Hop on your bike and cycle down to Centennial Park to enjoy the inaugural East Side Ride on Sunday, April 21. This free community event is hoping to promote green living through an array of entertaining activities and workshops that range from edible gardens to bike polo displays, which you can enjoy whilst eating something from one of Sydney's eclectic food trucks. All this will take place amidst the backdrop of live jazz, reggae and soul from the delicious Directions in Groove, Kingtide and Lily Dior. There really will be something for everyone. The event, organised by EastsideFM and made possible by a $10,000 Environmental Grant from the City of Sydney, is hoping to promote green living inititatives, and Lord Mayor Clover Moore hopes that this begins with everyone cycling to East Side Ride to educate people "about how cycling can help tackle traffic congestion and keep you healthy". So trade those four wheels for two and ride on down for a feast of food, fun and entertainment. Main image by NealeA.
The wildest and most remote places in New South Wales are now in the palm of your hand. On Tuesday, August 28, the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service announced the launch of its new, free mobile app, which provides guides to more than 225 national parks. It includes maps, things to do and places to stay in and around all of the national parks. And most information is downloadable, so, if you're heading beyond reception, you'll be able to save all the details you need to your mobile. Say goodbye to paper maps. But do remember that your device's battery might not last the distance of the multi-day hike you're planning. Whatever outdoorsy escapade you're hoping to conquer, you'll find it: from picnic areas and swimming spots to walks and cycle paths to places of cultural and historical significance. Covered, too, are the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's numerous accommodation options, including campgrounds, 19th century cottages and lighthouses. Last, but not least, is a bunch of less fun but nonetheless necessary information, such as the whereabouts of toilet blocks and sources of drinking water. Whenever you find an adventure, sleepover or toilet block that appeals to you, save it among your favourites, for easy access at a later date. The app, available now, is free to download to iOS (via the App Store) and Android devices (via Google Play). Ready to get going? Use the geolocation services help you to find a national park nearby. Images: D Parsons
In 2013, three women escaped from a home in Cleveland, Ohio, then shocked the world by revealing they'd been kidnapped and kept prisoner by one man for over a decade. It's hard not think that their harrowing tale may have played a part in the conception of writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's latest thriller, Split, which begins in a very similar fashion. Three young girls, all in their teens, are drugged and abducted in broad daylight outside of a shopping mall, only to wake up imprisoned in a bunker with no idea where they are, who took them, or why. That is, until they meet Dennis. Played by James McAvoy, Dennis is a cold, meticulous and physically brutal force. He's nothing like Patricia, the matronly British lady (also played by James McAvoy), who assures the girls they'll not be touched or harmed in any way. Then there's Hedwig (played by...James McAvoy) who's just a small boy who loves to dance to Kanye, and Barry (James McAvoy) a fashion designer constantly reassuring his shrink that everything's under control and…well…you get the idea. Rest assured though, this isn't some sort of Eddie Murphy costume romp where he's playing every character. Rather, McAvoy plays a collective of 23 distinct personalities competing for 'the light' within the body of one man named Kevin. Within this extraordinary case of DID (dissociative identity disorder), some personalities want the girls freed, whilst others appear to be preparing them for the arrival of the yet unseen 24th identity which they refer to only as 'the beast'. The burden of carrying the film, unsurprisingly, sits almost exclusively with McAvoy, whose performance more than rises to the challenge. Shyamalan actually filmed each of Kevin's identities as though they were portrayed by a different actor and the technique absolutely pays off. Each one feels different, and you soon think of them accordingly. Some you fear, others you warm to and none feel at all like the man playing them. The other performance of note comes from Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch). Introduced as a loner from the opening scene, Casey resists the others' suggestions of attempting an escape in favour of befriending the more approachable identities within Kevin, sparking additional conflict within an environment already dripping with tension. Taylor-Joy's a terrific actress with a long future ahead of her, and it's her scenes with McAvoy where Split is at its best. Filmed almost entirely in extreme closeups – a device that leaves audiences wondering what unseen menace might be lurking just off screen – McAvoy's unpredictability keeps the levels of menace high, while Taylor-Joy's enormous, soulful eyes speak volumes when words aren't (or can't) be spoken. Ever since The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan has been plagued by the expectation that his films will feature an unpredictable twist, a promise on which he's been mostly unable to deliver. Depending on your perspective, the finale of Split either sheds itself of that expectation entirely or doubles down and hits you with something even larger. Maybe it's both. Either way, the end result is almost certainly Shyamalan's best film since his breakout; a welcome return to form and an exciting precursor to whatever comes next. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84TouqfIsiI
Hosting your own craft beer-tasting event is a great way to discover the breadth and variety of the good stuff in a fun and highly convivial situation. Plus, you'll appreciate your casual Friday tipple more than ever. If you're a fan of the James Squire craft beer range, chances are you enjoy talking the ears off of your buds about your favourite type and why you think they should try them. Alternatively, you may be a devotee of one or two beers in the range and are now ready to explore a little further, with a mate or two coming along to keep you company on your journey. Either way, we've got all your home-hosted beer tasting ingredients right here. Friends Don't look at us like that. Obviously you're going to invite buds, this is a beer tasting. Four or five would be a good number for a tasting, this ain't a keg party. Food You don’t have to serve up a Michelin-starred degustation menu, but snacks provide the dual purpose of keeping alcohol levels lower and cleansing the palate between tastings. Make sure you don't choose food that could overshadow the taste of the beer. Having water on hand is also a good idea. Beer You could say this is somewhat a crucial element. You could go full throttle and sample the full range of nine James Squire craft beers and two James Squire Orchard Crush ciders or maybe you'd prefer to taste just a handful. Depending on which approach you choose, you could consider buying some of the beers (One Fifty Lashes Pale Ale, Nine Tales Amber Ale and The Chancer Golden Ale) in 568mL Friendship Pint format rather than six packs of the standard 345mL bottles. To keep costs down, you could suggest that each guest/participant/contestant/buddy ol' pal supplies one of the beers. Glasses The aim of the night is to taste rather than scull, meaning proper beer tasting glasses would be ideal. However, if you don't have any of these to hand (and since you don't live in James Squire Brewbar, that’s hardly surprising) any glass will do. You'll earn bonus craft beer cred points for having the 'right glass' for each style of beer (have a look over JS's Guide to Glassware Etiquette), but it's not the end of the world if you don't. Pour about three fingers worth into each glass, allowing the aroma to fill the rest of the space. Remember, the night is about tasting the beer, not simply drinking it and gettin' crunk. Materials You’ll need to provide pencils or pens, along with paper or notecards. If you’re a particularly efficient and overly-excited host, you could create a print a simple tasting score sheet with spaces for notes on appearance, aroma, flavour, mouth feel, overall impression and final total score. Guidelines Each beer should be judged in the same way, as follows: - On pouring, immediately sniff the beer to detect initial aromas. Write these down in the 'Aroma' section of the score sheet – e.g., 'nutty malt' or 'citrusy hops'. - Note the beer's appearance, particularly its colour (golden, copper, etc.), clarity (cloudy, clear, etc.) and head characteristic. - Taste the beer by taking a sip and keeping it in the mouth for a few seconds before swallowing. Note both the immediate finish and aftertaste, the malts and hops and the balance. - Assess the mouth feel — this includes body, carbonation level and alcoholic warmth. - Write down your overall impression and give a final score for each beer. For more detailed judging information, head over here. Now there's nothing left to do except begin the tasting — and enjoy. Image credits: *vlad* via photopin cc, oskay via photopin cc, nahlinse via photopin cc, Fixed in Silver via photopin cc.
As far as crowd-pleasing music goes, it's hard to top a Fleetwood Mac playlist. Formed in the late 60s, the British American rock band cemented itself in musical history with now-classic tunes like 'Little Lies', 'The Chain', 'Dreams' and more. Sadly, the band members themselves have hung up their guitars, but that doesn't mean we can't continue to enjoy their hits live. Thanks is due to Concerts By Candlelight, the event series you've no doubt heard about on social media. The concert group is rolling out the 2025 event program and the first item on the agenda is The Music of Fleetwood Mac By Candlelight. With a live band and a cast of West End singers performing all the hits (and selling out shows in the UK), the tour is hitting Australia and New Zealand throughout February and March. After a series of shows across the ditch, The Music of Fleetwood Mac By Candlelight will kick off an Australia-wide tour. First up is QLD, with the concert hitting the Gold Coast and The Star Theatre on Friday, February 28. Then, on Friday, March 7, it's Sydney's turn at Darling Harbour Theatre — followed by a stop at Melbourne Town Hall on Tuesday, March 11. Later that week, it crosses the country to PCEC Perth for a show on Friday, March 14, before finishing at Her Majesty's Theatre for an Adelaide performance on Friday, March 28. The Music of Fleetwood Mac By Candlelight will tour across cities in Australia and New Zealand from Friday, February 14 to Friday, March 28. For more information or to book tickets, visit the website.
In 2006’s Night at the Museum, the exhibits and dioramas of New York City's Museum of Natural History sprang to life, surprising freshly hired evening security guard Larry Daley (Ben Stiller). In 2009’s Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Larry returned to save enlivened treasures being shipped off to storage in Washington, D.C., stumbling upon a power battle between magically resurrected pharaohs in the process. The films, mixing an everyman protagonist with an exaggerated situation, established an easy formula of heroics and humour, history and fantasy, and quests and chaos, as suitable for all ages. Now, once more adhering to the blueprint but transporting the action to London, the trilogy crawls towards its conclusion with Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb. Here, the perpetually bumbling Larry is thrust into trouble once more when an important event goes awry as a result of his animated mannequin friends. The tablet that endows the appearance of life into the museum’s trinkets is starting to corrode, courtesy of an Egyptian curse. Only specimens housed in Britain hold the answers to stopping the rot, reinstating the spell and rescuing the likenesses of famous figures from reverting to a permanent state of wax. Adding to the antics are Larry’s English counterpart, nightwatchwoman Tilly (Rebel Wilson), and an arrogant Sir Lancelot (Dan Stevens), both endeavouring to thwart the visitors’ efforts for their own reasons. Returning director Shawn Levy (This Is Where I Leave You) and new scribes David Guion and Michael Handelman (Dinner for Schmucks) aren’t concerned with offering any unexpected detours in the events that follow, repeating the beats of the earlier films with a heightened emphasis on outdated pop culture jokes. Indeed, that the feature’s biggest source of laughs — and its best surprise cameo – stems from an internet meme gives an indication of the level of comedy cultivated, as does the prominence of online cat videos to the plot. Even the usual reliance upon slapstick wavers, for worse, not for better. The odd-couple banter of Owen Wilson as an old west cowboy and Steve Coogan as a Roman soldier is similarly toned down. Elaborate staging aside (best manifested in Secret of the Tomb in an uncharacteristically excellent M.C. Escher-inspired sequence), the biggest lure of the Night of the Museum series has always been its extensive cast. Performers express enough energy to keep the movie bubbling along; however, for reasons inconsequential to the content itself, it is Robin Williams’ return as Teddy Roosevelt that stands out. His last on-screen appearance evokes both sweetness and sorrow that far exceeds the average franchise swansong he is saddled with.
Okay, it hasn't exactly turned out to be the hot vax summer we deserve, but one thing we can be thankful for is the return of live music. And after a tough couple of years for the Australian music industry, there's probably never been a better time to celebrate homegrown talent. For all of January, The Rocks will be celebrating summer — and our incredible live music scene — with a month-long series of events. Rounding things out will be Sweet Summer Sounds, a two-week mini festival of live gigs featuring over 50 local music acts. The best part? It's absolutely free. The jam-packed bill bound for First Fleet Park includes the eclectic sounds of three-piece collective Haiku Hands who have garnered a global fanbase thanks to genre-bending tunes and big-energy live shows; and electrifying Western Sydney rapper, producer and engineer Kwame, Triple J's Unearthed Artist of the Year in 2018 who has shared a stage with heavyweights including Skepta and Migos. [caption id="attachment_839264" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Mia Wray by Lisa Businovski[/caption] Also taking to the Sweet Summer Sounds stage is the excellent Melbourne singer-songwriter Mia Wray, whose 2020 debut single 'Work for Me' was plugged by Elton John on his Beats 1 radio show; Northern Beaches indie-folk band Sons of the East (who are set to embark on a headline tour of Europe and North America later this year); and the alluring, cinematic sounds of Melbourne three-piece Telenova. To complete the festival experience, you can stay fuelled thanks to a pop-up prosecco bar, Bubble Bambino, as well as stalls slinging burgers, falafels and loaded hot dogs — each perfect for an afternoon session in the sunshine soundtracked by some of Australia's most exciting musical acts of the moment. For the full lineup and gig times, head the The Rocks website.
Music festival fans, it's time to take your horse to the old town road — hat down, cross town, livin' like a rock star. New South Wales end-of-year staple Lost Paradise has announced its return for 2022, and it's making a comeback with two huge headliners: Lil Nas X, clearly, as well as Arctic Monkeys. Do you wanna know what you're now doing this New Year's Eve? This Glenworth Valley event now has the answer. Between Wednesday, December 28–Sunday, January 1, it'll unleash a massive lineup that also includes Jamie xx, Ocean Alley, Spacey Jane, G Flip and Pinkpantheress, as well as Peggy Gou, KiNK, Ben Böhmer and Mall Grab doing DJ sets. And yes, it shares quite a few acts in common with the also just-announced Falls Festival bill for 2022 — but if you can't make it to Byron Bay, you now have another option. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Lost Paradise (@lostparadiseau) Since first unleashing its specific flavour of festival fun back in 2014, Lost Paradise has become a go-to way to see out one year and welcome in another — and with its just-dropped roster of talent for 2022, that's set to be the case across its four-stage setup again this time around. Also on the bill: artistic experiences, talks, workshops, wellness, and food and drink, all as part of a four-day camping festival. So, there's plenty to get excited about, and to tempt you to make the journey an hour out of Sydney. While the full rundown of activities hasn't been revealed as yet, past fests have included yoga, fashion and art markets, and a food and drink hub with communal tables for dining and an array of cuisines for feasting upon. And, camping-wise, options span everything from rent-a-tents to luxury glamping. Lost Paradise 2022 will introduce a ban on single-use plastics, too — which'll mean that you'll need to acknowledge the 'Paradisian Pledge' to minimise pollution and leave the campsite with no waste in order to purchase tickets. Also, this year's event will only use building materials built from 100-percent recyclable materials, and produce zero landfill. Of course, it's the music lineup that'll get you to Lost Paradise in the first place — the fest's first event since being forced to cancel in 2019 due to the New South Wales bushfires. So, enough chatter; here it is: LOST PARADISE LINEUP 2022: Artist lineup: Arctic Monkeys Lil Nas X Jamie xx Ocean Alley Spacey Jane G Flip Pinkpantheress Cub Sport Genesis Owusu Young Franco The Vanns MAY-A Furnace & The Fundamentals King Stingray Pacific Avenue Telenova 1300 Stumps Big Twisty & The Funknasty Egoism Yung Mtyr Lazywax Elsy Wamayo Eagle Eye Jones Abby Bella May Greatest Hits Sweetie Liyah Knight Coconut Cream Liquid Time Casual Fan Electronic lineup: Peggy Gou Mall Grab Ben Böhmer Folamour DJ Boring KiNK HAAi TSHA CC:DISCO! Heidi X Club. Flava D Shanti Celeste Moxie Loods Wax'o Paradiso Wongo Little Fritter Merve Luen Ebony Boadu Ayebatonye Crush3d James Pepper Elijah Something Latifa Tee Willo Dameeeela Mincy Conspiracy Crew Luke Alessi Troy Beman Mintox Waxlily Uncle Ru Girlthing Dj's Cleo Clutch 4 Love Roxy Lotz Madami Lost Paradise returns to Glenworth Valley from Wednesday, December 28–Sunday, January 1. Pre-sale tickets are available from Tuesday, May 10 with general tickets from Wednesday, May 11. For more information, head to the festival's website. Top image: Jordan Munns.
