In honour of the recent selection of the winner of the World Press Photo awards this week, here are each of the winners from 1955 to 2011. They say a picture tells a thousand words, and this old statement is strikingly appropriate for what's displayed here. Some truly moving and iconic pieces are featured; let's hope that the coming year's winner can uphold the tradition. Warning: some images contain graphic or objectionable content. 1955 A competitor tumbles off his motorcycle during the Motorcross World Championship at the Volk Mølle race course. (Mogens von Haven) 1956 A German World War II prisoner, released by the Soviet Union, is reunited with his daughter. The child had not seen her father since she was one-year-old. (Helmuth Pirath) 1957 Dorothy Counts, one of the first black students to enter the newly desegregated Harry Harding High School is mocked by whites on her first day of school. (Douglas Martin) 1958 National Football Championships between Prague and Bratislava. (Stanislav Tereba) 1960 A right-wing student in Japan assassinates Inejiro Asanuma, Socialist Party Chairman, during his speech at the Hibiya Hall. (Yasushi Nagao) 1962 Priest Luis Padillo offers last rites to a loyalist soldier who is mortally wounded by a sniper during military rebellion against President Bétancourt at Puerto Cabello naval base in Venezuela. (Héctor Rondón Lovera) 1963 Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc sets himself ablaze in protest against the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government. (Malcolm W. Browne) 1964 A Turkish woman mourns her dead husband, a victim of the Greek-Turkish civil war. (Don McCullin) 1965 A mother and her children wade across a river to escape US bombing. The US Air Force had evacuated their village because it was suspected of being used as a base camp by the Vietcong. (Kyoichi Sawada) 1966 The body of a Vietcong soldier is dragged behind an American armored vehicle en route to a burial site after fierce fighting. (Kyoichi Sawada) 1967 The commander of an M48 tankgunner of the US 7th regiment in Vietnam's 'Iron Triangle'. (Co Rentmeester) 1968 South Vietnam national police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes a suspected Viet Cong member. (Eddie Adams) 1969 A young Catholic wears a gasmask during clashes with British troops. People had been fleeing from teargas after a night of street fighting. (Hanns-Jörg Anders) 1971 During negotiations on the safe-conduct of a group of criminals on the run, police superintendent Gross suddenly shoots down gang leader Kurt Vicenik. The gang, who had disappeared after a bank-robbery in Cologne, re-emerged near Saarbrücken, carrying a hostage with them. A chase followed and the police and the robbers met at Baltersweiler. The two other men were captured in a wild fight. The men running away from the bullets are policemen. (Wolfgang Peter Geller) 1972 Phan Thi Kim Phuc (center) flees with other children after South Vietnamese planes mistakenly dropped napalm on South Vietnamese troops and civilians. (Nick Ut) 1973 Democratically elected President Salvador Allende moments away from death during military coup at Moneda presidential palace in Chile. (Orlando Lagos) 1974 The Faces of Hunger. A mother comforts her child, both victims of drought. (Ovie Carter) 1975 A mother and her daughter are hurled off a collapsing fire-escape in an apartment house fire in Boston. (Stanley Forman) 1976 Palestinian refugees in district La Quarantaine. (Françoise Demulder) 1977 Police throw tear-gas at a group of chanting residents of the Modderdam squatter camp protesting against the demolition of their homes outside Cape Town. (Leslie Hammond) 1978 A demonstrator is engulfed in flames of the molotov cocktail he was about to throw at the police during protests against the construction of the New Tokyo International Airport. The original Narita Airport plan was unveiled in 1966. To acquire the initial land, the government had to evict protesting landowners. Violent clashes between the opponents and authorities resulted in 13 deaths, including five police officers. The new airport opened in May 1978. (Sadayuki Mikami) 1979 A Cambodian woman cradles her child while waiting for food to be distributed at a refugee camp. (David Burnett) 1980 A starving boy and a missionary in Uganda. (Mike Wells) 1981 Lt. Col. Antonio Tejero Molina orders everyone to remain seated and be quiet after armed Guardia Civil soldiers stormed the Assembly Hall of the Spanish Parliament. Three hundred deputies and cabinet members were in session to vote upon the succession of premier Suarez. They were released next morning after having been held hostage for almost 18 hours; the coup was a failure. (Manuel Pérez Barriopedro) 1982 The war in Lebanon: The aftermath of the massacre of Palestinians by Christian Phalangists in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. (Robin Moyer) 1983 Kezban Özer (37) finds her five children buried alive after a devastating earthquake. At five o'clock in the morning she and her husband were milking the cows as their children slept. A few minutes later, 147 villages in the region were destroyed by an earthquake of magnitude 7.1 on the Richter scale; 1,336 people died. (Mustafa Bozdemir) 1984 A child killed by the poisonous gas leak in the Union Carbide chemical plant disaster. (Pablo Bartholomew) 1985 Omaira Sanchez (12) is trapped in the debris caused by the eruption of Nevado del Ruíz volcano. After sixty hours she eventually lost consciousness and died of a heart attack. (Frank Fournier) 1986 Ken Meeks' (42) skin is marked with lesions caused by AIDS-related Kaposi's Sarcoma. (Alon Reininger) 1987 A mother clings to a riot policeman's shield at a polling station. Her son was one of thousands of demonstrators arrested because they tried to prove that the presidential election on December 15, which was won by the government candidate, had been rigged. (Anthony Suau) 1988 Boris Abgarzian grieves for his 17-year-old son, victim of the Armenian earthquake. (David Turnley) 1989 A demonstrator confronts a line of People's Liberation Army tanks during protests for democratic reform. (Charlie Cole) 1990 Family and neighbors mourn the death of Elshani Nashim (27), killed during a protest against the Yugoslavian government's decision to abolish the autonomy of Kosovo. (Georges Merillon) 1991 US Sergeant Ken Kozakiewicz (23), gives vent to his grief as he learns that the body bag at his feet contains the remains of his friend Andy Alaniz. 'Friendly fire' claimed Alaniz's life and injured Kozakiewicz. On the last day of the Gulf War they were taken away from the war zone by a MASH unit evacuation helicopter. (David Turnley) 1992 A mother carries her dead child to the grave, after wrapping it in a shroud according to local custom. A bad drought coupled with the effects of civil war caused a terrible famine in Somalia which claimed the lives of between one and two million people over a period of two years, more than 200 a day in the worst affected areas. The international airlift of relief supplies which started in July was hampered by heavily armed gangs of clansmen who looted food storage centers and slowed down the distribution of the supplies by aid organizations. (James Nachtwey) 1993 Boys raise toy guns in a gesture of defiance. The Palestinian uprising, which began in December 1987, strengthened the Arab population in their determination to fight the occupying force. In March Israel closed its border with Gaza, causing a massive rise in unemployment. With more than 800,000 people contained in the Israeli-patrolled, eight-km-wide strip of land, bloodshed increased sharply. The peace agreement signed in Washington on September 13 promised limited authority for the Gaza Strip and a withdrawal of the Israeli army. (Larry Towell) 1994 A Hutu man at a Red Cross hospital, his face mutilated by the Hutu 'Interahamwe' militia, who suspected him of sympathizing with the Tutsi rebels. (James Nachtwey) 1995 A bus on the road leading to Grozny during fighting between Chechen independence fighters and Russian troops. The civil war which erupted when President Yeltsin sent troops to the rebellious province in December 1994 was still dragging on months later. When the Chechen fighters fled Grozny, the capital, where the war had claimed a horrendous human and material toll, Russian troops pursued them into the countryside to the south and east. (Lucian Perkins) 1996 Landmine victims in Kuito, a town where many people were killed and traumatized during the civil war. (Francesco Zizola) 1997 A woman cries outside the Zmirli Hospital, where the dead and wounded were taken after a massacre in Bentalha. (Hocine) 1998 A woman is comforted by relatives and friends at the funeral of her husband. The man was a soldier with the ethnic Albanian rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army, fighting for independence from Serbia. He had been shot the previous day while on patrol. (Dayna Smith) 1999 A man walks the streets in one of the largest gathering points for ethnic Albanian refugees fleeing violence in Kosovo. (Claus Bjørn Larsen) 2000 The mother of a Mexican immigrant family makes piñatas to support herself and her children. The family numbers among the millions of 'uncounted' Americans, people who for one reason or another have been missed by the national census and so don't exist in population records. (Lara Jo Regan) 2001 The body of a one-year-old boy who died of dehydration is prepared for burial at Jalozai refugee camp. The child's family, originally from North Afghanistan, had sought refuge in Pakistan from political instability and the consequences of drought. The family gave the photographer permission to attend as they washed and wrapped his body in a white funeral shroud, according to Muslim tradition. In the overcrowded Jalozai camp, 80,000 refugees from Afghanistan endured squalid conditions. (Erik Refner) 2002 A boy holds his dead father's trousers as he squats beside the spot where his father is to be buried, surrounded by soldiers and villagers digging graves for victims of an earthquake in Armenia. (Eric Grigorian) 2003 An Iraqi man comforts his four-year-old son at a holding center for prisoners of war, in the base camp of the US Army 101st Airborne Division near An Najaf. The boy had become terrified when, according to orders, his father was hooded and handcuffed. A soldier later severed the plastic handcuffs so that the man could comfort his child. Hoods were placed over detainees' heads because they were quicker to apply than blindfolds. The military said the bags were used to disorient prisoners and protect their identities. It is not known what happened to the man or the boy. (Jean-Marc Bouju) 2004 A woman mourns a relative killed in the tsunami. On December 26, a 9.3 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, triggered a series of deadly waves that traveled across the Indian Ocean, wreaking havoc in nine Asian countries, and causing fatalities as far away as Somalia and Tanzania. (Arko Datta) 2005 The fingers of malnourished Alassa Galisou (1) are pressed against the lips of his mother Fatou Ousseini at an emergency feeding center. One of the worst droughts in recent times, together with a particularly heavy plague of locusts that had destroyed the previous year's harvest, left millions of people severely short of food. (Finbarr O'Reilly) 2006 Young Lebanese drive down a street in Haret Hreik, a bombed neighborhood in southern Beirut. (Spencer Platt) 2007 A soldier of Second Platoon, Battle Company of the Second Battalion of the US 503rd Infantry Regiment sinks onto an embankment in the Restrepo bunker at the end of the day. (Tim Hetherington) 2008 Detective Robert Kole of the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office enters a home, following mortgage foreclosure and eviction. He needs to check that the owners have vacated the premises, and that no weapons have been left lying around. (Anthony Suau) 2009 Women shout their dissent from a Tehran rooftop on 24 June, following Iran's disputed presidential election. (Pietro Masturzo) 2010 Bibi Aisha, an 18-year-old woman from Oruzgan province in Afghanistan, fled back to her family home from her husband's house, complaining of violent treatment. The Taliban arrived one night, demanding Bibi be handed over to face justice. After a Taliban commander pronounced his verdict, Bibi's brother-in-law held her down and her husband sliced off her ears and then cut off her nose. Bibi was abandoned, but later rescued by aid workers and the U.S. military. (Jodi Bieber) 2011 A veiled woman holds a wounded relative "inside a mosque used as a field hospital by demonstrators against the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, during clashes in Sanaa, Yemen. (Samuel Aranda) [via Buzzfeed]
They're at it again. Sydney hospitality legends Jake Smyth and Kenny Graham (of Mary's, The Lansdowne, The Unicorn, P&V Wine and Liquor, Mary's Pizzeria) are set to add another notch to their ever-expanding belt. The duo has nabbed the digs of historic jazz venue The Basement, which closed after four decades of gigs back in April 2018. While another live music venue will take its place, it'll be a far cry from its predecessor. Work on the new spot, called Mary's Underground, starts this week, with the venue slated to open in May. "We're just excited to throw a big party in the CBD every night," says Smyth. That's the motto of the venture, which isn't going to be your standard 'dinner and a show' arrangement. Instead, expect hip hop, electro and rock 'n' roll acts to take the stage while you chow down. "Jazz and blues will be an element but we certainly don't want to open a jazz venue," says Smyth. "We want to keep it young and vibrant, with musicians from the conservatory playing next to ratbags from Newtown [on a Saturday night], or some young punks ripping the face off jazz on Monday and Tuesday nights." And the gigs will be free for diners, with a cover charge not starting until late. This close connection between food and music is emerging as an important part of the Mary's team's mantra. "The Basement had such a history that tied food and music together," says Smyth. "I think rambunctious fun and music need to be tied in really carefully and tightly with food in an innovative way." While the food side is still in the works, the focus will be on Euro-American eats with a Mary's "kick in the guts". Upstairs will house a casual bar serving the classic Mary's favourites — burgers, fried chicken and beers — along with a couple of vegan menu items. The kitchen team is working on a vegan version of its burger bun, too. Plant-based dishes will also be a focus of the full-service restaurant downstairs, where the kitchen will take a more elevated approach to the food. "We want to make a restaurant where vegan and vegetarian isn't an afterthought," says Smyth. "It's not merely animal ethics, it's a wider sustainability issue." The venue's third space will take the form of an intimate wine bar down the back, focusing on Australian drops in a list that exclusively features natural and sustainable labels, much the way the group's other venues do. This sustainable approach will extend further than the booze and vegetarian food, too, with a zero-waste mentality central to the new venue. "We're excited to explore that world and to create opportunities for all of our bars and restaurants to recycle and reuse," says Smyth. "It might be turning our used cardboard into coasters or using discarded limes to create cleaning products for the bars." Yes, a lot is changing, but The Basement vibe won't be completely gone, either. The downstairs bar will remain untouched, for example, and the new interior will retain elements of the former live music icon. "It'll be rough and ready at points but pretty grown up in other parts — we want the space to be both intimate and raucous," says Smyth. [caption id="attachment_653389" align="alignnone" width="1920"] The Basement, which closed in April last year. DNSW.[/caption] It may seem like a trend is emerging with Mary's Group, who similarly resurrected the Lansdowne back in 2017. Is revitalising Sydney's failing music venues a new team slogan? "The Lansdowne was a steep learning curve on what it takes to make a live music venue work, but we're 18 months in now and we feel like we have a valid voice in the industry," says Smyth. "I don't buy into rescuing venues, but I do like the idea of giving a kick in the ass to the music scene." For those still mourning the loss of The Basement, there's hope for the venue yet. The new owner, musical entrepreneur Albert Dadon — who runs Melbourne's Bird's Basement — is still on the hunt for a new CBD location and is even taking suggestions from the public. Mary's Underground is slated to open this May at 7 Macquarie Place, Sydney. We'll be keeping you updated as more details are revealed. Images: Leyla Muratovic.
If thinking about meat-free Mondays conjures up images of boiled vegetables, soggy tofu or a simple salad, you're doing it all wrong. In a city as health-conscious as Sydney, there are heaps of restaurants dishing up wholesome vegetarian meals that are both innovative and delicious. Grab a meal at one of these spots, and you'll soon see that there's absolutely no reason that meat-free needs to equal flavourless. In fact, these stellar restaurants make vegetarian eating so appealing you may just find yourself extending that meat-free commitment into the rest of the week. To get you started, we've teamed up with our mates at American Express to pick out the best spots to go when you want a vego feed with zero compromises on flavour. Whether you're looking for a veggie-driven banquet, premier farm-to-table eating or a healthy casual spot for a quick evening meal, we've got the place for you. From brekkie to dinner, these eateries make meat-free eating a total breeze. Plus, they all accept your American Express® Card so you can stock up on points while treating your body like the glorious temple that it is. Kiss that soggy tofu goodbye. Got yourself in another dining situation and need some guidance? Whatever it is, we know a place. Visit The Shortlist and we'll sort you out.
Everyone remembers studying ancient Egyptian history in school. Pyramids, pharaohs, boy kings, mummification: they aren't easily forgotten. Your next chance to explore this chapter of the past will get you walking through works from centuries ago, covering the time of Tutankhamun, Ramses II, Nefertari, Khufu and even Alexander the Great, all as part of an impressive exhibition at Melbourne's NGV International called Pharaoh. Meet the venue's midyear blockbuster for 2024, which will fall into Victoria's annual Melbourne Winter Masterpieces season. Following on from 2023's Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi, this middle-of-the-calendar spectacular will run from Friday, June 14–Sunday, October 6 and feature items from the British Museum. That loan is quite significant, too, with Pharaoh including the venue's biggest-ever borrowing of ancient Egyptian jewellery, as well as pieces that previously haven't been shown. In total, more than 500 works will be on display as the NGV peers back at Egypt from the 1st Dynasty to the Roman era — so, from around 3000 BCE to the 4th century CE. Expect to see plenty of gleaming artefacts given that focus on ancient Egyptian jewellery. The exhibition will also span coffins and other funerary items, as well as examples of architecture spanning tombs, temples, and also massive monuments and sculptures. [caption id="attachment_918945" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Plaque of Amenemhat IV, Probably Byblos, Lebanon, 12th Dynasty, reign of Amenemhat IV, about 1808- 1799 BC, Gold, H 2.9 cm, W 3.1 cm, D 0.1 cm, © The Trustees of the British Museum.[/caption] Among the specific highlights, a hefty wall from a 2.5-metre-high, three-metre-wide limestone wall from a mastaba tomb dating back to the Old Kingdom is one of them — complete with hieroglyphic texts carved into the surface. Also going big: a huge fist made of stone from a statue of Ramses II that hails from Memphis, in the temple of Ptah, and weighs in at almost 1.5 tonnes. Still on that particular ruler, Pharaoh will feature an enormous limestone statue of Ramses II that shows him as a high priest. Visitors will also be able to see a seated statue of Sety II, Ramses II's grandson, which is also notable for being one of the most complete sculptures that still exist from the time. Or, check out Pharaoh's oldest item, a five-centimetre-wide ivory label that shows the 1st Dynasty's King Den. Jumping forward, a green siltstone head of the 18th Dynasty's Tuthmose III wearing the cobra headdress will also feature. Among the gold, silver and gemstone-studded jewellery, everything from rings and necklaces to collars and girdles will be on display — and as sourced from tombs, so will amulets that were placed to protect the deceased, to examine the role that adorning bodies played in ancient Egyptians' beliefs about the afterlife. Pharaoh won't just focus on jewels used after death, however, with pieces from places such as Akhenaten's royal city Amarna also part of the exhibition as it examines everyday life. Still on royals, the showcase will boast objects from Deir el-Medina, where the craftspeople who were responsible for carving and decking out the Valley of the Kings' royal tombs resided. Here, attendees will see letters, notes, sketches and poems carved on limestone fragments. [caption id="attachment_918948" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Statue of Ramses II as a high-priest, Abydos, Egypt, 19th Dynasty, reign of Ramses II, about 1279-1213 BC, Limestone, H 171cm, W 71.5cm, D 98cm, © The Trustees of the British Museum.[/caption] Top image: Shabti of Pharaoh Sety I, Tomb of Sety I, Valley of the Kings, Thebes, Egypt, 19th Dynasty, reign of Sety I, about 1294-1279 BC, Blue faience, H 22.8 cm, W 9.6 cm, D 9.6 cm, © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Want to have your blood curdled, feast like it's your last night on earth or just get scarily sweaty on the d-floor? Lure out your inner ghoul with our top Halloween picks. Hijinks Halloween Hijinks has already seen the Festivalists take over the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium once and now they're responsible for Sydney's only underwater Halloween party. In between the search for a sunken treasure, guests can expect voodoo magic tricks, vampire selfie opportunities, Thriller dance-offs and Frankenstein makeover workshops. Matched with interactive art and theatre experiences, appearances from a host of Sydney's favourite entertainers and more surprises along the way, this day-early Halloween event is selling fast. Thursday, October 30, from 6.30pm at Sea Life Sydney Aquarium. Tickets $25. Ouija Beats at Luna Park Free rides, demented circus performers, spooky light shows and a killer program of Australia's best beatmakers including Cosmo's Midnight, Basenji, Panama and more will take over Luna Park this Halloween. The Big Top's first ever Ouija Beats party is the product of FBi Radio, The Music and LPS, who have put their heads together for a contemplation of the paranormal. The Halloween action kicks off at 6pm. Tickets are on sale here. Friday, October 31, from 6pm at Luna Park Big Top. Tickets $59. Beetlejuice Halloween Party at Golden Age Cinemas Practice your most angsty Winona Ryder and slap on some white face paint because Golden Age Cinema and Bar are ignoring their afterlife caseworker this Halloween and turning to Beetlejuice. The party starts with two screenings of Tim Burton's cult classic, after which you could win cocktails and prizes for the best dressed ghost. With music courtesy of Pelvis DJs, you'll be dancing well into the afterlife. Friday, October 31, from 6.30pm at Golden Age Cinema and Bar. Tickets $20/15. Nightmare on Stanley Street with Rupert & Ruby Uniting a handful of the Darlinghurst street's vendors, Nightmare on Stanley Street is the pre-Halloween party for the foodie. Nightmarees can explore both tricks and treats at a haunted mental institution (Kubrick's), the Addams Family mansion (Rupert & Ruby) and a scene from 'Return of the Titanic' (Hazy Rose), with live music from 9.30pm. Tickets include your choice of a Halloween-themed drink or dish at each of the venues. Thursday, October 30, from 7.30pm at Stanley Street, Darlinghurst. Tickets $60. Jurassic Lounge: Day of the Dead Extinction isn't permanent, apparently. Sydney's Night at the Museum-like party, Jurassic Lounge, is being resurrected for a one-off event to celebrate Dia de los Muertos — the Mexican holiday Day of the Dead. Returning to the Australian Museum and tying in with the new Aztecs exhibition, The Festivalists' beloved after-hours event will once again take over the entire museum. Saturday, November 1, from 6.30pm at the Australian Museum. Tickets are now sold out. Newtown Hotel's Second Birthday Halloween Party To celebrate their second year delivering great entertainment night after night, the Newtown Hotel is throwing what can now be called their Annual Halloween Party. So get freaky, get creepy and don your best Day of the Dead attire for a wild night of terror, tunes and treats. Local songwriting talent Andy Golledge will be crooning in rootsy hues, followed by Melbourne rockers Kingswood, who will be dropping hits from their latest album Microscopic Wars. Free drinks start flowing at 6pm. Thursday, October 30, from 6pm at Newtown Hotel. Entry is free. Jesse Willesee's The Slenderman Experience Sydney artist Jesse Willesee is transforming the Kings Cross Hotel again this Halloween, this time into a forest haunted by creepy internet meme Slenderman. The walk-through, four-level experience promises 3D ghost projections, a blood room and live actors doing their very best to freak everybody out. Persist through the four levels to the rooftop, where you can shake off the spooks and sip on some Halloween-themed drinks. Entry is $10 and the haunted forest starts rustling from 8pm. Friday, October 31, from 8pm at the Kings Cross Hotel. Tickets $10 on the door. This Thing x The Finer Things Halloween at Goodgod Hosted by record labels The Finer Things and This Thing, Goodgod Small Club's Halloween shindig is one of the last times Sydneysiders will be able to catch local producer Guerre live. Playing some spine-tingling tunes alongside the spoken word enigma are Wooshie and Silent Jay's new project N.B.L Players (Nothing But Love), Jace XL and Ry 4. Friday, October 31, from 11pm at Goodgod Danceteria. Tickets $10 or $5 for early birds. Morning Gloryville Sydney Presents: Fluroween Halloween doesn't have to be all ghoulish spook and gross fake blood. Morning Gloryville thinks Halloween should include an early morning rave for a good cause where fluro clothes and even brighter dance moves won't be frowned upon. Featuring all the usual healthy goodies as well as Retrosweat's Shannon Dooley and Sydney-based artist Morphingaz, Fluroween is raising money for the Mental Health Association and the Black Dog Institute. The party starts pumping nice and early at 6.30am. Wednesday, October 29, from 6.30am at UTS Underground (15 Broadway). Tickets $20/$25 on the door. By the Concrete Playground team.
