One of the longest running and most popular shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is the improvised musical Showstopper!. Like this very website, they kicked things off 18 years ago, in August 2008. Since then, there have been a dozen sell-out seasons, and they’ve even taken it to the West End (twice!) for which they…

There’s a certain honesty in opening your movie with the declaration that it is “based on a pathetic true story.” It’s an immediate indication of the wavelength Jeff Ryan is operating on with Mooch, a scrappy comedy noir that understands there are few things funnier – or, occasionally, sadder – than watching a grown man…

Aussie pop-punk legends Stand Atlantic are set to grace local stages once more, with October dates locked in to support the release of upcoming album GODBREATH. They’ll hit up Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth throughout October and early November, before heading over to Florida to join the line-up at the iconic Warped Tour. GODBREATH,…

Thanks to Sony Pictures Australia, we have 5 double in-season passes (Admit 2) to see the latest chapter in the Insidious series, Insidious: Out of the Further, only in Australian cinemas from August 20th, 2026. Having earned over $740 million at the global box office, the Insidious franchise returns with a new family and a…

Big Walk is the brand-new multiplayer game from developer House House, otherwise known as the team that previously made the wildly popular and addictive Untitled Goose Game. This time, they are going all in on the multiplayer angle, allowing for up to 12 players in a walkabout game that sees you communicating with your friends…

While I’m a massive AFL fan, I also have some incredibly fond memories of Aussie Rules Footy on the NES. While I’ve played almost every AFL game since then, I’ve always missed the simplicity and charm of that first NES game. So when I saw Pro Jank Footy, my eyes lit up. Pro Jank Footy…

Australian medical drama The F Ward is officially going global, with the locally produced series securing licensing deals across 100 key international territories and becoming the fastest-selling Australian drama ever pre-launch. Commissioned by Stan and co-produced by Roadshow Rough Diamond and CBS Studios, the six-part series launched in Australia last month, introducing audiences to the…

There’s an infectious sincerity running through Nimrods that makes it difficult not to root for. On paper, it’s another coming-of-age road trip about three underdogs chasing an impossible dream. In execution, however, it plays like a love letter to the scrappy youth comedies of decades past, complete with muted colours, fuzzy VHS inserts, a wall-to-wall…

Walking the streets of Edinburgh this week for my second ever time at the Fringe, it’s hard to escape the presence of Australians. I hear the accent in just about every audience, and there seems to be a comedian or a production on just about every stage. With the world’s second largest Fringe Festival in…

Few modern musicals have travelled quite as successfully as Hadestown. From its beginnings as Anaïs Mitchell’s independent theatre project to Tony-winning Broadway phenomenon and international hit, its journey is now taking another turn, with the celebrated musical heading to the big screen. Trafalgar Releasing has confirmed that Hadestown: The Musical, filmed live on stage at…

Phantom Blade Zero is shaping up to be one of the more exciting releases of the year, and PlayStation have announced in its latest blog post, that it will be the next State of Play for 2026. While we’re not sure exactly how long this will run, we do know it will extend upon the…

With billions of views, tens of millions of followers and sold-out shows across the globe, Max Amini has built the kind of comedy career whose statistics can sound almost implausible. Named by Variety as one of the “most watched comedians on the planet,” the Iranian-American performer delivered 2025’s most-watched stand-up special across all platforms with…

Making their fifth appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, last night I had the chance to see the hilarious Melbourne production Adults Only Magic Show at the iconic Scottish festival. The show receives rave reviews each year – and this, the 463rd time they’ve performed the show, will have been no exception. Helmed by magicians…

David Robert Mitchell has never seemed particularly interested in giving audiences exactly the movie they think they’re getting. It Follows turned a seemingly simple supernatural curse into an unnerving meditation on intimacy and mortality, while Under the Silver Lake gleefully disappeared down its own paranoid rabbit holes. So perhaps it makes perfect sense that Mitchell’s…

While the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is perhaps best known for its comedy programming, the world’s largest performing arts festival has something for everyone. British music promoter and musician Andy Macleod certainly understands this, as he debuts his new one-man show at the event, Soho Days and Camden Nights. It’s his second time at the Fringe,…

I’ve never really gotten into any of the X-Com games over the years, and to be completely honest, I’m not sure why. I’ve heard nothing but great things about them, but with Star Wars Zero Company essentially reviving the genre more recently, I felt compelled to dive a little deeper and check this one out….