UPDATE, April 12, 2021: Knives Out is available to stream via Amazon Prime Video, Binge, Foxtel Now, Google Play, YouTube Movies and iTunes. Sharp, shiny and unafraid to leave a mark, Knives Out sticks a blade into the murder-mystery genre, gives it a good twist and has plenty of fun. The first post-Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi flick from writer/director Rian Johnson, who returns to the pulpier terrain of Brick and Looper, this movie knows how to slice through the familiar, toy with trusty tropes, and create a gloriously smart, subversive and entertaining whodunit. The setup: a death in a wealthy family. The deceased: a crime author who wrote books about this kind of scenario. Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) expires after his 85th birthday party, when all of his relatives happen to be in his remote mansion. And yes, as a cop (Lakeith Stanfield), trooper (Noah Segan) and private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) discover, everyone has a motive — even if the old man's passing looks like a suicide. Initially framed via interviews with the Thrombeys, Knives Out interrogates the possible culprits. Daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis) became a real estate mogul without her dad's help, keeps her Trump-sympathising husband Richard (Don Johnson) in check and has an arrogant son, Ransom (Chris Evans), who's the picture of privilege and entitlement. Her brother Walt (Michael Shannon) is Harlan's publisher and has his own right-wing problem child (Jaeden Martell), while sister-in-law Joni (Toni Collette) is a lifestyle guru with a college-aged kid (Katherine Langford) hanging on grandpa's purse strings. As his closest confidante, Harlan's nurse Marta (Ana de Armas) also fields the detectives' enquiries. She tries not to vomit, too — a reflex whenever she tells a lie. As he makes clear in his slow southern drawl, Blanc is very intrigued by that physical reaction. It's a narrative that Agatha Christie could've penned a century ago, when she started writing Hercule Poirot stories. And yet, unlike the current revivals of the author's work — 2017's Murder on the Orient Express and next year's Death on the Nile — Johnson isn't peering backwards. Knives Out is steeped in America's present socio-political climate, and directs its most cutting commentary at folks filled with bluster but possessing little in the way of good ol'-fashioned human decency. It's not by accident that Marta, a Latin immigrant from a South American country that none of the Thrombeys bothers to remember, sits at the centre of this expertly executed film. Or, that she's the only one who isn't frothing over Harlan's money. Sometimes Johnson's scathing statements fall on the obvious side, but hey, a blunt knife can still cause considerable damage. Mostly, Knives Out is sleek, slinky and fascinated with its many secrets, which have been pieced together with precision. For viewers eager to sleuth themselves, it isn't overly difficult to start sniffing in the right direction — but the joys of seeing the plot spill open go far beyond simply discovering who did what among the rogue's gallery of shifty suspects. And anyway, another game is afoot, as Blanc keeps telling his offsiders (in a nod to Sherlock Holmes, of course). The private eye doesn't know who hired him, or why, and he's as obsessed with that question as he is with the Thrombey clan's petty yet incessant sniping. Oh, the sniping. One of the keys to Knives Out's genre is how quickly it always strips its players down to their base instincts and motives, which this nifty picture does extremely well. Not every character gains quite enough flesh over the top, but the entire cast is gleefully happy going along for the ride. That Craig, de Armas and Evans fare best is really just a matter of screen time, although all three earn the added attention. As loose as he often is whenever he ditches Bond's grim seriousness (as seen in heist caper Logan Lucky), Craig is having a ball — while de Armas proves sensitive but savvy, and Evans leaves Captain America's wholesomeness far, far behind. Johnson hasn't overlooked two other crucial elements of ace whodunits, thankfully. All those double-crosses, puzzles and arguments are great, but truly excellent murder-mysteries also engage the eyes and serve up a rollicking good time. With his now five-time cinematographer Steve Yedlin, the filmmaker easily takes care of the first aspect while his movie roves around Harlan's labyrinthine home (kudos to the production design team, too). As for the second part of the equation, that stems from the director's light but biting handling of his own material — and his knack for a hearty laugh. Some murder-mysteries try but fail, as Netflix's weak Adam Sandler vehicle Murder Mystery demonstrated earlier this year. Some find their nutty niche and prosper, as 80s cult classic Clue has over the years. It's a testament to Knives Out that it achieves everything it should, hits every target and firmly feels like its own highly enjoyable film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw6L1mu-Nss
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 and plenty of people staying home in iso will do that — that's no longer always the case. Maybe you've had a close-contact run-in. Perhaps you haven't had time to make it to your local cinema lately. Given the hefty amount of films 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 20 that you can watch right now at home. THE NORTHMAN Satanic goats don't talk in The Northman. Heartthrobs don't masturbate while fondling mermaid figurines, either. Still, within ten minutes, pre-teen Viking prince Amleth (Oscar Novak, The Batman), his glory-seeking warrior father King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke, Moon Knight) and jester-meets-shaman Heimir (Willem Dafoe, Nightmare Alley) descend into a fire-lit cave to take hallucinogens, growl, grunt, bark like wolves and fart like it's a god-given superpower. If viewers didn't know who's behind this bold, brutal, brilliant, and blood- and guts-strewn Scandinavian opus before then, there's no doubt from this trippy scene onwards: after The Witch and The Lighthouse, writer/director Robert Eggers' touch, approach and style have become that distinctive just three remarkable features into his helming career. In Eggers' new untamed and laid-bare portrait of the past, something is rotten in the state of Iceland — as it was in Denmark via William Shakespeare, and in the Pride Lands of Africa in both versions of The Lion King. "I will avenge you, father. I will save you, mother. I will kill you, Fjölnir," says Amleth as a boy on a north Atlantic island in 895, when he witnesses the latter's (Claes Bang, Locked Down) treachery. He flees after hearing his uncle bay for his head, too, and seeing him carry off Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman, Being the Ricardos) as a spoil of his victory. Two decades later, Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård, Succession) is a hulking, wolfskin-clad Viking berserker, living life flinging whatever weaponry he can find while viciously pillaging through the lands of the Rus. But amid the bloodlust, gore and piling-up body count, the intense marauder is thrust back onto his vengeance-seeking path. A Slavic seeress (Björk, in her first film role since 2005) whispers stark truths about his current savagery and lapsed mission against Fjölnir, reigniting his yearning for that promised slaughter — and the single-minded behemoth learns that his uncle is now sheep-farming in Iceland, having lost the kingdom in another coup. The Northman is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. THE GRAY MAN It's been four years since Ryan Gosling last graced screens, rocketing to the moon in First Man. No, Barbie set photos pored over on every internet-connected device don't count. Since he played Neil Armstrong, much has happened. There's the obvious off-screen, of course — but then there's Chris Evans farewelling Captain America, and also appearing in Knives Out with the scene-stealing Ana de Armas. After co-starring in Blade Runner 2049 with Gosling back in 2017, she leapt from that Evans-featuring whodunnit to palling around with 007 in No Time to Die. Also during that time, Bridgerton pushed Regé-Jean Page to fame, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood earmarked Julia Butters as a young talent to watch. This isn't just a history lesson on The Gray Man's cast — well, some of them, given that Billy Bob Thornton (Goliath), Jessica Henwick (The Matrix Resurrections), Dhanush (Maaran), Wagner Moura (Shining Girls) and Alfre Woodard (The Lion King) also pop up, plus Australia's own Callan Mulvey (Firebite) — for the hell of it, though. Back in 2018, before all of the above played out, it's unlikely that this exact film with this exact cast would've eventuated. Making an action-thriller about attempting to snuff out hyper-competent assassins isn't new — both John Wick and Atomic Blonde have already been there and done that, and the Bourne and Bond movies — but the combination of this collection of current actors and that familiar setup isn't without its charms. Gosling plays Court Gentry, aka Sierra Six; "007 was taken," he jokes. Before he's given his codename and paid to do the CIA's dirty work, he's in prison for murder, then recruited by Donald Fitzroy (Thornton). Fast-forward 18 years and Six is a huge hit at two things: being a ghost, because he no longer officially exists; and covertly wreaking whatever havoc the government tells him to, including knocking off whichever nefarious figure they need gone. But one stint of the latter leaves him in possession of a USB drive that his arrogant new direct superior Carmichael (Page) will ruthlessly kill to destroy. Actually, to be precise, he'll pay Lloyd Hansen (Evans) of Hansen Government Services to do just that, and to do the dirty work that's too dirty for the criminals-turned-government hitmen in the Sierra program, with Six the number-one target. The Gray Man is available to stream via Netflix. Read our full review. PETITE MAMAN Forget the "find someone who looks at you like…" meme. That's great advice in general, and absolutely mandatory if you've ever seen a Céline Sciamma film. No one peers at on-screen characters with as much affection, attention, emotion and empathy as the French director. Few filmmakers even come close, and most don't ever even try. That's been bewitchingly on display in her past features Water Lillies, Tomboy, Girlhood and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, any of which another helmer would kill to have on their resume. It's just as apparent in Petite Maman, her entrancing latest release, as well. Now 15 years into her directorial career, Sciamma's talent for truly seeing into hearts and minds is unshakeable, unparalleled and such a lovely wonder to watch — especially when it shines as sublimely and touchingly as it does here. In Sciamma's new delicate and exquisite masterpiece, the filmmaker follows eight-year-old Nelly (debutant Joséphine Sanz) on a trip to her mother's (Nina Meurisse, Camille) childhood home. The girl's maternal grandmother (Margot Abascal, The Sower) has died, the house needs packing up, and the trip is loaded with feelings on all sides. Her mum wades between sorrow and attending to the task. With melancholy, she pushes back against her daughter's attempts to help, too. Nelly's laidback father (Stéphane Varupenne, Monsieur Chocolat) assists as well, but with a sense of distance; going through the lifelong belongings of someone else's mother, even your spouse's, isn't the same as sifting through your own mum's items for the last time. While her parents work, the curious Nelly roves around the surrounding woods — picture-perfect and oh-so-enticing as they are — and discovers Marion (fellow newcomer Gabrielle Sanz), a girl who could be her twin. Petite Maman is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies and iTunes. 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. This Much I Know to Be True is available to stream via Mubi. Read our full review. DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS Somewhere in the multiverse, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is terrific. In a different realm, it's terrible. Here in our dimension, the 28th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe teeters and twirls in the middle. The second movie to focus on surgeon-turned-sorcerer Dr Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog), it's at its best when it embraces everything its director is known for. That said, it's also at its worst when it seems that harnessing Sam Raimi's trademarks — his visual style, bombast, comic tone and Evil Dead background, for instance — is merely another Marvel ploy. Multiverse of Madness is trippy, dark, sports a bleak sense of humour and is as close as the MCU has gotten to horror, all immensely appreciated traits in this sprawling, box office-courting, never-ending franchise. But it stands out for the wrong reasons, too, especially how brazenly it tries to appear as if it's twisting and fracturing the typical MCU template when it definitely isn't. Welcomely weirder than the average superhero flick (although not by too much), but also bluntly calculating: that's Multiverse of Madness, and that's a messy combination. It's apt given its eponymous caped crusader has always hailed from Marvel's looser, goofier and, yes, stranger side since his MCU debut in 2016's plainly titled Doctor Strange; however, it's hard to believe that such formulaic chaos was truly the plan for this follow-up. The last time that audiences saw Stephen Strange, he reluctantly tinkered with things he shouldn't to help Peter Parker in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Those actions had consequences, and recalling Raimi's time with Spidey came with the territory. Strange's reality-bending trickery has repercussions here as well, because Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen, Sorry for Your Loss) isn't thrilled about her fellow super-powered pal's exploits. Yes, Multiverse of Madness assumes viewers have not only watched all 27 past MCU movies, but also its small-screen offshoots — or WandaVision at least, where the enchantress that's also Scarlet Witch broke rules herself and wasn't still deemed a hero. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is available to stream via Disney+, Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. MEN Since popping up over the last decade, the term 'elevated horror' has always been unnecessary. Used to describe The Babadook, It Follows, The Witch, Get Out, Hereditary, Us, Midsommar and more, it pointlessly claims that such unsettling flicks have risen above their genre. Each of these movies is excellent. They all boast weight and depth, trade in metaphors with smarts and savvy, and have style to go with their creeps and thrills. But thinking that's new in horror — that pairing unease with topical woes or societal fears is as well — is as misguided as dubbing Michael Myers a hero. With a name that makes its #MeToo-era point plain, Men has been badged 'elevated', too, yet it also does what horror has at its best and worst cases for decades. That the world can be a nightmare for women at the hands of men isn't a fresh observation, and it's long been a scary movie go-to. Still, Men stresses that fact in an inescapably blunt but also unforgettable manner. Hailing from Ex Machina, Annihilation and Devs' Alex Garland, Men's setting is an English manor, where Harper Marlowe (Jessie Buckley, The Lost Daughter) hopes for a solo stint of rest, relaxation and recuperation. Processing a tragedy, shattering memories of which haunt the movie as much as its protagonist, she's seeking an escape and a way to start anew. The initial hint that she won't find bliss comes swiftly and obviously, and with a sledgehammer's subtlety. Arriving at an idyllic-looking British countryside estate, Harper is greeted by an apple tree. She plucks one from the abundant branches, then takes a bite. Soon, she's told by her host Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear, Our Flag Means Death) that it's forbidden fruit. He also says he's joking — but in this garden, a woman will again shoulder a society's blame and burdens. Men is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. NUDE TUESDAY Relationships are all about communication. So much about life is, too. And, so is storytelling. With absurdist comedy Nude Tuesday, expressing emotions, connections and narrative details all boils down to two things, though: gibberish and bodies. This extremely amusing New Zealand film from writer/director Armagan Ballantyne (The Strength of Water) and writer/star Jackie van Beek (The Breaker Upperers) does indeed strip its performers bare, as its name makes plain — but it saddles them with conveying almost everything about their characters via body language long before that. The reason: every piece of dialogue spoken in the movie is uttered in gibberish, with completely made-up and wholly improvised words that take a few cues from The Muppets' Swedish Chef in cadence. While they're subtitled in English by British comedian and writer Julia Davis (Camping), that text was penned after shooting, in one of the film's other gleefully silly twists. The result is patently ridiculous, and marvellously so — and hilariously, too. It's such a clever touch, making a movie about marital disharmony and the communication breakdown baked within that's so reliant upon reading tone and posture, as couples on the prowl for the tiniest of micro-aggressions hone in on. Van Beek and Australian The Tourist actor Damon Herriman play that pair, Laura and Bruno. Living on the fictional pacific island of Zǿbftąņ, they're as stuck in a rut as any married, middle-class duo can be, and they're gifted a getaway to ẄØnÐĘULÄ to help. But this mountainside commune, run by the charismatic and lustful sex guru Bjorg Rassmussen (Jemaine Clement, I Used to Go Here), wants them to bare all in multiple ways. The film doesn't live up to its moniker until its last third, but its perceptive and side-splittingly funny from the get-go. Nude Tuesday is available to stream via Stan. Read our full review. THE DROVER'S WIFE THE LEGEND OF MOLLY JOHNSON Leah Purcell's resume isn't short on highlights — think: Black Comedy, Wentworth and Redfern Now, plus Lantana, Somersault and Last Cab to Darwin (to name just a few projects) — but the Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri actor, director and writer clearly has a passion project. In 2016, she adapted Henry Lawson's short story The Drover's Wife for the stage. In 2019, she moved it back to the page. Now, she brings it to the big screen via The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson. Only minutes into her searing feature filmmaking debut, why Purcell keeps needing to tell this 19th century-set tale is patently apparent. In her hands, it's a story of anger, power, prejudice and revenge, and also a portrait of a history that's treated both women and Indigenous Australians abhorrently. Aussie cinema hasn't shied away from the nation's problematic past in recent times (see also: Sweet Country, The Nightingale, The Furnace and High Ground); however, this is an unforgettably potent and piercing movie. In a fiery performance that bristles with steeliness, Purcell plays the eponymous and heavily pregnant Molly. In the process, she gives flesh, blood and a name to a character who wasn't ever afforded the latter in Lawson's version: a 19th-century Indigenous Australian woman left alone with her children on a remote property for lengthy stretches while her husband works. During his latest absence, new sergeant Nate Clintoff (Sam Reid, The Newsreader) and Aboriginal fugitive Yadaka (Rob Collins, Firebite) separately venture Molly's way. From there, this sometimes-stagey but always blistering western digs sharply into issues of race, gender and identity — and eagerly, shrewdly and ferociously draws cinematic blood. The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. THE BOB'S BURGERS MOVIE Across its 12-season order to-date, the best episodes of Bob's Burgers have always resembled exactly what they should: a delicious serving of the meat-and-bread combination that shares the hit sitcom's name. There's a knack to a great burg — to a tastebud-thrilling, so-appetising-I-need-more-now example of this extremely accessible culinary art — and it's all about perfecting the absolute basics. No matter what else gets slotted in (and plenty of other ingredients can), every burger's staples should be the stars of the show. Indeed, a top-notch burg needn't be flashy. It definitely mustn't be overcomplicated, either. And, crucially, it should taste as comforting as wrapping your hands around its buns feels. On the small screen since 2011, Bob's Burgers has kept its version of that very recipe close to its animated, irreverent, gleefully offbeat heart. Unsurprisingly, the show's creators whip up the same kind of dish for The Bob's Burgers Movie, too. It's a winning formula, and creator Loren Bouchard knows not to mess with it while taking his beloved characters to the big screen. As always, the action centres on the film's namesake — the diner where patriarch Bob (H Jon Benjamin, Archer) sizzles up punningly named burgs to both make a living and live out his dream. And, as the show has covered frequently, financial woes mean that Bob and his wife Linda (John Roberts, Gravity Falls) have more to worry about than cooking, serving customers, and their kids Tina (Dan Mintz, Veep), Gene (Eugene Mirman, Flight of the Conchords) and Louise (Kristen Schaal, What We Do in the Shadows). Their solution: a burger, of course. But their bank manager isn't munching when they try to use food to grease their pleas for an extension on their loan. That mortgage also involves their restaurant equipment, leaving them out of business if they can't pay up. As their seven-day time limit to stump up the cash ticks by, Bob sweats over the grill and Linda oozes her usual optimism — only for a sinkhole to form literally at their door. The Bob's Burgers Movie is available to stream via Disney+, Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. HATCHING With a savvily sinister-meets-satirical blend, Hatching begins by unpacking a fallacy as fractured as Humpty Dumpty after the nursery-rhyme character's fall — and that still keeps being lapped up anyway. In suburban Finland, among homes so identical that the song 'Little Boxes' instantly pops into your head, 12-year-old gymnast Tinja (debutant Siiri Solalinna), her