opinion

The Cat Empire @ Melbourne Zoo

This time last year I saw Grizzly Bear at Melbourne Zoo Twilights, and this year we enjoyed a live show by the homegrown veterans The Cat Empire. Can we keep the animal band name theme going for a third year in a row? Stay tuned!

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The Favourite – Film Review

I love my conventional period costume dramas, but sometimes it’s nice to see a different take on the genre, and this deeply eccentric and sweary film hits the spot.

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4.50 From Paddington by Agatha Christie – Book Review

4.50 From Paddington probably sits squarely in the middle of Christie’s Miss Marple series – not a classic, but hardly one of the worst either. It certainly has a cracking premise at least. An elderly lady named Mrs McGillicuddy travels by train and shockingly comes face to face with a murder when she witnesses a woman being strangled in a train that briefly travels alongside hers. She promptly reports the crime, but no body is ever found and the officials dismiss her story as old lady ravings. The only person who believes Mrs McGillicuddy is her good friend Jane Marple, who knows that her friend lacks the imagination to make up a wild tale.

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Black Rock White City by A. S. Patrić – Book Review

I’m a sort of reader who doesn’t like to give up on books easily, but this latest book club read, an acclaimed debut novel from a Serbian-born Australian writer, really tested my patience for a good hundred pages before I finally started to find it somewhat rewarding.

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Conversations with Nick Cave @ Melbourne Town Hall

I have my friend and fellow fan to thank for a chance to attend this very special and unorthodox event involving one of my all-time favourite artists. I’ve lost count of how many times I saw Nick Cave live, but this speaking tour, with Cave candidly answering unpredictable questions from the audience and performing picks from his enormous back catalogue on the piano, was something very different.

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