Being an adult Disney fan in Sydney is easy right now. The Mouse House's movies can be watched and rewatched (then rewatched again) thanks to the company's very own streaming service, and there's no shortage of other events — outdoor cinemas, musicals, drinks, exhibitions in other states and more — popping up or on their way. But if you're looking for something special to celebrate a whole century of the company's wares, and you're particularly fond of all the earworm songs its flicks have gotten stuck in your head over the years, then a big 100th-anniversary Disney concert is just the ticket. Disney 100: The Concert hops on a trend that's been popular for a few years now, pairing beloved movies with a live orchestra playing the soundtrack as you watch. This time, though, you'll be seeing clips of the Mouse House's musical hits rather than watching an entire feature. There's just that much to get through, given the company's massive film catalogue. [caption id="attachment_872472" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Daniel Boud[/caption] Making its Australian premiere at the Sydney Opera House's Concert Hall over three shows between Friday, February 24–Saturday, February 25, the concert will bust out tracks from Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Moana and Encanto, as well as Pocahontas, Aladdin, Tangled, Hercules and Frozen. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra and maestra Jessica Gethin will be in charge of the tunes — and a yet-to-be-announced a lineup of Australian musical theatre stars will be lending their voices to the production, which focuses on Disney's animated favourites. Also featuring: performers Genevieve McCarthy (Mythic, Les Misérables) and Amy Manford (The Phantom of the Opera) from MM Creative Productions, which is behind the production. If Disney's music soundtracked your childhood — and still does your adulthood — being this show's guest is a delightfully easy decision.
If you only have time for a quick night away from the city and don't want to waste any of it driving to your destination, why not head seaside? Taylor Made Escapes has you covered with a luxury overnight experience on your own private yacht. Picture gorgeous Palm Beach scenery, crystal clear waters, deluxe cabins and champagne in the sunshine for some premium glamour. During the day, you can enjoy a secluded ocean swim or take a rowboat to shore. At night, watch the sunset over the horizon and relax on the calm sea while getting stuck into a decadent seafood platter. Rates start at $499 for two people, with additional guests charged at $100 per person (maximum six overnight guests). It's time to start planning the ultimate Sydney sleepover.
You won't have to wait much longer for the reopening of a Sydney stalwart, as the all-new crew behind Redfern pub The Bat and Ball Hotel has dropped an official opening date. The resurrection of the legendary local made news back in May of this year, and it has now been confirmed that the Cleveland Street spot will return just in time to close out those final weeks of winter, with the opening slated for smack-bang in the middle of next month on Thursday, August 15. An all-star team is behind the reopening, with Sydney hopso heavyweights Rachael Paul, Cameron Votano, Zachary Godbolt, Daniel McBride and Dynn Szmulewicz all be putting their plethora of expertise in the industry to use. The Bat and Ball Hotel's resurrection is a passion project for the group, whose experience spans from The Sunshine Inn, BTB Kirribilli and DOOM JUICE to Enmore Country Club and The Little Guy. While the revival of the beloved watering hole will feature an energised yet laidback fitout, exact details regarding its new look and offerings still have yet to be announced. The Bat and Ball Hotel crew have announced, however, that the Sydney haunt is expected to host a massive grand opening party on its second day of trade. [caption id="attachment_891666" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Enmore Country Club.[/caption] You can head to the venue on Friday, August 16, from 4pm to boogie from dusk until nearly dawn — the party will see the likes of Mickey Kojack and Reenie on the decks until 2am, alongside an array of top tipples and stellar bites. "It's going to be electric, the process has already been extremely fun," said Godbolt, the Creative Director and Co-Founder of Enmore Country Club and natural wine brand DOOM JUICE. "[It's been] lots of hard work but we can't wait for that first beer when the doors open." The Bat and Ball Hotel will be open from Thursday, August 15, at 495 Cleveland Street, Redfern. Head to the venue's Instagram page to keep up with further updates. Image credit: Angus Bell Young and Brewcasa Creative.
The humble grain of white rice—or hakumai in Japanese—can be the starting point for so many incredible dishes and drinks. This July, House of Suntory's Haku Vodka is teaming up with Prefecture 48 (P48) to celebrate just that. Bringing together world-class martinis—infused with the smooth and subtly sweet flavour of Haku Vodka—with refined Japanese cuisine, this exclusive and intimate event is an ode to the craftsmanship behind one of the world's simplest ingredients. Guests will enjoy a martini masterclass and a six-course degustation, hosted across two of P48's distinct spaces. First up: a martini masterclass held in P48's Whisky Thief cocktail bar. Join renowned House of Suntory Ambassador Natalie Ng to explore the elegance of Haku Vodka — a spirit distilled from polished Japanese white rice and filtered through bamboo charcoal for a remarkably clean finish. Discover its versatility as you sip your way through a flight of three martinis — paired with a canapé — including a Classic Haku Martini and onigiri, mentai mayo, shichimi; an Omakase Martini (a savoury, rice-inspired twist on a dirty martini), paired with beef tartare, confit yolk emulsion, hazelnut, rice cracker; and a Kozakura Martini (gently floral using sakura leaf) with sansho gravlax, potato aioli, rice puff. Then, move into P48's fiery robata grill restaurant, Ibushi, for a six-course degustation that blends the elegance of Japanese with signature touches from P48's award-winning chefs. Expect seasonal seafood-driven mains showcasing the nuance and depth that makes Japanese cuisine so popular. Think grilled oyster with mentai, guanciale and chives; tuna tartare with yuzu kosho, crispy sushi rice and avruga; and aburi scallop with apple ginger and umeboshi—before working your way through salmon temaki with avocado, soy, tobiko and leek; prawn tsukune with tarragon mayonnaise, puffed rice and ebi powder; and toothfish fillet with koji marinade, sumiso and cavolo nero. Each dish has been carefully curated to showcase the different styles of rice found in Japanese cooking, from classic to crispy textures. To finish, you'll receive an exquisite, handcrafted dessert to take home from P48's, Dear Florence. This dessert atelier blends the best of two treasured culinary styles: French and Japanese. A dreamy way to end a delicious evening – call it an edible ode to the beauty and artistry of Hakumai. Experience the essence of Japanese craftsmanship with House of Suntory's Haku Vodka. With seatings running between 6–8pm and 7.30–9.30pm and only 70 seats available (35 per seating), this is an exclusive and intimate progressive dinner you won't want to miss. Click here to find out more. By Elise Cullen Image Credit: Jiwon Kim
Next time you have a great idea while making a cup of coffee, it could spark a hit comedy flick. That's what happened to Jackie van Beek, New Zealand comedian and one half of the writing/directing/acting duo behind The Breaker Upperers. "I was literally just wandering aimlessly around my kitchen, and I was just thinking about all those conversations that we've all had with friends about that horrible moment when you realise that you have to break up with your partner, and that feeling of dread," she explains. "And I just thought, "gosh, how much money would somebody pay to not have to do that themselves?". And I thought it'd be quite a lot of money, and I know a lot of people that would pay to get out of that responsibility." To answer the obvious question, van Beek never considered setting up a business to end other people's relationships for cash. Instead, she called fellow NZ comedian and actress Madeline Sami, and they started working on what would become 2018's best comedy. That was back in 2013. The script took years to perfect between other jobs, and the film shot across 22 days in 2017, with a cast that included Boy's James Rolleston and Rosehaven's Celia Pacquola. This year, The Breaker Upperers premiered its tale of best friends Jen (van Beek) and Mel (Sami), their love-busting business, their various life woes and their Celine Dion karaoke singalong at SXSW, and then opened the Sydney Film Festival. "It has been a whirlwind few months," Sami observes. "I didn't really have any expectations on how it would do. You spend so long editing the film, making it, and then you're just kind of relieved to have finished it. Then it comes out, and then all of these other people see it and take it into their hearts, and it's just overwhelmingly lovely." Indeed, while The Breaker Upperers is all about helping others when love has faded, there's plenty of love blossoming for this smart, funny film, with audiences both overseas, in New Zealand and in Australia reacting warmly. With the movie now releasing around Australia, we sat down with van Beek and Sami to chat about real-life break-ups, smashing rom-com conventions and working collaboratively in a Kiwi comedy scene that also includes the film's executive producer, Taika Waititi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-phMlkRiWIg ON CREATING ROLES FOR THEMSELVES THAT DIDN'T EXIST OTHERWISE Sami: "We wanted to write characters that were fucked up women in their thirties, and that didn't have to settle down. That was the big, big point for us. Otherwise it's so unrealistic and so much pressure for women, and I hate that." van Beek: "And so exclusive. We've of course got so many friends that are single, in their early forties and are not going to have a baby now. What about happy endings for those guys? So it was very important that — we love rom-coms, but it was very important for us that we buck the convention and that we didn't end with a double church wedding with two women and two men tying the knot and talking about children." Sami: "We definitely thought about it in drafts and played with the idea, and it just never sat right. And we were just like, this is really a story about being okay with who they are, and accepting that and not having to bow to society's expectations — and the movies' expectations — of what your life should be like. It's really the movies. The movies tell us that we need to have all this shit together, especially for women. I think the pressure on women in movies — just the damsel in distress thing, it goes right back to Snow White. Or in all the Disney stuff. There's a princess who's stuck in a tower or she's in a coma, which is fucking dark, and she needs to be saved. And that same thing is in rom-coms today — a woman who's…" van Beek: "All befuddled." Sami: "And needs to be saved. And it's like, no we don't. We're cool. Just chill." van Beek: "We can figure out our own mess. It doesn't have to involve a man." Sami: "And also, a happy ending doesn't have to be what we've always been told what a happy ending is. It doesn't always have to be that conventional, settle down thing. It can just be 'well you're just not as dark and fucked up as you were at the beginning of the movie'." ON DECIDING TO NOT ONLY WRITE AND STAR IN THE BREAKER UPPERERS, BUT TO DIRECT IT, TOO van Beek: "It was always on the table." Sami: "We were scared." van Beek: "Were we scared? I wasn't scared." Sami: "There was a fear that it would take the fun away from the acting, which is what the whole reason we wanted to do it. It wasn't like scared to do it — it was just whether we were going to give ourselves too much of a workload." van Beek: "Yeah that's right. We knew that if we got too stressed, and we're on screen doing improvised comedy, it's just not going to be fun for us or the audience — so the stakes were quite high in making that decision." Sami: "And then we just like, we can't think of anyone who could fulfil this vision for us that we are planning in our own heads, so why don't we just do it? Take the gamble, and make sure we surround ourselves with really talented, experienced people so that we're supported. And that's what we did." van Beek: "People who are confident at improvisation, so we could all get there. And Taika was helpful." Sami: "Taika, we've worked with a lot — and he would've been a wonderful director for this film. But we knew that we were never going to get Taika because he was on Thor and was committed to that for years. But he shares our sensibility, we've worked with him — he directed the first series of a TV show that I'd made in New Zealand called Super City, and we had a lovely time when we worked together in that way. And he'd definitely get it. But he wasn't available, so we were the ones." van Beek: "But we got Jemaine Clement, who is an old friend of ours as well, he came up for three or four days of pre-production when we wanted to stand up and start exploring the characters ourselves. He'd come into the rehearsal room, and we'd do rewrites with him, and so it was all really..." Sami: "Collaborative." van Beek: "Supportive." Sami: "We've got so much amazing talent around us in New Zealand. There's so many amazing comedians coming up, and writers, that it was just really important for us to be energised by them. So we'd just keep them around us all the time, just everyone 'come in, add a joke in here if you want, yeah that's a good idea.' Just keep it fresh for ourselves, especially because we'd been writing for four-five years, so at a lot of points in that time, when you're right in it — especially towards the end, towards pre-production — you can't see. You're really close to it." ON SEEING NEW ZEALAND COMEDY FINALLY GET RECOGNITION OVERSEAS van Beek: "With Taika's films, and Flight of the Conchords and Rhys Darby having done so well internationally — we were over at SXSW with our film, and people were saying after the screening 'that's New Zealand' humour. They were identifying it. 'We love New Zealand humour! We love you guys.' It was quite exciting that people identify it, and many thanks to Taika who brought that New Zealand comedy voice into the mainstream with Thor." Sami: "When there's a bunch of people, and when there's support — the New Zealand Film Commission have really made an effort to get in behind New Zealand comedy over the last ten years probably. And because we've had success internationally, then there's more support back home. And it's kind of like with the Danish thrillers. All of a sudden the world loves Danish thrillers, and it's just the people making them are making them really well. I guess coming out of New Zealand right now, we've got a lot of great comedy, and it's just a time where it's just being recognised for what it is." van Beek: "Long may it last." Sami: "It's exciting. It's really just, I think, the world getting to know that New Zealand comedy a bit — and it started with Flight of the Conchords. There's an awkwardness to the comedy we make. So yeah, who knows how long that will last. But it's exciting that we don't have to explain our accent any more. People can start to tell the difference a little bit [between Australian and New Zealand accents]. We'll see Americanss try to do a Kiwi accent rather than just going 'oh, I can do a Kiwi accent — g'day mate'." van Beek: "Now they do Flight of the Conchords." Sami: "Yeah, 'Brett'. Or they do, 'oh hi, I'm Korg,' [from Thor: Ragnarok] or stuff like that. They're showing that they know the difference." van Beek: "By mocking us in a different way." Sami: "I loved being mocked." ON FINDING INSPIRATION FOR THE FILM'S MANY BREAK-UP SCENES Sami: "I've never been two-timed by someone, and then found out that... aah, I think I have." van Beek: "You have?" Sami: "Maybe I have." van Beek: "There's always going to be a bit of crossover." Sami: "There's just a bit of subconscious stuff — for me, the break up scenarios, everything you see in the film, nothing is specific to anything but everything is influenced by stories we've heard or things we've experienced. But there's no one like, 'yeah, I had this terrible breakup and this is exactly how the story went'." van Beek: "Or 'yeah, my boyfriend pretended to be in a coma and then died.' That all came from our imagination, but it was more like — definitely I've been through phases in my life when I've been a bit more like Jen, and just been in denial. I've been heartbroken and not wanting to grow up." Sami: "We did have a lot more scenarios and they got a lot more extreme. Obviously some were cut for time, and we didn't shoot all of them — a lot of them we just weren't going to be able to. To shoot someone falling off a speedboat in the middle of Auckland of harbour and taking an underwater scuba to an island and then sailing off, that would've been the whole budget of our film probably, just for that one day." van Beek: "We spent a bit of time writing it though." Sami: "It was a lot of fun writing and thinking out the ways people might choose to break up with each other." The Breaker Upperers is now screening in Australian cinemas.
A new designer cupcakery has quietly opened up in the backstreets of Darlinghurst. It’s impossible to walk past Black Velvet Sydney without stopping to stare at the extravagant window display — tier upon tier of cupcakes, lavish wedding cakes, prettily bowed boxes, and pots of crisp, white orchids. BV Sydney isn’t a mere cupcake shop; it’s a 'concept store' that offers a luxe bakery and cafe experience. The voguish veneer of the store is no surprise, as the owner Orlando Sanpo has a background in interior design. The Chanel-inspired interiors have a tasteful black-and-white colour scheme, elegant wall-mounted lampshades, Parisian-style marble and intricate wrought iron tables and simple Bentwood chairs. Cupcakes are gracefully arranged on tiered stands, and a range of sophisticated products are presented in a way you might expect from an upmarket perfumery. The assortment of frou-frou includes scented soy candles, reed diffusers, soaps and bath salts, jars of chocolate hazelnut or salted caramel spreads, cocoa-dusted sundried cherries, boutique coffee beans and a cabinet neatly ornamented with fancy chocolates. Black Velvet Sydney is the result of two years dedicated to understanding the art of cupcakes. After trialling copious recipes from renowned international bakers (such as the acclaimed Magnolia in New York and Hummingbird in London), in addition to French patisserie techniques for the buttercream frosting, Orlando eventually created what he considered a flawless cupcake. His endeavour was rewarded when pastry wunderkind Adriano Zumbo endowed BV Sydney the top three prizes at the Annual Bake Off awards this year. In case you’re wondering: the Lemon Vodka, the Italiano (coffee and chocolate) and the Black Velvet (double chocolate), respectively. The cupcakes are baked daily on site and we’d have to agree with Zumbo; the cake is wonderfully moist and fluffy, while the buttercream frosting is smooth, sweet and melts in your mouth. Orlando has created more than 100 flavours to rotate, so there will always be a new flavour to discover. The readily available signature flavours include the Lemon Vodka, Salted Caramel, Black Velvet and Passionfruit Velvet ($3.50/cupcake). Specialty seasonal flavours are introduced regularly, and be prepared for curious savoury combinations such as Bacon, Egg and Cheese; Smoked Salmon Cream Cheese; and Hot Dog. For those watching their waistline, Orlando’s cupcake recipe has is 40 percent less sugar than most. There is a cupcake to suit everybody’s needs, even sugar-free, vegan and gluten-free options. Despite the impeccable interior, there’s still a playfulness in the form of the mismatched crockery. They have a range of organic teas and also make a decent flat white ($3.5), which is quaintly served in an old-fashioned teacup. BV Sydney take their coffee seriously, collaborating with Melbourne-based roaster Single Estate to craft boutique batches of The Designer Blend coffee beans. For something more decadent, the rich 70 percent dark cocoa Madagascar blend (small $3.5) is one of our favourite hot chocolates in Sydney. For sunny days, top picks include the ice-blended drinks ($5.95) such as the cafe mocha made with silky Java chocolate ($5.95) or the bestselling salted caramel. Sydney's days of cupcakes aren't over yet; Black Velvet shows the bijou dessert trend is just hitting its stride. Words and images by Eddie Hart.
