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By Helen Razer
Not every human opinion is published in haste or on Facebook. Some of it is set down after days—even months—of thought. “To find the time for thought on arts and culture”. If Daily Review were the sort of place that printed out mission statements, something like this might have been posted in big red typeface on
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Which is better: a harebrained movie that does what it says it’d do on the packet, or an ambitious film that challenges, confounds, frustrates and fascinates viewers? Which is more meaningful: a popcorn flick that never wanted to be anything special, wink-winking audiences in regular acknowledgement of its dumbness, or a film that tries –
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In the under-rated anthology comedy Movie 43, Hugh Jackman plays a hunky bachelor with one, shall we say, slightly unusual thing about him: a pair of huge testicles that dangle from his chin. His shell shocked date, Kate Winslet, cannot take her eyes off them; nor can she understand why nobody else in a busy restaurant appears
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It will surprise nobody with an appreciation of film and television, and some understanding of the culture in which they are discussed, to say that we live in spoiler-averse times. One might also say “spoiler obsessed” or “spoiler paranoid”. I cannot count (and I doubt you can either) the number of conversations I’ve had with
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Finding a co-star physically larger than Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is no easy task. That great big human special effect of a man, who in recent years has overtaken Bruce Willis as the proprietor of the most iconic cranium in contemporary cinema, is 6 foot 4 inches tall. And – to borrow that quintessentially Australian
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The exhibition Wonderland now on at Melbourne’s ACMI begins with Lewis Carroll’s 1865 book Alice in Wonderland and follows Alice’s journey through her many cinematic appearances from 1930’s silent Alice in Wonderland to the recent Tim Burton blockbusters. The exhibition looks at the importance of Lewis Carroll’s creation, and how technological innovations and filmmakers’ unique voices have added intriguing new layers
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As Alfred Hitchcock once said: “self-plagiarism is style”. The writer/director Wes Anderson, whose best-known films include The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Royal Tenenbaums, has been self-plagiarising for some time now, and boy, is his style distinctive. He is, in fact, among the most visually distinctive auteurs working today. His idiosyncratic, teeth-achingly fastidious aesthetic is defined with labels
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Trixie Mattel is the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars 3. There is a certain irony that Brian Firkus’ perfectly executed parody of plastic, mass-produced womanhood (Barbie) seized the crown in a reality TV-show franchise that has “Barbie”-fied the art of drag: taking a staple of underground queer nightlife and turning it into a basic
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By Helen Razer
CNN is in urgent need of counselling. Since the 2016 death of Campaign Clinton, the poor old thing has suffered a collapse. Of course, it’s difficult for any of us to face the real life facts of a death, and we are often given in our grief to magical thinking. When, for example, my dear
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Political impersonators often come across as traders in a low-rent form of satire: pantomime obsessed with mimicking speech and gesture, and little else. I do not wish to use this occasion to ridicule entertainers trying to make a crust, such as ‘John How-Odd’ or the more straightforwardly named ‘Kevin Rudd Impersonator’ (“humour that cuts through
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