Arts and culture
A passable Antipodean
Isn’t it strange the way the popular and high art aspects of our culture keep connecting and intersecting. A friend…
The way the imagination works
Easter was almost on us when the suggestion came. There was talk of a new Narnia film underway and of…
The zenith of art
Last week your columnist cut a paragraph stating that the original Melbourne Higgins in My Fair Lady, Robin Bailey, and…
Unsurpassable
It’s a weird connection but they say Donald Trump is devoted to his presidential predecessor Andrew Jackson who was popular…
What really scares people about Adolescence
Two books I read in my teens made me want to be a writer. One, Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, appeared when…
Intensely engaging
The Australian National Academy of Music gala performance on Friday 21 March was dazzling with guest conductor Asher Fisch leading…
Theatre vultures will kill
Having a sportswriter father is no excuse. The young man was tall, long fair-haired with a hat. ‘What do you…
Netflix’s Adolescence is far from perfect
According to one gushing review, Netflix’s Adolescence is the ‘most brilliant TV drama in years’. And that verdict is at…
Is ‘good enough’ all we want from TV?
For those people with a therapeutic bent of mind, the phrase ‘good enough’ has an almost magical power. It says:…
What The Leopard is really about
Written by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa at the end of his life in the late 1950s, it is a novel…
Never mind the cracks
If you wanted confirmation that the world can change dramatically you need only remember the Berlin Wall coming down in…
How good titles are chosen
Liszt’s compositions tend to have descriptive titles — “Wild Chase;” “Dreams of Love” — whereas Chopin avoided titles. Thomas Wentworth…
Devotion and betrayals
There is a Roman saying, ‘What the barbarians started the Barberinis completed’ with reference to one of the great dynastic…
No Other Land isn’t what it seems
The Oscars, an institution that claims to celebrate artistic excellence, this week played a leading role in a sophisticated and…
Netflix’s ‘With Love, Meghan’ is surreally dull
My experience of Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex and Muchness of Montecito, has I imagine been quite a common one.…
Netflix’s ‘With Love, Meghan’ is Brand Sussex’s final hope
So here it is, the undistinguished thing, at last. I had hopes that, after its postponement because of the Californian…
In every kind of film
The fact that the eminent Irish actor Stephen Rea is doing Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape at the Adelaide Festival from…
Cinema doesn’t have to be stuck in a loop
If you’ve recently been to the cinema or turned on your streaming platform of choice, no doubt you’ll have been…
Knowing how to cast
Simone Young conducted Mahler’s Third at the Opera House on Wednesday 19 February and with its dense lyricism, its lush…
Newsreader fascinates
It’s a fascinating thing that The Newsreader is back on ABC iview. This is the soap about a couple of…
Bridget Jones is no feminist
Bridget Jones isn’t what she used to be. The latest film, Mad About the Boy, features Bridget as a grieving widow…
The perfect genius of P.G. Wodehouse’s ‘never-never land’
Pelham Grenville (PG – or Plum) Wodehouse breathed his last on Valentine’s Day fifty years ago. As Evelyn Waugh saw…
Sweeping exit
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
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
Art takes every possible shape and size. The exhibition of Japanese ukiyo-e prints (running at the National Gallery of Australia…
