. Also, the rules allowing only double-jabbed NSW residents in certain venues will ease, too — other than at indoor music festivals with more than 1000 people. That said, businesses can keep implementing their own conditions and require proof of vaccination before allowing people to enter. [caption id="attachment_716550" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Parker Blain[/caption] COVID safety plans will also only be optional for businesses moving forward, and the rest of the previously announced rules for the 95-percent double-jabbed mark will still kick in as planned — so there'll be no limits on gatherings at home or in public, regardless of vax status; the same will apply at gyms and recreation facilities; and non-critical retail will be open to all. "The easing of these restrictions will allow people to get out and enjoy summer, providing a boost for some of our hardest industries as we do everything we can to ensure we keep people safe as we learn to live with COVID," said the Premier. Perrottet's announcement comes as NSW reached 92-percent double-dose coverage among folks over the age of 16. For more information about New South Wales' reopening roadmap, head to the NSW Government website. For more information about the status of COVID-19 in NSW, head to the NSW Health website. Top image: Trent Van der Jagt.
UPDATE, October 9, 2021: Free Guy is available to stream in Sydney via Disney+, and is also screening in Sydney cinemas when they reopen on Monday, October 11. If Free Guy was a piece of home decor, it'd be a throw pillow with a cliched self-empowerment slogan printed on the front. You know the type. It might catch your eye the first time you spotted it, but it'd look almost identical to plenty of other cushions you can buy at absolutely any department store. It'd make you think of other, nicer pillows, too, but its phrasing and design wouldn't be as resonant or appealing. And, while its attractive font would tell you to believe in yourself, stand out and make each moment count, it'd still simply spout the usual well-worn sentiments that keep being served up as store-bought tonics for weary souls. Yes, Free Guy is a big-budget, star-led movie that primarily exists to answer two not-at-all pressing questions: what would The Truman Show look like if it starred Ryan Reynolds, and how would that 1998 classic would fare if it was about massive online video games instead of TV? But it's firmly Hollywood's equivalent of mass-produced soft furnishings emblazoned with self-help platitudes and designed to sit on as many couches as possible. Clearly cast for his generically affable on-screen persona — you almost always know what you're going to get when he's leading a film, as the Deadpool and Hitman's Bodyguard franchises keep attempting to capitalise upon — Reynolds plays Free City bank teller Guy. His daily routine involves greeting the same goldfish upon waking, putting on the same blue shirt, picking up the same coffee en route to work, and having the same chat with his best friend Buddy (Lil Rel Howery, Judas and the Black Messiah) when their place of employment is held up multiple times each and every day. Guy is completely comfortable with his ordinary lot in life. He knows that things aren't like this for 'sunglasses people', the folks who tend to wreak havoc on his hometown, but he doesn't challenge the status quo until he decides that the shades-wearing Molotov Girl (Jodie Comer, Killing Eve) is the woman of his dreams. To have a chance with her, he's certain he needs sunglasses himself — and when he snatches a pair off the latest robber sticking up his bank, it's Guy's first step to realising that he's actually a non-playable character in a video game. Sporting an upbeat mood best captured by its frequent use of Mariah Carey's 'Fantasy', Free Guy enjoys its time in Free City — which is also the game's title. There's a story behind its NPC protagonist's story, however, with the movie splitting its focus between its Grand Theft Auto-esque virtual world and reality. In the latter, coder Millie uses