Arts and culture

Sweeping exit

8 February 2025 9:00 am

It will be fascinating to see what Jamie Martín, the head of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, makes of Mahler’s Second…

It ain’t me, Bob

1 February 2025 9:00 am

It’s always a bit extraordinary how much an art form lives on the legends it has created. Everyone is looking…

Nothing like a Dame

25 January 2025 9:00 am

Art takes every possible shape and size. The exhibition of Japanese ukiyo-e prints (running at the National Gallery of Australia…

Classical music is worth the effort

23 January 2025 12:01 am

Last week I attended a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No.3 at the Barbican Centre in the City of London. Gustavo…

What made David Lynch cool

18 January 2025 5:00 pm

When one of your favourite filmmakers dies, it is hard not to feel a deeply personal sense of loss; the…

Pacific Paradise Lost

18 January 2025 9:00 am

Back in the childhoods of the baby boomers everyone seemed to know that Shakespeare was born in 1564 because there…

The triumph and tragedy of Tony Slattery

15 January 2025 10:44 pm

Tony Slattery was outrageously funny. And he was funny because he was outrageous. The actor and comedian, who died yesterday…

Thrillers

11 January 2025 9:00 am

It’s funny the preconceptions you have about the Christmas/New Year period. I hadn’t anticipated seeing Juror #2 the new Clint…

Summer Reading

4 January 2025 9:00 am

There are a thousand ways of celebrating the Christmas holiday that are culture specific but have a universal appeal. You…

The triumph of When Harry Met Sally

28 December 2024 9:01 pm

Look at any list of the ‘greatest ever romcoms’ and you’ll find When Harry Met Sally near the top of…

Pulp have always been in the wrong place at the wrong time

27 December 2024 6:32 pm

Pulp, the legendary band fronted by Jarvis Cocker, have revealed that they’ve signed a new recording deal with equally legendary…

Take it easy on a long, hot summer

14 December 2024 9:00 am

It’s a strange time, the summer holidays in Australia. Some people have riveting memories of Boxing Day tests, of Australian…

The most immodest thing

7 December 2024 9:00 am

So they’re having another go at removing the varnish and the accumulated dark oiliness and other accretions from that most…

Drunk in a midnight choir

30 November 2024 9:00 am

Biography can create the most heightened sense of drama. Just at the moment SBS On Demand is showing a streamer…

Such grandeur in the mind

23 November 2024 9:00 am

There’s always something breathtaking about the prices great art can fetch but the sale of Leonardo’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ at Christie’s…

Striving of the individual soul

16 November 2024 9:00 am

The Australian Ballet seems to have had a smash hit with Oscar. Not only did the ballet, choreographed by Christopher…

Narrative robbery

9 November 2024 9:00 am

So the silly season, the festive season when we celebrate the incarnation of the Good is looming, yet again, and…

The all-powerful hand of the director

2 November 2024 9:00 am

When that writer of spare French prose André Gide was asked who the greatest French poet was he replied, ‘Hugo,…

What Fight Club got right

26 October 2024 11:30 pm

There are three great makers of popular man-art working in Hollywood today – Michael Mann, Christopher Nolan and David Fincher…

Such wild and tumultuous art

26 October 2024 9:00 am

Jonathan Mills’ opera Eucalyptus based on the superbly designed novel by Murray Bail has left audiences dazzled and rushing to…

Paddington shouldn’t have been given a passport

23 October 2024 1:17 am

Paddington has an official passport. The makers of the new Paddington film Paddington in Peru revealed this in passing to the Radio Times today.…

A level of grandeur

19 October 2024 9:00 am

You can hardly complain about the state of classical music in this country at the moment. The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra…

Grave and terrible elements

12 October 2024 9:00 am

There’s something horrifying about Monsters, the Netflix streamer about the Menendez brothers who, back in 1989, murdered their mother and…

Why Threads is still the most terrifying film ever made

9 October 2024 5:00 pm

As we inch ever closer to Halloween, the inevitable lists of the scariest films ever made have already begun to…

Paul McCartney never got over his filmmaking flop

6 October 2024 5:00 pm

Witnessing the recent imperial progress of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, it occurred to me how impossible it is to imagine…