How do you say goodbye to one of Australia's great music festivals? Bringing together as many local acts as possible, filling the event's stages with homegrown talents, is one excellent option. When Bluesfest bids farewell with its 2025 fest, it'll also have help from international artists, but so far the lineup is jam-packed with Aussie names. It's the end of an era, and it's going out with some impressive assistance. Come April 2025, Crowded House, Ocean Alley and Vance Joy will lead the roster of talent getting behind Bluesfest's microphones in Byron Bay for the last time, as already revealed back in August. The festival has now dropped its second lineup announcement, which adds everyone from Hilltop Hoods and Budjerah to Kasey Chambers and The Cat Empire to the bill — and there's more on the list now, and still more to come. [caption id="attachment_969986" align="alignnone" width="1920"] LD Somefx[/caption] On their return to Bluesfest, Hilltop Hoods will headline Sunday night lineup. Also no strangers to the event: Xavier Rudd and John Butler. From there, the bill also features Miss Kaninna, Velvet Trip, Melbourne Ska Orchestra, CW Stoneking, Lachy Doley Group, Ash Grunwald and Kim Churchill. The new additions will join Tones and I, Gary Clark Jr, Rag'n'Bone Man, RY X, Allison Russell, Christone 'Kingfish' Ingram and plenty others across Thursday, April 17–Sunday, April 20, 2025. Another announcement is on its way soon, which is when international artists will start hitting the roster. [caption id="attachment_969990" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Joseph Mayers[/caption] "While this lineup focuses on our homegrown talent, it's still a strong blues and roots announcement, staying true to the heart of what Bluesfest has always been about. I can't begin to tell you how many incredible artists have reached out, wanting to be part of our final festival," said Festival Director Peter Noble about the second Bluesfest 2025 lineup drop. "Scores of amazing talents from across the country have thrown their hats in the ring. It's a testament to how special this festival is to the Australian music community. As much as I would love to include everyone, there are only so many spots we can fit into one lineup." "That said, I'm thrilled to welcome back some of our all-time favourites. You can't say no to artists who have helped shape this festival over the years, including Hilltop Hoods returning after a 20 year gap — and how can we be doing a best of Bluesfest without Xavier Rudd, John Butler, The Cat Empire and the incredible Kasey Chambers, alongside some rising Australian stars who represent the future of our music scene? This mix of legendary performers and up-and-coming talent is what makes this announcement so special and uniquely ours." The festival has been showered with affection since news arrived, also back in August, that it was planning to wrap up after the 2025 event. An ePetition has been launched by New South Wales MP Tamara Smith, asking the NSW Government to put together a rescue package for Bluesfest — a petition that'll be debated in the state's parliament if it hits 20,000 signatures. "It's been truly humbling to see how much Bluesfest means to so many of you. While the future remains uncertain, I am encouraged by the petition that's been raised to keep the festival going by our state member of parliament. There's real hope that with your continued support, and the backing of our community, we might just keep the Bluesfest legacy alive for generations to come," advised Noble. Bluesfest 2025 Lineup: First announcement: Crowded House Vance Joy Ocean Alley Tones and I Gary Clark Jr Rag'n'Bone Man RY X Allison Russell Christone 'Kingfish' Ingram Brad Cox Here Come the Mummies The California Honeydrops Marc Broussard Pierce Brothers Taj Farrant Fanny Lumsden 19-Twenty WILSN Cimafunk Neal Francis Second announcement: Hilltop Hoods Xavier Rudd John Butler The Cat Empire Kasey Chambers Melbourne Ska Orchestra CW Stoneking Budjerah Lachy Doley Group Ash Grunwald Kim Churchill Miss Kaninna The Beards Velvet Trip FOOLS ROSHANI Sweet Talk The Memphis Three featuring Fiona Boyes, Jimi Hocking and Frank Sultana [caption id="attachment_969988" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Roger Cotgreave[/caption] [caption id="attachment_969989" align="alignnone" width="1920"] LD Somefx[/caption] [caption id="attachment_969987" align="alignnone" width="1920"] LD Somefx[/caption] [caption id="attachment_867504" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Kurt Petersen[/caption] Bluesfest 2025 will run from Thursday, April 17–Sunday, April 20 at Byron Events Farm, Tyagarah. Early-bird tickets are on sale now — for further information, head to the Bluesfest website.
Paul Rudd probably has an attic. And in that attic, a dusty portrait of the superstar actor is probably ageing, because the man himself doesn't seem to be. That's a perfectly logical explanation for why the Clueless, Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers, Romeo + Juliet, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Parks and Recreation, Wet Hot American Summer and Living With Yourself actor — and Ant-Man star, too — has looked the same for decades. And, it inspires a question: if you keep Rudd's likeness somewhere in your house, will you stop getting older as well? Will you start looking like Paul Rudd instead? That's a situation no one would complain about. Whatever might happen, a very real book written by Rudd's very fictional Marvel Cinematic Universe alter ego is on its way, so soon you can pop it on your shelf and find out. That tome is Look Out for the Little Guy, as penned by Scott Lang — aka Ant-Man. It's just been announced because a not-at-all-tun movie called Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania hits cinemas on Thursday, February 16. And yes, this new text will feature in that flick. See the film, buy the fake memoir: that's what's on offer for MCU fans, Ant-Man stans and Paul Rudd obsessives (so, everyone). In Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, Lang has penned the book, detailing his time saving the world. Unsurprisingly, the autobiography has proven popular. The Disney-owned Marvel will be hoping the real text does the same, of course, when it hits bookstores on Tuesday, September 5. According to the official synopsis, the memoir steps through "a bracingly honest account" of Lang's "struggles and triumphs, from serving time to being a divorced dad to becoming Ant-Man and joining The Avengers". Readers are also in for "stories of epic battles won and lost, as this everyman turned super hero finally tells all — from the official account of what really happened between The Avengers and Thanos to how shrinking down to ant-size really feels to the challenges of balancing the roles of hero and dad". Look Out for the Little Guy also has a trailer, because Marvel and the Mouse House realise that the best way to sell anything involving Paul Rudd is just giving the world what we want: more Paul Rudd. "In this new book I'm almost certain was not written by me, we pull back the curtain and uncover the man behind Ant-Man: Scott Lang," the actor advises. "Who is he? What's he like? Why does he look so much like me?" Check out the Look Out for the Little Guy trailer below: Scott Lang's Look Out for the Little Guy will hit bookstores on Tuesday, September 5, and is available to pre-order now — head to the Disney Books website for further details. Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania hits cinemas Down Under on Thursday, February 16.
It's fair to say that Brookvale wasn't known for its hospitality scene in the not-too-distant past. But over the last decade, its dilapidated car mechanics and ramshackle warehouses have gradually given way to a new kind of resident – top-notch breweries, distilleries and eateries. With reasonable rents and industrial zoning making this spot along the Northern Beaches attractive to enterprising hospo operators, the sharp minds behind this suburb's culinary rejuvenation have come together to launch The Brookie Trail. While the area's industrial heart remains, there's no denying the locals' passion for their craft. Every stop along this curated journey reveals something new to sip, feast on or explore, while a colourful events program has breathed even more life into the neighbourhood. So, what stops can you expect along the way? Manly Spirits Co., Freshwater Brewing Co., 7th Day Brewery and Goodradigbee Distillers are just a handful of must-visit destinations making up this growing collective of like-minded food and drink purveyors. Yet it's not just tasty pub grub and refreshing beers that make exploring this part of the world a rewarding experience. There's also an ever-evolving entertainment calendar, with live music, pop-up markets, creative workshops and trivia nights on the agenda throughout the week. Best of all, The Brookie Trail has been created with families in mind, so there are a range of activities on offer that get the kids involved. Plus, you're welcome to bring your pup while you enjoy top-notch brews and mouthwatering eats. "Hopping between breweries and distilleries, especially after a morning swim at the Beaches, is hard to beat. It's an exciting time for Brookvale, and we're thrilled to share everything the trail has to offer," said Mike Beresford-Jones, founder of 7th Day Brewery. The Brookie Trail is ready to explore now around Brookvale. Head to the website for details about participating venues and their offerings.
Sydneysiders from all corners of the city flock to Addison Road each weekend for Marrickville's organic market, which takes place every Sunday from 9am–3pm. In addition to all the fruit, veg, eggs, pastries, breads, cakes, tarts, quiches and pies — all of which are organic — the market also offers all manner of other treasures, including vintage clothes, secondhand books and records, house plants, bespoke homewares, eco products, and even healing crystals and tarot readings. There are also plenty of affordable eats to fuel you during your shopping spree, from pho, loaded bagels and lamb rolls to raw vegan treats, specialty coffee and loaded yoghurt cups. When you're not perusing the many stalls, we suggest you stretch out on the grass behind the community hall where you can enjoy live music and other entertainment. And while you're in the area, be sure to pay a visit to Marrickville's legendary Reverse Garbage workshop, where you can transform discarded materials into unique items of jewellery, clothing and art.
There are plenty of obvious contenders for a spot on a Sydney bucket list — a visit to the Opera Bar, a climb to the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, or a stroll along the golden sands of Bondi Beach, to name only a handful. For newcomers to this glorious city, these must-do activities are a great introduction, but if you're a seasoned Sydneysider who's already ticked off these quintessential experiences, you may feel like there's not much left to discover about the place you call home. But don't be so sure. This list of 20 under-the-radar attractions and lesser-known outings — including unique tours, one-of-a-kind diners and secret nature retreats — reveals a whole new side to Sydney. All you need to decide now is which one to tick off first. Recommended reads: The Best Secret Beaches in Sydney The Best Walks Around Sydney The Best Waterfalls Near Sydney QVB History Tour When it opened in 1898, architect George McRae's grand sandstone masterpiece on George Street was an indoor marketplace, but for the past four decades, following extensive renovations in the 1980s, retail of a more high-end type has been the QVB's niche. The Queen Victoria Building remains one of Sydney's most popular shopping destinations, but it's also one of the city's greatest architectural gems. A guided history tour reveals the building's rich heritage as well as granting access to areas not usually open to the public, including the building's grand central dome. Along the way, visitors can learn stories from Sydney's past, such as the building's connection to Queen Victoria herself and its role in the city's evolution over the past 130 years. The Footpath of Fame [caption id="attachment_978581" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Maxim Boon[/caption] One of Hollywood's most famous attractions is the Walk of Fame — a series of handprints and signatures from cinema's greatest luminaries, etched in cement and laid into the sidewalk in front of the iconic Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Believe it or not, Sydney had a crack at creating a similar celebrity monument back in 1983. Dubbed The Footpath of Fame, it features a collection of cement slabs inscribed by entertainers, artists, sportspeople and politicians – the likes of Broken Hill artist Pro Hart, deceased racehorse Gunsynd, F1 racer Jack Barbham and Aussie Olympian Betty Cuthbert among them. Even some make-believe characters, such as Sesame Street's Big Bird and Santa Clause, also left their mark. Unlike its LA cousin, this starry street doesn't attract many tourists. Located behind the Pier One Hotel in the Rocks, just beyond its outdoor dining terrace, this curious time capsule of 1980s zeitgeist goes largely unnoticed. The Manly Wormhole [caption id="attachment_978573" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Destination NSW[/caption] At first glance, you might assume this rocky passageway is the work of mother nature, but in fact, the 40-metre tunnel, affectionately known as a Manly Wormhole, was the work of industrious fishermen, who chiseled their way between the headland separating Queenscliff and Freshwater beaches more than a century ago. While you can now make your way between these two popular beaches by cutting through suburban streets, a minor scramble over the rocks north of Manly beach is well worth the effort to retrace the steps of the sailors who once relied upon this thoroughfare in decades past. Provided the weather is dry (rains and high winds can make the journey to the wormhole dangerously slippery), the best time to visit is early in the morning, as the sun's first rays are peeking over the Pacific horizon. A Sydney By Kayak Dawn Harbour Tour [caption id="attachment_978633" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Perishan Tan[/caption] By day, Sydney Harbour is constantly crisscrossed by commuter-packed ferries, giant cruise ships and private pleasure craft out for a salty spin. However, before the sun rises, these usually busy waters are as calm as a mill pond. A Sydney By Kayak dawn tour grants you rare perspective on the big blue heart of the city, as well as the masterful feat of engineering that spans it as you paddle beneath the Harbour Bridge. Husband-and-wife team Laura and Ben Stone run these daily dawn tours which depart from Lavender Bay just before sun-up. After coffees have been distributed, it's time to paddle around Luna Park and into prime position in the middle of the harbour to witness the day's first rays gleaming off the sails of the Sydney Opera House. Q Station Ghost Tour Are you brave enough to enter Australia's most haunted bathroom? Visitors and paranormal investigators alike have experienced sinister and inexplicable events while visiting the infamous Grave Digger's Cottage at Q Station, the nation's oldest quarantine facility, perched on the rocky cliffs of North Head. Established in 1833, the site was once used to isolate incoming immigrants, many of whom were afflicted by contagious diseases, including the Spanish flu — the disease that led to the last major global pandemic between 1918 and 1921. As well as the petrifying plumbing of the aforementioned cottage, the bone-chilling after-dark tour takes visitors through the eerie, preserved buildings and grounds, where paranormal activity is said to be rife. Guides share chilling stories of their own ghostly encounters and mysterious occurrences, as well as the darker histories of the station, which operated until 1984 before becoming a heritage-protected site. Luke's Table at the Harbour Bridge Pylon Lookout Luke's Table, nestled within the Sydney Harbour Bridge Pylon, offers a dining experience with a difference. Located in the pylon lookout in the southeast tower of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, overlooking the Sydney Opera House, this unique restaurant combines the rich history of one of nation's most recognisable monuments with modern Australian cuisine. Guests can enjoy a relaxed atmosphere while savouring a menu inspired by local ingredients by Luke Mangan, one of Australia's most revered chefs. The panoramic views of the harbour waters and city skyline provide an unforgettable backdrop for a one-of-a-kind feed. The hidden meditation chamber at Sydney Modern Known as The Spirit House, this tranquil, immersive space serves as a cultural sanctuary, tucked quietly away through a leafy garden just outside the Sydney Modern Project building at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Designed by artist Lee Mingwei, this permanent installation blends art and spirituality, inviting visitors to pause and reflect. The space is a round, sandstone chamber with a simple bench and a Buddha statue, creating a meditative environment that highlights the ways contemporary creation and historical storytelling can intertwine. Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park Wildflower Garden Located in Sydney's northern suburbs, this vibrant natural haven is a floral wonderland. The reserve is renowned for its spectacular wildflower displays, particularly in spring when native species like wattles, banksias and grevilleas bloom, creating dynamic ecosystems for animals, insects and birds. Spanning over 15,000 hectares, the wider national park is popular with hikers, nature enthusiasts and birdwatchers, offering scenic walking trails and panoramic views of the surrounding bushland and waterways. The Wildflower Garden plays a vital role in preserving Sydney's diverse plant life and providing an accessible escape into nature just a short drive from the city. Sydney Opera House Backstage Tour Of course you've seen the world's most famous building and you may have even ventured inside for a show or concert. However, learning the masterful feats of engineering that brought this iconic structure into being can totally transform your appreciation for the national treasure that is the Sydney Opera House. This behind-the-scenes look at one of the world's most recognisible cultural landmarks takes in hidden spaces, typically off-limits to the public, while an expert guide explains the intricacies of running a multi-venue site. The tour reveals the inner workings including the dressing rooms, green rooms and rehearsal spaces where performers prepare for shows. The tour culminates with spectacular views of the illuminated Opera House sails and the waters of Sydney harbour beyond. Taste Cultural Food Tours [caption id="attachment_978701" align="alignnone" width="1920"] City of Sydney[/caption] Taste Cultural Food Tours offer a unique culinary journey through the city's vibrant multicultural neighbourhoods. These guided tours provide an immersive experience, allowing participants to sample a diverse array of dishes from local eateries, markets and hidden gems. From the rich flavors of Asian cuisine in Haymarket to Mediterranean delicacies in Leichhardt, each tour highlights the influence of different diasporas on Sydney's food scene. While you taste your way around the city, your guide will share the history and traditions behind the dishes, making it an educational and delicious adventure. Taste Cultural Food Tours offer a rich and authentic way to explore the city's diverse and delicious heritage. The Wildlife Retreat at Taronga Zoo This is a five-star stay like no other. This eco-luxury experience allows visitors to stay overnight within the zoo's serene natural surroundings. This plush hotel combines conservation with comfort, offering unique accommodation overlooking a private habitat filled with native wildlife, including trees where koalas snooze right outside the window of each suite. The experience includes guided tours and a looks behind-the-scenes before the zoo opens to the public. If your budget can't stretch to a night a night at the Wildlife Retreat, the popular Roar and Snore glamping experience also offers visitors the chance to sleep within the ground of the zoo for a lower price tag. Auburn Botanic Gardens [caption id="attachment_978721" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Destination NSW[/caption] This peaceful 9.2-hectare oasis offers a stunning variety of landscapes and plant collections to explore. The garden features diverse themed areas, including a Japanese Garden, featuring koi ponds and traditional pagodas, a tropical rainforest, and a rose garden. The tranquil setting is perfect for leisurely walks, picnics, or birdwatching, with native and exotic plants thriving throughout the year. The gardens are also home to wildlife, including waterfowl and colorful parrots. Lilypad Palm Beach One more the most unusual and luxurious stays in Sydney can be found bobbing gently on tranquil waves of Pittwater overlooking the Palm Beach peninsula. This floating villa offers the ultimate retreat, far from the noise of the city. The original Lilypad tragically burned down in 2018, but the owners quickly rebuilt, adding additional features on the way including an infrared sauna and outdoor shower. The villa sleeps two guests overnight or can be hired out for a fancy function. Camping on Cockatoo Island [caption id="attachment_884665" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Destination NSW[/caption] Located just a short ferry ride from Circular Quay, this harbour island combines a rich and checkered history with natural beauty. Visitors can camp under the stars on the island's waterfront or in the sheltered camping area, surrounded by old dock cranes and buildings that speak to the island's past as a convict prison and industrial site. The campsite provides basic amenities and visitors can enjoy activities like kayaking, cycling and stargazing, as well as guided tours. A Sydney Seaplanes Aerial Tour [caption id="attachment_800090" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Destination NSW[/caption] Discover a thrilling and unique way to see the city's stunning landmarks from above. Taking off from Rose Bay, passengers enjoy birds-eye views of Sydney's iconic sights, including the Opera House, Sydney Harbour Bridge, and Bondi Beach. The tour provides an unforgettable perspective of the city's beaches, lush parks, and sparkling waters. Expert pilots offer commentary, sharing fascinating insights about the city's past as well as the history of aviation in Sydney. O Bar Australia Square The revolving restaurant at Sydney Tower, Infinity, is well known to Sydneysiders. However, there is another revolving venue in the CBD that is often overlooked. Perched on floor 47 of the Harry Siedler-designed tower at Australia Square, O Bar rotates 360 degrees over the course of an hour, allowing diners to enjoy ever-changing vistas of landmarks such as the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Visitors can either stop in for a drink — order the martini and enjoy the spectacle of having your glass chilled with liquid nitrogen tableside — or a sit-down meal, featuring modern Australian cuisine. The Library Bar at the State Library of NSW This rooftop bar at the State Library of New South Wales offers a stylish and relaxed setting with sweeping views of Sydney's skyline and historic Macquarie Street. Located atop the library, the bar is part of the library's modern renovations, providing a unique blend of culture and leisure. Patrons can enjoy a curated selection of drinks, including cocktails, local wines, and craft beers, while taking in stunning vistas of nearby landmarks such as the Sydney Opera House and the Royal Botanic Garden. Boat Harbour at Kurnell Boat Harbour at Kurnell, located in Sydney's southern suburbs, is a picturesque and peaceful coastal spot offering stunning views of Botany Bay. This serene beach is popular for its calm waters, making it ideal for swimming, kayaking, and picnicking. The surrounding area features sandy shores, rocky outcrops, and lush greenery, perfect for relaxing or enjoying nature walks. Boat Harbour holds historical significance as part of the site where Captain Cook first landed in 1770. The nearby Kurnell National Park adds to the area's natural charm, offering visitors a tranquil escape within easy reach of Sydney's bustling city center. The Tiger Encounter at Sydney Zoo Feeding the tigers at Sydney Zoo near Blacktown in Sydney's far west is an exciting and educational experience that allows visitors to get up close with these magnificent predators. During the Tiger Encounter, participants have the rare opportunity to feed the zoo's Sumatran tigers, under the guidance of experienced zookeepers. As the tigers demonstrate their hunting instincts, guests learn about their behaviour, conservation efforts and the threats they face in the wild. The encounter offers a unmatched way to connect with these endangered animals while supporting the zoo's important conservation work. Phoenix Central Park This stunning cultural and architectural hotspot is located in the heart of Chippendale. Designed by architect Jean Nouvel, the building blends art, design, and sustainability, with a striking combination of modern apartments, art spaces, and a public park. The centerpiece of Phoenix Central Park is the beautifully landscaped rooftop garden, which offers panoramic views of the city skyline. What also stands Phoenix Central Park apart from other entertainment venues in Sydney is its ticket prices: every performance staged here is free. Prospective concertgoers need to apply for a seat via a lottery system, which during these time of soaring living costs, is music to our ears.