the Molotov Girl avatar, which she needs to search for evidence for a lawsuit. Years earlier, alongside her pal Keys (Joe Keery, Stranger Things), she created an indie open-world game that was purchased by tech-bro hotshot Antwan (Taika Waititi, The Suicide Squad), then sidelined — and, while Keys now works for Antwan, Millie is certain that Free City rips off their game. Proving that will require Guy's help, especially as he starts breaking his programming, making his own decisions and becoming sentient. Something that Guy doesn't glean once he begins thinking for himself: that he's the protagonist in a derivative big-screen action-comedy. Free Guy also borrows from The Matrix, The Lego Movie, Groundhog Day, They Live!, Wreck-It Ralph and Black Mirror. Pilfering from terrible fare as well, it even cribs from the abysmal Ready Player One. And, in reminding viewers that Disney is behind this flick via its purchase of 20th Century Fox, and that the Mouse House also serves up all things Marvel and Star Wars — as if anyone had forgotten — it sits in the same space as the horrendous Space Jam: A New Legacy. There isn't a second of Free Guy that feels original or authentic, in fact, even as it keeps stressing the importance of taking your own route through life. Director Shawn Levy (the Night at the Museum franchise) and screenwriters Matt Lieberman (The Addams Family) and Zak Penn (a Ready Player One alum) are happy with their throw cushion-level message. They're just as content not to practice what they preach. Their villain even blatantly embodies the cash-hungry corporate mindset that thinks leveraging the same ideas is better than developing new ones — there's a whole monologue about it — and it'd be much too generous to think that's a tongue-in-cheek inclusion. There's a bit of winking and nodding in Reynolds' casting, though, and welcomely so. Again, viewers typically know what to expect when he's the star of the show — and as well as aggressively synthesising a heap of better movies into one script, Free Guy endeavours to forcefully coast by on its leading man's likeable presence. If it wasn't entertaining-enough to see him play this kind of part, Hollywood would've stopped doing it. That said, now three decades into his acting career, audiences can also spot the formula behind most of his roles. Free Guy wants you to do exactly that, and to know that Reynolds is putting his usual charm to work as a guy that's meant to be the epitome of usual, which is by far the smartest thing about the film. The man in the spotlight doesn't let anyone down in the process, but that's different to carrying a feature that's anything more than average. Indeed, other than Comer's naturalistic performance, nothing that's around Reynolds busts free of its usual bounds either, and that can't be by design. You can't print by-the-numbers romantic subplots and slick-but-standard action scenes on home furnishings, of course — and you definitely shouldn't do the same with buzzword-heavy dialogue — but that's always Free Guy's chosen level.
There are almost 700 recorded climbing routes across the Port Stephens region, and the majority of crags in this region are made of seaside granite. It's a popular spot for keen bouldering and climbing enthusiasts. But if you're a novice, sign up to Escape Trekking Adventures' dedicated tour. Specifically designed for beginners, this three-hour rock climbing course will show you how to navigate the sea cliffs with various footholds, handholds and abseiling techniques. All climbing equipment, including ropes, harnesses and helmets are included in the course price (from $120 per person). We know you'll be concentrating, but do try to soak up the epic views while you're hanging around — you can't access the same vantage points any other way. Escape Trekking Adventures is a Port Stephens-based company that is best known for its trekking tours both here and abroad, including 11- and 13- day Kokoda Track tours, Papua New Guinea's Mount Wilhelm, Everest Base Camp and a four-day Port Stephens coastal summit pack-free hike.
