The Italian Film Festival opens on Thursday 1 October with a new live-action version of the classic Pinocchio fairy tale. The traditionally popular festival runs until Wednesday 14 October with screenings at Luna, Luna on SX, Windsor Cinema and Raine Square’s Palace Cinema. To celebrate the 20th anniversary – and in honour of the late […]
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig Canongate Sixteen year-old Nora Seed sat in the warmth of the school library in Bedford, playing chess with the librarian Mrs Elm. Nora was worried about her future but felt she could talk to the librarian who had so much wisdom to share. Suddenly, there was a phone call […]
The Translators | Dir: Régis Roinsard | ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ French writer/director Régis Roinsard has crafted a claustrophobic Agatha Christie style thriller that keeps the audience guessing until the very end. There are many twists and turns in this fast-paced film that features a multinational cast of superb actors. The suave and arrogant head of […]
A Saint from Texas by Edmund White Bloomsbury Yvonne (pronounced Why-von in Texas) and Yvette (pronounced Why-vet) Crawford are twin sisters born in Ranger, Texas – once the oil capital of America before the wells ran dry in the 1930s. Their mother died in the 1950s and their father had millions in oil money in […]
Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron Bloomsbury Variations of the Cinderella story have been told for nearly 2000 years and the mythology of the popular fairy tale lingers in our cultural ether even today. While the Grimm brothers’ tale is a lot darker than the Disney one, the possibility that magic can transform a destitute […]
Sam Bloom by Samantha Bloom, Cameron Bloom & Bradley Trevor Greive ABC Books The best-selling book Penguin Bloom captured the hearts and minds of people around the world, and the miraculous and heart-warming story has even inspired a major motion picture starring Naomi Watts. Full of the most marvelous photographs, it told how a wounded […]
Poly by Paul Dalgarno Ventura Press Melbournites Chris and Sarah Flood met in Hong Kong. He was working as a DJ and she was dancing professionally with Tasty Moves in Asia. Many years and two children later (7 year old Oliver and 5 year old Sophie), Chris can’t decide what to buy his wife for […]
Indigo Owl by Charlie Archibold Wakefield Press This is Adelaide author Charlie Archibold’s second Young Adult novel and it is set on the futuristic planet of Galbraith. After Earth was destroyed by climate change and overpopulation, only private corporations had the money to colonise new planets and Galbraith was a huge pharmaceutical enterprise. It is […]
The Wreck by Meg Keneally Echo Publishing Meg Keneally is fascinated by marine history and the title of her second historical novel gives an indication as to what historical aspects have influenced her writing of The Wreck. In the nineteenth century, the sailing ship Dunbar was forced into the cliff face a little south of […]
Tiny White Lies by Fiona Palmer Hachette I love that Fiona Palmer thanks her teenage children, who were born in the age of technology, for being the inspiration for her family drama. Her main character Ashley Grisham is still recovering from her husband’s suicide eight months previously when she finds out that her only child, […]