At Suntory, the spirit of "Yatte Minahare" — "You never know until you try" — remains as strong now, as it did 126 years ago. It has led to the creation of Japan's first whisky distillery, the reimagining of classic cocktails like the highball, and it now houses some of the world's finest brands –Yamazaki, Hakushu, Toki Whisky, Roku Gin, Haku Vodka, Maker's Mark, Jim Beam, -196 and BOSS Coffee to name a few. As Suntory looks to the future, let's travel back 126 years to the very beginning, when Shinjiro Torii, Suntory's first Master Blender, saw an opportunity and "went for it." Where it All Started Over a century ago, in a small store in Osaka, Japan, Shinjiro Torii had a dream: to create an authentic whisky in Japan. Having saved enough from his early Akadama Port Wine successes, Torii, with much resistance from family and colleagues, invested his whole fortune into the establishment of the Yamazaki Distillery in 1923. He didn't know it then, but this uncharted move transformed the spirits industry in Japan and changed the whisky-drinking world. Since then – despite some challenges along the way – the brand has grown into a global leader of drinks, with products found in countless venues across Australia and the world. Shaping how Japan drinks and what the global community knows about flavour and innovation. Successive leaders have carried forward Torii's legacy, future-proofing Torii's vision while staying true to the company's founding values of Yatte Minahare: Giving Back to Society and Growing for Good. The Recipe for Success Suntory's ability to innovate while staying grounded in its Japanese roots is a testament to the brand's vision. Take Suntory Whisky Kabukin, for example. Launched in 1937, it was Japan's first big foray into the whisky business, helping to cement Suntory's reputation as a trailblazer in the industry. The whisky's signature square bottle (Kakubin means "square bottle") became an enduring icon, and today, it remains a beloved part of Japanese drinking culture — particularly in the form of the highball, a whisky-soda cocktail that Suntory helped popularise. But Suntory's innovation continued beyond whisky. In 1992, the brand launched BOSS Coffee, a flash-brewed cold coffee in a can designed to keep Japan's workforce fuelled. This product quickly became a hit, and even today, BOSS Coffee remains a go-to drink for coffee lovers (and tradies) seeking convenience without sacrificing quality. The company's relentless pursuit of innovation led to another groundbreaking product with -196 — a vodka based ready-to-drink beverage that's taken the world by storm with its flavour and the bold process by which it's made. The 'Freeze Crush Technology' involves freezing and pulverising whole fruits in liquid nitrogen at a temperature of -196°C. While Suntory has a significant global presence, its inspiration remains true to its founding philosophy: to inspire the brilliance of life. From the pristine water used at its distilleries to the careful selection of ingredients for its products, Suntory's emphasis on nature and tradition flows through everything it creates. The House of Suntory line, which includes celebrated names like Suntory Whisky, Toki, Roku Gin, and Haku Vodka, exemplifies this approach and its connection to nature. Each product in the collection pays homage to something unique from Japan's rich cultural heritage. For Roku Gin, this is done by using six carefully selected Japanese botanicals, while Haku Vodka is crafted from 100 percent Japanese white rice for an exceptionally smooth finish. [caption id="attachment_1017676" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Jiwon Kim[/caption] The Spirit of Suntory in a Glass If you've walked down the bar-lined streets of Japan or even visited one of Australia's top whisky bars, you would have encountered the highball cocktail. A balanced combination of whisky and soda (and a wedge of lemon), it has long been a fixture of Japanese drinking culture, and Suntory has played a vital role in its revival. While the highball originated in the UK, Suntory perfected the drink, rolling out Tory's Bars in the 1950s, where patrons could sip highballs after a long day at work. Today, the highball is trending. Sipped by young folk in bars, paired and reimagined by the best bartenders in the world. Celebrating 126 Years As Suntory celebrates its 126th anniversary, it remains deeply rooted in the values that Shinjiro Torii instilled over a century ago. "We have grown from our roots in Japan to become a truly global company," says Greg Hughes, president and CEO of Suntory Global Spirits. [caption id="attachment_1017677" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Jiwon Kim[/caption] From the first drops of Akadama Port Wine to the pioneering Japanese whisky and beyond, Suntory's history is marked by a continuous drive to innovate. Whether perfecting the highball or creating products like Minus 196, the company's story is one of bold experimentation, guided by a deep respect for tradition. As Suntory moves into the future, one thing is clear: it will continue to shape how the world drinks, one glass at a time. The best time to sample Suntory's work will be when Suntory Bar takes over Whisky Thief inside Sydney's Prefecture 48. Running from Friday, August 8 to Saturday, November 8, Suntory will be serving refreshing highballs and signature Suntory and experimental cocktails alongside select snacks for three months. Find out more about Suntory's legacy and full range of products at the website.
There aren't many things that Sydney likes more than a rooftop bar. Sipping an ice-cold cocktail high above the city on a sunny day — does it get any better? Luckily, we've got plenty of options, including this colourful new watering hole on top of boutique Art Deco hotel, the Kimpton Margot. Harper Rooftop Bar fills out the hotel's quality dining options which include Luke Mangan's Luke's Kitchen and the lobby cocktail haven The Wilmot Bar. Harper joins in on the fun with a summer-ready drinks list and fit-out, a sky-high pool and a selection of eats once again courtesy of Mangan. Fast-paced bites include truffle fries, burrata and marinated olives, while more serious meals range from lobster rolls to veal cottoletta. As for the drinks menu, it's been injected with a whole lot of fun. Alongside classic cocktails and a robust wine selection, there are boozy slushies ready to cool you down on a warm December day. Kimpton claims that Harper is the CBD's biggest rooftop bar with the expansive L-shaped space set up to accommodate everything from intimate after-work drinks to large group events. Surrounded by Sydney's mass of inner-city high-rises, the new seventh-floor venue boasts plenty of greenery, bright pod seating and long dining tables for groups. Topping things off, you'll also find the hotel's swimming pool perched above the bar, calling out for hotel guests to enjoy a poolside martini during their stay. With a set up that good, why even bother leaving the premises?
Circular Quay has welcomed a new rooftop bar into its ranks as the Salt Meats Cheese team opens Bar Ombré on the top level of the Gateway Dining Precinct. The bar boasts house-made cheese, a dedicated spritz menu, a daily happy hour, free bar snacks and sunset views across the Harbour Bridge. Expect a bright fit-out with heaps of greenery and colourful furnishings to greet you as you enter the bar on the third level. Inside, you'll find stretched cheese —made onsite daily — along with antipasto plates of cured meats, burrata and wood-baked focaccia. Share plates include marinated white anchovies with tomato, fried calamari with crumbed zucchini and prosciutto with grilled eggplant, basil and rocket pesto. If these snacks don't quite touch the edges, you can head downstairs for a heartier meal — woodfired pizza or a big bowl of pasta, for example — at the Circular Quay outpost of Salt Meats Cheese, which is located on level two of the dining precinct. To drink, the European-inspired cocktail menu includes the likes of the Forget Me Not (gin, lychee and elderflower liqueurs, egg white and plum bitters) and the Smokin' Nights (amaro, mezcal, Angostura bitters, cream and cinnamon), as well as a pear and maple old fashioned and a vanilla and grapefruit barrel-aged negroni. You can also choose from five different spritzes and a drop off the wine list, which focuses on Italian drops and local biodynamic, vegan and organic labels. We recommend stopping by after work to catch the sunset and the daily happy hour, which runs from 4–6pm. Nab $5 beers, $10 spritzes and $20 cocktail carafes (including Aperol spritz, sangria and margarita jugs). Then, from 6–8pm, punters can enjoy free bar snacks — similar to Venetian cicchetti. Expect truffled pecorino, roasted peppers with salsa verde and wood-fired crackers with pesto, plus smoked olives, cured pancetta and truffled popcorn all on offer (for free). This is the 13th venue for Salt Meats Cheese co-founders Edoardo Perlo and Stefano de Blasi, with other recent openings including SMC outposts in Dee Why and Brisbane's South Bank. Images: Kitti Gould.
ANTE, a Newtown jazza kissu (or listening bar), is one of the very best bars in Sydney, especially if you're a fan of fine sake — of which there are over 65 kinds available. Grab a seat at the long timber bar overlooking the huge selection of vinyl and sake, and let the bartenders talk you through all the options. You can follow their lead on particular sips, but we recommend getting the sake tasting flight, especially if you're new to the world of sake. It features a great cross-section of sakes and will help you discover your own preferences. A decent range of Japanese spirits, cocktails and beers are also up for grabs, alongside a truly impressive selection of eats — designed to pair with sake. The menu changes fairly regularly, but it tends to include a handful of pastas, izakaya-style bites and decadent desserts. Like many of the other best bars in Sydney, ANTE takes its food very seriously.
An undisputed perk of living in a metropolis as multicultural as Sydney is that you can experience the wider world without ever having to leave the confines of the city. If a trip to Latin America is on your bucket list, why not save yourself a 13,000 kilometre plane trip and a significant chunk of cash, and have a local South American adventure instead? We've rounded up a comprehensive guide to Sydney spots where you can experience the flavours, sounds, and vibrancy of Latino culture — from the top Latin American restaurants, cafes, and bars to the best spots to get your salsa on. And, once you've fallen in love with all things Latin America, pick up some Spanish or Portuguese at one of the city's many language centres. That way, you'll be fully prepared when you do finally make it to that side of the globe. Of course, we couldn't cover everything here, but if your favourite Venezuelan spot, Brazilian barbecue house or Peruvian restaurant isn't in here, let us know where your go-to is in the comments below. WHERE TO EAT PORTENO Last year, this Sydney icon shut the doors of its Cleveland Street home to move to 50 Holt Street — they're still open for functions at Cleveland Street. But fans need not despair, the new location is serving up those coveted mouthwatering meats cooked Argentine-style over an open fire pit, an impressive wine list, and pitch-perfect playlists. LA PUERTA This charming family-run Neutral Bay diner combines the best South American flavours with Aussie produce. An evening at La Puerta involves hearty plates made for sharing (we're especially partial to the Pescada Creole), a wine list that showcases the best Chilean and Argentine varietals, and a backdrop of infectious Latino music. TEQUILA MOCKINGBIRD Opened in August 2016, this popular restaurant and bar has brought the best Latin American flavours to Paddington, with a seasonal menu that features dishes from Mexico all the way down to Argentina. We're especially partial to the alpaca and mozzarella empanadas and the barbecue lamb shoulder with red chimichurri. Meanwhile, the ample drinks list — featuring more than 40 tequila and mezcal varieties — will please even the pickiest connoisseurs. CHAR & CO We Sydneysiders sure do love us some Brazilian barbecue. In a city full of churrasco spots, the upscale Char & Co is one of Sydney's best. Expect an endless supply of succulent spit-roasted meats, a solid selection of side dishes, and distinctive Brazilian cocktails to wash it all down. Come hungry for this one or don't come at all. CAFE CON LECHE This tiny family-owned Surry Hills cafe will make you feel like you've stepped out of Sydney and straight into Bogotá or Medellín. Boisterous Spanish mingles with Latin music and the shelves are filled with Colombian crafts and produce. Come for the single-origin Colombian coffee, the freshly-baked arepas (corn cakes), and the weird-sounding but totally delicious hot chocolate with cheese. LA PAULA EMPANADAS This unassuming Kensington cafe has been serving up Chilean classics for the past 30 decades. Unsurprisingly, the highlight here are the empanadas. Served either baked or fried, this Chilean staple is the perfect comfort food. La Paula also offers a variety of traditional Chilean sandwiches (our fave is the beef churrasco) and addictive alfajores, dulce de leche stuffed biscuits. WHERE TO DRINK THE LOBO PLANTATION Named after Julian Lobo, 'The Sugar King of Havana', this popular CBD mainstay is a veritable rum heaven. With bottles sourced from across Central America and the Caribbean, rum fans — and everyone else — are guaranteed to find something that appeals. With an interior embellished with old Cuban charm, The Lobo Plantation is the perfect place to while away an evening in the city. BARRIO CELLAR Look for the neon sign promising "Everything with tequila", descend the stairs, and you'll have found some of the best tequila and mezcal cocktails in Sydney. The latest venture from the Barrio Chino team, this Martin Place basement bar is the place to go when you're in the mood for innovative drinks and Mexican street eats. Go on Friday and Saturday nights when a great DJ lineup will have you dancing until the wee hours. JAMTOWN This tiny bar is more than worth the ferry ride over to Manly. The cheery fitout — colourful benches, pink flamingos, hand-drawn signs — is a near-perfect replica of Jamaica's plentiful beach bars and refreshingly unpretentious. Expect a compact list of rum-based cocktails, authentic bar snacks (whatever you do, do not miss the delectable plantain chips), and DJs spinning the decks at the weekend. WHERE TO DANCE LATIN MOTION DANCE STUDIO No rhythm? No problem. The folks over at the Latin Motion dance studio will get you up to speed in no time. Led by World Salsa and Bachata champions, the talented team of instructors promise to have you shaking your hips with confidence after just a few classes. Alternatively, check out Salsa Republic in Surry Hills. ESTABLISHMENT, SALSA TUESDAYS If you still haven't experienced Salsa Tuesdays at Establishment, now's the time — even if you're not a regular at Establishment, give it a go. Get there at 8pm for a free salsa lesson, grab a $12 mojito to loosen you up, and spend the night shaking your stuff all over the dance floor. THE ARGYLE, SALSA WEDNESDAYS Head to The Argyle on Wednesday nights for their free salsa fiesta where everyone, from beginners to seasoned salsa dancers, is welcome. Resident DJ Miro will have you dancing the night away to the latest salsa tunes with a healthy dose of bachata thrown into the mix. WHERE TO LEARN If all the eating and dancing has moved Latin America to the top of your travel bucket list, why not pick up some language skills before you jet off? The Instituto Cervantes offers some of the best Spanish lessons in the city. Beyond the CBD, The University of Sydney's Centre for Continuing Education and Parramatta Community College both have an affordable and comprehensive range of courses. More of a Lusophile? Learn to falar português at UNSW's Institute of Languages or Sydney Language Solutions. WHERE TO GET FULLY IMMERSED No better way for a huge dose of Latin American culture than a festival. In February, two festivals immersed Sydneysiders in Latin American culture. For a little taste of Rio's iconic Carnaval, head to Sydney's first Portuguese-Brazilian festival, Canguru na Folia (Kangaroo revelry), bringing the music, food, and drinks of the Lusophone world to Sydney's inner west. Meanwhile, the annual Latin American festival returns to the Bondi Pavilion each year with food stalls aplenty, live Latin American music, and free dance workshops. This comprehensive guide is a jumping off point for highlighting Sydney's best Latin American experiences. Have a favourite Colombian cafe? A go-to salsa spot? Let us know in the comments, we're all ears. Top image: Tequila Mockingbird.
International Women's Day (IWD) is all about celebrating the social, cultural, economic and political achievements of women all around the world — and about furthering the movement for the rights of all women and non-binary identifying folks. This year's theme is #EachforEqual, calling for all to take action towards equality and raise awareness to help forge a gender equal world. And it's a good opportunity to thank and uplift all the badass womxn in your life. In Sydney, there are a bunch of events marking the day, so no matter what your interests — politics, art, beer — you'll be able to find something to get around. Here are just a couple of ways to spend this IWD on Sunday, March 8.
On Sydney's current form, it is no great surprise to see the Mexican bar revolution spread to an increasingly cosmopolitan Balmain. Enter Cantina Bar, Darling Street's version of the latin cuisine that has the harbour city at its mercy. Admittedly, this punter entered Tiger territory with a degree of intrigue, caution perhaps. Two hours later all hesitations had been put to bed. This bar is a cracker. Cantina Bar is owned and run by the Singer brothers and judging on their other project, Rozelle's Corner Bar, the boys have a bit of hospitality nouse about them. The bar ticks all the boxes you'd want for a lazy post-work beer or squeamish first date; simple things that we want but won't likely find in the pokie tainted mega pubs of, say, Balmain. The bar is, expectedly, a shop-width across and tastefully decked out in a polished-industrial spirit. The walls are adorned with day of the dead motifs, fake flowers and … a film that outdates any of the bar staff being projected onto a side wall. The crowd, a pleasant mix of suits and skateboarders, park around the bar or sit at the front tables; here, standing ain't really an option. After copping a gorgeous sunset through the front doors, the lighting is perfect and a few salsa tunes later and we're itching to consume. Cocktails are the first order of the day. A 'pc'' fizz (gin, chamomile and grapefruit) and jalapeno margarita (both $16) take the edge off. The bar stocks a range of imported Mexican and Spanish beers ($8.50-$12) and boasts a decent wine list. The organic shiraz ($8.50 glass) comes with an ethical stamp of approval and is a delightful drop. Cantina makes the grade as a watering hole alone, but some casual dining certainly amps up the experience. The lovely bar staff recommend the pulled pork sliders ($16), and they don't disappoint. These tasty suckers are culmination of explosive flavours in a bun-sized package that go beyond generic Tex-Mex. The build-it-yourself mini fish tacos ($16) are a nice little innovation and the cactus salad ($12) a buzzy way to say you've eaten cactus. And to cap off the night, the warm churros with chilli chocolate dipping sauce ($10) are more than worth the guilt. Mexican bars may have usurped Irish pubs for the themed drinking throne, but it's a hard formula to complain about when well executed. Cantina Bar is certainly a welcome addition to the cartel and will deservedly pack out with Balmain locals and tourists after a few drinks and a mean feed.
Barangaroo's a'Mare has long sat at the polished end of Sydney's Italian dining scene, all tableside theatre, crisp linens and a price point to match. Now, the Pavonis are opening things up. From April 22, the lauded restaurant will expand into a three-part venue, adding a new upstairs pizzeria and aperitivo bar, offering a more accessible way into one of the city's most pedigree-backed kitchens. If you know the names behind it, the move tracks. Alessandro and Anna Pavoni, the duo responsible for Ormeggio at The Spit, Cibaria Manly and Postino Osteria, have built a reputation on detail-driven Italian dining. Since opening in 2020, a'Mare has been their flagship: refined, exacting and firmly in 'special-occasion' territory. Upstairs, Pizza'Mare is shifting the dial. It's the group's first pizzeria, taking over the mezzanine with a more relaxed, drop-in format. The same produce-led philosophy, just expressed through pizza, pasta and antipasti instead of full-scale dining. The pizzas are built on a pre-fermented biga dough for a lighter, more digestible base, cooked in a Modena-imported MAM oven. Pizzaiolo Paolo Lacarpia, who has spun pizzas across Puglia and Tuscany, leads the offering under executive chef Giuseppe Fuzio. The menu leans clean and classic, with rigatoni cacio e pepe, punchy pennette arrabbiata and antipasti like Sydney rock oysters and octopus alla Luciana, alongside a tight pizza list that moves from traditional to downright luxurious. That includes the a'Marinara, topped with yellowfin tuna crudo, stracciatella and lemon zest (with optional caviar if you want to really get down). It's this balance that defines the new offering; familiar, but still unmistakably a'Mare. Next door, Vista'Mare is all about aperitivo culture, with spritzes, negronis and Venetian-style cicchetti designed for grazing by the harbour. There's also a rare Campari Seltz machine, one of only a handful worldwide, adding a direct line to Milanese drinking culture by way of frothy, ice-cold sippers. Don't fret though, none of this replaces the original experience. Downstairs, the a'Mare dining room continues as is, with its signature tableside service and dishes like trofie al pesto and cotoletta Milanese firmly leading the menu. Instead, the expansion reframes the experience. While a'Mare still sits comfortably in the anniversary and birthday camp, it now stretches across multiple formats, from a quick midweek pizza upstairs to Friday arvo knock-offs, and the full dining room experience below. For diners, this a new way in: the same kitchen, the same attention to detail, just without committing to the full-scale affair. Pizza'Mare and Vista'Mare will open on April 22, and reservations can be made at the website here. Imagery: Supplied | Steven Woodburn
A lot of Sydney's festivals push the boundaries of expansiveness, but few manage to cover a month wall-to-wall the way that Art Month lays claim to March. It's a solid thirty one days of hooking-up contemporary art, artist initiatives and Sydney galleries with an appreciative general public. Returning for a third year, the festival offers you the chance to wend your way into the Sydney art world as it briefly claims some space for you in art locations from the rambunctious to the serene. Fitting schedule to ambition, this year's selection is voluminous, filled with exhibtions, talks, workshops, tours and forays into the night. Diego Bonetto takes your on an edible tour by the Casula Powerhouse, new media artists dLux celebrate 30 years with digital sculpture spotting tours and art shoehorned into a pair of theatres. ARI gurus Matchbox Projects will help you see Sydney's ARI gems while the LOST Studio Trail picks out, part by part, the hidden creative side of Leichhardt's art. And if those options seems a bit slow-moving, Art Cycle brings four art tours by bike to add colour between the lines left by the other tour contenders. Exhibited highlights include Berlin-curated cultural exchange Migration, popping-up in the shadow of the MCA, a one-off show of Pat Corrigan's Indigenous Collection in SBS Sydney's angular confines and an uncommon peek into the massed cultural holdings of national art-loan service ArtBank. Stand out talks feature public art patron John Kaldor in conversation with ABC art maven Fenella Kernebone, words from Magnum rep Fiona Rogers and a some spirited defence of deliberately being an uncollectable artist. Art Month events are usually free, but often require advance bookings. Check individual events for details. Image from Julian Rosefeldt's 'asylum' video installation in Migration, courtesy of the artist.