younger brother Matias (fellow first-timer Oiva Ollila), and their mother (Sophia Heikkilä, Dual) and father Jani Volanen, Dogs Don't Wear Pants) are living their best lives. More than that, as the soft lensing and music that helps open the movie establishes, they're also beaming that picture of pink, white and pastel-hued domestic perfection to the world. Tinja's unnamed mum is a vlogger, and these scenes are being captured for her cloyingly named blog Lovely Everyday Life. Naturally, showing that this family of four's daily existence is anything but enchanting is one of Bergholm's first aims. In Finnish writer/director Hanna Bergholm's bold and memorable body-horror, twisted fairy tale and dark coming-of-age thriller, the initial crack comes from outside, crashing through the window to ruin a posed shot alight with fake smiles and, of course, being filmed with a selfie stick. Soon, broken glass, vases and lamps are strewn throughout a lounge room so immaculately arranged that it looks straight out of a supermarket-shelf home-and-garden magazine — and the crowning glory, the chandelier, has descended from a luminous pièce de résistance to a shattered mess. A garden-variety crow is the culprit, which Tinja carefully captures. She hands it to her mother, thinking that they'll then release it outside. But her mum, placid but seething that anything could disrupt her manufactured picture of bliss, ignores that idea with a cruel snap and instructions to dispose of the animal in the organic waste. When Tinja disobeys that order, taking the egg into her care, nurturing it tenderly and placing it inside a teddy bear for safe keeping, she gains her own little universe to dote over. Then the egg keeps growing, and a human-sized chick emerges. Hatching is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. THE INNOCENTS Thanks to his Oscar-nominated work co-penning The Worst Person in the World's screenplay, Eskil Vogt has already helped give the world one devastatingly accurate slice-of-life portrait in the past year. That applauded film is so insightful and relatable about being in your twenties, and also about weathering quarter-life malaise, uncertainty and crisis, that it feels inescapably lifted from reality — and it's sublime. The Innocents, the Norwegian filmmaker's latest movie, couldn't be more different in tone and narrative; however, it too bears the fingerprints of achingly perceptive and deep-seated truth. Perhaps that should be mindprints, though. Making his second feature as a director after 2014's exceptional Blind, Vogt hones in on childhood, and on the way that kids behave with each other when adults are absent or oblivious — and on tykes and preteens who can wreak havoc solely using their mental faculties. Another riff on Firestarter, this thankfully isn't. The Innocents hasn't simply jumped on the Stranger Things bandwagon, either. Thanks to the latter, on-screen tales about young 'uns battling with the supernatural are one of Hollywood's current favourite trends — see also: the awful Ghostbusters: Afterlife — but all that this Nordic horror movie's group of kids are tussling with is themselves. Their fight starts when nine-year-old Ida (debutant Rakel Lenora Fløttum) and her 11-year-old sister Anna (fellow first-timer Alva Brynsmo Ramstad), who is on the autism spectrum, move to an apartment block in Romsås, Oslo with their mother (Blind's Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and father (Morten Svartveit, Ninjababy). It's summer, the days are long, and the two girls are largely left to their own devices outside in the complex's communal spaces. That's where Ida befriends Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim) and Ben (Sam Ashraf), albeit not together, and starts to learn about their abilities. The Innocents to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. ITHAKA To look at John Shipton is to see the obvious, even if you've never laid eyes upon him before. The family resemblance is immediately clear, and the traits that've likely been passed down from father to son — determination and persistence, blatantly — become apparent within minutes. Shipton needs to be resolute for the battle that documentary Ithaka captures. It's a fight that's been waged for a decade now, publicly, and not just in embassies and courtrooms but across news headlines worldwide. He's visibly Julian Assange's dad, and he's been helping spearhead the campaign for the WikiLeaks founder's release. Assange fell afoul of US authorities in 2010, when his non-profit whistleblower organisation published documents about the American military's war crimes leaked by army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. As Ithaka makes plain, The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel revealed the same information at the same time; however, only Assange now sits in London's Belmarsh prison. Plenty about the past 12 years since Manning's leaks were exposed to the world is filled with numbers. Plenty about the ten years this June since Assange first took refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London is as well. The Australian editor and publisher spent almost seven years in that diplomatic space, seeking political asylum from sexual misconduct allegations in Sweden that he contended would be used to extradite him to America. If the US succeeds in its efforts, and in its espionage charges against him, he faces up to 175 years in incarceration. The list of figures goes on, but filmmaker Ben Lawrence (Hearts and Bones) makes two pivotal choices. Firstly, he surveys Assange's current struggle not through the Aussie himself, but through both Shipton and Stella Moris, his South African-born lawyer and now wife. Secondly, although those aforementioned numbers are inescapable, the riveting and affecting Ithaka brings humanity to this well-publicised plight. Ithaka is available to stream via ABC iview. Read our full review. ABLAZE A documentary that's deeply personal for one of its directors, intensely powerful in surveying Australia's treatment of its First Peoples and crucial in celebrating perhaps the country's first-ever Aboriginal filmmaker, Ablaze makes for astonishing viewing. But while watching, two ideas jostle for attention. Both remain unspoken, yet each is unshakeable. Firstly, if the history of Australia had been different, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta man William 'Bill' Onus would be a household name. If that was the case, not only his work behind the camera, but his activism for Indigenous Aussies at a time when voting and even being included in the census wasn't permitted — plus his devotion to ensuring that white Australians were aware of the nation's colonial violence — would be as well-known as Captain Cook. That said, if history had been better still, Bill wouldn't have needed to fight so vehemently, or at all. Alas, neither of those possibilities came to a fruition. Ablaze can't change the past, but it can and does document it with a hope to influencing how the world sees and appreciates Bill's part in it. Indeed, shining the spotlight on its subject, everything his life stood for, and all that he battled for and against is firmly and proudly the feature's aim. First-time filmmaker Tiriki Onus looks back on his own grandfather, narrating his story as well — and, as aided by co-helmer Alec Morgan (Hunt Angels, Lousy Little Sixpence), the result is a movie brimming with feeling, meaning and importance. While Aussie cinema keeps reckoning with the nation's history regarding race relations, as it should and absolutely must, Ablaze is as potent and essential as everything from Sweet Country, The Nightingale and The Australian Dream to The Furnace, High Ground and The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson. Ablaze is available to stream via ABC iview, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA The movies have come to Downton Abbey and Violet Crawley, the acid-tongued Dowager Countess of Grantham so delightfully played by Maggie Smith (The Lady in the Van) since 2010, is none too fussed about it. "Hard same," all but the most devoted fans of the upstairs-downstairs TV drama may find themselves thinking as she expresses that sentiment — at least where Downton Abbey: A New Era, an exercise in extending the series/raking in more box-office cash, is concerned. Violet, as only she can, declares she'd "rather eat pebbles" than watch a film crew at work within the extravagant walls of her family's home. The rest of us mightn't be quite so venomous, but that's not the same as being entertained. The storyline involving said film crew is actually one of the most engaging parts of A New Era; however, the fact that much of it is clearly ripped off from cinematic classic Singin' in the Rain speaks volumes, and gratingly. A New Era begins with a wedding, picking up where its predecessor left off as former chauffeur Tom Branson (Allen Leech, Bohemian Rhapsody) marries Lucy Smith (Tuppence Middleton, Mank) with everyone expected — the well-to-do Crawleys and their relatives, plus their maids, butlers, cooks, footmen and other servants — in attendance. But the film really starts with two revelations that disrupt the Downton status quo. Firstly, Violet receives word that she's inherited a villa in the south of France from an ex-paramour, who has recently passed away. His surviving wife (Nathalie Baye, Call My Agent!) is displeased with the arrangement, threatening lawsuits, but his son (Jonathan Zaccaï, The White Crow) invites the Crawleys to visit to hash out the details. Secondly, a movie production wants to use Downton for a shoot, which the pragmatic Lady Mary Talbot (Michelle Dockery, Anatomy of a Scandal) talks the family into because — paralleling the powers-that-be behind A New Era itself — the aristocratic brood would like the money. Downton Abbey: A New Era is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. 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 from director Keith Thomas (The Vigil) 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. As the first version of Firestarter in 1984 did, and King's book as well, 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. 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. 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.) Firestarter is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. HOW TO PLEASE A WOMAN When Magic Mike stripped its way into cinemas a decade ago, it didn't just turn Channing Tatum's IRL background into a movie and give his chiselled torso oh-so-much attention; it understood that women like sex, boast libidos and have desires, too. Its sequel, Magic Mike XXL, doubled down on that idea, and winningly so — even if the saga dances with a notion so blatant that it definitely shouldn't feel revelatory to see it thrust front and centre in a big-budget Hollywood film. There's no trace of Tatum in How to Please a Woman, and it has nothing to do with the saucy franchise that has a third flick on the way, but this Aussie comedy nonetheless follows in Magic Mike's footsteps. Here, women also like sex, boast libidos and have desires, and that's something that the stuck-in-a-rut Gina (Sally Phillips, Off the Rails) turns into a lucrative business. When first-time feature writer/director Renée Webster begins her sunnily shot, eagerly crowd-pleasing leap to the big screen — following helming gigs on TV's The Heights and Aftertaste — Gina's relationship with sex is non-existent. She has long been wed to lawyer Adrian (Cameron Daddo, Home and Away), but he still thinks that having a tumble on their last holiday years ago is enough bedroom action to keep their marriage going. Gina's resigned to that fact, too, until her ocean swimming club pals book her a stripping surprise for her birthday. Tom (Alexander England, Little Monsters) shows up at her door, starts gyrating and undressing, and says he'll do whatever she wants. Although her friends are later horrified, Gina asks him to clean her house instead — and its their eagerness to truly take Tom up on his offer that inspires a plan to turn a removalist company she thinks she can save into a male escort service, covering scrubbing and shagging alike. How to Please a Woman is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. HELMUT NEWTON: THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL One of the great treats in Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful stems from perhaps the film's simplest move: letting viewers peer at the often-provocative photographer's works in such a large format. Being able to do just that is the reason why the Exhibition On Screen series of movies exists, surveying showcases dedicated to artists such as Vincent van Gogh, David Hockney and Frida Kahlo over the years — and this documentary isn't part of that, but it understands the same idea. There's nothing like staring at an artist's work to understand what makes them tick. Writer/director Gero von Boehm (Henry Miller: Prophet of Desire) fills The Bad and the Beautiful with plenty more, from archival footage to recent interviews, but it'd all ring empty without seeing the imagery captured by Newton's lens firsthand. Every word that's said about the German photographer, or by him, is deepened by roving your eyes across the frequently contentious snaps that he sent Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Playboy and other magazines' ways. Those photos aren't run-of-the-mill fashion pics. Largely, the highly stylised images are of naked women — naked famous women, if not then then now, such as Isabella Rossellini, Charlotte Rampling, Grace Jones and Claudia Schiffer — and they're as fetishistic as the artform gets. They're the kinds of snaps that saw Susan Sontag call Newton out for being a misogynist to his face, as seen in a French TV clip featured in the film. The Bad and the Beautiful is an affectionate doco, but it also dives headfirst into the trains of thought that his work has sparked for decades. Anna Wintour explains that when someone books Newton, "you're not going to get a pretty girl on a beach". Women who posed for him, including the aforementioned stars, plus Marianne Faithfull, Arja Toyryla, Nadja Auermann and Hanna Schygulla, all talk through their differing experiences as well — and the portrait painted is varied. Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. LAST SEEN ALIVE Perhaps the most positive thing that can be said about Last Seen Alive is this: it's definitely a Gerard Butler-starring kidnapping thriller. That isn't meant as praise, though; rather, the film simply manages to be exactly what viewers would expect given its star and premise. There's clearly far less cash behind it than the also-terrible trio of Olympus Has Fallen, London Has Fallen and Angel Has Fallen — or Geostorm, Den of Thieves, Hunter Killer and Greenland among the Scottish actor's career lowlights over the past decade, either. There's visibly less effort, too, and more of a phoning-it-in vibe. The second collaboration between actor-turned-filmmaker Brian Goodman (What Doesn't Kill You) and producer/writer Marc Frydman after 2017's Black Butterfly, it plays like something that a streaming platform's algorithm might spit out in an AI-driven future where new movies are swiftly spliced together from pieces of past flicks. Yes, among Butler's output and with its abduction storyline, it's that derivative. Butler plays Will Spann, a real estate developer who already isn't having a great day when the film begins — but it's about to get worse. He's driving his unhappy wife Lisa (Jaimie Alexander, Loki) to her parents' home, where she's keen to decamp to find herself and take a break from their marriage, and Will is desperate to convince her to change her plans en route. His charm offensive isn't working when they stop at a petrol station mere minutes away from their destination, and he has zero charisma for anyone when Lisa unexpectedly disappears while he's filling the tank. Fuming that local police detective Paterson (Russell Hornsby, Lost in Space) hasn't just dropped everything immediately, and that he also has questions about their relationship, Will decides to chase down any lead he can himself. Meanwhile, Lisa's unsurprisingly wary parents (Queen Bees' Cindy Hogan and Master's Bruce Altman) direct their suspicions his way. Last Seen Alive is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. INTERCEPTOR Four decades back, Interceptor would've happily sat on a crowded video-store shelf alongside a wealth of other mindless, machismo-fuelled action thrillers. It would've been the epitome of one of the genre's straight-to-VHS flicks, in fact. Don't just call it a throwback, though; instead of testosterone oozing from every actor within sight, except perhaps a token wife worrying at home, this nuclear attack movie from Australian author Matthew Reilly focuses on a woman making waves in a male-dominated world. That's firmly a 2022 move, reflecting today's gender politics. So too is the fact that said protagonist, US Army Captain JJ Collins (Elsa Pataky, Tidelands), has just been reassigned after putting in a sexual harassment complaint against one of her past superiors. Don't go thinking that Interceptor doesn't tick every other box its 80s counterparts did, however. It couldn't lean harder on all of the cliches that've ever been involved with world-in-peril, military-driven movies, and with action fare at its most inane in general. A global success for his airport novels, writer Reilly doesn't just turn screenwriter here — with assistance from Collateral, Tomorrow, When the War Began and Obi-Wan Kenobi's Stuart Beattie — but also jumps behind the lens for the first time. Alas, his directorial instincts prove as flat and by-the-numbers as Interceptor's wanly boilerplate plot, as well as its clunky-as-clunky dialogue. And, that storyline really couldn't be more formulaic. In her new post on a remote platform in the Pacific Ocean, Collins soon finds herself under attack by terrorists led by the grating Alexander Kessel (Luke Bracey, Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan). Her sea-surrounded station is one of two sites, alongside Alaska's Fort Greely, that can intercept a nuclear warhead launch on the US. Naturally, Kessel and his men have already taken out the other one, and have also pilfered nukes from the Russians in their possession. Interceptor is available to stream via Netflix. 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 available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Looking for more at-home viewing options? Take a look at our monthly streaming recommendations across new straight-to-digital films and TV shows — and our best new TV shows, returning TV shows and straight-to-streaming movies from the first half of 2022. Or, check out the movies that were fast-tracked to digital in January, February, March, April, May and June.
You might think you know Richard Ayoade from his time as Maurice Moss in the British comedy The IT Crowd. But did you know he's also an acclaimed director of quirky indie films full of deadpan humour? After smashing it with his debut feature, Submarine, Ayoade's now back with The Double. Based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Double follows Simon James, the timid and nerdy office clerk whose life is completely unenviable. Played by Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network), Simon reaches breaking point when new co-worker James Simon appears on the scene. Also played by Eisenberg, James excels in all the ways that Simon cannot, being a daring extrovert with confidence and charm. Simon is both James's double, and as it turns out, his polar opposite. Also starring Aussie actor Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland, Stoker, The Kids are Alright) and Wallace Shawn (Clueless), The Double premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival and went on to Sundance. It's been praised in early reviews, including by the Playlist, who wrote: "Totally bonkers, hilarious and wickedly clever, The Double is special and singular filmmaking at its best." The Double is in cinemas on Thursday, May 8, and thanks to Madman Films, we have 15 double in-season passes to give away. To be in the running, subscribe to the Concrete Playground newsletter (if you haven't already), then email us with your name and address. Sydney: win.sydney@concreteplayground.com.au Melbourne: win.melbourne@concreteplayground.com.au Brisbane: win.brisbane@concreteplayground.com.au https://youtube.com/watch?v=_klCoDTHKGg ',width:'1150',height:'700'" width="1150" height="700" align="" />
Hip-hop fans listen up, an intimate show from Briggs and his Bad Apple Music label is coming to The Lair inside the CBD's Metro Theatre on Thursday, April 7. Billed as Briggs, Nooky and Friends as part of the Great Southern Nights program, expect memorable sets from the two trailblazing MCs as well as a bunch of surprise guests. Through his career, Briggs has been a vocal voice in the fight of First Nations people in Australia through his music — both solo and with A.B. Original — his writing and his comedy. He's toured with the likes of KRS-ONE and 50 Cent as well as written for programs like Black Comedy and Charlie Pickering's The Weekly. A newer voice in the hip hop community, Nooky's list of achievements is already long and impressive. Alongside his hard-hitting EP Lyrebird Par released at the end of last year, he's also the host of Triple J's Blak Out and the founder of Indigenous social enterprise We Are Warriors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7XevQAVoBI Great Southern Nights is facilitating a heap of gigs across Sydney and regional NSW, ranging from icons like Jimmy Barnes in western Sydney or Archie Roach performing in Wagga Wagga, through to smaller acts like hyped young R&B singer Liyah Knight headlining a night of local music and DJs at Zetland's 107 Projects. You can find the full program at the Great Southern Nights website.
While snow might not be falling all around like in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s Christmas here in Sydney and something’s stirring over at FBi Social. Radiant is bringing its yearly festive special, A Very Radiant Christmas, to FBi Social, escaping the radio waves to take to the stage for the first ever time this December 15th. Like previous years, Radiant are presenting a massive lineup of artists like Black Vanilla, Sarah Kelly, Glenn and Winter Thompson, Matt Banham and Joesph Leonard. Those artists will be backed up on stage by Sydney rock and roll legends The Holy Soul, who’ll be providing the big band for some of the other names on stage. Image by Mat Hurst.