There's only one thing wrong with the third season of Reservation Dogs: it's the show's last. After three years and 28 episodes spent with Muscogee Nation residents in Oklahoma — and also on a journey to California and back — this coming-of-age dramedy says farewell as sublimely and soulfully as it's said everything else since 2021. When Reservation Dogs initially arrived, including on Binge in Australia, its debut season delivered one of the best new TV shows of that year. Next, its second spin served up one of the best returning shows of 2022. The show's swansong achieves the same for 2023, and in a ten-episode run that takes many of the series' own messages to heart. There's a skill in recognising when something's time has come, as Reservation Dogs knows. As co-created, executive produced and written by Sterlin Harjo (Mekko) and Taika Waititi (Thor: Love and Thunder), this series is also well-aware that little lasts in life, but anything that's truly great always leaves an imprint and makes an impact. And, the show lives and breathes the idea that doing the best that you can with the time that you have is one of the noblest of purposes. Accordingly, while the teen-centric comedy about restless Indigenous North American adolescents feels like it could (and should) keep telling its stories forever, it wraps up with a season that's a rich and resonant goodbye — and continues to expand its slice-of-life tales, hero its distinctive perspectives and sink into minutiae that's seen nowhere else on television. Waititi gave Reservation Dogs its biggest name when it began with four Okern residents, aka the titular Rez Dogs, stealing a Flaming Flamers delivery truck to try to sell it to raise cash for their dream escape to the west coast. On the filmmaker's resume, it's one of a trio of brilliant half-hour comedies, premiering after the What We Do in the Shadows television spinoff was already a couple of seasons in and preceding pirate rom-com Our Flag Means Death. It's Harjo who is Reservation Dogs' guiding force, however, steering a series that couldn't be more original — and perfect. The casting, the cinematography, the equal parts dry and offbeat humour, the mix of clear-eyed reality and deeply felt spirituality, the thoughtfulness that swells through every touch: episode by episode, including in its masterful last season, these elements combine to make outstanding television. From its first-ever instalment, Reservation Dogs has hung out with its characters as they chase dreams and face truths, and realise that life is all about flitting between the two. So, it has enjoyed Bear (D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Fitting In), Elora (Devery Jacobs, Rutherford Falls), Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis, Ghostbusters: Afterlife) and Cheese's (Lane Factor, The Fabelmans) company as they learn about the transience of existence at every moment, whether they're striving to see more than the place that they've always called home, grappling with loss or pondering what the future means. Of course moving on was always going to come for this show, then. Of course it's finishing on its own terms, too. And of course its final season is more moving, ruminative and mesmerising than ever. When viewers last saw the Rez Dogs at the end of season two, the OG quartet plus Jackie (Elva Guerra, Dark Winds), their once-rival and now somewhat-reluctant newcomer to the group, had finally made the trip to California that they'd been working towards their entire lives — but with added urgency after the death of their friend Daniel. Season three picks up with the gang still far away from home, and still journeying even when they do return. Elora considers both her past and her future, complete with an excellent guest appearance by Ethan Hawke (Moon Knight) in an episode that Jacobs directed. Bear goes wandering on his own, including through several revelatory encounters (and with the spirit of The Battle of Little Big Horn warrior William Knifeman, as played by another Rutherford Falls alum in Dallas Goldtooth, still popping up). Both Cheese and Willie Jack keep discovering new learnings within their community. All continue to utter and inspire the term "shitass", all while navigating everything from grief to hope. Harjo remains unafraid to depart from his leads along the way, whether sliding into history to explore myths, traditions or horrors inflicted upon Indigenous children; hanging with the Rez Dogs' parents and elders now as well as in their younger days; and taking the revenge-fuelled Deer Lady (Kaniehtiio Horn, Alice, Darling) out of folklore and into a denim jumpsuit. A true portrait of community — and, of it teens embracing what it means to be a part of it — Reservation Dogs finds a story, be it big or small, for everyone within its frames. In season three, Bear's mother Rita (Sarah Podemski, Resident Alien) contemplates a big promotion that'll take her away from Okern, Elora's forever-20 mum Cookie (Janae Collins, Killers of the Flower Moon) still has messages to send as a spirit, and Jackie's aunt Bev (Rutherford Falls lead Jana Schmieding) has a spark with Officer