I have long been a fan of classic comedy duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, known of course as Laurel and Hardy, who were popular from the late 1920s through to the mid-1940s. Way back in the dim dark days of the mid-1970s, Australia’s national broadcaster ABC used to broadcast a Continue Reading
Movies
Movie review: Dope
Malcolm Adekanbi (Shameik Moore) is a young man who likes to defy expectations. And in writer/director Rick Famuyiwa’s Dope, a hit at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Malcolm and his geeky besties, Jib (Tony Revolori) and Diggy (Kiersey Clemons) certainly have quite a few expectations to defy. For one Continue Reading
Life is about knowing how to take a hit: Ashby (trailer + poster)
SNAPSHOT “Ed Wallis (Nat Wolff) and his spirited single mom (Sarah Silverman) are new in town. At school, Ed struggles to fit in. He secretly desires to make the football team although the jocks disapprove, and he connects with only one other student, brainy Eloise (Emma Roberts). Given an Continue Reading
Movie review: Ricki and the Flash
Following your dreams is one thing. Following your dreams, moving to California, abandoning your family in Indiana who grow to resent you (mostly), and finding your dreams aren’t quite what they’re cracked up to be; ah, well, that is quite another. It’s a lesson Ricki Rendazzo aka one time Continue Reading
Movie review: Mission Impossible Rogue Nation
Ladies and gentlemen, this is how you begin an espionage action movie. Particularly one as gloriously over the top, in all the best possible ways, as Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, the latest instalment in the classic TV show-cum -movie franchise that literally shows no sign of slowing down anytime Continue Reading
“We are the (flying) Men in Black”: Air New Zealand’s funky new air safety video
Let’s be honest. Not a lot of us pay attention to the necessarily ubiquitous safety videos that every airlines plays before takeoff. I am one of the very few who actually does it, figuring knowing how survive the “unlikely event of an aircraft crash” – see I have even memorised Continue Reading
Movie review: Holding the Man
History, it has been often be observed, is written by the victors. Or at the very least, by those who manage to outlast everyone else around them. However, in the case of Tim Conigrave (Ryan Corr), the author of posthumously-published iconic memoir Holding the Man, now a deeply-moving film Continue Reading
Risking it all for love: New extended Carol trailer
SNAPSHOT Adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novella The Price of Salt, which tells the story of a lesbian romance in the ’50s written by Highsmith under the pseudonym Claire Morgan. The rather unprecedented homosexual love story–for the time in which it was written–follows the relationship between two very different Continue Reading
Short and short of it: “I’m Going to Bite Someone” (a shark with a message)
It’s going to come as no surprise to anyone that the natural environment is being trashed at a frighteningly prodigious rate. And while pretty much everyone will agree Something Should Be Done, getting them to listen in detail to the issues at hand can be a challenge. Which is Continue Reading
Romantically Inside Out: “Riley’s First Date” #alltheemotions
SNAPSHOT The story picks up one year after the events of “Inside Out,” when a boy comes to Riley’s house to see her. That doesn’t sit well with her parents, who simply can’t figure out if their 12-year-old daughter is going on her first date. Her dad’s emotions quickly Continue Reading