To the dismay and disbelief of some (and to the giggles and chuckles of others), the recent Anthony Weiner sex scandal in American politics is producing some very interesting coverage. For instance, today's New York Post headline has created plenty of controversy as it brazenly proclaims 'Obama Beats Weiner'. The headline relates to President Obama's comments about Weiner's resignation, and while many are growing tired of the constant double entendres others are enjoying watching how far the joke can be pushed. The House Majority Leader, John Boehner, made comments earlier today calling for Weiner's resignation. Potential suggestions from Twitter for tomorrow's headline include 'Boehner Hard On Weiner'. While some suggest that this kind of childish joke-making is degrading American politics, it is hard not to laugh when you consider other recent political news. Fox Business host Eric Boilling yesterday remarked "What's with all the hoods in the hizzy?" after President Obama hosted rapper Common and Gabon President Ali Bongo at the White House recently. Boilling later apologised for "getting a little fast and loose with the language" but not for his comments about Obama "chugging 40s". And of course who could forget Sarah Palin, who continues travel around the United States on her One Nation tour, obviously inspired by her Australian political counterpart Pauline Hanson's One Nation party. Let's just hope the entire presidential campaign continues to be this much fun. https://youtube.com/watch?v=0XnLjDaREXs
Australians, if you need to renew your passport — or just find wherever you stashed it away more than 18 months ago — the time is now. When Monday, November 1 arrives, Aussies will be permitted to travel internationally again. Of course, given that the COVID-19 situation varies in each state, jetting off won't be as straightforward as it used to be; however, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has confirmed that the Federal Government will be allowing Aussies to leave the country and return from that date. Back at the beginning of October, the PM advised that Australia's indefinite ban on holidaying overseas — a ban that came into place in March 2020 to control the spread of COVID-19 — would lift sometime in November on a state-by-state basis. At the time, Morrison announced that "international travel is on track to reopen safely to fully vaccinated Australian travellers" when each state and territory individually hits the 80-percent double-jabbed threshold. Now, on Friday, October 15, the Prime Minister confirmed the exact date that Aussies will be allowed to travel internationally — after New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet announced that quarantine requirements will be dropped for folks who've had both their jabs from Monday, November 1, too. Also in NSW, caps on the number of double-vaccinated overseas arrivals will also lift on the same day. "I'm very pleased that the New South Wales Government has advised, as you've learnt today, that they will be in a position to move to a no quarantine arrangement for people arriving back in Australia from the 1st of November, which enables us to be in a position to ensure that we can lift the caps for returning Australian citizens, residents and their families from the 1st of November into New South Wales," said Morrison. He continued: "this also means is that we will be allowing Australians, permanent residents and citizens and their families, to leave Australia from wherever they live in Australia and return, but obviously the capped arrangements in other states will continue because of the vaccination levels in those places and the arrangements they have in place in each of those states and territories." Accordingly, if you wanted to hop on a flight out of NSW to an overseas destination from the beginning of November onwards, you can — and, if you're then returning to NSW and you're double-jabbed, you won't need to quarantine (not in a hotel, and not at home either). In response to the news, airlines have started bringing forward their international flight dates, so you really can start booking. Qantas has brought forward its London and Los Angeles routes from Sydney (the former now going via Darwin) to November 1, after initially intending to take to the skies again mid-November, and is also looking at possibly bringing forward the restart dates for flights to Singapore, Fiji, Vancouver and other destinations from mid-December. At this early stage, the international border will open for double-jabbed Aussies heading outwards and coming back — and permanent residents and citizens and their families, as the PM noted — but not for international travellers and international students. Plus, for those who aren't double-dose vaxxed, hotel quarantine will remain compulsory upon entering Australia, and caps upon arrival numbers will still apply. In NSW, mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine will remain in place, and only 210 overseas arrivals who aren't double-jabbed will be permitted each week. Media release: reopening roadmap update. #NSWPol #auspol2021 pic.twitter.com/mKbxdO0W53 — Dom Perrottet (@Dom_Perrottet) October 14, 2021 Arrangements in states and territories other than NSW, including the quarantine requirements upon return for double-vaccinated folks and the caps on arrivals from November 1, haven't yet been confirmed by the respective state and territory leaders. Also, exactly where Aussies can travel to out of NSW from November 1 obviously depends on border rules and requirements in other countries. The trans-Tasman travel bubble with New Zealand is presently on hold until at least mid-November, for instance, while Fiji will reopen to Aussies from Thursday, November 11. For further information about Australia's plan to restart international travel, head to the Prime Minister's website. More details about the National Plan to transition Australia's National COVID Response can be found on the same site. And, details of the New South Wales Government's current plans can be found on its website. Also, to find out more about the status of COVID-19 in Australia in general, head to the Australian Government Department of Health's website.
Not all that long ago, the idea of getting cosy on your couch, clicking a few buttons, and having thousands of films and television shows at your fingertips seemed like something out of science fiction. Now, it's just an ordinary night — whether you're virtually gathering the gang to text along, cuddling up to your significant other or shutting the world out for some much needed me-time. Of course, given the wealth of options to choose from, there's nothing ordinary about making a date with your chosen streaming platform. The question isn't "should I watch something?" — it's "what on earth should I choose?". Hundreds of titles are added to Australia's online viewing services each and every month, all vying for a spot on your must-see list. And, so you don't spend 45 minutes scrolling and then being too tired to actually commit to watching anything, we're here to help. We've spent plenty of couch time watching our way through this month's latest batch — and, from the latest and greatest to old favourites, here are our picks for your streaming queue from July's haul of newbies. BRAND NEW STUFF YOU CAN WATCH IN FULL RIGHT NOW MYSTERY ROAD: ORIGIN Origin stories: everyone's getting them. Caped crusaders like Batman and Spider-Man have several; Hercule Poirot's moustache even has its own. Originally played by Aaron Pedersen on both the big and small screens, Mystery Road's Jay Swan doesn't particularly need one, given that plenty about why he's the man and detective he is, and the balancing act he's forced to undertake as an Indigenous cop as well, has already been teased out. But Mystery Road: Origin isn't jumping on a trend, repeating itself or prolonging a long-running saga. It isn't trying to justify having someone else play Swan, either. Rather, this latest entry in Australia's best crime saga leaps backwards because this franchise has always danced with history anyway. It has to; you can't explore the reality of life in Australia today, the racial and cultural divides that've long festered across this sunburnt country, and all that Swan encounters and tussles with, otherwise. In Mystery Road: Origin, it's 1999 — and, when its six episodes begin, Swan isn't quite a detective yet. He's already a man of weighty thoughts and few words, though, and he's played by Mark Coles Smith (Occupation: Rainfall), who couldn't do a more impressive job of stepping into Pedersen's (High Ground) shoes. The series spies Swan as he's driving along sweeping salt plains. His destination: Jardine, his Western Australian home town, population 1000. Resident sergeant Peter Lovric (Steve Bisley, Doctor Doctor) welcomes Swan back eagerly, but his return isn't all cheers, especially when he stumbles across a robbery en route and gets cuffed by senior constable Max Armine (Hayley McElhinney, How to Please a Woman). Tensions also linger with Swan's estranged dad Jack (Kelton Pell, another The Circuit alum), the town's old rodeo hero, and with his hard-drinking elder brother Sputty (Clarence Ryan, Moon Rock for Monday). Indeed, that initial stickup, the crimewave waged by culprits in Ned Kelly masks that it's soon a part of, and those persistent family struggles will all define the detective's homecoming. Mystery Road: Origin streams via ABC iview. Read our full review. GREAT FREEDOM Great Freedom begins with 60s-style video footage captured in public bathrooms, showing Hans Hoffmann (Franz Rogowski, Undine) with other men, and with court proceedings that condemn him to prison purely for being gay. That was the reality in West Germany at the time due to Paragraph 175, which criminalised homosexuality — and, when he's incarcerated at the start of this equally tender and brutal Austrian film, Hans isn't surprised. He's been there before, as writer/director Sebastian Meise (Still Life) conveys almost like he's chronicling time travel. It's a canny touch, as relayed in the movie's cinematography, editing and overall mood. The minutes, days, hours, weeks and more surely move differently when you've been locked up for being who you are, and when being in jail is the better alternative to being in a concentration camp. Meise jumps between Hans' different stretches, exploring the imprint all that time behind bars leaves, the yearning for love and freedom that never dissipates, and his friendship with initially repulsed fellow inmate Viktor (Georg Friedrich, Freud). In the process, Great Freedom resounds with intimate moments and revealing performances, as anchored by another stellar turn by Rogowski. The German talent has had an outstanding few years thanks to Victoria, Happy End, Transit, In the Aisles and Undine. He's as absorbing as he's ever been here, too, in a movie that stares his way so intently — and with such a striking sense of light and shade — that it could be painting his portrait. Friedrich is just as impressive, in an outwardly thorny part. Great Freedom streams via SBS On Demand. THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH Who'd want to try to step into the one and only David Bowie's shoes? Only the brave and the bold. Two people earn that description in The Man Who Fell to Earth, the new TV sequel to the iconic 1976 movie that starred the music legend in the role he was clearly born to play: an alien who descends upon earth and ch-ch-changes history. Bill Nighy (Buckley's Chance) is charged with taking over the character of Thomas Jerome Newton and, thankfully and with style, he's up to the task. Chiwetel Ejiofor (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) slides into the same kind of part that Bowie owned in the original, however, as fellow extra-terrestrial interloper Faraday. He's this follow-up's newcomer to the planet, and he's just as destined to do big things. That's not a spoiler — early in the first episode, Faraday addresses a massive crowd like he's Steve Jobs announcing Apple's latest product, and The Man Who Fell to Earth's tech success uses the occasion to spin his origin story. Who'd want to try to pick up where one of the best sci-fi films ever made left off? That'd also be the brave and the bold, aka Clarice creators Jenny Lumet and Alex Kurtzman. Drawing inspiration from silver screen gems is obviously the pair's niche of late, but it's worth remembering with this new effort — which takes its cues from Walter Tevis' 1963 novel of the same name, too — that Kurtzman was also behind exceptional 2008–13 sci-fi series Fringe. Indeed, The Man Who Fell to Earth 2.0 feels like the perfect use of his talents, with the series thinking big and brimming with urgency in its vision of a world that might only be able to be saved by a spaceboy who truly cares about stopping climate change's damage. To follow through with his mission, though, Faraday also needs the help of former MIT physics whiz Justin Falls (Naomie Harris, No Time to Die). The Man Who Fell to Earth is available to stream via Paramount+. STRANGER THINGS For the second time in about as many months, Stranger Things has dictated everyone's playlists. While Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)' is still getting a workout, so is Metallica's 'Master of Puppets' thanks to the big two-episode end to the 80s-set hit's fourth season — two bumper movie-length instalments which clocked in at 85 minutes and 150 minutes each. Yes, it likely would've worked better if those two episodes had been split up, rather than going for length. Based on episode durations from earlier seasons, the Duffer brothers could've dropped five parts instead. The psychology behind the move was effective and ingenious, though; who didn't make a date to binge their way through as soon as they hit, because diving into two huge instalments in one night felt different than committing to five shorter chapters? Everyone did, and Netflix even momentarily crashed as a result. This season across both volumes certainly had a theme: going big in as many ways as possible. Season four gave the horror/slasher vibe a massive workout, thanks to new big bad Vecna — and ramped up the confrontations, showdowns, killings, flashbacks, drama and globe-trotting in the process. Clearly, the soundtrack budget was hefty. So was the performance given by season four MVP Sadie Sink (Fear Street) as Max Mayfield bore the brunt of Vecna's murderous and mind-bending games, and the place that Joseph Quinn (Small Axe) will always have in the show's fans' hearts thanks to his turn as Eddie Munson. And, the list of questions about what comes next in Stranger Things' upcoming fifth and final season, and where Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown, Godzilla vs Kong), Mike (Finn Wolfhard, Ghostbusters: Afterlife), Will (Noah Schnapp, Waiting for Anya), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo, The Angry Birds Movie 2), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin, Concrete Cowboy), Jonathan (Charlie Heaton, The Souvenir Part II), Steve (Joe Keery, Free Guy), Robin (Maya Hawke, Fear Street), Nancy (Natalia Dyer, Things Seen & Heard), Joyce (Winona Ryder, The Plot Against America) and Hopper's (David Harbour, Black Widow) stories will end, is sizeable. Stranger Things streams via Netflix. Read our full review of volume one of Stranger Things' fourth season. I LOVE THAT FOR YOU It works for television networks greenlighting new comedies, and it works for viewers picking what to watch, too: take one of Saturday Night Live's extremely amusing ladies, give them their own show, see laughs and smarts follow, profit. I Love That For You actually boasts two such talented women, although they didn't crossover during their SNL stints: Molly Shannon and Vanessa Bayer. The latter plays Joanna Gold, who has always dreamed of being on SVN — Special Value Network, that is. When she was a kid (Sophie Pollono, Small Engine Repair), she was diagnosed with childhood leukaemia, and obsessing over her idol Jackie Stilton (Shannon, The Other Two) as she sold anything and everything helped as a distraction. Now an adult, Joanna still wants to do exactly the same, and leave her job alongside her dad (Matt Malloy, The Sex Lives of College Girls) at Costco behind. But when she gets the chance, she pulls an unimpressed face during her first on-air stint that kills sales, so she says her cancer has returned to avoid getting fired. On paper, that's an extremely tricky premise. In lesser hands, it'd be downright horrible. As well as being a comic gem here, in SNL, and in everything from I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson to Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Bayer had childhood leukaemia herself — and if she didn't, and wasn't also one of I Love That For You's creators and writers, it's highly likely that this series wouldn't work. Thankfully, instead, it takes the same approach that Bayer has clearly always taken since her teenage experience, using humour in clever, sensitive, sincere, amusing, savvy and sometimes surreal ways. The show keeps demonstrating why its setup is worth tackling, too, asking questions about trying to live a normal life and work out who you are after surviving such a diagnosis; how and when sympathy is genuine, earned and milked; and guilt on several levels. It's also an entertaining workplace comedy and a takedown of consumerism, greed and the fact that anything, including sob stories, are for sale if there's something to be sold. And, of course, Bayer and Shannon are dynamite in their shared scenes. I Love That For You streams via Paramount+. NEW AND RETURNING SHOWS TO CHECK OUT WEEK BY WEEK THE RESORT If the last couple of years in pop culture are to be believed, it mightn't be a great idea to go away with a character played by Cristin Milioti. In three of the always-excellent actor's most recent high-profile roles, she has decamped to idyllic surroundings, only to find anything but bliss awaiting. Palm Springs threw a Groundhog Day-style time loop her way in its titular setting. Made for Love saw her trapped by sinister futuristic possibilities. In The Resort, which hails from Palm Springs screenwriter Andy Siara, she now has the ten-year itch — and a getaway to Mexico that's meant to soothe it slides swiftly into a wild mystery. In this instantly twisty comedy-thriller Miloti plays Emma, spouse to William Jackson Harper's (The Good Place) Noah. After a decade of marriage, they're celebrating at the Bahía del Paraíso in the Yucatán, but they're really trying to reignite their spark. At this stage in their relationship, he recoils at her bad breath, she makes fun of him falling asleep on the couch, and they're rarely in sync; even when they're floating along the resort's lazy river, cocktails in hand, they want different things. Bringing them together: a missing-persons case from 15 years ago, after Emma goes tumbling off a quad-biking trail, bumps her head and spies an old mobile phone. It belongs to Sam (Skyler Gisondo, Licorice Pizza), a guest at the nearby but now-shuttered Oceana Vista Resort, who was on holidays over Christmas 1997 with his parents (IRL couple Dylan Baker, Hunters, and Becky Ann Baker, Big Little Lies), as well as his girlfriend Hannah (Debby Ryan, Insatiable). As Emma learns via Sam's photos and text messages, all wasn't rosy in his romantic life. After running into fellow guest Violet (Nina Bloomgarden, Good Girl Jane), who was travelling with her dad Murray (Nick Offerman, Pam & Tommy), his SMS history skews in her direction. But the pair promptly disappeared, and any potential clues were lost when a hurricane struck and destroyed their getaway spot. If The White Lotus joined forces with Only Murders in the Building, it'd look a whole lot like this entertaining series, which also includes an ace performance by Luis Gerardo Méndez (Narcos: Mexico) as Baltasar, Oceana Vista Resort's head of security. The Resort is available to stream via Stan. Read our full review. WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS Live life long enough and anything can happen. Enjoy an undead existence for hundreds of years and that feeling only multiplies, or so the wealth of movies and TV shows that've let vampires stalk through their frames frequently remind viewers. A sharehouse-set mockumentary focused on bloodsucking roommates who've seen more than a few centuries between them, What We Do in the Shadows embraces that idea like little else, though — as a Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi-starring movie, aka one of the funniest New Zealand comedies of this century, and then as a hilarious American TV spinoff. The premise has always been ridiculously straightforward, and always reliably entertaining. A camera crew captures the lives of the fanged and not-at-all furious, squabbles about chores, a rising body count and avoiding sunlight all included. Their domesticity may involve sinking their teeth into necks, blood splatters aplenty, sleeping in coffins and shapeshifting into bats, but it also covers arguing about paying bills, keeping the house clean and dealing with the neighbours. The TV version's stellar fourth season picks up after a climactic end to the show's prior batch of episodes, which only finished airing back in October 2021. Its bloodsucking roommates were all set for their own adventures, but a year has passed in the show, bringing them back together. Nandor (Kayvan Novak, Cruella) returns from exploring his ancestral homeland, and he's more determined than ever to find a wife. He also thinks that one of his many from the Middle Ages could be the one again; bringing back a Djinn (Anoop Desai, Russian Doll) to grant his wishes helps. After a stint in London with the Supreme Vampiric Council, Nadja has big ambitions, too, setting her sights on opening a vampire nightclub. As for her beloved Laszlo (Matt Berry, Toast of London and Toast of Tinseltown), he's still taking care of the baby-turned-boy that burst its way out of energy vampire Colin Robinson's (Mark Proksch, The Office) body. For the fourth time around, nothing about this delight sucks, not for a second, with season four as wonderful as ever. What We Do in the Shadows streams via Binge. Read our full review. BETTER CALL SAUL When the middle of August arrives, the best show on television for the past seven years — other than the one-season return of Twin Peaks — will come to an end. That isn't new news, but it's still monumental, especially given that Better Call Saul is the spinoff to an also-phenomenal