Halloween has been and gone for 2024, but Australia isn't done with peering at pumpkins yet. One of the most stunning sights to see in the country right now, and on an ongoing basis, is a giant gourd that stands five metres tall. The fact that it's yellow and black, and also covered in polka dots, explains why this is such a spectacular piece of art: it's one of Yayoi Kusama's famous pumpkin sculptures. Back in April, Melbourne's NGV International promised that the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025 would be filled with spots and gourds when it announced Yayoi Kusama, its big summer blockbuster exhibition. Featuring 180-plus works from the Japanese artist, the retrospective opens on Sunday, December 15, displaying until Monday, April 21. Ahead of that launch, however, Dancing Pumpkin has already arrived — and been unveiled for gallery visitors to enjoy. Open to the public since Saturday, November 8, 2024 in NGV International's Federation Court, the 2020 piece is making its Australian debut. Until now, only two editions of it had been seen anywhere on the planet, initially in 2021 at the New York Botanical Garden and then in 2022–3 at the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar. Yayoi Kusama itself is also a first, as a world-premiere that Aussie art lovers can only check out in the Victorian capital. Gourds and dots are among Kusama's trademarks, with Dancing Pumpkin combining the two in one of her biggest pumpkin sculptures of her career. Its towering height and legs in various poses — hence the name — means that visitors literally look up at the artwork. You can also wander beneath it. While checking out not just Dancing Pumpkin but the Yayoi Kusama exhibition overall is a summer must, the former is sticking around, with the piece acquired by the NGV. "We're delighted to unveil Yayoi Kusama's breathtaking Dancing Pumpkin sculpture ahead of our major exhibition surveying the artist's groundbreaking career. The newly acquired work, supported through the generosity of the Loti & Victor Smorgon Fund, will leave a defining impact on the NGV Collection and will be available for all Victorians to enjoy for many years to come," said NGV Director Tony Ellwood AM. When we say that this Kusama showcase, is big, we mean it. While the Japanese artist's work is no stranger to Aussie shores — and was the focus of a comprehensive showcase at Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art back in 2017–18 — NGV International's ode to the iconic talent is the largest that the country has ever seen. Among its highlights is another of Kusama's usual fascinations: kaleidoscopic reflections. Visitors will also be able to scope out the world-premiere showing of a brand-new infinity mirror. The NGV has curated Yayoi Kusama with input from Kusama, with the end result stepping through the 95-year-old artist's eight decades of making art via a thematic chronology. Some pieces hail from her childhood. Some are recent. Her output in her hometown of Matsumoto from the late 30s–50s; the results of relocating to America in 1957; archival materials covering her performances and activities in her studios, especially with a political charge, in the 60s and 70s: they'll all appear. Half of the exhibition is devoted to the past four decades — so, pumpkins galore; giant paintings; and an impressive and expansive range of room installations, complete with her very first infinity room from 1965, plus creative interpretations since from the 80s onwards. Again, this is a hefty exhibition. It's one of the most-comprehensive Kusama retrospectives ever staged globally (and the closest that you'll get to experiencing her Tokyo museum without leaving Australia). Basically, wherever you look across NGV International's ground level, Kusama works will be waiting, spanning paintings, installations, sketches, drawings, collages and sculptures, as well as videos and clothing. For the first time in the country, 2019's THE HOPE OF THE POLKA DOTS BURIED IN INFINITY WILL ETERNALLY COVER THE UNIVERSE will unleash its six-metre-high tentacles — as also speckled with yellow-and-black polka dots. One section of the gallery will replicate Kusama's New York studio. Over 20 experimental fashion designs by the artist will also demand attention. Infinity Net paintings from the 50s and 60s, Accumulation sculptures and textiles from the 60s and 70s, and a Kusama for Kids offshoot with all-ages interactivity (fingers crossed for an obliteration room) are also on their way. Almost six decades since first debuting at 1966's Venice Biennale — unofficially — Narcissus Garden will be a part of Yayoi Kusama, too, in a new version made of 1400 30-centimetre-diameter stainless silver balls. Now that's how you open an exhibition, as this will. NGV's Waterwall is also scoring a Kusama artwork specific to the space, while the Great Hall will be filled with the giant balloons of Dots Obsession floating overhead. [caption id="attachment_950480" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Yayoi Kusama, 2022 © YAYOI KUSAMA[/caption] Dancing Pumpkin is on display at NGV International, St Kilda Road, Melbourne until Monday, April 21, 2025. Yayoi Kusama runs from Sunday, December 15, 2024–Monday, April 21, 2025. Head to the NGV website for more details and tickets. Images: Yayoi Kusama's Dancing Pumpkin 2020 now on display for the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at NGV International, Melbourne until 21 April 2025. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: Sean Fennessy.
If you've been looking for an excuse to book a Perth trip this year, RAC Arena is making a very strong case for it. The 2026 calendar is stacked with major music, comedy and live-event dates, giving east-coast visitors plenty of reasons to turn a night out into a full weekend away. While there's a lot happening at the venue across the year, this hit list leans into the headline acts most worth planning around — whether you're after a huge pop night, a long-awaited hometown set or a comedy show that fully justifies a flight west. There's even room for something a little different, because the best arena lineups are never just one-note. It helps that Perth is an easy city to build a mini break around once the tickets are sorted. You can pair your RAC Arena night with beach time, a day in Fremantle, a wander through Kings Park or a trip to Swan Valley for a winery lunch before heading back into the city. So if you're keen to make a westbound trip feel bigger than a fly-in, fly-out show, start with the dates below. These are the RAC Arena picks worth locking into the calendar now, in the order they're landing across 2026. Machine Gun Kelly — April 8 Machine Gun Kelly is kicking off the Australian and New Zealand leg of his Lost Americana tour in Perth, bringing his genre-blurring mix of rap, rock and alt-pop to RAC Arena. With a reputation for high-energy live shows and a huge global following behind him, this one looks set to be a big way to start the arena run. Jimmy Carr — April 21–22 If razor-sharp one-liners and properly dark humour are your thing, Jimmy Carr's Perth return should be high on your list. Demand has already been strong enough to add a second show, so this is clearly one of the comedy dates to lock in early. Harlem Globetrotters — June 20 Not every RAC Arena highlight this year is strictly a concert, and the Harlem Globetrotters' 100 Year Tour is a good example of that. Expect big tricks, huge energy and plenty of family-friendly spectacle from one of the most iconic names in live sports entertainment. Laufey — July 25 Two years after her last Australian visit, Laufey is bringing her A Matter of Time Tour to Perth in late July. Supposedly her biggest tour yet, her unique blend of jazz and classically infused pop will be sweeping the nation, and the hearts of everyone at RAC Arena (for one night only). Jim Jefferies — July 30 Jim Jefferies is bringing his Son of a Carpenter tour to Perth, with the Australian comic promising a night of brutally honest stories, biting commentary and absolutely no soft edges. For anyone planning a comedy-led trip west, this is one of the sharpest names on the bill. Urzila Carlson — July 31 Urzila Carlson follows close behind with Fatty On a Yacht, a new show built around not fitting in, standing out and laughing through the awkwardness of it all. Her deadpan delivery and fan-favourite status make this an easy pick for anyone keen to line up back-to-back comedy nights at RAC Arena. Alex Warren — September 12 Feel stuck in the ordinary? The chart-topping sounds of Alex Warren might be just the thing you need. If you missed him last year, or need another dose of his uplifting music to keep you topped up in these dark times, the megastar is bringing his global Finding Friends on the Road tour to Perth this September. Tame Impala — October 24–25 Tame Impala's hometown return is one of the biggest RAC Arena moments of the year, with Kevin Parker bringing new album Deadbeat back to Perth for a massive two-night run. A second show has already been added, which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about how quickly these tickets are moving. Lily Allen — November 1 Lily Allen rounds out the run with what's being billed as the biggest headline tour of her career, arriving in Perth with her new live show Lily Allen performs West End Girl. She'll play the new album in full, while also bringing the same sharp, candid pop voice that made her one of the defining artists of the 2000s. Head to RAC Arena's What's On page to see the full 2026 lineup and snap up tickets. This article is produced by Concrete Playground in partnership with RAC Arena. Image credit: Supplied/RAC Arena.
Two excellent TV comedies about show business hardly makes a trend, let alone heralds a golden age, but it's currently a fantastic time for smart, astute and extremely funny series about standing behind microphones. In 2021, Girls5eva and Hacks premiered in America within a week of each other, deservedly winning fans immediately. In 2022, they've both returned for their second seasons in the US and Down Under (via Stan and TVNZ On Demand) with the same timing. Accordingly, if you only want to watch shows about talented ladies chasing their starry dreams right now, that's firmly on the cards. If you're keen to dive deep into what makes something funny — how comedy evolves, shifts and swings; the differences between easy and well-earned laughs; the courage it takes to truly lay yourself bare during a standup set; and how comedy is received when it's coming from women rather than men, too — that's Hacks' remit. As the goofier and sillier but still wonderfully savvy Girls5eva does, it carves into the entertainment industry's treatment of women, and doesn't hold back from depicting the bleak reality. It's scathing, in fact. This Emmy- and Golden Globe-winner's specific target, though: the world of comedy. In season one, Hacks pushed Deborah Vance (Jean Smart, Mare of Easttown) and Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder, North Hollywood) together. The former is a veteran comic with a long-running Las Vegas residency, while the twentysomething latter reluctantly took a job as Deborah's assistant after thinking she was going to make it big in Los Angeles, then getting herself into trouble via an ill-thought-out tweet. The end result could've been cliched from start to finish. The series does indeed focus on a chalk-and-cheese pair who don't get along, slowly discover that they have more in common than either will admit, and try to navigate the unwelcoming realm that is comedy for women with each other's help. But, crucially, that whole concept is the premise, not the joke. Hacks doesn't laugh at its mismatched, wittily spiky central duo, but at everything they're stuck facing. The series' first season quickly cemented itself as one of 2021's best new TV shows — one of two knockout newbies starring Jean Smart last year, thanks to the aforementioned Mare of Easttown — and it's just as ace the second time around. It's still searingly funny, nailing that often-elusive blend of insight, intelligence and hilarity. It retains its observational, wry tone, and remains devastatingly relatable even if you've never been a woman trying to make it in comedy. And it's happy to linger where it needs to to truly understand its characters, but never simply dwells in the same place as its last batch of episodes. Season two is literally about hitting the road, so covering fresh territory is baked into the story; however, Hacks' trio of key behind-the-scenes creatives aren't content to merely repeat themselves with a different backdrop. Those guiding hands — writer Jen Statsky (The Good Place), writer/director Lucia Aniello (Rough Night) and writer/director/co-star Paul W Downs (The Other Two) — started Hacks after helping to make Broad City a hit. Clearly, they all know a thing or two about moving on from the past. That's the decision both Deborah and Ava had to make themselves in season one, with the show's second season now charting the fallout. So, Deborah has farewelled her residency and the dependable gags that kept pulling in crowds, opting to test out new and far-more-personal material on a cross-country tour instead. Ava has accepted her role by Deborah's side, and is willing to see it as a valid career move rather than an embarrassing stopgap. That said, last year's episodes also left the series with a potential wrecking ball: an email Ava wrote about Deborah while drunk, high, and upset about being slapped and insulted. Penned in anger and filled with extremely personal details about the comedian, it was sent to LA producers who wanted to hire Ava to mine Deborah's life for a new show about an insufferable woman in power. That destructive stream of text isn't season two's entire focus, but it's also inescapable, as much as Ava wants it to just disappear — as does Jimmy (Downs), Ava and Deborah's shared manager. But Hacks has always been willing to see that actions have consequences, not only for an industry that repeatedly marginalises women, but for its imperfect leading ladies. The brilliantly biting Smart continues to turn in awards-worthy work in Hacks' second season, and Einbinder still wears Ava's entitled chaos like a second skin. But there's one added bonus: now Deborah and Ava are lived-in characters, rather than newcomers to audiences. It's a pleasure to see both actors dive deep into what makes their on-screen alter egos tick, clash and occasionally get along; indeed, many of season two's best moments explore the whirlwind that ensues when Deborah and Ava fight but still clearly care about each other. Also upping the ante: being stuck on a tour bus on the road, decked out with a luxe bedroom for Deborah but condensing Ava's bunk to the tiny space above the onboard tanning bed. There, with fellow assistant Damien (Mark Indelicato, With Love) and new tour manager Weed (Laurie Metcalf, The Dropout) in tow, everyone's feelings bubble and boil in the resulting pressure cooker. Those supporting players — Deborah's daughter DJ (Katlin Olson, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia), business manager Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins, Candyman) and personal blackjack dealer Kiki (Poppy Liu, The Afterparty) included, as well as Jimmy and his high-maintenance assistant Kayla (Megan Salter) — don't get as much time to shine this time, though. That's the one difficulty that Hacks' sophomore batch of episodes have, but it's also the best kind of problem. There's still so much depth to Deborah and Ava's stories and their dynamic, and so much to unpack about them separately, together and in the world of comedy, that pushing the spotlight elsewhere is always going to prove tricky. The only solution: renewing Hacks for a third season, and hopefully more beyond that. Check out the trailer for Hacks season two below: Hacks' second season starts streaming via Stan in Australia from Friday, May 13, beginning with two episodes, then dropping further instalments weekly — and on TVNZ On Demand in New Zealand. Read our full review of season one. Images: Karen Ballard/HBO Max.
Looking for the paw-fect way to spend a Sunday with your dog in Sydney? Head to BrewDog at the South Eveleigh Precinct with your four-legged friend, and you and your fur baby can be immortalised at a Pooch Portrait session. From Sunday, August 11, until the beginning of September, Brewdog patrons can get a complimentary photo portrait of their dog. A cartoonist will also be on deck drawing caricatures and there will even be an instant photo booth, so you and your photogenic Fido can capture some candid memories together. Don't have your own dog but still love giving pats? Head down to the Interchange Pavilion in South Eveleigh on Wednesday, August 28 between midday and 2pm and you'll find an adorable puppy party where you can cuddle up with a pup. For us humans, playing with puppies can reduce stress and promote relaxation, while stimulation and exercise have myriad benefits for the pooch, so it's a win-win all round. Pooch Portraits and Puppy Playtime are both part of South Eveleigh precinct's month-long winter series of events. "We've loved curating such a community-focused and immersive winter program that really showcases the vibrant precinct of South Eveleigh," Jamie Toko, Portfolio Manager of Mirvac said. "We encourage locals and visitors to enjoy the precinct and take the opportunity to eat and drink at some of our fantastic restaurants and cafes, explore our gardens and community spaces and tour the historic buildings, all while learning something new via these unique activities."
The first time that filmmaker Justin Kurzel and screenwriter Shaun Grant tackled a recent dark chapter in Australia's history, in 2011's Snowtown, they both earned AACTA awards for their efforts — and their film picked up six gongs in total. Ten years later, they've bettered the feat with Nitram, which explores the lead up to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. Both Kurzel and Grant again collected trophies, while the feature nabbed eight awards all up. One of those prizes: the AACTA for Best Film, beating out The Dry, The Furnace, High Ground, Penguin Bloom and Rams. Nitram also swept all four acting prizes in the film fields, with its four key cast members — Cannes Film Festival Best Actor-winner Caleb Landry Jones, plus Aussies Judy Davis, Anthony LaPaglia and Essie Davis — emerging victorious. That's the big story from the 2021 AACTA Awards, which announced its nominees back at the beginning of November, then handed out its trophies on Wednesday, December 8. Nitram scooping the pool isn't surprising, given that it's powerful, haunting and the best Aussie movie of the year — and that AACTA has a history of going all on features it loves. Last year's Best Film recipient, Babyteeth, won seven awards, while The Nightingale picked up six the year before, Sweet Country did the same the year before that and Lion nabbed 12 in 2017. (Thanks to the likes of Hacksaw Ridge, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Dressmaker, The Great Gatsby and The Sapphires before that, the trend goes on.) The Academy's gongs also span television — so, if you've watched The Newsreader or Fisk this year, then you've seen 2021's Best Drama and Best Narrative Comedy Series. Across both the big and small screens, other winners include Ellie and Abbie (& Ellie's Dead Aunt) for Best Indie Film, My Name Is Gulpilil for Best Documentary, and Fires for Best Telefeature or Miniseries. Here's a rundown of the major nominations — and you can check out the full list on AACTA's website: AACTA NOMINEES 2021 FILM AWARDS: BEST FILM The Dry The Furnace High Ground Nitram — WINNER Penguin Bloom Rams BEST INDIE FILM Disclosure Ellie and Abbie (& Ellie's Dead Aunt) — WINNER Lone Wolf Moon Rock for Monday My First Summer Under My Skin BEST DIRECTION Rob Connolly, The Dry Roderick MacKay, The Furnace Stephen Maxwell Johnson, High Ground Justin Kurzel, Nitram — WINNER Glendyn Ivin, Penguin Bloom BEST LEAD ACTOR Simon Baker, High Ground Eric Bana, The Dry Caleb Landry Jones, Nitram — WINNER Ahmed Malek, The Furnace Jacob Junior Nayinggul, High Ground BEST LEAD ACTRESS Rose Byrne, Peter Rabbit 2 Judy Davis, Nitram — WINNER Noni Hazlehurst, June Again Genevieve O'Reilly, The Dry Naomi Watts, Penguin Bloom BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Michael Caton, Rams Baykali Ganambarr, The Furnace Anthony LaPaglia, Nitram — WINNER Sean Mununggurr, High Ground Jack Thompson, High Ground BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Essie Davis, Nitram — WINNER Claudia Karvan, June Again Esmerelda Marimowa, High Ground Miranda Tapsell, The Dry Jacki Weaver, Penguin Bloom BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Monica Zanetti, Ellie and Abbie (& Abbie's Dead Aunt) Roderick McKay, The Furnace Chris Anastassiades, High Ground JJ Winlove, June Again Shaun Grant, Nitram — WINNER BEST SCREENPLAY Rob Connolly and Harry Cripps, The Dry — WINNER Shaun Grant and Harry Cripps, Penguin Bloom Will Gluck and Patrick Burleigh, Peter Rabbit 2 Jules Duncan, Rams BEST DOCUMENTARY Girls Can't Surf I'm Wanita My Name Is Gulpilil — WINNER Playing with Sharks Strong Female Lead When the Camera Stopped Rolling TELEVISION AWARDS: BEST DRAMA SERIES Clickbait Jack Irish Mr Inbetween The Newsreader — WINNER Total Control Wakefield Wentworth BEST TELEFEATURE OR MINISERIES A Sunburnt Christmas The End Fires — WINNER New Gold Mountain The Unusual Suspects BEST NARRATIVE COMEDY SERIES Aftertaste Aunty Donna's Big Ol' House of Fun Fisk — WINNER Frayed Preppers Rosehaven BEST COMEDY ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAM Dom and Adrian 2020 Hard Quiz — WINNER The Moth Effect Spicks and Specks The Weekly BEST LEAD ACTOR IN A TELEVISION DRAMA Rudi Dharmaligam, Wakefield Guy Pearce, Jack Irish Sam Reid, The Newsreader Richard Roxburgh, Fires Scott Ryan, Mr Inbetween — WINNER BEST LEAD ACTRESS IN A TELEVISION DRAMA Deborah Mailman, Total Control Mandy McElhinney, Wakefield Miranda Otto, Fires Pamela Rabe, Wentworth Anna Torv, The Newsreader — WINNER BEST COMEDY PERFORMER Mark Samual Bonanno, Aunty Donna's Big Ol' House of Fun Kitty Flanagan, Fisk — WINNER Tom Gleeson, Hard Quiz Broden Kelly, Aunty Donna's Big Ol' House of Fun Sarah Kendall, Frayed Nakkiah Lui, Preppers Luke McGregor, Rosehaven Celia Pacquola, Rosehaven BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A TELEVISION DRAMA Harry Greenwood, Wakefield William McInnes, The Newsreader — WINNER Matt Nable, Mr Inbetween Stephen Peacocke, The Newsreader Justin Rosniak, Mr Inbetween BEST GUEST OR SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A TELEVISION DRAMA Michelle Lim Davidson, The Newsreader Marg Downey, The Newsreader Harriet Dyer, Wakefield Rachel Griffiths, Total Control — WINNER Noni Hazlehurst, The End
No two neighbourhoods are the same in Singapore. From swanky Marina Bay to lively Little India, buzzing Orchard Road and idyllic Sentosa, each area of the Lion City has its own distinct character and offers unparalleled adventures. Katong-Joo Chiat is no exception. The vibrant region has roots tracing back to the early 19th century, gradually evolving from coconut and cotton plantations to an affluent coastal retreat in the 1920s, which drew a strong community of Straits–born Chinese and Malay descendants — otherwise known as the Peranakan community. Now, the neighbourhood is a colourful cultural hub that still upholds remnants of Singapore's Peranakan culture. With the help of Singapore Tourism, we're showcasing some of the top experiences around Katong-Joo Chiat, so you can dive into the area's rich and diverse history. What to See Wandering through Katong-Joo Chiat will take you on a journey through time. Here, you'll find heritage landmarks interspersed with contemporary boutiques and eateries that pay homage to the area's Peranakan history and culture. Discover Peranakan architecture at the pastel-hued shophouses on Koon Seng Road. Built in the 1920s, these restored dwellings interweave traditional Peranakan design with European and Chinese influences, such as floral tiles, ornate frames and intricate motifs. You're welcome to take photos, but keep in mind that these are occupied residences. Want to see it all but don't know where to start? Hop on a Vespa sidecar to see the area from a different vantage point. Singapore Sidecars runs tours throughout the city on vintage Vespas, while you take it in from the comfort of a sidecar. The Katong-Joo Chiat tour takes you along hidden laneways to see Koon Seng Road, Sri Senpaga Vinayagar Temple, street murals and local coffee houses. If you're still keen for more, add on an extra hour and you'll get to explore a pre-war school and an old residential area, and enjoy a meal at a hawker centre or shophouse eatery. [caption id="attachment_980366" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Danny Santos[/caption] What to Do Continue your exploration of Peranakan culture at Rumah Kim Choo and Rumah Bebe, where you'll be able to venture inside old shophouses. Rumah Kim Choo is a two-storey shophouse with a gallery and Kim Choo Kueh Chang eatery. Head upstairs to join a beading workshop or private tour, before sampling traditional Peranakan snacks downstairs, including savoury rice dumplings and sweet Nyonya kueh, which the family-owned business has been making since 1945. [caption id="attachment_980370" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Yik Keat[/caption] Similarly, Rumah Bebe sells Peranakan collectibles and clothing in a vivid blue shophouse, with classes and tours upstairs. After you've learnt about beading techniques and tried on some Nyonya garments like sarongs and kebayas, round out the experience with some Peranakan cuisine at the restaurant downstairs. The menu includes small bites, curries, a traditional ayam buah keluak (chicken or pork ribs cooked in tamarind gravy) and a selection of sweet kuehs. [caption id="attachment_982044" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Danny Santos[/caption] For shopping and souvenirs — that will bring you back to the present era — make a beeline for Cat Socrates and The WYLD Shop. Cat Socrates has a selection of homewares, books, decor, lifestyle goods and gifts by Singaporean designers. You'll even find knickknacks inspired by the neighbourhood, including a linen wall calendar of Joo Chiat Road, glass mugs with Peranakan tiles, sandals with shophouses and Southeast Asian fruits, and art prints of local scenes. The WYLD Shop also carries a range of local brands across clothing, accessories, beauty, homewares, lifestyle goods and gifts. Get some mementos of your trip to bring home, such as a tea towel with the shophouses of Koon Seng Road, a candle inspired by the tropical scent of Singapore, facial oils by a locally made brand, and brightly printed kimono jackets. What to Eat Your Katong-Joo Chiat visit wouldn't be complete without some treats to reward your day of exploration. Established in 1925, Chin Mee Chin Confectionery is a neighbourhood institution that has withstood the test of time. First opened as a coffee shop, the bakery and eatery evolved with the times and is still managed by some of the original family to this day. Be sure to have a taste of the signature kaya toast, sugee cake and kaya swiss roll when you're there. [caption id="attachment_983639" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Birds of Paradise Facebook[/caption] Get some respite from the humidity at Birds of Paradise. The store serves heaping scoops of creamy gelato, but you won't get any traditional flavours here. Instead, expect flavours derived from natural botanicals (without any artificial additives) and inspired by Southeast Asian tastes and aromas. Options range from the delicate white chrysanthemum and fruity lychee raspberry to the rich pandan coconut caramel and nuanced macadamia butterfly pea. Book your Singapore holiday now with Flight Centre. All images courtesy of Singapore Tourism Board.
