Gay Chorus Deep South | Revelation Film Festival | 6th & 16th July | ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Written and directed by David Charles Rodrigues, this heart-warming documentary is about the healing power of music. Rodrigues follows 300 singers from the Gay Men’s Chorus of San Francisco as they tour the southern American states with the most […]
I Miss You When I Blink by Mary Laura Philpott Murdoch Books Mary Laura Philpott has written for The New York Times, The Paris Review and O The Oprah Magazine, examining the overlap between the absurd and the profound in her life. In this memoir-in-essays, she shares the humour of her life’s more memorable moments […]
Tremors | Cinema Paradiso | May 3 & 12 | ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ Tremors is a very dark film. It opens with 40-something Pablo (Juan Pablo Olyslager) arriving home in the rain after work in Guatemala City. Obviously wealthy, he is met by the maid who tells him that his young son and daughter have […]
Carmen & Lola | Cinema Paradiso | May 6 & 11 | ★ ★ ★ ★ Carmen & Lola, the first feature film from Arantxa Echevarria, takes the audience into a deeply Catholic gypsy community in the bustling Spanish city of Madrid. There’s colour, dancing and the sense of a close-knit community where Carmen (Rosy Rodriguez) and […]
Rolling with the Punchlines by Urzila Carlson Allen & Unwin Comedian Urzila Carlson has made a big splash in Australia and New Zealand where she lives with her wife and two children. Originally from South Africa, she did her first stand-up gig did as a dare from her workmates in 2008. She now has regular […]
Without A Doubt by Fleur McDonald Allen & Unwin Esperance farmer and writer Fleur McDonald has written a succession of books that allow her readers to get to know rural Australia much better. In Without A Doubt, she continues the adventures of Detective Dave Burrows, who has been posted to the remote country town of […]
Thirty Thousand Bottles of Wine and a Pig Called Helga By Todd Alexander Simon & Schuster Australia Todd and Jeff had had enough of the city. Todd was a high-flying marketing executive “living the classic city lifestyle of hard work and even harder play”. He lived with Jeff, who worked for a cancer charity, in […]
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon Bloomsbury Publishing Taking her inspiration from stories of old, Samantha Shannon has built an intricate fantasy world that is populated by a huge array of characters (there are 15 pages of character descriptions), wyverns (wyverns are much smaller than dragons, have limited powers and only 2 […]
Destroyer | MA15+ | Thu 21st Mar | ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ LAPD Detective Erin Bell (Nicole Kidman) seems to have spent the night in her car under a bridge. Certainly looking a lot worse for wear, she staggers from her car to the crime scene nearby where a dead man lies face-down and she recognizes […]
How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee Oneworld When Wang Di was born in Singapore, she wasn’t really wanted by her family as it was a time when girls weren’t valued. In fact, her name means “to hope for a brother”. She was 16 years old when the Japanese army invaded Singapore during WW II and […]