Big (Zahn McClarnon, No Hard Feelings). Indeed, Reservation Dogs floats between characters as skilfully as it jumps between genres, in a series that can be anything in any given episode. During this last stretch, it's a road-trip awakening and an adventurous magical-realist odyssey. Then it dives into horror akin to Jordan Peele's work (see: Get Out, Us and Nope), as well as workplace comedy. Reservation Dogs flirts with 70s-set Dazed and Confused territory after that, plus an Ocean's-esque heist and sincere family drama as well. Harjo and his creative team nail each and every one — and ensure that every turn reinforces the show's survey of Native American life. This is a series that revels in the daily specifics, including the triumphs and joys; honours cultural conventions and how they're passed down; parodies cliches; and never forgets for a moment the plight that First Nations Americans have endured since colonial times. Everyday facts, ghostly visitors, decrying the worst of history, watching the next generation find its own way while balancing tradition and modernity, championing Indigenous talents emerging and experienced (including Killers of the Flower Moon's Lily Gladstone, Dead Man's Gary Farmer, The Last of the Mohicans' Wes Studi and Dances with Wolves' Graham Greene in the latter category): that's the juggling act that Reservation Dogs couldn't handle better. As Atlanta also achieved while similarly musing on race in the US, serving up surprises in every single episode and proving a creative masterpiece, it sees the moment-by-moment scene and the broader view. That both pictures take in the Oklahoma landscape also helps Reservation Dogs look like little else, as well as feel it. The show's legacy is equally pivotal; Bear, Elora, Willie Jack and Cheese especially will be deeply missed, but Woon-A-Tai, Jacobs, Alexis and Factor shouldn't ever be far from screens after this exceptional breakthrough. Check out the trailer for Reservation Dogs season three below: Reservation Dogs streams via Binge. Read our review of season two, too. Images: Shane Brown/FX.
Some unexpected things have long artistic history. Cabbages for example, or horses in distress. Drapery hasn't always seemed synonymous with huge excitement, but it's an insanely popular motif that's been used for thousands of years to run contrast to sculpted marble bodies. The National Gallery of Victoria was so taken by the technique that it ran a whole exhibition on the theme of folded fabrics earlier this year, and New York's Metropolitan Museum has favoured the idea as well. At the edge of Redfern, artist-run Locksmith Project Space is about to take its turn. Anna John's Wind Now takes its name and inspiration from two albums by South-Korean seventies rocker Kim Jung Mi. The exhibition plays drapery against abstract skeletons of figures or buildings. Anna has put together anti-figures in the past — the detail's there, but the bodies have gone elsewhere to be implied by what remains. Along with such things, Wind Now also owns to a series of TV backdrops imagined for Kim Jung Mi. A half of Knitted Abyss, a third of Holy Balm and 50% of 2SER's The Modern Dance, Anna John has had her musical groove on at the Locksmith before. Now step in and see her art there, too.
Dating back to 1870, Silos Estate is hidden among converted farm silos in rural Berry. Located within an original dairy shed, the cellar door offers free wine tastings, plus an art gallery and an impressive array of locally made smallgoods. Those include jams, honey, tapenade, relishes and cheese from 13 different providores. The vineyard is growing a wide array of grape varieties for your tasting pleasure, and showcases the full range of the cool Shoalhaven climate — from chardonnay, semillon and sauvignon blanc to shiraz, merlot, cabernet sauvignon and malbec. You can also grab a glass or bottle alongside a meal in the adjoining Silos Restaurant. Open for lunch and dinner, Thursday through Sunday, it's serving up a farm-fresh seasonal menu that uses native Aussie produce — and rolling views of the vineyard beyond.
When your nine-to-five plays out like a well-oiled machine, it can sometimes feel like each week is a little same-same. But Sydney is brimming with a fine bounty of things to experience and explore each and every day. So aside from casual laziness and a little lack of inspiration, there's really nothing stopping you from squeezing some adventure and spontaneity into your schedule. We've teamed up with Mazda3 to help you celebrate the little things that bring a sense of adventure to life. Shake things up, as we give you seven different detours to take each week in Sydney. From Monday to Sunday, enrich your everyday with one completely achievable activity that inspires you to take the scenic route as you go about your daily routine. This week, get some culture with dinner and a play for under $50, dive into some lunchtime laps and eat your way through a food truck festival. Plus, we've got your future detours sorted for the next few weeks here. All require no more effort than a tiny break from the norm — what's your excuse for not trying them all?