series. Unlike when Breaking Bad wrapped up, though, there's no future immediately in sight. Perhaps that's fitting. Better Call Saul is TV's great tragedy precisely because we always knew what its prequel segments, which comprise the overwhelming bulk of the show, will lead to. We know who Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk, Nobody) is when he's a shady Albuquerque criminal defence attorney aiding Walter White (Bryan Cranston, Your Honor) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul, Westworld). We know what all his choices then lead to, because we've already seen it. But every single moment that's been brought to the screen in sunny colour in Better Call Saul so far, including in the now-airing second half of the series' sixth and final season, desperately makes you wish that everything you know is destined to occur won't. That said, this latest and last batch of episodes has already overflowed with surprises as it works towards that big farewell. And, it's been delighting and astonishing as only Better Call Saul can — with meticulous precision in everything that it slips across the screen, including in its tightly plotted and never-predictable narrative, its cinematic imagery and its many, many marvellous performances. That includes continuing to unfurl Lalo Salamanca's (Tony Dalton, Hawkeye) part in this long-running crime saga, as the first half of the season did with Nacho Varga (Michael Mando, Spider-Man: Homecoming). It spans seeing where being Saul's wife, as well as his happy co-conspirator in getting revenge against their old boss Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian, Gordita Chronicles), leads Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn, Veep). TV won't be the same without Saul Goodman. It certainly won't be s'all good, man. Still, what a swan song this extraordinary show is treating viewers to — even with three episodes left to go. Better Call Saul streams via Stan. Read our review of the first half of Better Call Saul's sixth season. BLACK BIRD 2022 marks a decade since Taron Egerton's first on-screen credit as a then-23 year old. Thanks to the Kingsman movies, Eddie the Eagle, Robin Hood and Rocketman, he's rarely been out of the cinematic spotlight since — but miniseries Black Bird feels like his most mature performance yet. The latest based-on-a-true-crime tale to get the twisty TV treatment, it adapts autobiographical novel In with the Devil: a Fallen Hero, a Serial Killer, and a Dangerous Bargain for Redemption. It also has Dennis Lehane, author of Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River and Shutter Island, bringing it to streaming. The focus: Jimmy Keene, a former star high-school footballer turned drug dealer, who finds his narcotics-financed life crumbling when he's arrested in a sting, offered a plea bargain with the promise of a five-year sentence (four with parole), but ends up getting ten. Seven months afterwards, he's given the chance to go free, but only if he agrees to transfer to a different prison to befriend suspected serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser, Cruella), and get him to reveal where he's buried his victims' bodies. Even with new shows based on various IRL crimes hitting queues every week, or thereabouts — 2022 has already seen Inventing Anna, The Dropout, The Girl From Plainville and The Staircase, to name a mere few — Black Bird boasts an immediately compelling premise. The first instalment in its six-episode run is instantly gripping, too, charting Keene's downfall, the out-of-ordinary situation posed by Agent Lauren McCauley (Sepideh Moafi, The Killing of Two Lovers), and the police investigation by Brian Miller (Greg Kinnear, Crisis) to net Hall. It keeps up the intrigue and tension from there; in fact, the wild and riveting details just keep on coming. Fantastic performances all round prove pivotal as well. Again, Egerton is excellent, while Hauser's menace-dripping efforts rank among the great on-screen serial killer portrayals. And, although bittersweet to watch after his sudden passing in May, Ray Liotta (The Many Saints of Newark) makes a firm imprint as Keene's father. Black Bird streams via Apple TV+. THE REHEARSAL Early in the first episode of The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder meets Kor Skeete, a Jeopardy!-watching, trivia-loving New Yorker with a problem that he's seeking help with. Skeete has been lying to his bar trivia team about his educational history, claiming that he has a master's degree instead of a bachelor's degree, and he's hoping for assistance in coming clean. His biggest worry: how his pal Tricia might react, and if it'll end their friendship. First, however, in their initial meeting in Skeete's apartment, Fielder asks Skeete if he's ever seen any of Fielder's past work. Skeete says no, despite claiming a particular interest in television as his favourite trivia subject — and his response to what Fielder explains next will likely mirror anyone watching who comes to this with the same fresh eyes. Until now, Fielder was best known for Nathan for You, in which he helped companies and people by using his business school studies. Fielder played a version of himself, and the result is best described as a reality comedy. It's the kind of thing that has to be seen to be truly believed and understood, and it's both genius and absurd. In The Rehearsal, Fielder is back as himself. He also wants to use his skills to help others again. His tactic this time is right there in the name, letting his subjects rehearse their big moments — baring all to a friend in that first episode, and exploring parenthood in the second, for instance. The show's crew even build elaborate sets, recreating the spots where these pivotal incidents will take place, such as the bar where Skeete will meet Tricia. Fielder hires actors to assist, too. And, adding yet another layer, Fielder also steps through the same process himself, rehearsing his first encounter with Skeete, with thanks to an actor, before they cross paths. If you've ever thought that life was a big performance, and that every single thing about interacting with others — and even just being yourself — involves playing a role, you'll find much to think about in this fascinating, funny, often unsettling, quickly addictive series. There's reality TV and then there's the way that the deadpan Fielder plays with and probes reality, and while both can induce cringing, nothing compares to this. The Rehearsal streams via Binge. A RECENT CINEMA RELEASE TO CATCH UP WITH RIVER Some actors possess voices that could narrate almost anything, and Willem Dafoe (The Northman) is one of them. He's tasked with uttering quite the elegiac prose in River, but he gives all that musing about waterways — the planet's arteries, he calls them at one point — a particularly resonant and enthralling tone. Australian filmmaker Jennifer Peedom (Sherpa) knew he would, of course. She enlisted his vocal talents on her last documentary, Mountain, as well. Both films pick one of the earth's crucial natural features, capture them in all their glory at multiple spots around the globe, and wax lyrical about their importance, and both make for quite the beguiling viewing experience. Thanks to writer Robert Macfarlane, Dafoe has been given much to opine in River, covering the history of these snaking streams from the planet's creation up until today. He hones in on their importance to human civilisation — in making much in our evolution possible, in fact, and also the devastation we've wrought in response since we learned to harness all that water for our own purposes. That said, River could've simply paired its dazzling sights with its Australian Chamber Orchestra score and it still would've proven majestic and moving. The footage is that remarkable as it soars high and wide across 39 countries, and peers down with the utmost appreciation. Here, a picture truly is worth a thousand of those Dafoe-uttered words, but the combination of both — plus a score that includes everything from Bach to Radiohead — is something particularly special. River is available to stream via ABC iView. Read our full review. A STONE-COLD CLASSIC TO BINGE IN FULL THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW TV shows about TV are like movies about movies: someone somewhere is usually making one. But every television series that's told a tale about making a television show since the early 90s has owed an enormous debt to The Larry Sanders Show — and everything that's still to come always will. One of HBO's earliest examples of original programming, it parodies the late-night talk show world. (Yes, 30 Rock's satire of Saturday Night Live took more than a few cues from it.) The show within the show is also called The Larry Sanders Show, as hosted by its namesake (the late, great Garry Shandling), and its day-to-day production is always hectic. There's Larry's ego to deal with, the distinctive management style of producer Artie (the also late, great Rip Torn), the parade of staffers and assistants (including a pre-Entourage Jeremy Piven and Reality Bites-era Janeane Garofalo), and a constant array of demanding guests. And, Larry's personal life always bleeds into the chaos, including the spoils and trappings of fame, and his romantic relationships. Curb Your Enthusiasm, another series set within showbiz that's also about someone called Larry, similarly wouldn't be what it is if The Larry Sanders Show had never existed. Tonally, they share plenty — the acerbic humour, the willingness to be both blunt and brutal, and the well-known names skewering themselves, too. Thanks to its fondness for walk-and-talk scenes, The Larry Sanders Show has left its imprint as far and wide as ER and The West Wing as well. It isn't just phenomenal because it helped shape so much great television that followed, however. Perhaps the best sitcom ever made, it's as smart as it is savage, surreal and hilarious, and the combination of Sanders and Torn, both at their absolute best, is what TV dreams are made of. Making your way through the 90 episodes, which originally aired across six seasons between 1992–98, is a breeze. Wanting to binge them again immediately afterwards comes just as easily. The Larry Sanders Show streams via Binge. Need a few more streaming recommendations? Check out our picks from January, February, March, April, May and June this year. You can also check out our running list of standout must-stream 2022 shows so far as well — and our best 15 new shows from the first half of this year, top 15 returning shows and best 15 straight-to-streaming movies.
Keen for an overseas holiday as soon as you can possibly take one? Aren't we all — and Australians can now add Singapore to their list of international destinations. A quarantine-free travel arrangement between the two countries was first floated back in March, and it'll finally kick in on Monday, November 8. At present, this'll be a one-way setup, allowing double-vaccinated Australians to enter Singapore without quarantining. Dubbed a 'vaccinated travel lane (VTL)' by Singaporean authorities, it'll commence just a week after Australia's international border restrictions ease to once again permit Aussies to leave the country for holidays. Here's how the VTL will work: if you've had two jabs, you can enter Singapore without quarantining, although you will need to undergo COVID-19 Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing. If you're travelling with kids aged 12 years and under who aren't vaxxed, they'll be allowed to enter Singapore, too — as long as you're double-vaccinated. Obviously, double-vaxxed Aussies will be allowed to return back to Australia after their Singapore trips; however, Australia isn't opening up to overseas holidaymakers as yet — which is why it's a one-way arrangement Singapore has already established VTLs with a range of countries, including Germany, Brunei, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the US. Switzerland will also join the arrangement on November 8, with South Korea following on November 15. When it was first suggested at the beginning of 2021, the Australia–Singapore arrangement was expected to start in July, but that clearly didn't happen. Then, in June, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison met with his Singaporean counterpart Lee Hsien Loong, with the pair releasing a joint statement affirming that they were working towards the travel arrangement. Singapore follows countries such as Fiji and Thailand in revealing when they're reopening to holidaying Australians. If you're currently thinking about booking flights, Qantas has already announced fares from Sydney from Tuesday, November 23. To find out more about the status of COVID-19 in Australia and how to protect yourself, head to the Australian Government Department of Health's website.
UPDATE: APRIL 30, 2018 — In news that is really not that surprising, Kendrick's Melbourne and Sydney shows sold out in less than an hour this morning. To meet demand, two more shows have been added — one in Melbourne on July 14 and one in Sydney on July 25. Tickets go on sale at 2pm today, and will no doubt sell out as quickly as the first batch. We had a feeling this might happen. Off the back of an appearance at an already sold-out Splendour in the Grass, Kendrick Lamar will also headline four Australian shows in support of his fourth album DAMN.. Lamar is one of the most critically acclaimed and successful hip hop artists of our generation. The Compton rapper most recently became the first ever artist to take out the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for contemporary music. He's also the beholder of 12 Grammys, has clocked up more than six million album sales worldwide, and was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME Magazine. Lamar will return to our shores for Splendour on the weekend of July 20–22 and four headline shows: one in Perth on July 10, one in Melbourne on July 13, one in Adelaide on July 15 and one in Sydney on July 24. Having recently taken the DAMN. tour across the UK and Europe, set lists included his extensive catalogue, including good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012), To Pimp A Butterfly (2015) and his most recent effort DAMN.. DAMN. AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES 2018 Tuesday, July 10 — Perth Arena, Perth Friday, July 13 and Saturday, July 14 — Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne Sunday, July 15 — Entertainment Centre, Adelaide Tuesday, July 24 and Wednesday, July 25 — Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney Kendrick Lamar will visit Australia in July. Tickets will go on sale at local times on Monday, April 30 here.
It's made from pickle relish, mustard, soybean oil, egg yolk, onion, garlic and vinegar, has been slathered on burgers for more than half a century, and boasts as passionate a following as any condiment can have. Yes, we're talking about Big Mac Special Sauce, which goes mighty well with two beef patties, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions and a sesame seed bun — and, for McHappy Day, it's being bottled up and sold separately. If you're keen to squeeze the famous sauce on your own homemade burgers — or whatever other everyday meals it happens to go well with — then head along to a McDonald's eatery ASAP. A 500ml bottle will set you back $12, and there'll be more than 144,000 available. That seems like plenty; however, folks tend to go a little overboard when it comes to the condiment. Case in point: back in 2015, when limited-edition bottles were put up for auction on Ebay, one sold for more than $20,000. This isn't the first time that Maccas has packaged its famous sauce and put it up for sale, with the chain doing so in 2018 to celebrate the Big Mac's 50th anniversary. Still, it's not the kind of condiment that you can buy everyday. And, while there's plenty of recipes online that explain how to whip up a version at home, your tastebuds can probably tell the difference. Profits from all sales will be donated to Ronald McDonald House Charities, which McHappy Day raises money for each year. If you're buying an actual Big Mac with your bottle of Big Mac Special Sauce, $2 from your burger will also go to the cause, with other merchandise on offer and gold coin donations also accepted. Bottles of Big Mac Special Sauce are now available to purchase in store at McDonald's stores nationwide. For more information, visit the McHappy Day website. CORRECTION: OCTOBER 28, 2019 — This article previously stated that the Big Mac Special Sauce would be available from Saturday, November, but it is actually available now (Monday, October 28) until sold out. The above article has been updated to reflect this.
Conveniently sitting on the corner of Wentworth and East Esplanade, just steps from Manly's Ferry Wharf, is the Artisan Cheese Room. Occupying a small corner shop, this delightful room is created for cheesemongers, by cheesemongers. Owners Joanna and Paul Thompson opened up the carefully curated cheese haven after successful careers elsewhere — although a career in cheese with your significant other feels like a whole different level of success. Inside you can browse over 50 cheeses sourced from across the world, as well as from just a few hours' drive away. Also available are accessories like blue-and-white crockery and handmade knives, all with a sharp focus around cheese. The shop also offers cheese celebration cakes, boards, hampers and gift boxes all prepared upon request. If you're now hankering for a cheese plate, then you might be interested in the store's Cheese Club which provides four cheeses each month along with biscuits and tasting notes (for all you cheese newcomers out there). March's featured cheeses included the Holy Goat La Luna, sourced from the rural plains just a few hours north of Melbourne, as well as L'Amuse gouda, a cheese made in northern Holland's UNESCO World Heritage Site of Beemster, which then aged for two years in Amsterdam. Cheese lovers can choose between four options — or one ($90), three ($260), six ($530) or 12 months ($1000) of cheese. Sign up online, or pop into the cheese shop — and taste a few seasonal favourites while you're there.
Roman-style pizza plays a hefty part on Maybe Frank's menu every day of the week. Come Wednesdays, however, pizza is the main attraction — as you'd expect at the Surry Hills and Randwick eateries' all-you-can-eat pizza evening, which has returned after the pandemic. For $20, you can indeed feast on all the slices that your stomach can handle. You can choose from 11 different flavours (and potentially even try them all if your stomach is roomy enough). Start with a simple margherita and classic capricciosa, perhaps, and move on to the decadent four-cheese number and a tartufo, which comes with porcini and truffle oil. You'll get salad and a Nutella slider as part of the deal, too. The only requirement for the all-you-can-eat pizza night is that you purchase a drink. And you'll want to try the cocktails, which are as good as any bar in the city. As an added bonus, $10 negronis and spritzes are available all night. If you don't want a drink, you can also get the bottomless deal for $25 a head. [caption id="attachment_645487" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Maybe Frank Randwick[/caption] All-you-can-eat pizza is available at both Maybe Frank Surry Hills and Randwick. Top image: DS Oficina
If you know anything about the Hotel Rose Bay, it's probably the pub's obsession with miniature trains — up until recently, it sported a model that would skirt around the venue every hour. But an extensive renovation and a few million dollars later, and the 90-year-old pub will choo-choo no more. It will reopen on Friday, March 1 as a sleek new eastern suburbs venue. The heritage facade had been kept, but inside the space has undergone some serious work by Richards Stanisich Interiors, who raised ceilings, added more windows and doubled the interior space. It's now brighter and more airy and befits the venue's harbourside location. Rose gold finishes, terrazzo tiling and Australian spotted gum furnishings, along with an emerald granite bar, have replaced the pub's train track. [caption id="attachment_709922" align="alignnone" width="1920"] The kitchen's split king prawns with burnt butter and coastal greens.[/caption] As a result, there are now three distinct spaces on offer: the main bar and lounge with a cocktail list and share plates, the sports bar, and the 70-seat restaurant. The latter is helmed by ex-Flying Fish and Catalina executive chef Ian Royle, who's bringing his fine-dining background to pub grub. Sure, you'll find the usual fish and chips, cheeseburgers and steaks, but also a barramundi fillet with cauliflower and tamarind butter ($29.50) and soy spare ribs served with sriracha mayo ($29). Other menu specialties include the king prawns with burnt butter and native greens ($28), the free-range chicken with chilli coconut and peanut sauce ($28), and the salmon tartare with avocado, tomato ponzu and wonton crisps ($18.5). Having first opened its doors back in 1929, Hotel Rose Bay is also one of the few independent pubs around town — it's been owned and operated by the Auswild family from Bellevue Hill for over 20 years now. Hotel Rose Bay opens Friday, March 1 at 807 New South Head Road, Rose Bay. Opening hours are Monday through Saturday 10am–1am and Sunday 10am–10.30pm. Food images: Oliver Minnett.
Steam Mill Lane is already well-known for its lineup of impressive eateries, which include everything from famed Melbourne burger joint 8bit to Japanese-Scandi cafe Edition, and now it's throwing another element into the mix — helping to make some lives a little easier this festive season by hosting a charity sneaker drive. Coinciding with the lead-up to Christmas, from December 12–14, the drive will see Steam Mill Lane collecting a heap of shoe donations for Shoes for Planet Earth — a non-profit organisation that provides recycled running shoes for those in need. Head in to the inner-city precinct between 12pm–3pm on any of the days to drop off a pair of pre-loved, hole-free sneaks, and you'll score some free food for your efforts. On Tuesday, December 12, you'll snag a miso dark choc cookie from Edition, on Wednesday a hot cinnamon doughnut from Butter and on Thursday a bubble tea from Gong Cha. The collection station will be located right outside 8bit, so if you're heading over on your lunch break, you could pick up a standout burger, too. The Steam Mill Lane Charity Sneaker Drive will run from 12–3pm.