Something delightful has been happening in cinemas in some parts of the country. After numerous periods spent empty during the pandemic, with projectors silent, theatres bare and the smell of popcorn fading, picture palaces in many Australian regions are back in business — including both big chains and smaller independent sites in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. During COVID-19 lockdowns, no one was short on things to watch, of course. In fact, you probably feel like you've streamed every movie ever made, including new releases, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent all your time of late glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of new films are hitting cinemas so that you can do just that — and we've rounded up, watched and reviewed everything on offer this week. NOPE Kudos to Jordan Peele for giving his third feature as a writer/director a haters-gonna-hate-hate-hate name: for anyone unimpressed with Nope, the response is right there. Kudos, too, to the Get Out and Us filmmaker for making his third bold, intelligent and supremely entertaining horror movie in a row — a reach-for-the-skies masterpiece that's ambitious and eerie, imaginative and expertly crafted, as savvy about cinema as it is about spectacle, and inspires the exact opposite term to its moniker. Reteaming with Peele after nabbing an Oscar nomination for Get Out, Daniel Kaluuya utters the titular word more than once in Nope. Exclaiming "yep" in your head each time he does is an instant reaction. Everything about the film evokes that same thrilled endorsement, but it comes particularly easily whenever Kaluuya's character surveys the wild and weird events around him. We say yay to his nays because we know we'd respond the same way if confronted by even half the chaos that Peele whooshes through the movie. As played with near-silent weariness by the always-excellent Judas and the Black Messiah Oscar-winner, Haywood's Hollywood Horses trainer OJ doesn't just dismiss the strange thing in the heavens, though. He can't, even if he doesn't realise the full extent of what's happening when his father (Keith David, Love Life) suddenly slumps on his steed on an otherwise ordinary day. Six months later, OJ and his sister Emerald (Keke Palmer, Lightyear) are trying to keep the family business running; he does the wrangling, she does the on-set safety spiels, which double as a primer on the Haywoods' lengthy links to the movie industry. The first moving images ever presented, by Eadweard Muybridge of a galloping horse in the 1800s, featured their great-great-great grandfather as the jockey, Emerald explains. His image was immortalised, but not his name — and, although she doesn't say it directly, that's a fate she isn't eager to share. In fact, Emerald ends her patter by proclaiming that she's available for almost any Hollywood job that might come up. Unsurprisingly, OJ is horrified about the hustle. Her big chance is indeed tied to their ranch, but not in the way that Emerald initially realises either — because who'd predict that something would be lurking above the Haywoods' Agua Dulce property? Just as Get Out saw Peele reinterrogate the possession movie and Us did the same with doppelgängers, Nope goes all in on flying saucers. So, Emerald wants the kind of proof that only video footage can offer. She wants her "Oprah shot", as well as a hefty payday. Soon, the brother-sister duo are buying new surveillance equipment — which piques the interest of UFO-obsessed electronics salesman Angel Torres (Brandon Perea, The OA) — and also enlisting renowned cinematographer Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott, Veni Vidi Vici) to capture the lucrative image. Cue plenty of faces staring up in shock and wonder, as Steven Spielberg has made a mainstay of his films — and cue a movie that nods to Jaws as much as Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Peele makes smartly and playfully cineliterate flicks, which aren't content to merely wink and nudge, but instead say "yep" themselves: yep to all the tropes and symbols that the comedian-turned-filmmaker can filter through his own lens, and his determination to unearth the reality of living in America today, just as he did when he was making some of this century's best skits on Key & Peele. Indeed, Nope is keenly aware of the lure and power of spectacle, especially the on-screen kind, which also echoes through in the picture's other pivotal character. Ricky 'Jupe' Park (Steven Yeun, Minari) isn't involved in the Haywoods' attempts to snap upwards, but the former child star runs a neighbouring theme park called Jupiter's Claim, which cashes in on his big hit role in a movie called Kid Sheriff. He's known for short-lived 90s sitcom Gordy's Home, too, starring opposite a chimpanzee, and moments of the show also pop up in Peele's film. Read our full review. THE PRINCESS Finding a moment or statement from The Princess to sum up The Princess is easy. Unlike the powerful documentary's subject in almost all aspects of her life from meeting the future King of England onwards, viewers have the luxury of choice. Working solely with archival materials, writer/director Ed Perkins (Tell Me Who I Am) doesn't lack in chances to demonstrate how distressing it was to be Diana, Princess of Wales — and the fact that his film can even exist also underscores that point. While both The Crown and Spencer have dramatised Diana's struggles with applauded results, The Princess tells the same tale as it was incessantly chronicled in the media between 1981–1997. The portrait that emanates from this collage of news footage, tabloid snaps and TV clips borders on dystopian. It's certainly disturbing. What kind tormented world gives rise to this type of treatment just because someone is famous? The one we all live in, sadly. Perkins begins The Princess with shaky visuals from late in August 1997, in Paris, when Diana and Dodi Fayed were fleeing the paparazzi on what would be the pair's last evening. The random voice behind the camera is excited at the crowds and commotion, not knowing how fatefully the night would end. That's telling, haunting and unsettling, and so is the clip that immediately follows. The filmmaker jumps back to 1981, to a then 19-year-old Diana being accosted as she steps into the street. Reporters demand answers on whether an engagement will be announced, as though extracting private details from a teenager because she's dating Prince Charles is a right. The Princess continues in the same fashion, with editors Jinx Godfrey (Chernobyl) and Daniel Lapira (The Boat) stitching together example after example of a woman forced to be a commodity and expected to be a spectacle, all to be devoured and consumed. Listing comparable moments within The Princess' riveting frames is easy; they snowball relentlessly into an avalanche. Indeed, after the film shows Charles and Diana's betrothal news and how it's received by the press and public, the media scrutiny directed Diana's way becomes the subject of a TV conversation. "I think it's going to be much easier. I think we're going to see a change in the attitude of the press. I think that now she's publicly one of the royal family, all this telephoto lens business will stop," a talking head from four decades back asserts — and it isn't merely the benefit of hindsight that makes that claim sound deeply preposterous. Later, Perkins features a soundbite from a paparazzo, which proves equally foolish, not to mention a cop-out. "All we do is take pictures. The decision to buy the pictures is taken by the picture editors of the world, and they buy the pictures so their readers can see them. So at the end of the day, the buck stops with the readers," the photographer contends. The Princess isn't here to simplistically and squarely blame the public, but it does let the material it assembles — and the fact that there's so much of it, and that nothing here is new or astonishing even for a second because it's already been seen before — speak for itself. What a story that all unfurls, and how, including pondering the line between mass fascination and being complicit. Perkins eschews contemporary interviews and any other method of providing recent context, and also makes plain what everyone watching already knows: that escaping Diana has been impossible for more than 40 years now, during her life and after her death a quarter-century ago as well, but it was always worse by several orders of magnitude for Diana herself. The expressions that flicker across her face over the years, evolving from shy and awkward to determined and anguished, don't just speak volumes but downright scream. In the audio samples overlaid on paparazzi shots and ceaseless news coverage, that's dissected, too, and rarely with kindness for the woman herself. Read our full review. 6 FESTIVALS Three friends, a huge music festival worth making a mega mission to get to and an essential bag of goon: if you didn't experience that exact combination growing up in Australia, did you really grow up in Australia? That's the mix that starts 6 Festivals, too, with the Aussie feature throwing in a few other instantly familiar inclusions to set the scene. Powderfinger sing-alongs, scenic surroundings and sun-dappled moments have all filled plenty of teenage fest trips, and so has an anything-it-takes mentality — and for the film's central trio of Maxie (Rasmus King, Barons), Summer (Yasmin Honeychurch, Back of the Net) and James (Rory Potter, Ruby's Choice), they're part of their trip to Utopia Valley. But amid dancing to Lime Cordiale and Running Touch, then missing out on Peking Duk's stroke-of-midnight New Year's Eve set after a run-in with security, a shattering piece of news drops. Suddenly these festival-loving friends have a new quest: catching as much live music as they can to help James cope with cancer. The first narrative feature by Bra Boys and Fighting Fear director Macario De Souza, 6 Festivals follows Maxie, Summer and James' efforts to tour their way along the east coast festival circuit. No, there are no prizes for guessing how many gigs are on their list, with the Big Pineapple Music Festival, Yours and Owls and Lunar Electric among the events on their itinerary. Largely road-tripping between real fests, and also showcasing real sets by artists spanning Dune Rats, Bliss n Eso, G Flip, B Wise, Ruby Fields, Dope Lemon, Stace Cadet and more, 6 Festivals dances into the mud, sweat and buzz — the crowds, cheeky beers and dalliances with other substances that help form this coming-of-age rite-of-passage, aka cramming in as many festivals as you possibly can from the moment your parents will let you, as well. This is also a cancer drama, however, which makes for an unsurprisingly tricky balancing act, especially after fellow Aussie movie Babyteeth tackled the latter so devastatingly well so recently. Take that deservedly award-winning film, throw in whichever music festival documentary takes your fancy, then add The Bucket List but with teens — that's 6 Festivals. There's a touch of the concert-set 9 Songs as well, obviously sans sex scenes. Spotting the dots connected by De Souza and Sean Nash's (a Home and Away and Neighbours alum) script isn't difficult. That said, neither is spying the movie's well-intentioned aim. Riding the ecstatically bustling festival vibe, and surveying everything from the anticipation-laden pre-fest excitement through to the back-to-reality crash afterwards, 6 Festivals is an attempt to capture and celebrate the fest experience, as well as a concerted effort to face a crucial fact: that, as much as a day in the mosh pit feels like an escape and is always worth cherishing, it only sweeps away life's stark truths momentarily. The film's core threesome have their fair share of stresses; pivotally, 6 Festivals sticks with believable dramas. James faces his diagnosis, treatment and his mother's (Briony Williams, Total Control) worries, all while trying to recruit the feature's array of musical acts for his own dream event. Scoring backstage access comes courtesy of up-and-coming Indigenous muso Marley (debutant Guyala Bayles), who graces most of the lineups and shared a childhood with Summer, united by their respective mothers' struggles with addiction — and, now they've crossed paths again, offers to mentor her pal's own singing career. As for Maxie, his drug-dealing older brother Kane (Kyuss King, also from Barons) is usually at the same fests pressuring him into carrying his stash. They're the only family each other has, so saying no doesn't seem an option. Read our full review. If you're wondering what else is currently screening in Australian cinemas — or has been lately — check out our rundown of new films released in Australia on May 5, May 12, May 19 and May 26; June 2, June 9, June 16, June 23 and June 30; and July 7, July 14, July 21 and July 28, and August 4. You can also read our full reviews of a heap of recent movies, such as Petite Maman, The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Firestarter, Operation Mincemeat, To Chiara, This Much I Know to Be True, The Innocents, Top Gun: Maverick, The Bob's Burgers Movie, Ablaze, Hatching, Mothering Sunday, Jurassic World Dominion, A Hero, Benediction, Lightyear, Men, Elvis, Lost Illusions, Nude Tuesday, Ali & Ava, Thor: Love and Thunder, Compartment No. 6, Sundown, The Gray Man, The Phantom of the Open, The Black Phone, Where the Crawdads Sing, Official Competition, The Forgiven, Full Time, Murder Party and Bullet Train.
When Australia started to get excited about Brisbane potentially hosting the 2032 Olympic Games — with the Queensland capital named as the preferred host last month — one important detail stood out. Planning for an event 11 years away is all well and good (and necessary, of course), but the 2020 Tokyo Olympics hasn't yet been held, with the Games postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic. With COVID-19 case numbers still high around the world, there has been much speculation about whether the Tokyo Olympics will go ahead this year, too; however, Japan is currently forging ahead with its plans. Much will likely be different about the event, which is slated to run from Friday, July 23–Sunday, August 8 — and a lack of overseas spectators looks set to be one of the big changes. The Kyodo News Agency is reporting that the Japanese government has decided to exclude international fans from attending both the Olympics and the Paralympics, in a bid to stop the coronavirus spreading at the event. The move is sparked by fears of more contagious variants of the coronavirus that are in circulation outside of Japan. At present, restrictions on international travellers entering the country are in place in general. Japanese officials are due to meet with the International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee by the end of March to make a final decision on overseas spectators, and then to decide capacity levels — including whether Japanese spectators will be permitted to attend at all, too — for the Games in April. If international spectators are banned from attending, current ticket holders that fall into that category would receive refunds. Spectators would also be banned from the opening ceremony for the torch relay, which is due to kick off on Thursday, March 25 in Fukushima. [caption id="attachment_801246" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] The Department for Culture, Media and Sport via Wikimedia Commons[/caption] Of course, even if Japan does allow folks from overseas to travel to Tokyo to attend the Games, both Australia and New Zealand presently have international travel restrictions in effect. In Australia, a travel ban is still in place until at least mid-June, with Aussies unable to depart the nation unless they seek an exemption from Home Affairs. And in New Zealand, the government still currently advises that all New Zealanders do not travel overseas at present. For more information about the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, which are due to be held from Friday, July 23–Sunday, August 8, 2021, head to the event's website. Via Kyodo News Agency. Top image: IOC Media.
Getting some shuteye or even slightly comfortable on a long-haul can be tricky. With its new 17-hour non-stop Auckland to New York service on the horizon, Air New Zealand is hoping to put economy travellers to sleep with a new prototype that features six lie-flat pods. The Economy Skynest is the result of three years of research and development at its Hangar 22 innovation centre in Auckland. Each bunk bed-style Skynest, measuring 200 by 58 centimetres, will have room for six sleepers. While still yet to be confirmed, it is intended that each pod will include a full-size pillow, sheets and blanket, ear plugs along with privacy curtains and lighting designed for sleep. The airline says it is exploring other features such as separate reading light, personal device USB outlet and ventilation outlet. Air New Zealand Chief Marketing and Customer Officer Mike Tod says that the development of the Economy Skynest is a direct response to economy travellers inability to stretch out on long-haul flights. It's not the first time the carrier has put energy into making economy passengers more comfortable; the Economy Skycouch allows travellers to book an entire row and transform it into a makeshift bed, while last year saw the introduction of inflight exercise videos to enhance wellbeing. The airline today filed patent and trademark applications for the Economy Skynest. It will make a final decision on whether to operate the service next year after it has assessed the performance of its Auckland to New York operations. For more information about the Economy Skynest, visit airnz.co.nz.
Five years after they were first introduced to curb alcohol-fuelled violence, Sydney's lockout laws are set to be lifted in the CBD. They will, however, remain in place in the Kings Cross area. Premier Gladys Berejiklian has today announced plans to repeal the lockouts, telling The Daily Telegraph: "It's time to enhance Sydney's night-life. Sydney is Australia's only global city and we need our night-life to reflect that." The current lockout area stretches from Darling Harbour to Kings Cross and from The Rocks to Campbell Street in Surry Hills. According to The Daily Telegraph, the laws will be repealed in the CBD, but not in Kings Cross. It's not yet clear exactly where the new boundaries will be. Since the lockout laws were introduced in 2014, a reported 176 venues have closed, and a report by Deloitte Access Economics showed that the laws have contributed to NSW missing out on $16 billion in potential profits. A year-long parliamentary inquiry into the state of the Sydney's music and nightlife economy in 2018 also found that the industry was in "peril" due to the NSW Government's history of neglect, and lack of funding. [caption id="attachment_737655" align="alignnone" width="1920"] The CBD's new nightclub Pamela's will be able to extend its opening hours. Image by Kimberley Low.[/caption] In the past few years, there has been some relaxing of the laws. More than 20 venues have been granted half-hour live entertainment extensions, and Oxford Street has gone lockout-free for Mardi Gras the past two years. Earlier this year, Ms Berejiklian announced a review of the city's night-time economy by a ten-person parliamentary committee. The committee has considered close to 800 submissions from business owners and industry members and is set to release its findings on September 30 this year. Despite this being only 22 days away, Ms Berejiklian has already begun to make moves to to repeal the lockouts. There's not an exact date set for the changing of legislation, but The Daily Telegraph has reported that it's expected to occur later this year. While the CBD's nightlife and live music scene has struggled under the stifling legislation — and has seen institutions like The Basement close — the lifting of the lockout laws together with the City of Sydney's plans to introduce 24-hour trading to the CBD could mean big changes for the area. The repeal of the lockout laws would allow Sydneysiders to head into CBD bars, pubs and nightclubs after 1.30am — and those same venues to remain open after 3am — while the City of Sydney is hoping to encourage the 24 hour trading of unlicensed CBD businesses. That's all we know for now. We'll update you as more specific details — and the findings from the parliamentary committee — are released later this month. Top image: Kimberley Low
If you've ever wanted to indulge in an immersive fine-dining feast onboard a luxe yacht, here's your chance. Acclaimed chef Nelly Robinson will be plating up a six-course sensory fare for this year's Vivid Sydney. NEL's founder and chef patron will take over the kitchen of superyacht The Jackson on Saturday, May 25, for what promises to be a colourful culinary journey backed by front-row views of the iconic Sydney Harbour. Robinson is known for his avant-garde and often kooky degustation menus, so prepare for the kind unbridled creativity that's been on display in his previous degustations, which span from Disney-inspired dishes and Christmas-themed festivities to a dedicated showcase of native Aussie ingredients and even a bold take on KFC. Upon boarding the multimillion-dollar cruiser, you'll be met with free-flowing sparkling for the first hour, as well as a selection of small bites including beetroot and tuna tarts, smoked oysters and a chicken and macadamia toastie. For the sit-down portion of the evening, you'll tuck into a lemon myrtle-infused poached salmon for entree, lamb shoulder with herb risotto for main and a banana-starring dessert. To finish the cruise on a high, head on upstairs for a boogie accompanied by a rose heart canapé. Tickets cost $325 per person, but you can add an additional $65 for a Tyrrell's Wine pairing to accompany your meal. At the end of the evening, you'll disembark at King Street Wharf where you can continue partying into the night. If you love fine food, immersive creative experiences and fabulous views, you best consider adding this to your list of must-book Vivid Sydney events. Head to The Jackson's website to purchase tickets to A Night with Nelly Robinson before they sell out.