Since 2016, the cinema-loving world has had a Studio Ghibli-shaped hole in its heart. That's when the acclaimed Japanese animation house released its most recent film, the gorgeous French co-production The Red Turtle. Its last solo production actually came two years earlier, courtesy of 2014's When Marnie Was There. Still, much has happened in Studio Ghibli's world over the past decade. Hayao Miyazaki announced his retirement, then changed his mind. In 2018, fellow co-founder and acclaimed director Isao Takahata sadly passed away. And, over the past few years, the company has been busying itself with its very own theme park. The latter is due to open in 2022 and become quite the tourist attraction — but that doesn't mean that fans aren't keen for more Ghibli movies. Thankfully, the studio revealed earlier this year that it's working on just that, with two new films on its slate for 2020. One of those movies will be helmed by My Neighbour Totoro, Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle icon Miyazaki, with How Do You Live? actually first announced a few years back. As for the second film, information have been scarce to date; however the company has just provided more than a few details. Called Aya and the Witch — and also known as Earwig and the Witch in English — the movie will mark the first Studio Ghibli completely made using computer-generated animation. Director-wise, it's helmed by Hayao Miyazaki's son Goro Miyazaki, who previously directed Tales from Earthsea and From Up On Poppy Hill. It's also based on a novel written by British author Diana Wynne Jones, who penned the book that Howl's Moving Castle was adapted from, too. And, it'll head straight to Japanese television, with the film airing on local broadcaster NHK TV sometime during Japan's winter. Just when audiences elsewhere will get to see Aya and the Witch is yet to be revealed; however it was announced this week that it would've screened at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival if the event had gone ahead this year. In lieu of holding a physical fest, the prestigious event announced a lineup of 56 movies it would've shown, giving them the 'Cannes 2020 Official Selection' label — and Ghibli's latest is one of them. In terms of story, Aya and the Witch focuses on a girl at an orphanage. She enjoys living there, but her world changes when she's chosen to live with a couple — including, as the title makes plain, a witch. Fingers crossed that Aya and the Witch will head to screens Down Under sooner rather than later. In the interim, you can get your Ghibli fix by checking out the company's online tours of its museum on the outskirts of Tokyo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccgm1Pp5Whw Via Studio Ghibli. Top image: Howl's Moving Castle.
The third Heaps Gay party hits the Gladstone Hotel this Saturday, February 15, bringing together artists and DJs from across Sydney to celebrate the day of love no matter who you are or how you identify. Beginning as a fundraiser for ACON, with a philosophy of cheap beers, good music and innovative art, this now monthly party (held every third Saturday) is guaranteed to draw a crowd of heteros, homos, girls, boys and anyone else who fancies a night of sweaty dancing, sans the stereotypical gay scene drama. This particular Valentine’s-inspired shindig will feature DJs Power Suit, Cunningpants, Smithers and Chrisa K, while the Gladstone itself will be transformed by Joe Po’s video projection Be Better, body-painting artist Olusenka, designer Neil McCann, as well as visual performer Matt Format both serenading you with love songs in the laneway and marrying you in the Vegas-style wedding chapel that once was the pokie rooms. Heaps of fun? You bet.
