Arts and culture

A passable Antipodean

26 April 2025 9:00 am

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

19 April 2025 9:00 am

Easter was almost on us when the suggestion came. There was talk of a new Narnia film underway and of…

The zenith of art

12 April 2025 9:00 am

Last week your columnist cut a paragraph stating that the original Melbourne Higgins in My Fair Lady, Robin Bailey, and…

Unsurpassable

5 April 2025 9:00 am

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

3 April 2025 2:52 am

Two books I read in my teens made me want to be a writer. One, Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, appeared when…

Intensely engaging

29 March 2025 9:00 am

The Australian National Academy of Music gala performance on Friday 21 March was dazzling with guest conductor Asher Fisch leading…

Theatre vultures will kill

22 March 2025 9:00 am

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

20 March 2025 4:41 pm

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?

17 March 2025 5:23 pm

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

16 March 2025 5:00 pm

Written by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa at the end of his life in the late 1950s, it is a novel…

Never mind the cracks

15 March 2025 9:00 am

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

15 March 2025 9:00 am

Liszt’s compositions tend to have descriptive titles — “Wild Chase;” “Dreams of Love” — whereas Chopin avoided titles. Thomas Wentworth…

Devotion and betrayals

8 March 2025 9:00 am

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

5 March 2025 4:30 pm

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

5 March 2025 1:32 am

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

4 March 2025 8:30 pm

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

1 March 2025 9:00 am

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

25 February 2025 11:52 pm

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

22 February 2025 9:00 am

Simone Young conducted Mahler’s Third at the Opera House on Wednesday 19 February and with its dense lyricism, its lush…

Newsreader fascinates

15 February 2025 9:00 am

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

14 February 2025 5:08 pm

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’

14 February 2025 5:00 pm

Pelham Grenville (PG – or Plum) Wodehouse breathed his last on Valentine’s Day fifty years ago. As Evelyn Waugh saw…

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…