Horror films have had a banner year in 2019. They crept under the audience’s skin, lingering in the mind long after the credits had stopped rolling. But none of them seemed as haunting as the first theatrical trailer for Tom Hooper‘s Cats. When the trailer was released, the public opinion was overwhelmingly negative. Many viewers were…
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Time to admit it: you need a gift guide. It’s a few days to Chrimbo and you’ve only just realised because you’ve been playing Death Stranding. You’ll be at the shopping centre this weekend to see Star Wars which presents an opportunity to do some last minute Christmas shopping. But what do you get the…
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We’re excited to introduce a new Spotify playlist, designed to take you down memory lane, looking at a selection of songs that you might have forgotten about, or missed when they were first released. Our first Re-Discovery playlist looks at the last decade, taking you through some of the best music between 2010 and 2019….
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Rum, whisky and wine. Clear spirits take a backseat when it comes to ideal Christmas pairings, and wine is infallible given the multitude of flavours in a silly season feast. You might as well be across your best options, right? We’ve rounded up some of the best for you to go grab in your last…
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It’s going to be a massive year in 2020 for those who enjoy theme parks, with a number of brand new, highlight anticipated parks and expansions opening up all over the world. There are also new museums, IMAX cinemas and even hotels that are worthy of getting excited about here in Australia and overseas. Here’s…
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It’s been a couple of days since Stu Larsen wrapped up his South American tour, including taking on a support slot with Passenger. This self-styled musical nomad never stays in one place for long, have been on the road for nearly twelve years, moving across five continents. And his talents don’t stop on the stage…
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GoPro have favored redesigning and updating their software with numerous minor upgrades in-lieu of one stand-out, marquee feature for their latest release, the GoPro HERO8 Black. In years prior, each flagship release has come with an industry changing feature. The HERO4 debuted 4K/30fps, the HERO5 was waterproof without a housing unit and last years HERO7…
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Who would have thought that the space opera that is Star Wars would span 42 years, multiple generations of fans and be the tentpole blockbuster series and franchise behemoth that it is today. It began with A New Hope in 1977 and the introduction of Luke Skywalker. It ends with The Rise of Skywalker in…
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2019 has been a big year for noise cancelling headphones, and the race to produce the very best has been increasingly difficult to call. Bose were once the clear front-runners with the widely acclaimed QuietComfort line, but since then worthy competitors from Sony, Sennheiser and Bang & Olufsen stepped up in a big way. With…
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South Australia has long been regarded as a playground of sorts for discerning gourmands and wine enthusiasts the world over. Alongside the plentiful key regions of Adelaide Hills, Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale, the capital of Adelaide maintains its reputation for compact travel, artisan outlets, world-class restaurants (bolstered by the iconic Adelaide Central Market), and…
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2019 you’re done. It might not have all gone to plan, and you might’ve been a bit of a trash fire politically, but there’s no denying you’ve produced the goods books wise. It’s been another big year in publishing, with thousands of books being published, read and enjoyed. We’ve also had quite a few literary heavyweights…
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The hybrid reboot/sequel that was 2017’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was a mammoth success that I suspect not even Sony was anticipating. Sure, they threw considerable weight behind the project but in the wake of Star Wars: the Last Jedi‘s release, a near billion dollar haul worldwide was an unprecedented outcome, to say the…
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Any well-informed beer enthusiast who finds themselves in Vancouver or surrounds absolutely must not leave without a visit to Port Moody, BC, a relaxed area laden with lakes, lush mountains and young families walking their dogs. Located 20 minutes outside of Vancouver by public transit, the main street truly comes into its own in the…
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Chile’s National Tourism Service has today announced a postponement of the planned visa requirement for Australian tourists wishing to enter the country. Between now and May 9, 2020, Australian passport holders will not be required to hold a visa when entering Chile. As of May 9, 2020, Chile will introduce a new electronic visa, which…
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The small city of Napa is no longer just a stepping stone to the many venerated vineyards that populate Northern California’s Napa Valley. Although once seen as the forgettable part of an unforgettable wine adventure, recent years have worked magic around Napa’s boutique-minded downtown, propping it up as the most ideal base for discerning wine…
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It’s time for the AU review’s annual list of the best albums from Australia and the rest of the world for 2019. Across this list, we take you through a wide range of genres, with music that represents the exciting, vibrant time of music right now. It’s fair to say that there are some notable…
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2020 is going to be a big year for Qatar Airways and their ever-expanding network, if the airline’s most recent announcement is anything to go by. As part of a massive network expansion, the five-time “World’s Best Airline” winner are introducing numerous seasonal flights and new destinations to make some of the world’s best destinations…
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If you read over our Game of the Year list for 2019 and thought there were a few missing titles, there’s a reason for that. We simply can’t fit them all. In fact, there were so many great titles to come out in 2019 that we felt running a single list didn’t feel quite fair….
