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By Helen Razer
Australia is a wretched sunbed maintained by debt and founded in unspeakable acts of racist brutality. Even so, sometimes the old girl does us proud. One day, I’m all “this is a culturally inert toilet remarkable only for its willingness to be shat upon by empire”. And then the next? Well. There are few among
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What is more important for a filmmaker: telling an interesting story in interesting ways, or attempting to evoke the sensation that ‘you were there’? In his historical drama First Man, about the career and various NASA missions of astronaut and first man on the moon Neil Armstrong (played by a workman-like, restraint-exhibiting Ryan Gosling), director
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Daily Review presents actor Neil Pigot’s series of 60 minute podcasts in which he interviews artists from a range of disciplines about making art. In Episode Seven of Making Art he talks to academic and theatre director Julian Meyrick (co-author of the new book What Matters – Talking Value in Australian Culture) and Mark Williams (author of Falling Through
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How do you design a unique aesthetic for a sci-fi series based in the not-too-distant future? The dank, rain-clogged and violated skyline look, with city streets full of neon signs and gaudy electronica, was popularised by Blade Runner and is a common reference point – creepily beautiful and perhaps realistic, but hardly innovative. The slicker
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Bruce Beresford has a repertoire of films that stretch from broad and iconic comedies (The Adventures of Barry McKenzie) to brilliant and nuanced relationship studies (Tender Mercies and the Oscar-winning Driving Miss Daisy among them). Despite his extraordinary track-record, it has taken him 25 years to pull together the financing to adapt Australian writer-expat, Madeleine
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Before I sat down to watch ABC TV’s new comedy series Back in Very Small Business I expected – outrageous though it may sound – to watch a show about a very small business. Dylan Moran’s book shop in Black Books: that was a small business. The pizza shop in Fat Pizza: a slightly bigger
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In Australia, we hold state funerals for political leaders, however divisive or unloved they may have been while they lived. And we grieve the departure of sporting greats. Perhaps we should set aside one day each year to remember great Australian artists who have died during the past year. So far in 2018, a significant
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By Daily Review
The digital realm is not what it seems, and impacts on music curation in myriad and hidden ways, says Tully Barnett, one of the lead researchers in the Flinders University team Laboratory Adelaide: The Value of Culture. Barnett and Julian Meyrick and Robert Phiddian are co-authors of What Matters? – Talking Value in Australian Culture (Monash University
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Has there been another film, in recent years, with so much pining and so little emotion? We are told many times throughout director Wim Wender’s meditative romantic drama Submergence that the two lead characters – British secret agent James Moore (James McAvoy) and deep-sea diving bio-mathematician Danny (Alicia Vikander) – are in love, or at
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By Helen Razer
In mildly troubling news, ABC TV has failed to renew comic current affairs program, Tonightly. In a statement prepared today by cheerful bot, the Abysmal Bootlicker Crew alleges that it is grateful for the efforts of Tom Ballard and writing team, but that it is time, these many weeks into the project, “for a fresh
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