Arts and culture
Moulin Rouge
It seems an aeon ago, the press night of Moulin Rouge, on 26 November. Since then, there has been illness,…
Don’t Look Up
How strange it is to be in a supposedly opened-up world, even as the Omicron variety of the virus shuts…
Jeremy Irons in House of Gucci
Any attempt to fictionalise the Gucci story runs into the same difficulties as Ridley Scott’s handsome and absorbing film, House…
West Side Story
How strange to revisit the Nova in Lygon Street, Carlton, where a lifetime of films have been experienced, after an…
The Cardinal’s books
There are a thousand overtly artistic things to talk about at this summer moment including the new Sidney Nolan exhibition…
Sigrid Thornton
It was the thought of Stephen Sondheim’s death that made us watch Imelda Staunton in Gypsy. It’s the second musical…
Jane Campion
A new film by Jane Campion is always going to be a magnetsing prospect and the idea of it suddenly…
Nitram
Nitram is the Martin Bryant film which sent shivers down everyone’s spine at the mere prospect. Justin Kurzel’s film about…
As You Like It
As You Like It is middle Shakespeare, probably lateish 1590s. It’s not one of the earlier happy comedies like the…
Don’t forget the motor city
No Sudden Move, Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Streaming on Amazon Prime
Sean Connery
Anyone who cares about the theatre should rush to see Kendall Feaver’s Wherever She Wanders which Griffin Theatre Company is…
Bert Newton
And so the world finally bestirs itself in the direction of going out because it’s now allowable. A young millennial…
The Crucible
Sometimes you think the Apocalypse doesn’t go away. It just takes new and frightful forms. No sooner was the lockdown…
Keith Michell
So the lockdowns end, even in Melbourne, and we get a glimpse of what artistic performance may loom in a…
Bob Dylan
Only in Australia and perhaps only in Sydney, that cradle of the cons and the jailers, the Rum Corps and…
Maggie Smith
And so we look like being able to see live performance again in the two biggest cities in Australia: Sydney…
Clive Owen
A time of plague makes us brood on the culture we share in the absence of personal preference. One person…
Heath Ledger
It’s weird to hear news of artistic life in the midst of Covid. The Sydney Theatre Company has a new…
Nic Denton and Frances O’Connor
As the northern hemisphere, that ambiguous spectral homeland we’re conscious of, starts to open up, it’s easy to be envious…
Diane Lane
It was doubly sad the other night to see Virginia Gay deliver a speech from her Covid-cancelled Cyrano on the…
Thomas Mann
And so Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge is Melbourne’s musical-in- waiting. The show that can only go on when we’re 80…
Charlie Watts
The endless news is of shows locked down as every form of life is locked down in a nation struggling…
Nicole Kidman
And, as even Canberra locks down, so do all the shows. The Melbourne Theatre Company shuts down its production of…
Ernest Hemingway
Entertainment in a public place shrivels as the lockdowns continue. The Australian Ballet has cancelled its Melbourne season, Anna Karenina…
Aden Young
No one has any guarantee of seeing Sigrid Thornton in Lifespan of a Fact with the Sydney Theatre Company now…
