Year: 2013
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
Saturday, December 21st, 2013 Film Reviews,It has been a whopping nine years since Will Ferrell starred in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004). This is an eternity compared to the speed with which Hollywood usually serves up sequels, although the delay may simply be due to the huge volume of film and TV work the hyperactive Ferrell has undertaken […]
Kill Your Darlings
Saturday, December 21st, 2013 Film Reviews,Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Lucien Carr. The first three were among the most famous writers of their generation, the last worked for 47 years as a news editor for United Press International. Yet in the formative years of the Beat Generation, Lucien Carr was the hippest of the hip. This brief, glittering […]
The Met: Captured Live in HD/National Theatre Live
Saturday, December 14th, 2013 Film Reviews,For those who hesitate to keep up a subscription at the opera or the theatre the live broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera, New York, and the National Theatre Live from Britain, are a pure pleasure. For less than $30 one can sample the very best these cities have to offer, getting ringside seats for shows […]
Cai Guo-Qiang
Saturday, December 14th, 2013 Art Column,Cai Guo-Qiang is an artist who understands spectacle. In an international art scene as crowded as a commuter train at rush hour he creates large-scale installations that stop viewers in their tracks. Where so many artists are identified with a trademark style, Cai has managed to regularly turn over his themes and techniques. What all […]
American Hustle
Saturday, December 14th, 2013 Film Reviews,There’s something irresistible in a wellmade film about con artists, who are invariably portrayed in a sympathetic light. Perhaps there’s not much difference between them, actors and directors. Filmmakers set out to con the viewer by creating an illusion, setting false trails and expectations. We, in turn, are happy to be conned. There are plenty […]
Night Train to Lisbon
Saturday, December 7th, 2013 Film Reviews,In Jack Cardiff’s Girl on a Motorcycle (1968), which marries pretension and sexploitation in a way that only the 1960s could conceive, Marianne Faithfull abandons her boring schoolteacher husband and roars off to Switzerland on a big Harley-Davidson for a romantic assignation with Alain Delon. Most girls might think this sounds like a perfectly logical […]
Singapore Biennale
Saturday, December 7th, 2013 Art Column,This year’s Singapore Biennale goes by the theme: If the World Changed. But where does the “if” come into the equation? The world is changing all the time with increasing rapidity. There is the forward movement of technological progress and the looming entropy of climate change. Every country in the world is locked into a […]
The Darkside
Saturday, December 7th, 2013 Film Reviews,Warwick Thornton’s The Darkside is one of those rare films that defies categorisation. It is being called a “documentary” for want of a better word, but it’s also a drama and a horror movie at one remove. A succession of wellknown actors tell us stories about ghosts and supernatural occurrences. These stories are word-for-word renditions […]
Martin Sharp 1942-2013
Thursday, December 5th, 2013 Blog,When the word Eternity was emblazoned on the Sydney Harbour Bridge for the turn of the new millennium, it served to remind Australians of the remarkable talents of Martin Sharp. This famous piece of graffiti was the trademark of the religious eccentric, Arthur Stace, who spent almost 30 years chalking it onto walls and streets, […]
Fiona Hall for Venice
Thursday, December 5th, 2013 Blog,For more than 20 years Fiona Hall has been the obvious, dead-set, undeniable first choice to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale. It is a testimony to the acumen of our arts bureaucracy that in 2015 she will become the first artist to occupy a newly-built pavilion. Any other country might have rushed her into […]