Visit the old-school ticket box at the Elizabeth Street Bus Shelter next month and you'll score tickets for a very different kind of journey; namely, a ride to flavour town courtesy of Nutie's pop-up dessert bar. Best known for its gluten-free doughnuts and inventive plant-based sweet treats, the crew is teaming up with the soon-to-open Coffee Press Cafe for a tasty, two-week stint, where it'll dish up some of its most impressive all-vegan, all-GF desserts yet. The pop-up is set to run from October 5 to 20, opening for post-dinner dessert cravings and caffeine hits, from 5-10pm daily. One brand-new creation making an appearance is Nutie's vegan (and gluten free) cookie dough brownie sundae — a triple-decker fudge brownie teamed with cookie chunks, vanilla cookie dough bombs, rich choc fudge sauce and a hearty scoop of vegan ice cream. There'll also be (vegan and GF) s'mores torched to order, either featuring a classic choc fudge ice cream sandwich, or loaded with boozy cherry compote to create an indulgent black forest version. They'll sit alongside long-time Nutie favourites like baked doughnuts and those outrageous Golden Gaytime doughnut bombs. The pop-up's conveniently (or inconveniently, if you have trouble saying no) located right near the Night Noodle Markets. Keep it in mind for your post-dumpling dessert fix. Nutie Late-Night Dessert Bar will be open every night from 5–10pm.
Figuring out what to cook or contribute to a Christmas Day feast isn't always easy. Fortunately, The Good Food & Wine Show Christmas Market is here to offer plenty of inspiration, taking over the ICC Sydney with a food-filled wonderland from Friday, November 21–Sunday, November 23. Bringing together over 150 different exhibitors from across Australia, this is your chance to sample all the festive bites and sips needed to make your holiday season a delicious success. Meanwhile, the market is stacked with festive gifts and knick-knacks, so you can get your Christmas shopping sorted long before chaotic queues put a dampener on your merry spirit. "The Christmas Market is all about helping people discover unique gifts, get inspired into the kitchen and kick off the season surrounded by the best food, drinks and festive cheer," says Mike Bray, Managing Director at SpecTAPular. For those heading along, The Festive Kitchen returns by popular demand, featuring top-notch culinary stars like Miguel Maestre, Kirsten Tibballs and Valérie Henbest. Spanning fascinating live demos, each will showcase their best tips and tricks to make this year's Christmas feast your best one yet. Plus, Secret Sips sessions invite guests to free 30-minute tastings where they'll put their palate to the test through a blind experience. Alongside dedicated wrapping stations, the chance to win awesome prizes from spin-the-wheel games and a who's who of makers and producers, guests will also get to taste two exclusive treats. Munch on Miguel's Crispy Christmas Pork, the ideal centrepiece for your dining table, and an inventive chocolate made by Kirsten Tibballs, combining the festive flavours of Christmas cake crumbs with orange and almond.
Oxford Street has many identities, and the section that cuts through Paddington is largely known for and dedicated to fashion boutiques. Many homegrown labels have chosen the suburb for their first — and, in many cases, only — dedicated bricks-and-mortar space, including We Are Kindred. The boutique was selected by CP reader Susi Reed, for the "dreamy florals and pretty things" that get them compliments every time they wear them. Started by sisters Lizzie and Georgie Renkert in 2013, We Are Kindred is a luxe womenswear brand with a penchant for floral prints. The duo designs everything in this Paddington studio and sources quality fabrics like silk, washed linen and lace from across the world. Images: Cassandra Hannagan
Getting your art fix can be difficult in the hustle and bustle of daily life — and so, when the opportunity arises to soak in some creativity at a convenient time, you've got to jump at the chance. Southwest Sydney residents and art lovers from across the city: mark Saturday, January 20 in your diaries. That's when Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre is hosting Exhibitions After Dark as part of Sydney Festival 2024. The beloved Western Sydney cultural space will be opening from 6pm until late for a midweek dose of after-hours art. Check out Eddie Abd, Katy B Plummer and Leanne Tobin's new exhibitions, all of which are part of the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre's summer program. Rounding out the night's entertainment will be a series of performances and workshops based around the trio of exhibitions and the creative minds behind them. There's also a yet-to-be-announced food and drink lineup that will keep the art lovers in attendance well fed. Entry is free and no registration is required.
There's nothing quite like the thrum of a crowd at a live gig, but we often forget to acknowledge all the incredible work that goes into putting on a show. Australia's live music scene is growing, and we owe so much of that to not only the musicians but also their managers, agents, crew and others working tirelessly behind the scenes. Support Act props up the music industry with mental health and wellbeing initiatives, like the Wellbeing Helpline, short-term financial aid and dedicated First Nations support. On Thursday, November 30, it's asking you to help continue to raise funds for music workers by showing your support on Ausmusic T-Shirt Day. Don your favourite Ausmusic tee on Thursday, November 30 and donate to Support Act to boost Australia's music industry. If you don't have a shirt, you can buy one on the website for $50. Take your pick of designs created by local artists, featuring musos such as Kylie Minogue, Nick Cave, Paul Kelly, Gang of Youths and John Farnham – but get in quick, as stocks are limited. All proceeds go directly to Support Act. You can get additional merch from celebrated stars such as Jess Mauboy, Tame Impala, Tash Sultana, INXS, RÜFÜS DU SOL and Ocean Alley, who are donating a percentage of sale proceeds to the campaign. Find the full list of merch partners at the website. In showing your support, you'll become a part of something bigger. Upholding the cause are some notable names in Aussie music — lead ambassadors Amy Shark, Budjerah and Jimmy Barnes are joined by Alex Lahey, Baker Boy, Client Liason, Gretta Ray, Jet, Josh Pyke, MAY-A, Voyager and more. ARIA, Triple J, Heaps Normal, Gildan Brands and AAMI are also backing the cause. "November 30 is a day where we can all rally together, show our support of Aussie music and raise much-needed funds for Support Act who do amazing work for artists, crew and music workers across the industry," shares Amy Shark. Donate and get involved at the Ausmusic website.
If you're heading to Bondi Beach to catch some waves, soak up the rays or enjoy a quick dip this month, you may notice a new addition to the familiar beach-facing stores. From Thursday, December 7, you'll spot a limited-time pop-up store at 80 Campbell Parade that'll be offering up Ksubi's coveted denim goods until Saturday, December 30. Open from 10am to 6pm daily, you'll be able to explore a limited-edition range of the brand's products, from its signature denim staples and kidswear to previously archived designs that are returning as Aussie exclusives — and that's not all. Ksubi was born in the Northern Beaches in 1999, and to celebrate its return to Sydney, the pop-up will also be hosting free parties every Friday and Saturday throughout December. To kick off the celebrations, the globally renowned brand is partnering with Kosta's Takeaway on Saturday, December 9, where the beloved sando deli will be slinging its famed creations from 1–3pm. The following week, Momentum Mag will be spinning tunes from 4–7pm on Friday, December 15, and then the Ricos Tacos crew will take over the Saturday food slot from 1–3pm on Saturday, December 16. Lovejoy will handle the sunset music session on Friday, December 22, with Burger Park joining the pop-up's food lineup on Saturday, December 23. And to round out the year, Bodega Collective will curate the soundtrack on Friday, December 29, while Pizza Oltra's slices will close out 2023's culinary lineup on Saturday, December 30. And if you just can't get enough of Ksubi, don't fret. It'll be back in March of next year with its flagship Australian store at 113 King Street in Sydney's CBD.
Did you know Australia is the world's seventh-largest market for champagne? And, because we never do anything by halves, we're also the largest consumers of champagne per person outside Europe. We also seek quality over quantity, with drinkers choosing sparkling and champagne from vineyards with high quality vines. Avid champagne drinkers may have noticed an increasing number of rosé champagnes in their favourite bars and bottle shops, too. This is thanks to a rosé revolution — a surge in popularity for not only still pink wines but also for sparkling and champagne rosé — which is why we've partnered with Moët & Chandon to bring you a quick guide to the complex drink that can range from amber to hibiscus pink in colour, and from red currant to strawberry in flavour, and pair surprisingly well with sashimi and roast chicken. Read on to find out why your next glass of champagne should be pink. [caption id="attachment_760242" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Pinot meunier grapes; Fred Laures[/caption] PINK CHAMPAGNE IS MORE COMPLEX THAN YOU THINK It's also drier and has layers of flavour. Winemakers use red wine grapes pinot noir and pinot meunier as the basis for rosé champagne; they take the intensity and structure of the pinot noir and combine it with the opulent flavours of meunier — think wild strawberry and cranberry characters — which creates a champagne that has freshness as well as layers of flavour. [caption id="attachment_758615" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Lasseter Winery[/caption] IT'S THE ONLY TIME WINEMAKERS ARE PERMITTED TO BLEND RED AND WHITE WINES No, really. Making rosé champagne is the only time when it is permitted to blend still red wine and still white wine together to make rosé. The process is called rosé d'assemblage and winemakers combine a percentage of red wine (usually pinot noir or meunier) with the cuvée. Taking it a step further, Moët & Chandon trains its winemakers to master the specific techniques necessary to make red wines, giving them a devoted space, amenities and resources to allow them to focus on the nuances of crafting red wine. No other rosé champagne producer in the Champagne region has taken comparable steps. ROSÉ CHAMPAGNE DATES BACK TO THE 1700s The first documentation of rosé champagne was on March 14, 1764. It was discovered in entries from historic champagne house Ruinart's accounts book, which detailed a shipment of "a basket of 120 bottles", 60 bottles of which were Oeil de Perdrix ("Eye of the Partridge"), refers to "a delicate pink coppery colour." Some champagne houses like Moët & Chandon are celebrating their 43rd vintage of rosé champagne. IT PAIRS WITH MORE THAN JUST OYSTERS Rosé champagne comes alive with food. There's a common misconception that both champagne and rosé champagne should only be drunk at the beginning of a meal (with oysters or as an aperitif), but ask any sommelier or champagne lover and they will tell you that the vibrancy and delicate lines of acid are perfect for freshening the palate after foods like roasted pork, cured meats, or even after devouring a delicious burger. It makes the ideal brunch wine alongside fruit platters, which highlight the wine's natural fruit characters, and its minerality and acidity pairs well with a smoked salmon blini. Get creative and come up with a few unusual pairings at home. [caption id="attachment_762305" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Anna Kucera[/caption] THE POP PRESSURE IS INTENSE The pressure in a bottle of rosé champagne (or any champagne for that matter) is equivalent to three times the pressure in your average car tyre (around 96psi) — which is why you should never take your hand off the cork when opening a bottle. This pressure is created through the process of fermentation within the bottle; when the yeast eats all the natural sugar in the grapes to produce alcohol, carbon dioxide is the by-product of this process and it gets trapped within the bottles of champagne. In rosé champagne the result is delicate pink bubbles that dance on your tongue. TWENTY PERCENT OF MOËT & CHANDON CHAMPAGNES ARE PINK One in five bottles (or around 20 percent of champagne production) from Moët & Chandon House is rosé. It takes the crafting and production of the blend very seriously. Its focus on higher quality champagnes shines through in the wine, which shows various vinous characters in different vintages with each new release. The non-vintage (NV) styles are made to a 'house style' and are consistent from year to year. [caption id="attachment_760219" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Moet and Chandon Vineyards at the Loge Mont Aigu[/caption] IT'S (SURPRISINGLY) EXCEPTIONAL VALUE FOR MONEY Truly. Hear us out. Only the most outstanding pinot noir grapes, harvested from the House's own highly rated premier crus and grands crus vineyards (read: highly rated in French classification terms), are made into the red wines to be blended into Moët & Chandon's Grand Vintage Rosé Champagne. So you're always guaranteed incomparable quality every time you pop a bottle open. Moët & Chandon's Rosé Impérial is a fruity and elegant champagne with gooseberry, raspberry and wild strawberry notes. Find out more here. Top image: Boudewijn Boer.
Warm summer days, kicking back with friends, gin and tonics on the go — it doesn't get much better than that. While you don't need to go out to enjoy the classic drink, you'll definitely need all the best ingredients. Enter Ginny Brings: the brainchild of Tanqueray and Jimmy Brings that's now delivering flawless G&Ts to your door. Order a Ginny Brings Bundle from the site between midday and 11pm and you'll get Tanqueray, Fever-Tree and garnishes delivered to straight to you within half an hour. What's more, if you order between 5.30pm and 10pm from December 28–31, you'll go in the running to win a Ginny Brings experience. The experience includes Ginny (Tanqueray ambassador Krystal Hart) coming to your house for a personalised gin session, where she'll make you and all your guests some flawless G&Ts — all while showing you how to expertly make the drink yourself later on. Plus on her departure, she'll gift you with a bottled Tanqueray and Tonic cocktail. Think of her as Santa's little gin helper. [caption id="attachment_700864" align="alignnone" width="1920"] 'Ginny' AKA Krystal Hart, Tanqueray Brand Ambassador.[/caption] But hold on, your gin mastery doesn't stop there. You may now have quality ingredients at your fingertips — and if you're lucky, your own bartender for a night — but you should still be prepped with some G&T know-how. It's all too easy to end up with an unbalanced drink — even if it seems like one of the easiest drink recipes out there. To help you out, we've had a chat with Hart to uncover a few key tricks of the trade so you can concoct flawless G&Ts at home like a pro. So gather the troops, order your G&T and start mixing. Just make sure to brush up on the below tips first for maximum G&T prowess. And if you win an experience with Ginny, know you'll be a total G&T master come 2019. [caption id="attachment_689394" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Kitti Smallbone.[/caption] CHOOSE THE RIGHT GIN With so many gins on the market at the moment, choosing the right one can make your head spin. But really it comes down to personal preference. If you love that big hit of juniper, Tanqueray London Dry could be the winner. After a burst of citrus? Tanqueray No. Ten delivers refined, zesty notes. And if you're looking to shake things up a bit, set your sights on Tanqueray's new Rangpur gin, distilled with Rangpur limes and mandarin, or the sweeter Flor de Sevilla, made with Seville oranges. FIND THE PERFECT TONIC Tonic can affect taste just as much as your choice of gin. Skip the home brand option and opt for something a little more distinctive in terms of purity and flavour. Fever-Tree has a range a tonics, from elderflower to lemon to Mediterranean, that help to highlight the varying botanicals in your gin. Hot tip: pair Tanqueray Flor de Sevilla gin and Fever-Tree aromatic tonic, then add a wedge of orange and sprig of thyme for an afternoon spritz-inspired G&T. [caption id="attachment_689430" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Kitti Smallbone.[/caption] CONSIDER YOUR GLASSWARE They say it's what's on the inside that counts, but that rule doesn't apply to your G&T vessel of choice. You wouldn't drink coffee from a wine glass, so don't go pouring quality gin into some second-rate sippy cup. For an aromatic gin like Tanqueray Sevilla, try a stemless wine glass or Bordeaux glass to help accentuate the taste. A good glass is ergonomic, it's classy — it's fashion. KEEP THINGS CHILL No one likes a flat, warm G&T. The best way to avoid this dire outcome is by loading up on the ice. Depending on personal preference, you can roll with one giant cube (classy and restrained) or fill your glass to the brim with standard cubes. The more chilled, the more balanced, the better. [caption id="attachment_700029" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Daniel Boud.[/caption] MAKE IT VISUAL Always garnish. We're not saying it's hard science, but pretty looking drinks just seem to taste better. A classic staple is a piece of citrus and, to up the ante slightly, some fresh herbs to complement the gin's botanicals. But feel free to experiment with the unknown: add a fresh bay leaf, get around blackberries and cucumber or garnish with chilli, lime and coriander for a spicy, savoury alternative. You'll not only end up with some attractive drinks but also some new flavours to tickle your tastebuds. Over the next two weeks, look to Ginny Brings to get your flawless G&Ts sorted this silly season, and go in the running to win a Ginny Brings experience. Ginny will deliver an experience every 30 minutes from December 28–31 from 5.30–10pm. Looking for more ways to enjoy gin? Check out The Gin List for more ideas.
There's something secretive and special about slipping into an art gallery after hours. Add a few laughs and a glass of wine, and it's pretty difficult to imagine a more seductive reason to get out of your house for the night. Kicking off on 7 September is the latest of the Art Gallery of New South Wales' late night events, Late Night Laughs. Some of Australia's best comedians will put their spin on one of Australia's most-loved art honours, the Archibald Prize. There are four nights of Late Night Laughs: catch Becky Lucas, who recently debuted on ABC's Comedy Up Late, on 7 September; triple j breakfast co-host Matt Okine on the 14th; Andy Saunders, who killed Youtube in 2012 with Coz I'm Aboriginal on the 28th; and 2016 Barry Award winner Zoe Coombs Marr on October 5. Drop in after the comedy – or on Sundays – for film series Me, Myself and I. If you've been wondering who you are, where you came from, what you stand for and what your life means of late, the films on show will either help you clarify or make matters more delightfully confusing. Expect tales of crime, espionage and love, filled with mistaken, false and imagined identity, along with forgetfulness and gender-bending. Live music from Arabesk and Microwave Jenny will play after the comedy on selected nights. Late Night Laughs runs on Wednesday, September 7, 14 and 28, and October 5.
There's plenty to love about Shoalhaven: white sand beaches, primo snorkelling spots and a plethora of picturesque holiday homes. Next time you're road tripping through the area, you can refuel between swims and hikes at The Growers in Worrigee. Sprawling across 450 indoor and outdoor seats, the new restaurant and bar opened is from the team behind Acre Artarmon, The Greens and Taffy's, Tully Heard Consulting, so you can safely assume it's going to be lush. In the kitchen, chef Patrick Haney is plating up produce from the surround areas, including Batemans Bay oysters, Milton Beef and smoked goods from Eden Smokehouse. The kitchen does its own smoking, too, with woodfired pizzas coming topped with smoky chicken ($24) and a dedicated Smokehouse turning out the likes of pulled pork empanadas ($14), prawn tacos ($16) and chipotle chicken wings ($18). There are also plenty of options for those with dietaries, thanks to vegan cheese, gluten free pizza bases and vego cauliflower burgers ($23). Like the food, the drinks also have a local focus with cocktails starring spirits from Distillery Botanica, beers on offer from Jervis Bay Brewing Co and Bentspoke and a lineup of NSW wines. You can choose to eat and drink inside the restaurant or in the expansive outdoor garden, which is filled with plant-covered pergolas, a fire pit and play areas for children. While each space is unique, it has all been designed by Pony Design Co using plenty of natural timber, greenery and textured stones.