There’s something almost quaint about One Night Only being sold on the promise of sex. Will Gluck’s latest romantic comedy takes place in an alternate United States where premarital sex has been outlawed under a government decree known as “The Mandate.” For 364 days of the year, unmarried citizens are expected to keep their hands…

The 2026 Good Things lineup is here, with this being the earliest lineup drop in the festival’s history. I’ll be honest, we were slightly off with our predictions but we’re far from disappointed. Leading the lineup are nu-metal favourites Limpbizkit, who are no strangers to Good Things, having co-headlined in 2023. Joining them are pop-punk…

There’s something almost rebellious about a comedy as proudly, aggressively stupid as Stop! That! Train! In an era where even the lightest studio entertainment can feel burdened by franchise mythology or the need to justify its own existence, Adam Shankman’s disaster-movie spoof has a refreshingly uncomplicated ambition: make people laugh. Preferably with a dirty joke,…

From The Wedding Planner and Bringing Down the House to the gloriously larger-than-life musicality of Hairspray, Adam Shankman has spent decades making studio comedies designed, above all else, to entertain. But for his latest film, Stop! That! Train!, the director traded the machinery of a major Hollywood production for a 19-day independent shoot, a train…

If there was ever a role designed to weaponise Brooke Lynn Hytes’ statuesque presence, impeccable posture and bone-dry delivery, it’s Amber, the gloriously condescending first-class attendant she plays in Stop! That! Train! Directed by Hairspray filmmaker Adam Shankman and produced by the team behind RuPaul’s Drag Race, the unabashedly camp disaster-movie spoof takes its cues…

When Doom: The Dark Ages launched, it redefined the Doom Slayer’s origins with a heavy-metal, dark-fantasy crunch that swapped hyper-agile verticality for overwhelming, wall-like momentum. Now, with the Revelations DLC, id Software returns to double down on that medieval carnage. Far from a light, cash-in expansion, Revelations delivers a tight, punchy, and surprisingly robust addition…

I recently reviewed the Shark SpeedStyle Pro FLEX Hair Dryer System with my wife’s help, and while it was something I could use myself, it was better reviewed as a team. When it came to the Shark SilkiPro Straight, however, I was much more reliant on her input, as I am literally unable to use…

There is an old saying about not fixing what isn’t broken. Despite being sage advice, the modern video game industry appears to have adopted it as a primary business model. Remakes, remasters, and re-releases have become some of the safest tickets in town. The Last of Us. Dead Space. Resident Evil. Silent Hill. Oblivion. Not…

As soon as I hear that signature beat, I’m transported straight back to the 1990s. You know the one – boom-boom-ba-da, boom-boom-ba-da. A heartbeat to a generation. As quick as they land in my ear canal, my mind is back in a flannie, with a head of long thick hair well past my collar. Cigs…

For Liv Hewson, a good detective story isn’t really about the crime. It’s about the people trying to make sense of what has been left behind. That philosophy sits at the heart of Treasure & Dirt, a distinctly Australian murder mystery set in the scorched, dust-choked opal mining town of Nullah, where the brutal beheading…

Fifteen years after its release, Conan the Barbarian remains one of modern fantasy cinema’s most understood films. Dismissed upon arrival by critics and audiences alike, it was quickly branded an unnecessary remake, a hollow echo of John Milius’s 1982 classic, and a failed vehicle for a rising star. Yet time has been kinder to Conan…

There’s something inherently unsettling about the suburbs in the films of David Robert Mitchell. Familiar streets, quiet houses and seemingly ordinary neighbourhoods have a way of suggesting that something strange might be lurking just beyond the frame. With The End of Oak Street, the filmmaker behind It Follows and Under the Silver Lake takes that…

It’s that time of the year again for another round of football, with EA Sports FC 27. Fresh off another FIFA World Cup, we’re absolutely rearing to get stuck in once again, and the team at EA Sports have given us a peek behind the curtain at their next big iteration. We’re going to be…

Massive Attack the pioneers of trip-hop returned to Sydney for the first time since 2010 to play to a sold out Afterpay Arena (formerly known as Qudos Bank Arena). Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshall stood largely in silhouette as the enormous screens behind them became a constantly shifting collage of images, headlines and political…