Another week, another Gelato Messina special. That's been the dessert chain's contribution to making lockdown a little more bearable over the past year and a half, and it isn't changing that tactic now. So, if you're under stay-at-home conditions in Sydney and Melbourne, you now have another indulgent sweet treat to look forward to. And for folks in southeast Queensland, you've got an excuse to treat yo'self to a decadent dessert anyway. On the menu this time: the return of the brand's Basque cheesecake gelato, but without the sticky Cinnabon-style scrolls it came paired with when it made its debut back in August. You'll be able to buy a one-litre tub of the stuff, which comes filled with exactly what it says on the label — that'd be Basque cheesecake gelato — and is topped with a slice of toasted Basque cheesecake. The special can only be ordered online on Monday, September 27. It will set you back $35 — and, because Messina's specials always prove popular, the brand is staggering the on-sale times. Accordingly, folks in Queensland and the ACT are able to purchase at 9am, Victorians at 9.30am, and New South Wales customers split across three times depending on the store (with pies from Circular Quay, Surry Hills, Bondi, Randwick and Miranda on sale at 10am; Brighton Le Sands, Tramsheds, Parramatta and Darlinghurst at 10.30am; and Darling Square, Newtown, Rosebery and Penrith at 11am). The catch? You'll have to peel yourself off the couch and head to your local Messina store to pick up your order. They'll be available for collection between Friday, October 1–Sunday, October 3. Sydneysiders, remember to abide by lockdown restrictions when it comes to picking up your bavarian — which means sticking to your Local Government Area, or within five-kilometres from home. Melburnians, under new eased lockdown rules that come into effect in mid-September, you're permitted to travel within a ten-kilometre radius to pick up food. You can preorder a Messina Basque cheesecake gelato tub from Monday, September 27, to pick up from Friday, October 1–Sunday, October 3.
Matteo Downtown will bring negroni week's namesake cocktail back to its Italian roots. To start, the CBD restaurant is slinging some seriously unusual takes on negroni, including the signature Double Negroni, which combines two cocktails in one. It's a white negroni (that's gin, French vermouth and Cocchi Americano), topped with a negroni-injected ice sphere that slowly melts into cocktail round two. The menu also features a parmesan version — it's washed with Sicilian green olives and the rim is garnished with a parmesan crust and basil dust. All of the negronisare $15 during the venue's weekday aperitivo hour from 4–6pm, and will be served with free Italian-style bar snacks, created by head chef Chef Orazio. The entire negroni menu is available from June 3–28, with proceeds going toward the Fondazione Telethon, an Italian charity that aids children with a rare-immunodeficiency called ADA-SCID.
"From little things, big things grow". If ever there were a film saga to take up Paul Kelly's mantra, the Fast and Furious juggernaut would surely be it. Beginning all the way back in 2001 with a Point Break knockoff about street racers moonlighting as crims, the franchise now boasts eight movies and a combined box office of close to $4 billion. The latest installment, The Fate of the Furious, could not be further from the film that began it all. The cast is bigger, the locations more exotic, the cars more expensive, and the explosions much, much more frequent. Far from a story about living life a quarter mile of a time, the plot is now about saving the entire planet from nuclear devastation. The rules of franchise cinema are well established. Each subsequent film must honour those that preceded it by including any signature shots, iconic lines or beloved characters that haven't yet been killed off. To that end, The Fate of the Furious knows its history well. The opening shot, in fact, tracks a barely-clothed female derriere as it snakes its way through a collection of vintage Cuban cars. Moments later, series stalwarts Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) come to the aid of family and challenge a local to an illegal street race for pink slips, all to the tunes of a thumping trap, electro and hip hop soundtrack. This, more than anything else, is the lifeblood of these films. But long gone are the days where such scenes receive anything more than lip service, replaced by action set-pieces so ridiculous that you can't help but go along for the ride. The Fate of the Furious kicks into gear via the sudden emergence of a computer hacker named Cipher (played by series newcomer Charlize Theron). From there, all it takes is a little bit of blackmail to convince Dom to turn on his extended family, betraying everyone in his life as he helps Cipher carry out a series of increasingly brazen attacks