Put down the books. Step away from the screen. For your next history lesson, you're busting out your best fancy footwork. History of House commemorates dance music through the decades, covering tunes and beats from half a century. 70s disco? Check. Pop from the 80s? Tick there, too. All things house ever since? That's the star of the show. History of House boasts two big-name talents as well: Groove Terminator and the Soweto Gospel Choir. The Australia DJ and the Grammy-winning, world-famous choral group have been joining forces to break house music's origins and evolution down — and, yes, bring the house down — since the 2020 Adelaide Fringe, where it won the Best Music Show award. House music with the choir that've played with Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder and Queen — plus Bono and Celine Dion — isn't the type of gig that you get to see every day. Now, it's Sydney's time to make shapes, with the concert hitting up the Harbour City on Friday, October 6. Your dance floor for the evening: The Barracks Precinct in Manly. Images: Helen Page / Brisbane Festival.
Can a fourth wall be smashed if it's barely even a gauze curtain? For audiences, Deadpool & Wolverine plays out on sturdy IRL surfaces that can be shattered — cinema screens first, then home entertainment's TVs and computers and phones forever afterward — but the film's to-camera asides, self-reflective jabs, in-gags, sarcasm, meta references upon meta references and all-round superhero satire aren't breaking, busting through or saying bye, bye, bye to anything. There's nothing to destroy when the idea that movies are their own worlds separate to the reality that they're viewed in simply doesn't exist in the third picture with Deadpool in its title, 11th X-Men feature and 34th entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is still a flick spinning make-believe as it makes fun, but one that acknowledges how everyone interacts with pop culture: by knowing personal and industry goings-on tangential to the in-film action, such as that Ryan Reynolds (IF) is married to Gossip Girl's Blake Lively, Hugh Jackman (Faraway Downs) is Australian and newly divorced, Disney bought Fox in the battle of Hollywood studios and the MCU hasn't had the strongest of times of late. Deadpool & Wolverine may spend a fair portion of its duration in a wasteland-like place called The Void; however, viewers don't watch anything in a vacuum. This isn't the only feature to recognise that truth, nor the lone Deadpool movie to do so. That said, there's leaning into the fact that no one can completely split any art from their contextual awareness around it, and then there's this level of commitment. Comparing one of its major settings to the Mad Max realm within seconds of arriving there — and within months of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga releasing — is merely one further example. Nods, shoutouts and wisecracks go everywhere, including deep into the Marvel comics, their prior leaps to the screen, gripes about the latter, Tinseltown manoeuvrings, box-office fortunes, abandoned projects, stalled future flicks and actors' romantic lives. Reteaming after Free Guy and The Adam Project, Reynolds and director Shawn Levy co-penned the screenplay with Zeb Wells (She-Hulk: Attorney at Law), plus Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese (who return from 2016's Deadpool and 2018's Deadpool 2), but the internet may as well have earned a scripting credit. For those less head over heels with Deadpool's merc-with-a-mouth schtick than Reynolds visibly has been for the eight years and running, consider this the only-way-out-is-through approach: there's more stacked on top of more, then huge piles of more again, then more and more sprinklings as well, especially when it comes to jokes that can't occur without referring to details well beyond Deadpool & Wolverine's frames. Reynolds, Levy and company own the onslaught with the transparency of the film's absent barrier — and while that isn't the same as ensuring that the bit always works or avoids getting repetitive (on both, it doesn't), it firmly helps establish part of the feature's vibe. This probably should be named Deadpool with Wolverine, but adding James 'Logan' Howlett to Wade Winston Wilson isn't just about superheroes teaming up, then the bickering banter and frenemy frays that result. Deadpool & Wolverine also gains energy from the scowling, growling, unhappy-to-be there mutant with the adamantium skeleton, giving it what past Deadpool jaunts have deeply missed: some tonal balance. Spirit first, story second: that's also Deadpool & Wolverine's gambit. As it cracks the boundaries between Disney and Fox's respective Marvel domains, and endeavours to win over the naysaying Wolverine — two tasks with glaring parallels between what's happening in its narrative and for viewers — it spins a straightforward tale given stock-standard sprawling franchise complications. The world is in peril. Masses will die. Multiple villains have schemes. The ill-fated sphere needs a hero, and that hero needs aid from another. Or: told by the Time Variance Authority's Mr Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen, Succession) that his timeline needs pruning following the events of 2017's Logan, Deadpool can only save everyone that he loves from being snuffed out by finding a new Wolverine from across the multiverse. But, they'll also have to flee The Void where unwanted intellectual property is dumped, and where Charles Xavier's maniacal twin Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin, A Murder at the End of the World) controls and manipulates everything. Although the plot doesn't lack specifics, be it Wade's eagerness to join the Avengers to impress his ex-fiancee Vanessa (Morena Baccarin, The Flash), Logan grappling with trauma and mistakes, Paradox's machine that's due to eradicate Earth-10005 or Cassandra messing with minds, the tale itself never feels like the point. While the minutiae is engaging enough, when Deadpool mentions more than once that he's now Marvel Jesus, believe the intent behind those words. After Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was a flop, with the MCU's route towards the fifth and sixth Avengers flicks requiring reworking after off-screen developments, and as 2024's only film in the series, there's some world-saving needed for this saga, too. Deadpool & Wolverine's method of going about it is crashing well-known pieces together for fun — not just its titular characters, but also via more surprises than at a Kinder factory, with one reveal particularly wittily done. There's that favouring atmosphere above all else again; refreshingly, despite teasing several times that Jackman will likely keep playing his role till he's 90, no one can accuse this movie of solely or mainly trying to lay groundwork for the franchise's 35th entries onwards. There's no missing where Deadpool & Wolverine's strengths reside, though: in Jackman, Corrin and Macfadyen. That Reynolds can irreverently and acerbically snark the hell out of Deadpool and sell the meta-ness of it all has been plain for almost a decade now, and he rides Wade's emotional journey here effectively as well, yet his co-stars couldn't be more pivotal. Sometimes slicing and stabbing at each other's regenerative flesh in a Honda Odyssey, sometimes trading barbs for glares, sometimes dispensing with foes in a side-scrolling frenzy, the odd-couple act with Jackman gleams and wipes the dull clash that 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine flatly served up from memories. In addition to donning his character's yellow suit, Jackman himself wears weariness, anger, disappointment and regret like it too is fused to his framework, getting more and more moving the longer that he dons the claws. It's been 24 years now since the debut X-Men and if there's a potential Marvel messiah here for his Real Steel helmer, it's him. Also, memorable bad-guy alert not once but twice: Corrin is an unnerving delight as Cassandra gets into peoples' heads — not just figuratively — and Macfadyen hams it up superbly. Layered within the nudging and parodying, stream of inside-baseball shots, shiny display of Disney's new IP wares, OTT violence and retro-leaning tunes — Goo Goo Dolls, Avril Lavigne, the Grease soundtrack and Madonna all echo prominently — is a takeaway that life isn't a mystery, but rather is all about acceptance. It's worth fighting for. It deserves you giving a shit, not coasting. Nonetheless, learning to come to terms with missteps and mourning, and faded dreams and paths not taken, is inescapable no matter if you have adversaries to vanquish, universes to rescue, lost loves to woo, identities to reconfigure, reputations to salvage and caped-crusader squads to wow. Cue another instance of mirroring. Levy mightn't be actively aiming to tell viewers that looking past Deadpool & Wolverine's tussles with itself is also part of this package, yet it still sticks when some of the film's scenes struggle with blandness visually and in their effects, the corporate-synergy angle is laid on thick and, regardless of what Reynolds quips, there's also a sense of holding back now that Disney is pulling the strings. Looking for a devilishly self-aware Deadpool and Wolverine romp, though? Just like a prayer, this'll take you there.
Bangarra Dance Theatre is bringing its renowned work Sandsong: Stories from the Great Sandy Desert back to the stage this winter. The production premiered last year at the Sydney Opera House and marked the company's first new production at the venue since COVID-19 closures. If you didn't get a chance to see the enthralling show in 2021, here's the gist. Set in Walmajarri Country, which spans the Great Sandy Desert and Kimberley regions of Western Australia, this powerful performance explores the displacement and survival of First Nations people in this part of Australia, particularly between the 1920–1960s. Artistic Director Stephen Page and Associate Artistic Director Frances Rings have choreographed this breathtaking work in consultation with Wangkatjungka and Walmajarri Elders, reaffirming Bangarra's place as the leading performing arts company for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. For performance times and to grab tickets to this must-see new work, head here. Images: Daniel Boud
Dear Sainte Eloise wants you to end your year with good omens for 2023 by filling the last night of the year with great food and wine. The Potts Point restaurant is hosting a huge New Year's party — with two different ways to experience the night's festivities. The first is a seafood-heavy ten-dish set menu that will set you back $165 per person. Included in what will be your final feast for 2022 will be Sydney rock oysters, sea urchin crostinis, caviar tarts with tuna crudo, burrata with brunch peach and raw lamb with anchovy cream. This selection of inventive starters will all build up to a Jack's Creek sirloin which will act as the main centrepiece of the menu, served with horseradish butter and crispy potatoes. For dessert, diners will be treated to a dark chocolate and raspberry tart. [caption id="attachment_882872" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Dexter Kim[/caption] While drinks aren't included, you can pre-order a glass of champagne on arrival and there will be ten different varieties of wine available by the magnum on the night. Bookings for the dinner service are available from 3–8.30pm, before this portion of the evening will wrap up at 11pm. From there, the restaurant's doors will open to walk-ins. Anyone looking to toast to the new year with top-notch wine can arrive between 11pm and midnight. The bar staff will be marking the occasion with more magnums and some special rare wines including a skinsy Gruner Veltliner from local producer Gut Oggau, and golden Nosiola and 'L'Anodine' Grenache wines from Italy's Elisabetta Foradori. The party will kick on for both diners and walk-ins until 2am. [caption id="attachment_882873" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Dexter Kim[/caption] Top images: Nikki To
Step inside BLAK BOX, a new architect-designed sound pavilion at Barangaroo, and you'll be carried into a world of First Peoples' stories. Spoken word, music and field recordings combine to create a stream of consciousness that expresses experiences of Barangaroo – from the past, the present and the future. The installation is the creation of Urban Theatre Projects, who commissioned architect Kevin O'Brien to design the immersive pavilion. Lighting is kept to a minimum, encouraging "deep listening", a concept that invites you to pay attention, not only to the stories, but also to the silences and spaces between them. Radio National presenter Daniel Browning curated the audio. His selections include 15 commissioned sound pieces, oral histories of Barangaroo before 1788, informal interviews and spoken word performances. "BLAK BOX is one of our most ambitious projects to date – bringing together design, installation and sound for a unique contemporary storytelling experience," said Rosie Dennis, artistic director at Urban Theatre Projects. "Daniel has curated an intelligent, layered and thought-provoking program which grapples with the complexity of urban development, place and history." BLAK BOX will make its world premiere at Barangaroo Reserve from 2–24 June, it's launch coinciding with Reconciliation Week, before touring Australia. The work is the first to emerge from a three-year partnership between Urban Theatre Projects and the Barangaroo Delivery Authority, which will see new sound and art installation in the same Barangaroo site every June until 2020. Blak Box is located at Barangaroo Reserve and is open Tuesday–Saturday, 5.30–9pm; Sunday, 2.30–6pm. Entry is free, but reservations are recommended and can be made here.
UPDATE, September 1, 2020: Fighting with My Family is available to stream via Stan, Foxtel Now, Google Play and iTunes. A word to the wise: should you find yourself watching wrestling with the Bevis family, don't go claiming that their favourite sport isn't real. While the in-ring entertainment is staged, its narratives are scripted and its rivalries areas fabricated as any soap opera, the difference between fixing matches and faking them is as hefty as The Rock's hulking biceps. The same sentiment rings true in Fighting with My Family, in a fashion. Playing producer as well as appearing as himself, Dwayne Johnson ushers this British tale onto the screen with a clear awareness of its tropes and cliches, which anyone who's ever seen a rousing sports drama or underdog movie will spot. But the former WWE pro also knows that a fantastic story can make a mark even when it's swinging every expected blow — and in terms of emotional impact, Fighting with My Family packs a mighty punch. The driving force behind Norwich's World Association of Wrestling, the Bevis crew first came to broader attention in the 2012 documentary The Wrestlers: Fighting with My Family. It's easy to see why they've now inspired not just a TV doco, but a dramatised film that shares most of its predecessor's moniker. Patriarch Patrick Bevis (Nick Frost) turned to the spandex as a respite from a life of crime, then founded his own wrestling organisation with his wife Julia (Lena Headey). Better known as Rowdy Ricky Knight and Sweet Saraya in the ring, the two were soon bringing their kids in on the action, including a daughter named after Julia's stage persona. When the big leagues came calling for the younger generation in 2011, Saraya (Florence Pugh) and her brother Zak (Jack Lowden) couldn't get to their audition fast enough. While the above details could've filled a movie by themselves, here they're just the starting point. The jump from scrapping around England's east to earning fame and fortune doesn't come without ample hard work — and many doubts. Training montages rumble across the screen, but so does plenty of contemplation, with Fighting with My Family never shying away from the difficulties of trying to make it in wrestling. Some members of the Bevis clan are forced to realise that dreams don't always come true. Some learn to stop living vicariously through others. Thrust out of her comfort zone and struggling with her sense of identity, Saraya discovers the challenges and costs of even trying to take the next step. Indeed, Fighting with My Family might champion a broader focus in its title, but this is Saraya's show. Or Paige's, as she's been known to her adoring WWE fans since 2012. The film correctly notes that she took her new name from her favourite childhood TV show, Charmed, and it's that kind of earnestness that helps transform a straightforward tale into a resounding crowd-pleaser. Devotees and newcomers alike will know where the movie is going, however this feel-good comedy charts its path with genuine affection for its characters, their chosen pastime and the quirks of each. It immerses viewers in the wild, weird and wonderful world of wrestling, embraces the sport's theatricality and pageantry, and never serves up an ounce of judgement. As a result, the film deserves every laugh and fist pump that it inspires. Of course, it's easy to go along with the movie's flow when there are such engaging figures at its centre. The picture's pitch-perfect tone feels like an extension of its central motley crew, who love everything about wrestling even when the sport is kicking their arses. Segueing from an initially reluctant fighter to one of the field's female superstars, Pugh puts in a powerhouse performance as Paige, switching the scheming steeliness of 2016's Lady MacBeth for a completely different type of fierceness and fortitude. Credit should also go Lowden, Frost and Headey's way, all playing multifaceted characters who could've devolved into caricatures in other hands. As the no-nonsense WWE scout with dominion over the family's hopes and dreams, Vince Vaughn similarly leaves an imprint among Fighting with My Family's impressive cast. As for The Rock, he cameos as his usual likeable self — the kind of tough but tender guy viewers have basically welcomed into their families for decades now, and that the Bevis' mob incredulously yet excitedly welcomes into theirs. Like his former profession, his well-cultivated persona shares much in common with this flick: big-hearted, sturdy, sincere, relatable and relentlessly charming. Stylistically, the film earns comparable terms, with writer-director Stephen Merchant rarely dazzling with his visuals, but crafting a delight of a movie nevertheless. And yes, it's the same Merchant who's best known for palling around on-screen and off with Ricky Gervais. Devoid of snark or awkwardness, the sweat, stress, tears and cheers of this wrestling comedy suit him nicely. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFew9cpWijc
A well-designed sneaker is one of the finer things in life, much like a fine wine, a Cuban cigar or a cabinet fashioned from rich mahogany. Step into a crowded room wearing a good pair of kicks and you may verily command that room. Knowing this, luxury brand-touting Sneakerboy has come to us from Melbourne bearing not only the finest sneakers but a novel way of purchasing them — combining the efficiency of online shopping with the hands-on, social advantage of bricks-and-mortar stores. One feels that if Kanye or will.i.am were to go shopping in Sydney, this would be their first stop. Creative director Chris Kyvetos, who's formerly contributed his talents to Harrolds as creative director andAssin as a designer, is the mastermind behind this high-end sneaker gallery. How does it differ from yourHypes and your Platypi? Sneakerboy is like the Berlin underground gothic nightclub of sneaker stores, with a semi-secret location deep in Temperance Lane — you may have already walked by it, completely oblivious to the illuminated circular tunnel of leathery delights right under your nose. (Like me you may, however, have clocked the mysteriously attractive men loitering in the laneway). Enter the industrial-style, concrete-floored magic bunker and you'll see mounted rows of shoes by Prada, Yohji Yamamoto, Pierre Hardy, Balenciaga, Reebok, Krisvanassche, Givenchy and more. There are also clothes to be tried on, by designers Hood By Air, Christopher Kane and other trendoids of a similar, street-wise stripe. The shopfit is inspired by public spaces and the Paris Metro in particular, with future-retro metal seats and lighting cues giving the store a vibe that's raw and edgy yet sleek. Tech details hint at the forward-thinking outlook of this retail concept — plugs peeking out of shoe displays and screens mounted in the chairs. Where's the cash register? There is none — all sales are done on your own phone. This is just the physical place where you experience a product that you'll buy online, and which will be shipped to your door from offshore warehouses in Hong Kong (within 3-5 days, pledges Chris). It's also where you're likely to run into some of the slickest folk in town.