It's true of every movie: how much you know going in can and does influence the viewing experience. Great films are still great films no matter your prior awareness of their twists, or even just the main premise, but how the audience takes that ride will morph and shift depending on what they're expecting will eventuate. Abigail is a case in point. Why that's so was revealed in its trailer, leaving almost no one sitting down to it in the dark about what's to come. But when the reveal arrives in Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett's fifth full-length directorial effort — and their first after bringing back Ghostface in 2022's Scream and 2023's Scream VI — it's a glorious moment. It's also treated in the flick as a big unveiling, and not just for the picture's characters, in what serves as an overt reminder of how divorced that marketing a movie is to making it. Abigail, aka the tween vampire ballerina film, is still an entertaining time irrespective of your starting knowledge, thankfully. It begins as a blend of a heist affair, horror mansion movie and whodunnit, with a kidnapping skilfully pulled off by a motley crew (is there any other type?), then with holing up in the mastermind's sprawling and eerie safe house with their 12-year-old captive, then with fingers being pointed and their charge toying with them. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are slick with their opening, from breaking into a well-secured estate to avoiding surveillance cameras while speeding through the streets afterwards. They're playful, too, when corralling everyone in their next location — a setup that they've turned into an ace horror watch before in 2019's Ready or Not — and letting suspicions run wild. The six abductors here, as given nicknames Reservoir Dogs-style but with a Rat Pack spin, and told not to divulge their true identities or histories to each other: Joey (Melissa Barrera, Carmen), a recovering addict with medical skills; Frank (Dan Stevens, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire), who has a background in law enforcement; Rickles (William Catlett, Constellation), an ex-marine; Sammy (Kathryn Newton, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania), the resident hacker; Peter (Kevin Durand, Pantheon), the dim-witted muscle; and Dean (Angus Cloud, Euphoria), the stoner wheelman. The middleman for their employer: the no-nonsense Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito, The Gentlemen). And the girl: Abigail (Alisha Weir, Wicked Little Letters), of course, who is the daughter of someone obscenely rich and powerful. She's just finished dance rehearsals, is still in her tutu, and proves the picture of scared and unsettled when she's snatched from her bedroom, drugged and blindfolded — until she isn't. Anyone that's seen Ready or Not will spot the commonalities with Abigail, even amid such hefty differences as well. Although this definitely isn't about a newlywed bride being hunted by her wealthy in-laws on her wedding night, it does trap its characters and the bulk of its action in a stately but isolated residence filled with secret hallways and rooms, and in a fight-to-the-death battle where it's evident from the outset that folks are going to get picked off one by one. There's also a strict timeline, and a red-splattered white dress. Abigail heroes a working-class female protagonist who's forced to grow into her role taking on the privileged, sports buckets full of affection for horror old and new, and winks to the past vigorously among its thoroughly modern irreverence. And, in inventive and eye-catching manners — captured this time by cinematographer Aaron Morton, who is having a great 2024 with this and The First Omen — it loves, loves, loves splashing around OTT violence. Radio Silence, the production company that doubles as a brand for Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett, clearly know this terrain. Working with a script by Stephen Shields (The Hole in the Ground) and Guy Busick (back from Ready or Not, Scream and Scream VI), Abigail's helmers also know how to make the key storytelling move in frightening flicks, and all other types of tales, of ensuring that familiar elements feel fresh when viewers can spy oh-so-much that's recognisable. That's part of the fun of Abigail, including as it becomes a gleefully gory rendering of a Home Alone-esque caper with its namesake stalking the people holding her for a $50-million ransom: seeing how its pieces, drained from elsewhere as they may be, mix and pirouette anew. It's also why the feature's chief reveal should've stayed that way going in, because there's so much else that drinks from overflowing genre cups anyway, while dropping clues from the use of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake onwards about what's in store. A tense crime-film atmosphere to kick off, Agatha Christie nods, quite the child adversary, deranged dances, getting drenched in blood again and again, a The Cabin in the Woods vibe: they're all in a day's work for the film's well-deployed cast, even if not every character runs deep. The screenplay gives its flesh to Joey and Abigail above everyone else, and Barrera — also reuniting with Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett after their Scream flicks — and Matilda the Musical breakout Weir benefit. Stevens, Catlett, Newton, Durand, Cloud and Esposito might only be asked to hit one real note each in this predator-and-prey monster mash, but they commit to the task. It's a talent-trumps-material scenario, where this group were always going to give their figures more life on the screen than on the page — with Stevens especially having a ball, and Cloud's involvement dishing up a reminder of what the world lost when he passed away in 2023. Abigail isn't just any addition to the vampire fold (on-screen, it also knows what else slumbers in this jam-packed coffin). In 2023, Universal Pictures was similarly behind Renfield and Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter. Before 2024 is out, The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman's Robert Eggers will have his own Nosferatu flickering. Finding new ways to rework its Universal Classic Monsters characters and titles — plus the pictures that inspired them, such as unauthorised adaptations of Bram Stoker's Dracula — is one of the studio's current niches, which also applies to The Invisible Man, the upcoming Wolf Man and this. Abigail does it with flair, enthusiasm, humour and literal guts aplenty, and while biting heartily into maximalist flourishes. It might've tasted sweeter if its promotional campaign had been slyer and shyer, but sinking your teeth in remains bloody delicious.
Sous chefs are regarded as the engine room of the kitchen, but despite their many responsibilities (including defining how dishes are presented and training staff), they often go under-acknowledged. But now they're getting their time. In an Australian first, sous chefs from some of Sydney's best restaurants are coming together for a special dinner series. Taking place at the old Marque space on Crown Street in Surry Hills, Sunday Sous Sessions will bring together chefs from Cirrus, .nel, Fratelli Paradiso and North Bondi Fish. Each will present a five-course degustation dinner every Sunday in September. "Often the unsung heroes, sous chefs are juggling everything from budgets, suppliers, menu creation and working with the team from preparation to service," said event founder Aaron Teece. "This is a chance to have the public experience and see firsthand what our sous chefs can do." Tickets are $165 a head, with a portion of all ticket sales donated to RUOK Day. Session 1 — Sunday, September 3 Andy Ashby from .nel Restaurant Session 2 — Sunday, September 10 Khanh Nguyen from Cirrus Session 3 — Sunday, September 17 Sam Young, Ex Ms G's & newly appointed for Fratelli Paradiso Session 4 — Sunday, September 24 Alex Farrow, North Bondi Fish
It's time to experience one of Sydney's most popular museums on a new level. The Museum of Contemporary Art's late-night takeover Artbar is returning on Friday, May 17, with a program of artworks, performances and activations. This time, the event is curated by Western Sydney local, 24th Biennale of Sydney artist and punk metal musician Serwah Attafuah. She's planning to transform the museum into "a cyber dreamscape of technological nostalgia" and invites guests into a world that is just outside of our grasp. [caption id="attachment_953763" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Serwah Attafuah, Between this World & the Next, 2023–24, installation view, 24th Biennale of Sydney: Ten Thousand Suns, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 2024, digital 3D render, e-waste, wood, enamel, image courtesy and © the artist, photograph: Hamish McIntosh[/caption] Knowing past editions of MCA Artbar, the possibilities of what could unfold under that notion are bordering on limitless. It's not just one mind behind the evening, as Attafuah will be joined by a lineup of local and international talent, including London-based futurist rapper Llainwire, Australian music/visual artist group DeepFaith and First Nations metal band Dispossessed. MCA Artbar: Tomorrow is an 18+ event, taking place on Friday, May 17 from 7–11pm. For more information or to get tickets, visit the website.
Time flies when you're obsessing over a big blockbuster fantasy TV series, as HBO's biggest hit of the past decade demonstrates. This April marks ten years since Game of Thrones first hit screens and became a pop culture phenomenon — broadening the world's awareness of George RR Martin's books, pointing out how often Sean Bean meets an untoward end on-screen and delivering more dragon-fuelled drama than anyone ever knew they needed. Keen to celebrate the occasion like you're in a Westerosi tavern? That's an option, all thanks to a new collaboration between Moon Dog Brewing and Warner Bros Consumer Products. The two have joined forces on a new line of GoT beers, so get ready to sip a Breaker of Chains imperial stout and a Watchers on the Wall imperial white ale. The former features chipotle chilli, vanilla and a chocolate finish, while the latter pairs white chocolate with orange and coriander. Winter might be coming, but these brews will be available this month — so, in autumn — with the Melbourne-based Moon Dog pouring them at its Abbotsford and Preston sites from Friday, April 16. The brewery is hosting a launch party in Abbotsford the day before, then dedicating the weekend of April 16–18 to all things GoT in Preston. An Iron Throne will also be onsite, because clearly Moon Dog couldn't pass up the opportunity to let folks sit on one of the most famous chairs there is. [caption id="attachment_744585" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Moon Dog World, Kate Shanasy[/caption] Lovers of both beer and G0T elsewhere in the country won't miss out on the brews, however, with the two beverages available via the brewery's online store and at craft beer retailers nationwide from Monday, April 19. If you decide to keep some in the fridge so that you can drink it when winter arrives, that's perfectly understandable. And if you're just excited about getting another chance to show your affection for the huge hit series — while you're waiting for the just-announced GOT stage production, and the many TV spinoffs and prequels in the works — that is, too. Moon Dog Brewing's Breaker of Chains and Watchers on the Wall beers will be available from its Melbourne venues from Friday, April 16, and online and in craft beer retailers nationwide from Monday, April 19.
Double Bay's growing reputation as one of Sydney's most dynamic dining destinations is in no small part thanks to Neil Perry. Since opening his comeback solo venture Margaret in 2021, the legendary chef, who was officially declared a culinary icon earlier this year, has been slowly expanding his Bay Street empire. In 2022, Perry partnered with Melbourne bakery Baker Bleu, establishing its first Sydney outpost next door to Margaret. Perry's third Double Bay venue, Song Bird, is now set to open its doors on Friday, August 30. Spread over three levels of the heritage-listed Gaden House, this 230-seat Cantonese fine-diner will showcase Perry's long-held affection for Asian cuisine. Seafood will feature heavily, with Perry drawing on the same local fishermen and producers who supply Margaret. Seasonality will also be a big influence, with the menu shifting depending on the best available produce. [caption id="attachment_965872" align="alignnone" width="1920"] A render of Song Bird's exterior[/caption] Throughout his career, Perry has explored Asian flavours through a personal lens, reimagining classic dishes with modern Australian twists. Perry and his team have been hard at work refining a menu for Song Bird that offers familiar favourites like dumplings, pipis in XO sauce, kung pao chicken and Peking duck, elevated through a suite of complex techniques. For example, Wollemi ducks, sourced from Copper Tree Farms, have the main cavity sealed after air is pumped under the skin. The bird is then blanched in boiling water before receiving a seasoning bath of maltose, vinegar and soy. Finally, the meat is aged for between three and seven days, until the colour, skin texture and tenderness are just right. Once it reaches this peak, the duck is roasted, ready for the table. [caption id="attachment_961055" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Image: Petrina Tinslay[/caption] Another new Double Bay venue from Perry will also welcome its first guests in the coming months. Bobbie's will be an underground speakeasy-style cocktail lounge, located on — you guessed it — Bay Street, not far from Margaret. Perry's longtime collaborator Linden Pride, who also launched award-winning New York bar Dante, will oversee the new drinking den, which is named in tribute to Pride's grandfather, the famed Australian broadcaster and disc jockey Bob Rogers OAM who died in May, 2024 aged 97. Perry is not the only restaurateur to see the potential of Double Bay. Recently opened ventures including Asian-fusion diner Bartiga and modern Mexican Gitano have revitalised the suburb, attracting Sydneysiders from all corners of the city in search of a delicious feed. View this post on Instagram A post shared by @songbirddoublebay Find Song Bird at 24 Bay Street, Double Bay. Head to the venue's website to make a reservation.
Sydney Beer Week is back. If you're finding it hard to choose between the many beer-themed activities and events to attend, check out our top picks for this year's festival of froth, featuring tap takeovers, amazing food and even a little bit of exercise (don't worry there's always a beer at the end). From hop heads to sour freaks, there's something for everyone happening across Sydney's best breweries, bars and restaurants from October 26 through November 4.
He made movies that no one else could've. He changed what the world, viewers and fellow filmmakers alike, thought was possible in cinematic storytelling. The greatest television show ever created sits on his resume, a label that would've applied even if it had only received a two-season run in the 90s, but was proven all-the-more accurate when he revisited it two and a half decades later to gift audiences an unforgettable 18-episode achievement. There has never been an artist like David Lynch, and won't be again. Anyone who has had the chance to explore his paintings, drawings and sculptures, too — which made a spectacular Australian showing at a dedicated exhibition at Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art in 2015, with the man himself in attendance — can't shake them from their mind. Movies, TV, acting, animation, art, music, books, furniture, photography, advertising, music videos, transcendental meditation, comic strips, coffee, weather reports, cooking quinoa, gravity-defying hair: before his death on January 15, 2025, Lynch made an impact upon all of them. "He was in touch with something the rest of us wish we could get to," shared Kyle MacLachlan, Lynch's Special Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, Paul Atreides in 1984's Dune and Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet. "David was in tune with the universe and his own imagination on a level that seemed to be the best version of human," he continued. "Every moment together felt charged with a presence I've rarely seen or known. Probably because, yes, he seemed to live in an altered world, one that I feel beyond lucky to have been a small part of. And David invited all to glimpse into that world through his exquisite storytelling, which elevated cinema and inspired generations of filmmakers across the globe," said his Mulholland Drive lead Naomi Watts. For Wild at Heart's Nicolas Cage, Lynch "was a singular genius in cinema, one of the greatest artists of this or any time," he told Deadline. "He was brave, brilliant and a maverick with a joyful sense of humour. I never had more fun on a film set than working with David Lynch. He will always be solid gold." "The world is going to miss such an original and unique voice. His films have already stood the test of time and they always will," noted Steven Spielberg, who gave Lynch one of his last role sas an actor, casting his fellow helmer as another Hollywood great, John Ford, in the autobiographical The Fabelmans. For another filmmaking icon adoring a filmmaking icon, Martin Scorsese also provided his ode in a statement: "I hear and read the word 'visionary' a lot these days — it's become a kind of catch-all description, another piece of promotional language. But David Lynch really was a visionary — in fact, the word could have been invented to describe the man and the films, the series, the images and the sounds he left behind. He created forms that seemed like they were right on the edge of falling apart but somehow never did. He put images on the screen unlike anything that I or anybody else had ever seen — he made everything strange, uncanny, revelatory and new. And he was absolutely uncompromising, from start to finish." When Lynch committed his journey to paper with 2018's must-read Room to Dream, the talent that crafted the most-stunning debut feature there is with Eraserhead, earned a Best Director Oscar nomination for his second film The Elephant Man (and later for Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive), and has nine Emmy nods to his name for the first and third seasons of Twin Peaks, couldn't have chosen a better moniker for his memoir. When Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me advises that "we live inside a dream", it also couldn't have felt more apt. To watch Lynch's work is to fall into his dreams — surrealist visions filled with clashes and contrasts, such as his career-long fascination with the sublime and the terrifying sides of suburbia and domesticity — then be inspired to have your own, whichever places both wonderful and strange that they might take you. [caption id="attachment_987090" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Suzanne Tenner/SHOWTIME[/caption] For Lynch, where his output transports fans to has always been personal, including to them. Famously, he eschewed explanations, letting his creations speak for themselves, and giving everyone watching, viewing, listening and appreciating the room to draw their own interpretations. "It's the ideas that come. And many of the ideas that come are conjured by our world. And we all know that there's many mysteries. I always say that human beings are like detectives: we want to know what's going on and what the truth of a thing is, and we see our world, we feel it, we feel there's things going on," he said to David Stratton at a public in-conversation event during his trip to Brisbane. "I always say that the filmmaker has to understand the thing for himself or herself. But when things get abstract, or a little bit abstract, there's room for many interpretations, and each person should be able to make up his or her mind to feel what the things mean." To pay tribute to Lynch, damn fine cherry pie should be on the menu. So should a damn fine lineup of viewing, because there's no better way to honour a filmmaker like no other than to relish his on-screen dreams. When his family announced his passing at the age of 78, they noted that he'd remind everyone to "keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole". Take that advice by enjoying everything that's available to stream right now — and Lynch's version of a small-town-set TV murder-mystery, its big-screen prequel, a documentary about him, several acting roles and a monkey interrogation are just the beginning. (Sadly, Eraserhead, The Straight Story and Inland Empire aren't available at the time of writing, but they'd be on the list otherwise.) The Elephant Man David Lynch has never been shy about how unlikely it was for the director of Eraserhead to score a job making a Victorian era-set period drama in England with John Hurt (Jackie), Anne Bancroft (Keeping the Faith), John Gielgud (Elizabeth) and Anthony Hopkins (Those About to Die) — or how he thought that once Mel Brooks (Only Murders in the Building), who executive produced the film, saw his debut feature that he wouldn't get the gig. Thankfully Brooks was wowed, and so cinema gained an affecting movie from Lynch that's restrained compared to much of his other output, but also deeply compassionate and unflinching. With Hurt astonishing as its lead, the eight-time Oscar-nominated The Elephant Man tells of the IRL life of Joseph Merrick, whose physical deformities saw the movie's moniker slung his way. The Elephant Man streams via iTunes and Prime Video. Dune Before Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown) became cinema's ultimate spice boy — Paul Atreides, as he plays in 2021's Dune and 2024's Dune: Part Two for Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049) — Kyle MacLachlan (Blink Twice) walked without rhythm first, in his debut collaboration with David Lynch. The latter disowned his adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi novel, his third feature, his only attempt at a blockbuster and a movie that wasn't met warmly when it released in the mid-80s; however, there's no mistaking the visual ambition that the director attempts to bring to the page-to-screen space opera. Everyone knows the film's narrative due to the two Chalamet-starring flicks, but those versions didn't also star Sting (playing Feyd-Rautha before The Bikeriders' Austin Butler) or Patrick Stewart (as Gurney before Outer Range's Josh Brolin). Dune streams via Netflix and Stan. Blue Velvet What lurks behind seeming perfection is a lifetime-long on-screen obsession for David Lynch, beginning with parenthood in Eraserhead and applying to white picket-fence life in every iteration of Twin Peaks, plus Blue Velvet. Returning home to Lumberton, North Carolina from college, Kyle MacLachlan's Jeffrey Beaumont is soon drawn into the nightmare lived by lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini, Conclave) at the hands of gangster Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper, Crash) — all after he finds a severed human ear in a field near his house. The film's exploration of darkness lingering within also applies to its protagonist, with MacLachlan stellar in a movie that also marks Lynch's first collaboration with Laura Dern (Lonely Planet), features a haunting performance by Hopper and ensures that you'll never hear Roy Orbison the same way again. Blue Velvet streams via iTunes. Twin Peaks It's the mind-bending small-town mystery-drama that comes with its own menu — and with plenty of thrills, laughs and weirdness. Whether you're watching Twin Peaks for the first or 131st time, you'll want to do so with plenty of damn fine coffee, fresh-made cherry pie and cinnamon-covered doughnuts to fuel your journey. David Lynch and Mark Frost's seminal TV series doesn't just serve up 90s-era oddness with backwards talk, log-carrying ladies, couch-jumping monsters and fish in percolators, as centred around the murder of high-schooler Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee, Limetown), though. It returned for an astonishing third season in 2017 as well that's the finest thing to reach the small screen in the 21st century. There's never been anything on television like Twin Peaks. No one can play a kind and quirky FBI boss like Lynch either, or a dedicated agent like Kyle MacLachlan as Dale Cooper. Twin Peaks streams via Paramount+. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is a prequel to Twin Peaks, as well as the exceptional TV show's leap to cinemas. The film is also a masterpiece in tragedy, and the same in empathy. Before she's "dead, wrapped in plastic" in the program's debut instalment, David Lynch truly sees Laura Palmer and everything that she goes through. Set in the lead-up to her demise, the flick burrows deep into the menacing forces at play. It's a movie of sheer dread, even though viewers know what's going to happen. As only he can, Lynch steeps every frame in the brutal pain, terror and suffering of his doomed protagonist, ensuring that his audience walk in her shoes, feel what she's going through and see how ravenously that the world tears into her, all while baking in his adored surrealist touches. He also works David Bowie into the Twin Peaks cast, magnificently so. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me streams via YouTube Movies. Wild at Heart David Lynch directing Nicolas Cage: of course it had to happen, and thankfully did. That's one helluva filmmaker-actor combination — and when the unrivalled helmer had the incomparable star in front of his lens, the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival came his way. The movie that Lynch made between Twin Peaks' initial run and the series' big-screen prequel Fire Walk with Me, it features one of Cage's greatest performances. Cage playing one half of a couple on the run (opposite Laura Dern), singing Elvis tunes like he was born to and navigating a Lynchian crime-romance flick truly is what dreams are made of. Adapting the 1990 novel of the same name — by author Barry Gifford, who went on to co-write Lost Highway with Lynch — Wild at Heart is also as distinctive as crime road movies get. Wild at Heart streams via iTunes and Prime Video. Lost Highway It's thanks to Lost Highway that Nine Inch Nails' 'The Perfect Drug' exists; before he was composing Oscar-winning The Social Network and Golden Globe-winning Challengers scores, Trent Reznor also produced this 1997 film's soundtrack for David Lynch. Tunes by NIN, David Bowie, The Smashing Pumpkins and Lou Reed are just one of movie's highlights, however. Initially with Bill Pullman (Murdaugh Murders: The Movie) as a saxophonist, then with Balthazar Getty (Megalopolis) playing an auto mechanic — and with Patricia Arquette (Severance) acting opposite each, featuring in both of the flick's two parts — Lost Highway embraces its sinister tone from the get-go, with its guiding force strapping in for an eerie and audacious ride filled with mysterious VHS tapes, murder convictions and sudden swaps, and refusing to pump the brakes for a moment. Lost Highway streams via Stan. Mulholland Drive In dreams, Mulholland Drive lingers. In reality, the Los Angeles-set masterpiece has as well since 2001. Although the term naturally applies to his entire filmography, movies don't get much more Lynchian than this shimmering neo-noir and tribute to Tinseltown that started as a TV project, and stars Naomi Watts (Feud) as eager aspiring actor Betty Elms and struggling thespian Diane Selwyn. One is fresh from Deep River, Ontario and chasing her dreams. The other no longer has stars in her eyes. Reflections and doppelgängers, fantasies and alternate realities, accidents and surprises, hopes and failures, how Hollywood demands reinvention, the roles that people play for and without the cameras: they're all part of a mesmerising picture (as are Father of the Bride's Laura Harring and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice's Justin Theroux among the cast). Mulholland Drive streams via Binge, Stan and ABC iView. Duran Duran: Unstaged Inland Empire will always be David Lynch's last narrative feature, but it wasn't his last full-length film. Five years after the movie that he wanted Laura Dern to win an Oscar for so badly that he took to Sunset Boulevard with a cow by his side, he helmed Duran Duran: Unstaged. Before making his one and only concert flick, he'd directed music videos for Chris Isaak's 'Wicked Game' and Moby's 'Shot in the Back of the Head', among others. Afterwards, he'd do the same on Nine Inch Nails' 'Came Back Haunted' and several of his own tunes with Chrystabell, too. But just once, for two hours, he brought an entire live gig to the screen — as shot in Los Angeles on the British band's The All You Need Is Now tour, complete with 'Hungry Like the Wolf', 'Girls on Film', 'Notorious', 'Rio', 'A View to a Kill', 'Come Undone', 'Planet Earth', 'Ordinary World' and more on the setlist. Duran Duran: Unstaged streams via Docplay David Lynch: The Art Life Even when a David Lynch-directed project is diving into nightmares, which is often, the filmmaker's movies and TV shows get audiences yearning to spend time in their company, lapping up his unequalled vision of the world. That's the reason that documentary Lynch/Oz, about his obsession with The Wizard of Oz in his work, exists. Watch doco David Lynch: The Art Life and viewers can spend time in Lynch's company as well. For helmers Rick Barnes, Olivia Neergaard-Holm and Jon Nguyen — all directing their only feature so far — Lynch takes everyone on a tour of his upbringing, efforts to make Eraserhead in the 70s, and artistic and musical output. Of course, don't expect any answers. Again, Lynch wants to let his work speak for itself, rather than him speak about it. But do expect to spend an enjoyable time with the unparalleled master auteur. David Lynch: The Art Life streams via Docplay. What Did Jack Do? In a dimly lit room in a grimy train station, a capuchin monkey sits at a table. In walks a detective, who then starts smoking a cigarette and interrogating the animal in front of him. They chat, bantering back and forth as the cop asks questions and the primate answers. At one point, the monkey even sings. Queries range from "do you know anything about birds?" to "you ever ride the rodeo?", all in a quest to solve a murder. A chicken also pops up, and a waitress. If the above scenario sounds more than a little surreal, that's because it is — especially given that it's part of David Lynch's 17-minute short film What Did Jack Do?. The black-and-white piece also stars the inimitable Lynch as the detective. It's a unique, delightful and characteristically eccentric work by one of the most distinctive folks to ever stand behind a camera. What Did Jack Do? streams via Netflix. Lucky Six times throughout their careers, David Lynch directed Harry Dean Stanton. In the year that delivered their last collaboration in one of Lynch's projects — the third season of Twin Peaks, which followed Wild at Heart, miniseries Hotel Room, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, The Straight Story and Inland Empire — and sadly saw Stanton pass away at the age of 91 after 200-plus acting credits, they teamed up as fellow performers in the delightful Lucky. In the directorial debut of actor John Carroll Lynch (Babes), the veterans are thrust to the fore as Stanton plays a 90-year-old small-town loner who is forced to face his mortality. The landscape of his face pairs perfectly with the arid dessert surroundings, while his specific brand of cantankerous charm finds its match in Lynch as his monologue-spouting, tortoise-loving pal. Lucky streams via Brollie. Read our full review. The Fabelmans With The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg pays tribute to cinema in as many ways as he can fit into a single feature, all while relaying how he grew up as a movie-loving kid — and sharing the affection with his family, too, as he explores the complicated dynamics that shaped his childhood. The director behind everything from Jaws and Indiana Jones to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park and West Side Story also tips his hat to two other filmmaking forces in his coming-of-age affair: four-time Best Director Oscar-winner John Ford, who Spielberg met when he was starting out, and David Lynch. The latter fellow helmer plays the former, in an inspired stroke of casting. Although any acting performance by Lynch is a treat, this one, as he makes a point about interesting filmmaking using the horizon to Gabriel LaBelle (Saturday Night) as Spielberg's surrogate, couldn't be more perfect. The Fabelmans streams via Netflix and ABC iView. Read our full review.