around the world. The rest of the movie tracks the efforts of Dom's crew to hunt him down and stop him. Naturally, a few hundred cars get obliterated along the way. The returning cast members – including Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Tyrese Gibson, Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges, Nathalie Emmanuel and Kurt Russell – give the intensely silly material everything they've got, though this time there's only a brief reference to the late Paul Walker. Director F. Gary Gray also lands the mother of all cameos, which we won't reveal here, other than to say damn. The vehicular cast is similarly impressive, and includes a 1971 Plymouth GTX, a 2017 Subaru BRZ, a Lamborghini Murcielago LP 640, and a Russian Akula Class Attack Submarine. Ultimately, and despite the major departure from its origins, The Fate of the Furious still delivers in spades when it comes to entertainment. If anything, the film actually rises above other brainless blockbusters by being, almost paradoxically, extremely clever in its stupidity. For example: any movie can crash dozens of cars into one another, but it takes a special kind of inventiveness to have a hacker assume control of their onboard computers, essentially turning them into zombies on wheels. The action sequence that follows proves utterly exhilarating, and makes clear that the folks behind this franchise still have a few tricks up their sleeve. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwMKRevYa_M
When it comes to the world of action movies we’re now living in the year 9AB (After Bourne) – a dark and gritty reality characterised by nebulous morality, sympathetic villains and brooding heroes who’ll punch you in the face if you ever call them a hero. Championed by the likes of Paul Greengrass they’re films driven by complex plots and sweeping character arcs where the occasional shaky action sequence almost feels like a reluctant concession made by the director. Without a doubt they’ve helped revitalise a genre that had come perilously close to ridicule in the wake of such abominations as Die Another Day, however for all their positives the one thing they collectively lack is that indispensable sense of fun. That’s where Tom Cruise comes in. Say what you like about the man’s personal life, he rarely fails to deliver when it comes to movies and his latest offering is no exception. It’s almost paradoxically an old-school action flick filled with ultra-modern, hi-tech wizardry and the most refreshing part of all is how it refuses to take itself too seriously. The first clue comes with its choice of director, Brad Bird, whose previous works included Disney/Pixar’s exceptional The Incredibles, Ratatouille and even a few episodes of the Simpsons. Then there’s Simon Pegg reprising his role as the awkward but well-intentioned techy ‘Benji’; a fan favourite whose promotion to fulltime field agent provides the film with a constant stream of laughs. Lastly there’s Cruise himself: actor, producer, smiler — he does it all in Ghost Protocol and always with the kind of unbridled enthusiasm you’d expect reserved for a person appearing in their first ever film. As the fourth instalment in the now 16 year-old Mission Impossible franchise, Ghost Protocol doesn’t stray too far from the familiar. When a mission in Moscow is sabotaged and the Kremlin’s nuclear launch codes are stolen, super spy Ethan Hunt and his team once again find themselves disavowed by the US Government and forced to save the world on their own (a plot device used in all but one of the four films). Filmed in Russia, India and Dubai the stunts are spectacular, the action is thrilling and the technology is as mesmerising as it is terrifyingly believable. Ghost Protocol is a slick, exciting and terrifically entertaining movie that unashamedly pushes plausibility to the very extreme without straying into farce. Cruise and his team have served up a classic action movie here, not in the least because it is so damned fun to watch.
Get your fill of the best vegan food in town at the Vegan Day Out. Come September 8 and 9, The Cruelty Free Shop is putting together a walking tour of vegan cafes, restaurants and retailers, many of which will be offering discounts, deals and free samples to anyone who stops by. For Saturday and Sunday, socially conscious eaters can stop by The Cruelty Free Shop on Glebe Point Road, and grab a map outlining their route. From there, it's all about making your way to to plant-based delights aplenty — and making a day (or two) of it. Whether you're a dyed-in-the-wool vegan or just curious to give it a go, you'll find a whole world of retailers catering to animal-free eating, offering meal deals, two-for-ones, coffee, wine tastings and savings on vegan groceries. The Cruelty Free Shop will also be running its own tastings throughout the day, as well as offering discounts on some of its 3000+ products.