Gelatissimo brought us ice cream for dogs, a Weet-Bix flavour and a 100-percent vegan range and, now, for Easter it's getting suitably paschal. It's not only releasing a new flavour, but it's giving it away for free. The gelato chain has just launched a new Choc Cross Bun flavour, which, like its name suggests, combines traditional hot cross bun spices, chocolate gelato and chunks of actual chocolate hot cross buns. You can pick this up from one the gelato chain's 37 Aussie stores nationwide, or get it delivered to your door via UberEats, Deliveroo or DoorDash (yes, it's almost as omnipresent as God himself). It's giving away free tubs of this new flavour, too. In a new initiative called Scoop It Forward, Gelatissimo is inviting you to nominate someone who deserves some free dessert. So, if you've got a friend or family member who is working as a health professional, had to cancel their holidays or has just had a tough week, now may be the time to brighten up their month with a little bit of sweetness. You just need to head on over to the Gelatissimo website between now and midnight on Monday, April 13, add in some details about the person you think deserves free Choc Cross Bun gelato and the company will deliver as many boxes as they can to deserving folk across the country. It'll also be kicking off its Easter giving by donating some tubs to the nurses at the Prince of Wales Hospital. To nominate someone for free Choc Cross Bun gelato, head over to the Gelatissimo website before midnight on Monday, April 13. You can buy some for yourself over here.
Last weekend, Sydney looked a little different than it has since COVID-19 took over our lives and shutdown our hospitality venues in March. We sat in cafes with our coffees, had a pub feed with mates and went out to dinner — all of which had been off the cards for months. There were some restrictions, though. The strict ten-person limit meant, for us, that getting a table was trickier than usual. For those on the other side of the kitchen pass, it meant filling every one of those ten seats was crucial. With so few tables allowed at a time, making a profit was either out of the question or going to be pretty slim. But, still some went empty, with several venues having bookings that simply didn't show up. Not even a phone call. Even in normal circumstances, it's a pretty bad move. Now? Unfathomable. One of those cursed with a no-show on opening weekend was celebrated chef Mat Lindsay's Surry Hills wine bar Poly. One of the top spots in town, with an award-winning chef behind it, the wine bar reopened as Petite Poly, with bookings available on Friday and Saturday. But, people just didn't show. "Clearly ten seats is not going to generate huge income but it all helps," Lindsay told Concrete Playground. "More than that, though, we were excited to provide a place so people could come out finally and get a little hospitality and some food that didn't come in a box and reheated. And our team were really excited to be providing that again. Mostly I was upset for the people that came wanting and excited to be there, but we had to turn them away disappointed only for the seats to go empty." [caption id="attachment_698801" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Poly, Kitti Gould[/caption] Up the road at Crown Street's late-night bar Low 302, another table went to waste. A four-person table — which is 40 percent of every venue's capacity right now — didn't show up. Nor did they call to cancel, meaning the bar couldn't fill it with one of the many people on its waitlist. "No shows, whilst maximum capacity numbers are so restricted, is an extra issue that nobody in hospo needs right now," owner Aref Jaroudy told CP. "It was so disappointing for the crew. We're not going to make bank with just ten people. It was turning people away that was the most upsetting for us. It's a shame. We got slammed with potential bookings when we announced we were opening. To say no, you feel like you're letting them down." As a result, you'll now have to pre-pay for a set menu at Poly when making a booking, something the team had wanted to avoid. Low 302 is going ahead with no deposit for this weekend's upcoming bookings, but if there's another no show, it might have to make the switch. https://www.facebook.com/Low3o2/posts/2929795243754894 Some Sydney restaurants required a deposit straight off the bat, including Marta in Rushcutters Bay and Potts Point diner Chester White. Others are only taking reservations for private parties of up to ten people, requiring a minimum spend, which is paid at time of booking. Such venues include the CBD's multi-level restaurant and nightclub Prince of York, Maurice Terzini's Ciccia Bella in Bondi and Woollahra's I Maccheroni. Paddington's Tequila Mockingbird started off with walk-ins to get a grasp for it all and is now taking bookings, taking credit card details for bookings of six or more and has a $100 minimum spend for groups of eight to ten. When asked about people cancelling if sick, owner Michael Fegent told CP: "I don't want to give people too many rules. We'll adjust as we go." For more spontaneous diners, you can head to venues like Maybe Frank, Chaco Ramen and Pizza Fritta, which are walk-in only at this time. [caption id="attachment_659258" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Chaco Ramen[/caption] It's no secret the hospitality industry has been one of the hardest hit by COVID-19 restrictions. According to website I Lost My Hospo Shift, at last count, 2614 Aussie hospo workers had lost their jobs and 13,339 shifts had been cut, which equates to over $2 million in lost wages this week alone. So, despite the no shows, the limited capacities and turning people away, Sydney pubs, restaurants, bars and cafes reopening is a big win. If you've got a booking and can't make it — a situation that is sometimes inevitable — or wake up with so much as a sniffle, restaurants and bar owners ask you to at least call ahead of time, so they can offer the spot to a walk-in or someone else on the waiting list. "If a person is feeing in anyway unwell, the last thing they should be doing is going out to a restaurant," Jaroudy told CP. "Nor should they be penalised — say if a deposit had been taken — if they cannot make the booking...There's no one size fits all perfect solution here. If you are unwell, stay home. If you can call and cancel that's great." To find out what other Sydney restaurants are now open to dine-service, have a look over here. Top Image: Poly by Kitti Gould
Matthew Whittet’s new play, Seventeen, is a story of teenage boozing, dreaming and bickering on the night after finishing the HSC. A group of 17-year-olds celebrate the end of childhood in the tried and true manner of downing cans of VB in a playground. The recognisable, if clichéd, story of confused crushes, nostalgia and dreams for the future could be banal if it weren’t for Whittet’s approach of casting actors over the age of 70. Director Anne-Louise Sarks elicits the vitality of youth from the cast of Sydney theatre greats (Peter Carroll, Maggie Dence, John Gaden, Barry Otto and Anna Volska), but her direction is otherwise staid. For example, there was much fanfare when Taylor Swift announced via Twitter that Belvoir Theatre was permitted to play 'Shake It Off' in full, so it was a bit disappointing to discover that the song was used for much of the play. The cast have a bit of a jive and the audience laughs at old people dancing to pop music. The entertainment provided by a 70-year-old person saying ‘totes’, pole dancing or binge drinking is uncomfortable and interesting — in a culture that values youth so highly we’re confronted with quite a few moments of ‘laughing at’ the cast. The age of the cast draws out an acute contrast between the characters’ aspirations and a future self; the actors are almost like premonitory ghosts hovering over the 17-year-old characters, which is very moving at times. When cool kid Mike (John Gaden) taunts Tom (Peter Carroll) by reading out a letter he had written to his future self at age 12, we’re immediately struck by how quickly life flies by, not only from 12 to 17, but from 17 to 70. The only cast member under 70 is the inimitable Genevieve Lemon playing Mike’s younger sister Lizzy, a loud, annoying, intelligent brat. Lemon pulls off the balance between immaturity and concern for her older brother beautifully, even if she does show up the rest of the cast with her ability to wholly embody a 14-year-old. The narrative of Seventeen is nothing special, with some especially clunky final plot twists that throw in homosexuality and homelessness from left field for some added 'spice', but the production is undeniably enjoyable and moving. Whittet has hit on a poignant contrast between the dreams of youth and the fragility of old age.
Keen to feast on oysters right by the ocean? Then head to Tathra Hotel to sample a few. The traditional country pub has been a beacon for locals for 100 years and the family friendly establishment has all the pub classics. The oysters are served natural, Asian-inspired or kilpatrick and come in half-dozen ($18) or a dozen ($36). Other smaller plates include Vietnamese salad ($17), spice-dusted calamari ($17) and mushroom arancini ($14). Then, there's schnitty ($24), parmy ($25), sirloin steak with mash($35), burgers and fish and chips ($30). Or, you can pick from the chef's specials, which includes the likes of house-made gnocchi ($22), prawn and vegetable curry served with yellow rice and chutney ($32) and Taiwanese braised beef and noodle stew ($22). Basically, you're spoilt for choice. But, whatever you decide, be sure to wash it down with a tap beer made at the onsite craft brewery, Humpback Brewery. Image: Destination NSW
Because my father cannot tell me this story himself, my mother often tells me about my father’s journey to Australia as a Vietnamese boat person. She talks about this era in fragments: some are told in vivid detail, so much so that I suspect that she is exaggerating. Some are both inspiring and terrifying and help me appreciate my life in Australia. Some are left unsaid because she does not know. It’s this missing link that I look for in stories about boat people from Vietnam — stories that only my father could have told me. Escape From Vietnam is a collection of thirteen photographs from the Archive of Vietnamese Boat People that do exactly this. While seemingly few in number, the collection covers much of the lives of Vietnamese boat people in their journey to freedom. From floating in rickety, overcrowded fishing boats to building shanty towns out of wood and plastic salvaged from the ocean; from constructing primary schools to receiving vocational training; from performing wedding rites to marching in funeral processions. While each photograph differs in time and place to the next, all point toward a brighter future. Here, boat people gamble away all they know, hoping for a glimpse of a brighter future. People who once lived in mansions huddle under huts made out of coconut palm fronds on the Philippines’s Luband Island; huge families for whom space was once no issue cram their lives into five cardboard boxes. Yet, even without this material wealth, the most striking thing about ‘Escape From Vietnam’ is the dignity that its subjects retain. Even when 40,000 people are crammed into a square kilometre on Bidong Island in Malaysia, even in conditions where 200,000 or more perished to drowning, hunger, thirst, malaria, and cholera, chins are held high and eye still bring smiles from the homeland. Every person brings a story, and all of these stories form a culture. And, when a boat of Vietnamese people brandish the flag of South Vietnam upon rescue by the relief organisation Cap Anamur, it’s clear that they have embedded their journey into their culture – one defined by hope, sacrifice, endurance, and new beginnings. Escape From Vietnam is a powerful collection whose opening marks Refugee Week. It celebrates the triumph of the human spirit against all adversity by focusing on the plight of just one culture of the people who sought a better life here. It is a reminder of the rich histories and unfathomable struggles that each person carries every day. Image 3 Refugee camp on Bidong Island Malaysia 1981 provided by the Australian National Maritime Museum.
The National Gallery of Australia is no stranger to big names. Last year saw a short-term showcase of pre-Raphaelite masterpieces from London's Tate Britain and Yayoi Kusama's infinity room become a permanent fixture. Earlier this year, it played host to Monet: Impression Sunrise. Now, perhaps some of the most celebrated artists in history — Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso — are coming to the nation's capital. Kicking off on Friday, December 13 and running till Monday, April 13, 2020, Matisse & Picasso will give art fans the chance to see iconic works by two major artists in the same space. Drawing pieces from more than 40 collections around the world, the exhibition will feature more than 200 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, illustrated books and costumes by the 20th century artists. Plus, it'll highlight the artistic rivalry and the famously turbulent friendship between the two figures, as well as their influence on 20th century Western European art, both individually and collectively. The NGA's fondness for Picasso shouldn't come as a surprise — the gallery is already home to a rare set of 100 of the artist's works on paper, called The Vollard Suite, which has been touring the country with stops in both Brisbane and Victoria. Matisse & Picasso will be on display between December 13, 2019 and April 13, 2020. For further details and to book tickets, visit the NGA website. Images: Installation view of Matisse & Picasso, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, © Succession Picasso/Copyright Agency 2019, © Succession H. Matisse/Copyright Agency 2019.
Andy Bull is on one big ol' ride. The Sydney-based singer/songwriter has been unfathomably busy over the past year, juggling tour dates and life commitments while penning and producing his second album, Sea Of Approval. Released in July, the 29-year-old's newest record is a brilliant blend of insightful lyricism and exquisite electro pop. Bull's unique vocals and his knack for catchy hooks have caught the ears of listeners Australia-wide. Bull's latest three singles have notched up hours of radio play; you've definitely heard his voice on the airwaves. 'Talk Too Much', 'Keep On Running' and 'Baby I Am Nobody Now' have helped build anticipation for his second LP, which was almost entirely written and self-produced by Bull. We spoke to the Sydneysider not long after the announcement of his national tour in support of Sea Of Approval, hitting the Metro this Saturday. An insightful young pop virtuoso with a unique take on the creative process, Bull took us through his penchant for DIY, staying sane in the business and dealing with second album demands. Check out the interview here. Supported by New Navy + Vigilantes. All ages. https://youtube.com/watch?v=7sqR15lBVkE
Sydney Metro's city and southwest line is set to launch in 2024, and a host of new venues will be opening in North Sydney as part of the transport hub. From midyear, Victoria Cross Station will welcome a group of 20 new retailers to Miller Street. While North Sydney has seen a boom in premium hospitality offerings over the last couple of years — including the incredibly luxe Poetica located right across from the station — the new dining options at Victoria Cross Station will be a who's who of beloved casual Sydney eateries. [caption id="attachment_748000" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Mary's[/caption] Mary's Burgers fifth Sydney outpost and Marrickville Pork Roll's fourth location headline the list of vendors. Also coming to the station: Only Coffee, North Sandwiches, DOPA, Machi Machi, Top Impressions Bakery, Sushi Hub and McDonald's. That's right, loaded banh mis, Mary's famous beef burgers, top-notch coffee, crispy chicken karaage, affordable sambos and Big Macs — they'll all be available in the heart of North Sydney from the middle of next year. [caption id="attachment_736938" align="alignnone" width="1920"] DOPA[/caption] There will also be a new multi-level drinking and dining venue called Miller House opening the following year, offering more refined eats and sips. Plus, five terrace restaurants, cafes and bars will open alongside the flagship venue in 2025. Alongside all of these exciting hospitality additions will be Victoria Cross Tower, a 42-storey, 58,000-square-metre office building that will host 7000 office workers. "With the first retailers set to open mid-next year and the precinct to be completed by 2025, Victoria Cross will soon be a social business district for workers, visitors and locals and complement North Sydney council's public domain strategy to foster thriving activity from east to west of the CBD," says Lendlease Victoria Cross Project Director Jessica Paterson. [caption id="attachment_763480" align="alignnone" width="1920"] North Sandwiches[/caption] Victoria Cross Station's new eateries will start opening in mid-2024. Head to the Sydney Metro website for more information.
Despite it not being an ideal time to open a brand spanking new gin distillery and tasting bar, Finders Distillery has just launched. But, instead of opening the doors to its St Leonards space, the lower north shore's first distillery is starting out online — so you can get your gin fix regardless. Its first release is an Australian dry gin, made with orange peel, chamomile, native gun and wattle seed, which you'll be able to buy online from Wednesday, April 22 for $79. Also on the lineup are an Australian vodka ($69) and, yes, a hand sanitiser. Like many Australian distilleries and breweries, Finders has created its own finger-cleaner following World Heath Organisation guidelines. It's currently sold out, but 1000 500-millilitre bottles will be landing on the website on April 22, too. To launch its first batch of Australian dry gin, Finders founders Kyle Ford and Georgia Conn started a Pozible campaign in March, which received $22,506. In the future, you can expect more Aussie spirits from Finders, too. The distillery's ethos moving forward is to celebrate a region of Australia by sourcing botanicals unique to that specific area for each gin it makes. You can get these gins and sanis delivered to your door or you can pick them up — and get a quick socially-distant peek at the new digs. The distillery and tasting bar is then hoping to officially open to the public once restaurants, bars and cafes across the country can reopen. Finders Distillery is slated to open at Unit 12, 6 Herbert Street, St Leonards later this year. In the meantime, you can order its Australian dry gin and hand sanitiser from Wednesday, April 22.
It appeared true when The French Dispatch dropped its first trailer, and it definitely is true now that the film is out in the world: with his tenth release, Wes Anderson has made his most Wes Anderson movie ever. And yes, while editors fictional and real may disagree — The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun's Arthur Howitzer Jr (Bill Murray, On the Rocks) among them — it's incredibly easy to use Wes Anderson's name as both an adjective and a verb. In a sentence that'd never get printed in his latest feature's titular tome (and mightn't in The New Yorker, its inspiration, either), The French Dispatch is firmly the most Wes Anderson movie Wes Anderson has ever Wes Andersoned. It's also now available to stream at home, even though it's still currently screening in cinemas Down Under. The star-studded affair is the latest big-name flick to get fast-tracked from the silver screen to whatever-sized device you watch along with at home, alongside everything from Dune to The Matrix Resurrections in Australia — and has just landed on Disney+. All of the usual Anderson touches are all covered in The French Dispatch: the immaculate symmetry that makes each frame a piece of art is present, naturally, as are gloriously offbeat performances from an all-star cast that also spans Tilda Swinton (Memoria), Owen Wilson (Loki), Timothée Chalamet (Dune), Adrien Brody (Succession), Frances McDormand (Nomadland), Léa Seydoux (No Time to Die), Jeffrey Wright (also No Time to Die), Elisabeth Moss (The Invisible Man), Saoirse Ronan (Ammonite), Edward Norton (Motherless Brooklyn), Willem Dafoe (Nightmare Alley) and Jason Schwartzman (Fargo). And yes, as it spins stories set in the fictional French town of Ennui-sur-Blasé in the mid-20th century, where Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Murray) has turned a series of travelogue columns into a weekly American magazine — as a supplement to the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, The French Dispatch, staffed by top expatriate journalists, and covering everything from life in France, world politics, high and low art, and diverse stories of human interest — the film proves equally dreamy and precise with its pastel- and jewel-hued colour palette. Also covered: the miniatures and animated interludes and split screens, the knack for physical comedy, and the mix of high artifice, heartfelt nostalgia and dripping whimsy, too. Anderson knows what he loves, and also what he loves to splash across his films — and it's all here. With The French Dispatch, he also adores stories that say as much about their authors as the world, the places that gift them to the masses, and the space needed to let creativity and insight breathe. He likes pictures that look as if someone has doted on them and fashioned them with their hands, too, and is just as infatuated with the emotional possibilities that spring from such loving and meticulous work. Indeed, each of his films expresses that pivotal personality detail so clearly that it may as well be cross-stitched into the centre of the frame using Anderson's hair, this one included. Obviously, as has been the case in every Anderson film from Bottle Rocket and Rushmore to Isle of Dogs and now this, every frame in The French Dispatch looks like it belongs on a wall — or in Anderson's own recent museum exhibition. Now, it can screen on yours, all as part of a regular Disney+ subscription. Check out the trailer for The French Dispatch below: The French Dispatch is now available to stream via Disney+. Read our full review.
