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Recent reviews
Perth Writers' Festival, A new art and design publishing prize, Jaipur in Melbourne, Cirque du Soleil in Melbourne, The Long String Instrument, and film giveaways ...
... (read more)Nude: Art from the Tate collection (Art Gallery of New South Wales)
There is an underlying theme to Nude: Art from the Tate collection: the tussle between the desire to connect humanity to mythology by shrouding our naked forms in grand narratives, and the will to see human nudity both objectively and subjectively, but most importantly as entirely our own ...
... (read more)For the first third of this film, you would be forgiven for thinking you were back under the influence of the Italian neorealists: largely non-professional actors in a realistic milieu; themes of poverty and deprivation; a child at the centre of the action. That it takes place in India only heightens the ...
... (read more)It was in early 1974, while Harold Pinter was in America and working on a screen adaption of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon, that the originating image of No Man’s Land occurred to him
... (read more)In London, 1947, a young white English woman named Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike), of modest background, meets an ordinary-seeming young black man named Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo) at a dance. They go on a few dates, swap jazz records, and then, in short order, the young ...
... (read more)Tracey Moffatt at the Venice Biennale, Brett Whiteley, Brett Dean and Stuart Skelton, Shakespeare: The Complete Works – 100 CDs, Todd in Venice, Summer Showcase, and giveaways from Transmission Films and Entertainment One ...
... (read more)When a friend suggested over dinner that I watch Netflix’s The Crown, I responded with an earthier version of ‘Ten hours about an unelected monarch? Nope.’ It made sense, of course, for the US streaming giant to drop $100ish million on a television drama about Her Maj ...
... (read more)Versailles: Treasures from the Palace (National Gallery of Australia) and A History of the World in 100 Objects (National Museum of Australia)
Two very different touring exhibitions are showing in Canberra this summer. A History of the World in 100 Objects, from the British Museum at the National Museum of Australia, tells a two-million-year story through works from the collection of the British Museum. It is based on former BM ...
... (read more)‘The Jews will not come to it because it is a Christian story and the ladies will not come because it is a virtuous one.’ George Frideric Handel’s much-quoted explanation for the lack of success of Theodora, his penultimate oratorio, may or may not be accurate, but there is no doubt about its ...
... (read more)After the exaltation of the closing duet in Siegfried (memorably sung by Stefan Vinke and Lise Lindstrom), we had to wait until the second part of the Prologue to Götterdämmerung before meeting the post-coital lovers. First we had the Norns (Tania Ferris, Jacqueline Dark, Anna-Louise Cole ...
... (read more)