In 2004, Denzel Washington starred in Man On Fire, a violent action thriller about an ex-special forces loner named John who establishes a special bond with a young blonde girl and then embarks upon an uncompromising vengeful rampage against a cartel that assaults her. His latest film The Equalizer is entirely different in that his character's name is now Robert. Not that there's anything wrong with typecasting yourself every now and then, especially in this genre. Liam Neeson's practically become a synonym for 'gruff vigilante', though when Denzel busts out his busting chops, he's as good as anyone at rocking the unflappable one-man-army vibe. In The Equalizer, the unfortunate recipients of Robert's wrath are a gang of Russian mobsters, who he coolly dispatches in a Sherlock Holmes-esque sequence of blow-by-blow preemption. That enrages their Moscow-based kingpin, who orders his 'fixer' (Marton Csokas) to track him down and restore order. Instead, Robert begins to singlehandedly dismantle every tier of the crime lord's operations. It's bloody, violent and wildly implausible, yet — like so many of these recent vigilante flicks — also largely satisfying. The Equalizer was directed by Antoine Fuqua, whose previous collaboration with Washington in Training Day garnered two Academy Awards. While his leading man has lost none of the cool that made his turn in Training Day such a powerhouse performance, what's lacking this time round is tension. Robert is simply too good at kicking arse, thereby making The Equalizer a victim of the 'Superman zone' wherein a character's ostensible invulnerability robs the film of any suspense. It's a solid action film, but without at least a hint of peril for the main man, you're left feeling like you just saw a superhero movie minus the superpowers. https://youtube.com/watch?v=64QGV7bf3hE
Get shucking — The Hook, a brand-new oyster bar and cocktail joint, is taking over Izgara and Harajuku Gyoza's old digs in Kings Cross. This new, 80s-leaning venture from Dave and Amy Spanton — the crew behind Piccolo Bar and Vermuteria — hopes to reinvigorate the former excitement surrounding the world of oysters that its predecessor, Bayswater Brasserie, was known for. Opening its doors on Thursday, May 23, the sleek newcomer to Bayswater Road has seen the hospitality greats turn their attention to cocktails, oysters and jazz piano tunes. Dave Spanton, in particular, has spent the last three months prior to opening transforming the spot. "Our aim is to create an atmosphere that feels like it's been part of the community for half a century," said Dave. The team helming the ambitious venue also includes Mike Delany (Vermuteria, Piccolo Bar, Cafe Freda's, Club 77 and The Abercrombie) and Michael Perelini (ex-The Lobo) who'll be in charge of The Hook's front-of-house operations. "This has been a much bigger undertaking for us from a business perspective, with more staff and more behind-the-scenes management," said Amy. "It's really exciting to be working on a bigger venue with a bigger team and doubling down on our vision to make Kings Cross great again." This passion project from the Spantons spans 250 square metres with a sleek horseshoe bar in the centre. The space is adorned with art and antiques collected by Dave from his international travels. The saloon-style venue also incorporates stylistic influences from dive bars across the US, as well as the bars of Ireland, Scotland and England, with its green colour scheme and whisky- and Guinness-led drinks list. Much like the venue, the drinks list boasts an array of the founders' favourites. Expect nostalgic-leaning cocktails, coastal whiskies, beer on tap or in tins, and bubbles in the selection. "Highlights for me include the 1940s Hurricane, a throwback to the original New Orleans recipe, served in a hurricane glass, and the Black Velvet, Guinness and sparkling wine," said David. "We are also doing our French 75 in the traditional way – with Champagne, not prosecco – it's delicious." As for bites, the menu is nautically inspired, with the option of freshly shucked oysters or four variations of grilled oysters. Plus, there'll be meals familiar to a saloon space, from smashed patty burgers to LP's dive dogs that you can load up with your fill of sauce. To secure a spot at The Hook, you'll want to head in early or plan ahead. The venue has a no-booking policy and accepts walk-ins only. You'll find The Hook at 13-15 Bayswater Road in Kings Cross, open from 5pm–12am Wednesday–Saturday and 5–10pm on Sunday. Image credit: Christopher Pearce