Something delightful has been happening in cinemas across the country. After months spent empty, with projectors silent, theatres bare and the smell of popcorn fading, Australian picture palaces are back in business — spanning both big chains and smaller independent sites in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. During COVID-19 lockdowns, no one was short on things to watch, of course. In fact, you probably feel like you've streamed every movie ever made, including new releases, comedies, music documentaries, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent all your time of late glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of new films are hitting cinemas so that you can do just that — and we've rounded up, watched and reviewed everything on offer this week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5kkZAKjkiw COLLECTIVE We can only hope that one day, likely in a far distant future, documentaries will stop doubling as horror films. That time hasn't arrived yet — and as Collective demonstrates, cinema's factual genre can chill viewers to the bone more effectively than most jump- and bump-based fare. Nominated for Best Documentary Feature and Best International Feature at the 2021 Academy Awards (only the second time that's ever happened, after last year's Honeyland), this gripping and gut-wrenching Romanian doco starts with a terrible tragedy. On October 30, 2015, a fire broke out at a metal gig in Bucharest, at a club called Colectiv. Twenty-seven people died in the blaze, and 180 people were injured as they tried to escape via the site's lone exit; however, that's just the beginning of the movie's tale. In the four months afterwards, as burn victims were treated in the country's public hospitals, 37 more passed away. When journalist Cătălin Tolontan and his team at The Sports Gazette started investigating the fire's aftermath and the mounting casualty list, they uncovered not only widespread failures throughout Romania's health system, but also engrained corruption as well. This truly is nightmare fuel; if people can't trust hospitals to act in their patients' best interest after such a sizeable disaster, one of the fundamental tenets of modern society completely collapses. Early in Collective, director, writer, cinematographer and editor Alexander Nanau (Toto and His Sisters) shows the flames, as seen from inside the club. When the blaze sparks from the show's pyrotechnics, hardcore band Goodbye to Gravity has just finished singing about corruption. "Fuck all your wicked corruption! It's been there since our inception but we couldn't see," the group's singer growls — and no, you can't make this up. It's a difficult moment to watch, but this is a film filled with unflinching sights, and with a viscerally unsettling story that demands attention. Nanau occasionally spends time with the bereaved and angry parents of victims of the fire, even bookending the documentary with one man's distress over the "communication error" that contributed to his son's death. The filmmaker charts a photo shoot with Tedy Ursuleanu, a survivor visibly scarred by her ordeal, too. And yet, taking an observational approach free from narration and interviews, and with only the scantest use of text on-screen, Collective's filmmaker lets much of what's said rustle up the majority of the movie's ghastliest inclusions. Read our full review. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zadWJ8tPmnU VOYAGERS He's an Australian treasure, he's one of Hollywood's recent villainous go-tos and he definitely isn't in Voyagers. That'd be Ben Mendelsohn, who comes to mind anyway while watching this sci-fi thriller. In a softer mode, the Rogue One and Ready Player One star could've played Colin Farrell's part here. That's not why Voyagers makes him pop into viewers' heads, though. Rather, it's because his brand of slippery menace still slinks through this space-set flick, all thanks to its most vivid performance. Should an upcoming movie ever need a fresher-faced version of Mendelsohn's latest bad guy or next morally complicated figure, Dunkirk, The Children Act and Black Mirror: Bandersnatch's Fionn Whitehead needs to be on speed dial. He channels Mendo perfectly as Zac, one of 30 test tube-bred teenagers who are rocketed into the heavens as humanity's last hope for survival. In the latter half of the 21st century, Earth is near-uninhabitable, so he's on an 86-year mission to a newly located planet. The young Humanitas crew's main purpose is to beget the next generations who'll colonise their new home — but, after learning that he's being drugged into obedience, Zac decides not to play nice. Ten years in, when the quieter Christopher (Tye Sheridan, X-Men: Dark Phoenix) realises that the drink they all call 'blue' contains an unidentified compound, the decision is easy. First Christopher, then Zac, then the rest of their shipmates all stop sipping it and start letting their hormones pump unfettered for the first time in their intricately designed and highly controlled lives. Richard (Farrell, The Gentlemen), the lone adult and the closest thing any of the crew have ever had to a father, is suddenly treated with suspicion. Christopher and Zac begin testing boundaries, indulging desires and flouting rules, too — and realising that they're both attracted to dutiful Chief Medical Officer Sela (Lily-Rose Depp, Crisis). Then an accident changes the dynamic, with the two pals challenging each other while fighting to lead. Factions are formed, chaos ensues and the very folks entrusted with saving the species are now simply trying to outlast each other. Read our full review. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE5-hkHIZF4 WILLY'S WONDERLAND If you've ever wondered how Nicolas Cage might've fared during cinema's silent era, Willy's Wonderland has the answer. A horror film about killer animatronic restaurant mascots, it's firmly a 2021 feature. It wasn't made a century ago, before synchronised sound forever changed the movie business, so it's definitely a talkie as well. Cage doesn't do any chattering, however. He groans and growls, and often, but doesn't utter a single word. The actor's many devotees already know that he's a talent with presence; whether he's cavorting in the streets under the delusion that he's a bloodsucker in Vampire's Kiss, grinning with his locks flowing in the wind in Con Air, dousing himself with vodka and grunting in Mandy or staring at a vibrant light in Color Out of Space, he repeatedly makes an imprint without dialogue. So, the inimitable star needn't speak to command attention — which is exactly the notion that Willy's Wonderland filmmaker Kevin Lewis (The Third Nail) put to the test. First, the great and obvious news: Cage doesn't seem to put in much effort, but he's a joy to watch. Playing a man simply known as The Janitor, he glowers like he couldn't care less that furry robots are trying to kill him. He swaggers around while cleaning the titular long-abandoned Chuck E Cheese-esque establishment, dances while hitting the pinball machine on his breaks, swigs soft drink as if it's the only beverage in the world and proves mighty handy with a mop handle when it comes to dispensing with his supernaturally demonic foes. Somehow, though, he's never as OTT as he could be. Cage plays a character who doesn't deem it necessary to convey his emotions, and that results in more restraint on his part than the film demonstrates with its undeniably silly premise. Accordingly, cue the bad news: as entertaining as Cage's wordless performance is — even without completely going for broke as only he can — Willy's Wonderland is often a ridiculous yet routine slog. Read our full review. Willy's Wonderland opens in Sydney and Brisbane on April 8, and hits home entertainment on April 21. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZmgl4TkFBc ANTOINETTE IN THE CÉVENNES In some other parts of the world, Antoinette in the Cévennes is known as My Donkey, My Lover & I. Both titles summarise the French comedy in a literal sense, but only one taps into the unexpected survivalist thread weaved through its woman-and-animal antics. Parisian primary school teacher Antoinette (Laure Calamy, Only the Animals) does indeed travel to the Cévennes, the mountain range in France's south. The lovestruck fortysomething makes the trip to follow her married lover Vladimir (C'est la vie!), who has cancelled their plans for the school holidays to hike with his wife Eléonore (Olivia Côte, No Filter) and daughter Alice (first-timer Louise Vidal), the latter of which is one of Antoinette's students. And, setting off on a six-day trek, she walks with a donkey, just like Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde author Robert Louis Stevenson did in the 1870s — as he chronicled in his book Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. Chaos and convenient plotting ensues, with the film's eponymous figure unprepared for her journey, inexperienced at both hiking and walking with a donkey, quickly becoming the talk of the trail and greeted with awkward horror by Vladimir when they eventually cross paths. But as a tale of a woman finding herself — and finding out how to truly survive and thrive in her own skin — Antoinette in the Cévennes is both thoughtful and charming. Luminous star Calamy is so essential to Antoinette in the Cévennes, it's hard to see the feature working without her. She plays her titular part with the commitment rather than recklessness or naive confidence; Antoinette knows that her decisions are guided by her heart rather than by any amount of consideration, but she's determined to see them through. In the movie's opening sequence, when Antoinette dons a sparkly dress and overshadows her class during a performance, Calamy conveys both yearning and spirit. In the many moments that her character finds herself alone on the trail unburdening her romantic woes to Patrick, the stubborn donkey who becomes her unlikely confidante and much-needed animal companion, she's unguarded and without a drop of self-consciousness. Just as crucially, writer/director Caroline Vignal (Girlfriends) has penned a character who smacks of typical rom-com traits at first glance, yet continually proves anything but. Her script gives its central figure time and space not just to grow, but to realise who she really is. That time can pass more patiently than the film's 97-minute running time should, and that gorgeously lensed space — by Knife + Heart cinematographer Simon Beaufils — is as much the star of Antoinette in the Cévennes as Calamy and her four-legged co-star; however, the end result is never anything less than a winsome and perceptive jaunt. Antoinette in the Cévennes opens in Sydney and Melbourne on April 8, and in Brisbane on April 15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6vOhD_fI2I&feature=emb_logo ASCENDANT More than halfway into Australian sci-fi thriller Ascendant, Aria Wolf (Charlotte Best, Tidelands) finds herself facing one of the modern world's worst nightmares: a dying phone battery. She's trapped in a 120-storey Shanghai building, and in an elevator that plunges downward and jerks back up seemingly at random. She awoke bound, gagged and blindfolded, and with no recollection of how she came to be in such a predicament. She's at the mercy of sinister Russians (led by The Mule's Alex Menglet), who are holding her father (Jonny Pasvolsky, The Front Runner) hostage and live-streaming his torture into her suspended cage. But if her phone was to stop working, it'd be the movie's most monumental development. She'd no longer be drip-fed Ascendant's exposition, and first-time feature writer/director Antaine Furlong (co-scripting with fellow debutant Kieron Holland) would also lose his main way to relay those details to his audience. The low battery hardly comes as a surprise, given that Aria has spent the bulk of the film to that point using the device. Because logic is absent here, Aria's mobile keeps working long after she starts stressing about its demise, too. But the importance placed on her phone — both in relaying much of the feature's story, Buried- and Locke-style, and in providing an easy source of drama — speaks volumes about this muddled struggle of a film. The Russians want information, but Aria doesn't know what they're talking about. Enter flashes of memories from her childhood, which help fill in the gaps. Throw in flimsy supernatural elements as well, and that's the crux of Furlong and Holland's screenplay, which primarily feels like a series of one-upping "what if?" questions — "what if she isn't merely stuck, but she's being tormented?", "what if one wall of the elevator is a big TV screen?", "what if her name makes everyone think of Game of Thrones?", "what if it's all taking place in China?", "what if the CIA is involved?" and "what if there's an ecological aspect?", for instance. Living up to her surname as the feature's standout actor, Best turns in a convincing and layered performance as the perplexed Aria. Stunt double Marlee Barber (The Invisible Man) deserves ample credit given the amount of time that the film's protagonist spends being thrown around, and production designer Fiona Donovan (Back to the Rafters) makes the movie's eerie setting look both unsettling and striking. Their efforts can't lift a picture that's big on ideas but light on cohesion, though. Furlong has a keen eye and doesn't lack in ambition — but Ascendant sinks rather than rises. If you're wondering what else is currently screening in cinemas — or has been lately — check out our rundown of new films released in Australia on January 1, January 7, January 14, January 21 and January 28; February 4, February 11, February 18 and February 25; and March 4, March 11, March 18 and March 25; and April 1. You can also read our full reviews of a heap of recent movies, such as Nomadland, Pieces of a Woman, The Dry, Promising Young Woman, Summerland, Ammonite, The Dig, The White Tiger, Only the Animals, Malcolm & Marie, News of the World, High Ground, Earwig and the Witch, The Nest, Assassins, Synchronic, Another Round, Minari, Firestarter — The Story of Bangarra, The Truffle Hunters, The Little Things, Chaos Walking, Raya and the Last Dragon, Max Richter's Sleep, Judas and the Black Messiah, Girls Can't Surf, French Exit, Saint Maud, Godzilla vs Kong, The Painter and the Thief, Nobody and The Father.
For the first time, Darling Harbour's Tumbalong Park is getting in on the Vivid Sydney action with the introduction of Tumbalong Nights. From Wednesday to Saturday throughout the festival, you can enjoy performances from the very heart of the Light Walk. From rising Aussie starlets like Stevan and Elsy Wameyo to established acts like Haiku Hands and Donny Benét — and long-time festival favourites like Hot Potato Band — there's a diverse array of musical talent at Tumbalong Nights in 2022, plus short film screenings on offer too. What's more, every single one of these events is completely free. Music will start at 8pm on Wednesdays and at 7pm from Thursday to Saturday. Plus, head down with your minis a bit earlier on Saturdays for some of Australia's best acts for children as part of Vivid Kids at Tumbalong from 5pm.
It's no secret that Sydney's hospitality industry is suffering. With more and more people self-isolating and social distancing — plus the introduction of a government ban on gatherings above 100 people — our city's bars and restaurants have seen a drop in customers. Heaps of Sydney venues have begun offering new takeaway and delivery options to provide an alternative. Sister venues Bulletin Place and Dead Ringer are taking a different approach. They announced on their Instagram pages that they're partnering with a bunch of the city's best venues to encourage Sydneysiders to head on in. Bring in a same-day receipt from a list of local joints and you can nab a $10 penicillin cocktail at either Bulletin Place or Dead Ringer. This deal is on offer all month long, too. Heaps of venues are included on that list, including Mary's Underground, Shady Pines, The Wild Rover, Tio's, Bartolo, Cantina OK!, Ramblin' Rascal, Maybe Sammy, Door Knock, Restaurant Hubert — and that's to name a few. Bistecca has jumped on board with the Drink It Forward, Sydney initiative too, offering negronis for a just tenner. And PS40 is slinging 3-for-$48 or 5-for-$70 cocktails (that's $14–16 a pop). We imagine all of the other venues involved will be offering up their own cocktail deal soon enough. Check out the full list on the Bullet Place, Dead Ringer, PS40 and Bistecca Instagram posts. If you're not as keen on heading out, but still want to support your locals, Bulletin Place and Dead Ringer are both offering gift voucher deals. Each voucher you purchase before Thursday, March 19, this week will come with a 20-percent extra value (so a $100 gift voucher becomes $120). You can order from Bulletin Place here, and from Dead Ringer here. This offer will only be available this week, but the vouchers are valid for three years, so get in quick or miss out. If you're choosing to go out and support local businesses, have a look at the latest COVID-19 advice and social-distancing guidelines from the Department of Health. Images: Dead Ringer, Bulletin Place by Cesar Echeverri, PS40 by Alana Dimou, Bistecca by Dominic Loneragan.
First, the bad news: as much as fans of Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan's excellent Australian mystery series Deadloch want it to (and we do want it to), the first season of that stellar new show doesn't go on forever. Now, some news to help cope with that reality: come August, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart will hit streaming to deliver another twisty Aussie affair. This one heads to the screen from the page, with Holly Ringland's 2018 novel getting the miniseries treatment. And, it features one helluva huge name leading the show. Alien and Ghostbusters legend Sigourney Weaver stars as June, the no-nonsense grandmother to the titular nine-year-old, in the seven-part drama — with the story kicking into gear when Alice loses her parents in suspicious circumstances. On the page and on Prime Video — where The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart will debut on Friday, August 4 — Alice moves to Thornfield flower farm after the life-changing tragedy, and starts to find solace among its wildflower blooms. But her new home is also the place where secrets about her family and their past start to blossom. Wondering about the show's mood? In both the initial teaser trailer back in June and the just-dropped new full trailer now, the series emphasises that it hails from the producers of Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers. Lambs of God's Sarah Lambert, Mustang FC's Kirsty Fisher and A League of Their Own's Kim Wilson penned the scripts, while Penguin Bloom's Glendyn Ivin directs every instalment. As well as Weaver as Alice's grandmother, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart stars Alycia Debnam-Carey (Fear the Walking Dead) as its namesake, plus Ayla Browne (Nine Perfect Strangers) as the younger version. The cast from there is a who's who of homegrown talent, including fellow Nine Perfect Strangers alum Asher Keddie, Leah Purcell (The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson), Tilda Cobham-Hervey (Hotel Mumbai), Xavier Samuel (The Clearing) and Alexander England (Black Snow). In sneak peeks that highlight the complex decades-spanning drama surrounding the titular character, the swirling lies and simmering mistrust, fire, the Aussie backdrop and the big-name stars, Frankie Adams (The Expanse), Charlie Vickers (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power) and Sebastián Zurita (How to Survive Being Single). Check out the full trailer for The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart below: The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart will start streaming via Prime Video from Friday, August 4.
