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The extra half star is a generous gesture aimed at those who haven’t read the fourth instalment of the Millennium books, written by David Lagercrantz after the untimely demise of original author, Stieg Larsson. Anyone who has read the books, and particularly The Girl in the Spider’s Web, will spend much of the time caught
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Last week I attended the Melbourne chapter of the Australia Council’s national consultation on the strengthening and enhancement of the Major Performing Arts Framework. I came away with a mix of emotions that a week later settled into unease then dread. I’m going to try to unpack that feeling through this essay. I believe the
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The race that stopped the nation stopped the horse. So death becomes us, becomes even more part of our culture, but not in a way that grasps us by the throat and sends us into gasps of grief. No, we say it’s tragic and move on. Culture’s collateral damage really. It’s not as if a
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Head to the cinemas while you still can. In the United States, cinema attendance plummeted to its lowest in 25 years. At home, Screen Australia’s CEO Graeme Mason said movie theatres are surviving on blockbusters alone. With streaming platforms like Netflix freeing us from the collective watching experience – anyone who loves popcorn, a choc
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“Sitting beside a waterhole, amidst the lush greens of the semi-tropics, Azure Kingfishers feeding, knowing that surrounding this abundance are vast stretches of dry and dusty country with perhaps no other person within hours of reach.” This is the way artist Alison Binks begins to describe the process of painting the works for her current
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School of Rock kicks ass. Right from the get-go, as power-chords blast through the speakers and morph into a pulsating bass line and pounding drums; as lights (Natasha Katz) slice through thick chugging haze and reveal ‘No Vacancy’ live on stage: you’ll feel a smirk coming on. These dudes may not have armadillos in their
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By Shane Murphy
The Melbourne City Council (MCC) has embarked on quite an ambitious program in using the Town Hall’s grand organ for new works it has commissioned for it. Thursday (November 8), showcased the work of JP Shiloh, the well-known multi-instrumentalist from a number of bands, most notably the Blackeyed Susans. Before JP, the MCC presented artists making
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Remade as a muscular, heroic underdog for our times, this new Spartacus is crisp and compelling storytelling. Despite Khachaturian’s glorious, ever-shifting melodies, Lucas Jervies’ choreography does veer to the repetitive and monosyllabic, but he’s a director well versed in the drama of theatre; and with dramaturg, fellow director Imara Savage, knows how to stage a good
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When we read true crime, we might think it’s about trying to work out why people commit murder, what leads to awful events, and how society deals with it. It may, at the same time, feel prurient to be peering into the windows of a house where someone was killed, or to hear in dramatic
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At the Q&A, held after the first of only two performances of Syrian playwright, Mohammad Al Attar’s While I Was Waiting, someone asked the director, Omar Abusaada what message he wanted audiences to take away from the play. His reply was that he did not want his theatre to be about messages, he wanted it
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