Tag: history
Cornelia Parker
Friday, November 15th, 2019 Sydney Morning Herald Column,A good deal of contemporary art is wilfully opaque but the work of Cornelia Parker is distinguished by a consistent, lucid intelligence – which is not to say there aren’t plenty of puzzles. I’ve never been a fan of wall labels that explain a work but with the survey Rachel Kent has put together for […]
The King
Thursday, October 24th, 2019 Film Reviews,It would be foolish to expect the cinema to accurately portray historical reality but some films leave one itching to get home and pick up a reference book – or more likely, ask Google. Whether your preferred route is paper or digital, David Michôd’s Netflix drama, The King, is a film that cries out for a […]
The Nightingale
Thursday, August 22nd, 2019 Film Reviews,Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale won the Special Jury Prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival, but made headlines because an enraged Italian film critic shouted abuse from the audience. This is not the only place the film has proved controversial, with viewers walking out of screenings at the Sydney Film Festival, complaining about “gratuitous violence”. The […]
Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan
Friday, August 9th, 2019 Film Reviews,A film script is one area where the old adage about “too many cooks” almost always rings true. Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan, has employed no fewer than five writers, but the dialogue and characterisation never seem to have gotten beyond a first draft. This would be fatal if the film set out […]
Danie Mellor
Saturday, August 3rd, 2019 Blog,NATSIAA may not be the most mellifluous of acronyms but it generates an incredible amount of excitement, as finalist Danie Mellor can attest. In 2009 Mellor won the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, which is held every year at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, in Darwin. It’s good […]
The White Crow
Friday, July 26th, 2019 Film Reviews,Rudolf Nureyev (1938-93) was not only one of the most celebrated ballet dancers of all time, but an icon of popular culture in the 1960s. His defection at Paris’s Le Bourget airport in June, 1961, at the height of the Cold War, was a major embarrassment for Soviet authorities who had sent the Mariinsky Ballet […]
Apollo 11
Thursday, July 18th, 2019 Film Reviews,Where were you when Neil Armstrong left that first, famous footprint on the Moon? It’s a question that need not concern a good number of readers as it’s been precisely 50 years since the lunar landing. I was around, but too young to appreciate the momentous nature of the event. My class was herded into […]
The Third Wife
Thursday, July 11th, 2019 Film Reviews,My first option this week was Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart, which arrived with glowing plaudits as an American high-school comedy that was supposedly fresh, original and funny. That sounded about as likely as the platypus but it was something I needed to see with my own eyes. Alas, I must have gone to a different movie […]
Peterloo
Friday, May 10th, 2019 Film Reviews,Rise, like lions after slumber In unvanquishable number! Shake your chains to earth, like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you: Ye are many – they are few! Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Masque of Anarchy, thought by many to be the greatest political poem ever written, was inspired by one, singular event. In the […]
Mary Queen of Scots
Thursday, January 24th, 2019 Film Reviews,Remember the Monty Python sketch: “Yoo are Mary Queen of Scots?” “I am” Crash, bang wallop! Well there’s plenty of bang in Josie Rourke’s new bio pic, but nothing to laugh about. There have been so many movies about the cousins and rival queens, Mary and Elizabeth, that I could spend this entire column listing […]