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Kathy O’Shaughnessy‘s In Love with George Eliot is subtitled ‘A Novel’. Thank goodness for that, because if not, booksellers and librarians probably would not know where to shelve it. While readable and intensely interesting, the book reads more like a bibliomemoir, more akin to previous George Eliot studies like The Road to Middlemarch and last year’s…
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Melbourne is now the location for the world’s first Ink Hotel, a personality-focused brand from Singapore-based Next Story Group, best known for their elegant NEXT Hotels and forward-thinking ‘Members Only’ club Kafnu. Ink adds another distinctive element to the group, focusing on lifestyle hotels that shape their own social scenes and provide a comfortable guest…
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It hasn’t been easy to choose as a Game of the Year for 2019. This has been a pivotal year for the games industry. With new consoles on the horizon, and several high profile AAA titles delaying into early 2020, independent games have been able to take the spotlight in a big way. The games…
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It’s a pretty amazing thing to see an artist who’s been around for 35 years continually reinvent themselves while managing to engage both the newest and oldest of fans. Returning for the third year of his Making Gravy tour, Paul Kelly brought along a heap of musical friends to well and truly welcome in the…
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Paul Kelly and friends enriched our lives again at the Domain in Sydney, for the latest edition of Making Gravy. It was a quality line-up, with Thelma Plum, Kate Miller-Heidke, Marlon Williams and Courtney Barnett lighting up the stage. This event is the pre-cursor to Christmas in Sydney, with Paul Kelly giving us an uplifting…
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A film like Just Mercy lays all cards on the table before it even starts. On the surface, it’s another entry in the long-line of righteous fury pointed at miscarried justice and a system unashamed by its own historical wrongdoings. And yes, that’s pretty much what it is, adapting the true story from a 2014…
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Elton John and photographer Terry O’Neill first collaborated in 1972. Since then, O’Neill has taken around five thousand photographs of the star across the decades that followed. Recently, when going through his collection, O’Neill recognised the special nature of these photographs and wanted to share them with Elton’s legion of fans. Elton John: The Definitive…
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Candide, or absolute nihilism? Eastern European cinema has always had a nail-biting bleakness about it, but The Painted Bird may have just upended all others. This is a brutal hellscape somehow stretched into an adventure epic; as hard to look away from, as it is to watch in the first place. There’s little wonder as…
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Mary Costello’s first novel, Academy Street, was shortlisted for a number of awards, and won the Irish Book of the Year Award in 2014. It also shares a lot thematically with her latest work. However, in her second novel, The River Capture, Costello has used a very different narrative style, and although providing some real…
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When director Michael Bay gets handed $150 million from Netflix to make a movie you can be guaranteed that he’s going to make something pretty insane. Where in the past he has felt a little hamstrung by studio expectations or interference, his latest effort feels like a return to form. For Netflix, 6 Underground is…
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Last month Melbourne indie-rockers Kilns released their beautiful debut album “You Can Bet Your House on Me”. It’s an album that regularly visits themes of relationships, their fragility but is also joyous. Guitars riff and vocals soar with some sweet harmonies. There is also some sweet humour in there as well. It’s hard to believe these…
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Sincere motivational rhymes about veganism and leading a healthy lifestyle may have been the last thing you would have expected from a dead prez concert. That is, if you thought the anthemic chant of their signature hit, “Hip Hop”, was nothing more than an infectious hook. The now veteran duo of stic.man and M1 don’t…
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