Arts and culture
Is Jeremy Strong our John Cazale?
If you’re a big Bruce Springsteen fan, then this weekend’s new release, Deliver Me from Nowhere, will be one of…
La de da
Everyone who has read the work of the late great Thomas Bernhard, the Austrian novelist forever spitting his fellow Austrians…
The Chair Company is the workplace comedy we need right now
If you watched The Paper and, like most of its viewers, remained unimpressed by its comparatively limp updating of The…
What’s the point of remaking Amadeus?
At the close of Milos Forman’s Oscar-winning film, Amadeus, the central character, the terminally envious court composer Salieri, declares: ‘I…
The rustle of underwear
If ever there was gorgeous chocolate-box theatre it’s this magnificently staged production of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca directed by Anne-Louise…
Jilly Cooper’s novels could well become classics
Dame Jilly Cooper, who has died at 88, had a remarkable career, turning herself from a sparkling writer for newspapers…
Has Taylor Swift lost it?
The Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant once remarked that every successful musician has what he called ‘an imperial phase’, during…
What can we expect from the Simpsons sequel?
It is now more than three decades since President Bush the First declared that American families should be “more like…
Why the snobs were wrong about Jilly Cooper
Dame Jilly Cooper, who died today, finally achieved the acceptance that she’d always deserved. She wrote numerous volumes of witty,…
Looming horror of the heart
What are we to make of dramatic classics and classics of music and dance? That very distinguished actor Bille Brown…
Gore Vidal was the Virgil of American populism
America’s Montaigne, Gore Vidal, was born 100 years ago today. Born Eugene Luther Vidal, this Virgil of American populism entered…
High artistry and hilarity
It’s bizarre the level of sheer wastage in Ian Michael’s production of Troy. Yes, there’s a bit of hieratic glamour…
Dazzling reverse-mirror farce
It was good to see that Vivien Gaston was lecturing about portraiture in the context of the travelling Archibald Prize…
What Hollywood owes Robert Redford
Robert Redford was more than a film star, though he knew that was how he would be remembered. He didn’t…
We won’t see the likes of Robert Redford again
In the end, the Sundance Kid died in his sleep. The death of the actor, director and Sundance Film Festival…
Please let this be the end of Downton Abbey
The third and supposedly final Downton Abbey picture released in American cinemas this Friday. Ominously subtitled The Grand Finale –…
Turning your brain to mush
The appointment of Dean Bryant as head of the Malthouse Theatre took some of us by surprise. He had just…
The blood goes cold
Isn’t it weird the way our newspapers seem suddenly to have discovered the obituary. David Stratton, loved and revered for…
What has Hollywood done to Wuthering Heights?
‘Come undone’, the billboard reads. Two hands are clasped together. On another a blonde-haired woman lies prone on a fuzzy…
Dark and ravaged places
Destiny was the first work commissioned under Anne-Louise Sarks’ directorship of the Melbourne Theatre Company and it’s appropriate that it…
A world away
Remember Gus the Theatre Cat in T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats? He says that he has acted…
Shaggy dog tale
I thought it would be impossible to make a bad film about a dog but the production team for The…
Getting down and dirty
It’s splendid to be sitting at the very front of the Playhouse watching a new musical from the Melbourne Theatre…
Unparalleled strangeness
How strange it is to be transported back to some version of the world of Lena Dunham. Remember Girls, that…
A touch of the unthinkable
The other night we watched one of the greatest American films ever made. Network was directed by Sidney Lumet to…
