Art Smitten

Part 2 of the interview where Christian and Andrew chat to Melbourne filmmakers Charles Terrier and Mike Loder about their debut indie feature  A Little Resistance , the " Moulin Rouge of war films" that's also “ Cinderella meets Platoon .” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Christian and Andrew chat to Melbourne filmmakers Charles Terrier and Mike Loder about their debut indie feature  A Little Resistance , the " Moulin Rouge of war films" that's also “ Cinderella meets Platoon .” Click here for Part 2 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After the melancholy vampire story that was Only Lovers Left Alive , Jim Jarmusch has delivered an equally meditative human drama with Paterson . It’s a film that shows a week in the life of a lovely artistic couple living in Paterson, New Jersey. Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) is an avid painter, designer and cupcake maker, with a distinctive monochromatic colour scheme in everything she makes...

The Founder is screenwriter Robert D. Siegel’s scathing portrait of Roy Kroc, the eponymous creator of the McDonald’s Corporation, not to be confused with the McDonald brothers who created, well, McDonald’s. If that sounds as all suss it’s probably because it was. Kroc, as written by Siegel, and played by Michael Keaton, is a shameless anti-hero, an opportunistic businessma...

Threadbare   Featuring: Fipe Preuss, Elnaz Sheshgelani and Phillipa Russell Choreographer: Kathleen Gonzales Producer: Natasha Jynel Threadbare is a three-part multidisciplinary show that celebrates the diversity of Australian identity through dance, poetry and visual art. The show is presented in languages including English, Spanish, Tongan, Arabic and Auslan. Threadbare invites audiences to...

Arrival is the latest film by Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, written by Eric Heisserer and adapted from a short story by Ted Chiang. It’s a science-fiction film in which aliens arrive on Earth and Dr Louise Banks, a linguist, played by Amy Adams, is asked to help decipher their language in order to find out their purpose on Earth. Over the course of the film we join Dr Banks in solving...

Erin is joined in the studio with Melbourne comedian Sammy J, one half of the comedy duo, Sammy J and Randy. Sammy J has been busy working on a new stage show since his hit tv election series, Playground Politics,  and co-writing and acting in Sammy J and Randy in Ricketts Lane , which was nominated for the 2015 ACCTA award for Best Television Comedy Show. The duo are now reopening Sammy J &a...

Hacksaw Ridge is quickly turning into the must-see film of the year: the true story of Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), a pacifist army medic who saved the lives of 75 World War II soldiers without ever holding a weapon. It's that powerful combination of a visceral war film, a compelling social justice story and a very poignant biopic that always gets people talking. Audiences all seem to be apprec...

The audience at La Mama Courthouse demanded encore bows from the cast of Rust and Bone on the night of its Victorian premiere performance, which they very humbly gave and most definitely deserved. Caleb Lewis’ three-pronged play asks a lot of its actors, and quite a bit from its audience as well. A trio of male performers - Luke Mulquiney, Adam Ibrahim and Glenn Maynard in this production -...

Hosts Ben and Andrew are joined in the studio by playwright and actor, Nakkiah Lui, the playwright behind Malthouse Theatre's production of Blaque Showgirls.  Loosely based off the movie, Showgirls (1995), the story is set in Brisvegas, where a young Ginny Jones seeks to join the Blaque Showgirls.  Christian Tsoutsouvas' review can be found here ! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy...

Blaque Showgirls is a merciless interrogation of Australian racism in the form of a stage parody of dance movies, including, of course, Showgirls (1995). Written by Nakkiah Lui, the acclaimed Aboriginal activist and playwright who recently worked on the ABC’s Black Comedy , it’s a play that mocks and borrows from film and tv in equal measure. Eugyeene Teh’s set design even resemb...

As fantastic as it is to see Arrival gaining so much traction, I do hope that Amy Adams’ other big release, Nocturnal Animals , still gets enough attention. Tom Ford’s second feature, after A Single Man (2009), sees Adams playing an equally sleep deprived but much less scholarly professional at the peak of her career. Susan Morrow is the jaded owner of a glitzy contemporary art gallery...

F. is a theatre production by Riot Stage, a youth theatre company based in Melbourne. It is part of Poppy Seed Festival, Poppy Seed is in its second year, it aimed producing shows made by independent and emerging theatre companies. F. followed a lives of a group of teenagers, it was composed of short scenes playing out different stories throughout the show, they sometimes became connected and it a...

Thierry, Andrew and Christian discuss the controversies surrounding the 2016 Archibald Art Prize . Between self portraits, twitter followers and distracting backgrounds, the Archibald entries always cause a stir. Which one was your favourite? Check them out as the tour makes its way through Australia. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ken Stone and Irene Silber’s Hard to Believe is a tight 56-minute exposé of an issue that few people like to think about: forced organ harvesting in China. It isn’t exactly a secret that the Chinese government performs surgery on its political prisoners without their consent, but in recent years the media has largely neglected this still very present atrocity. This documentary,...

Roger Ross Williams' latest feature documentary is about a 23-year-old autistic man who's obsessed with Disney movies - basically, me, if you just wind his age back two years, move him from America to Australia and rotate his sexuality 180 degrees. In light of that, you'll have to forgive me since I can't exactly distance myself from what is pretty much my own biography. Mostly, I was just overjoy...

Beth and Rach are joined by Stephaie Lake, performer in The Dark Chorus, a production in the Melbourne Festival.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alice Nash, Executive Produer of Lady Eats Apple, joins Beth and Rach in the studio to speak about the production in the Melbourne Festival.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s something incredibly uncomfortable about seeing a show about poor people by non-poor people, essential for rich people in one of Melbourne’s most highly regarded theatre venues. Blessed explores the lives of Maggie and Grey, two poor people who fell in love as teenagers and had heaps of fun, then Grey disappeared for ages and Maggie found him in a disgusting apartment, they tal...

This review contains mature content and language and pretty major spoilers about the show. Straight up, Anti-Hamlet was one of the best productions I have seen this year. It was absolutely trilling, and so engaging it left me exhausted and unable to get up from my seat, which is always a very special experience that I’ve only felt twice before I loved it so much that I was it two times in it...

Derek Cianfrance's The Light Between Oceans is something of an epic, operating on quite a small scale but still putting its characters through some formidable challenges. It's based on TL Stedman's novel of the same name, one that suggests both intimacy and profundity. This story does eventually deliver on both, but in the film at least, the intimacy is there pretty much from the get-go. It sets i...

Ben and Thierry are joined in the studio by Jonathan Holloway, the artistic director of the Melbourne Festival, recapping highlights and challenges of the 2016 season. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thierry and Ben are joined by Sean Patten, one of the performers and creators behind Gob Squad's production of War and Peace at the Malthouse Theatre. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Christian and Adalya are joined in the studio with Linda Shevlin, curator of Radical Action exhibition, by artist Seamus Nolan. This year is the 100 year anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland, and Radical Action focuses on "how events in recent and distant history, attitudes to rebellion, revolution and agitation have formed societies and national identities, question[s] the role of the...

Julieta is the latest film by Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, based on three short stories by Canadian writer Alice Munro. The eponymous lead character is depicted in the present and in flashbacks through a diary she is writing in a sort of cathartic fit. From the flashbacks we learn of Julieta's life, her joys and more specifically her tragedies, of which there are several, spanning ever...