Art Smitten
678 episodes - English - Latest episode: 21 days ago -Art Smitten is SYN's weekly guide to arts, culture and entertainment in Australia and around the world. With a focus on youth and emerging arts, we're here to showcase culture ahead of the curve. From our base in Naarm/Melbourne, contributors interview, review, and cover the very best of what the world’s second-most liveable city has to offer. Whether it's film, fashion, photography or Fauvism you're into, Art Smitten is the place!
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Episodes
Review: Paterson
January 11, 2017 08:33 - 3 minutes - 3.42 MBAfter 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, and wears, though ironically she is a very colourful character. Her husband, Paterson (Adam Driver), i...
Review: The Founder
January 10, 2017 07:24 - 5 minutes - 4.75 MBThe 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 businessman who listens more to his motivational tapes than he does to his own conscience, if indeed he has one. The film follows ...
Review: Threadbare
January 10, 2017 06:18 - 2 minutes - 2.32 MBThreadbare 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 shift their perspectives and open their eyes with ideas that challenge convention in ...
Review: Arrival
January 10, 2017 05:40 - 3 minutes - 3.5 MBArrival 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 this curious puzzle, as she races against the worldwide chaos caused by the presence of these creature...
Interview: Sammy J, Sammy J and Randy Land
December 07, 2016 10:23 - 8 minutes - 7.48 MBErin 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 & Randy Land, which promises haunted ghost trains, velociraptor petting zoos, and the infamous "Sphincter...
Review: Hacksaw Ridge
December 06, 2016 06:18 - 6 minutes - 6.15 MBHacksaw 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 appreciating a journey into the hellfire of war that leaves them with more than just a feeling of po...
Review: Rust and Bone, La Mama
December 06, 2016 06:07 - 3 minutes - 2.94 MBThe 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 - play out three of the stories from Craig Davidson's collection of the same title. Ibrahim plays a SeaW...
Interview: Nakkiah Lui, Blaque Showgirls (Malthouse Theatre)
December 06, 2016 05:44 - 9 minutes - 8.8 MBHosts 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 information.
Review: Blaque Showgirls, Malthouse Theatre
December 06, 2016 05:37 - 5 minutes - 4.89 MBBlaque 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 resembles a television set as well as a theatre within a theatre, something that director Sarah Giles takes full advantag...
Review: Nocturnal Animals
December 06, 2016 04:11 - 6 minutes - 5.61 MBAs 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, a realist in a world that is anything but reality. She first entered the creative world when she wanted ...
Review: F., Riot Stage (Poppy Seed Festival)
December 06, 2016 04:00 - 4 minutes - 4.03 MBF. 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 all ending in a huge stylised movement and piece. These explored all sorts of themes around b...
Discussion: Archibald Art Prize
November 30, 2016 09:13 - 10 minutes - 9.33 MBThierry, 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.
Review: Hard to Believe
November 30, 2016 09:01 - 4 minutes - 3.67 MBKen 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, which mostly looks at the communist party’s persecution of Falun Gong spiritual practitioners, is Stone and Silber’...
Review: Life Animated
November 30, 2016 08:58 - 9 minutes - 8.89 MBRoger 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 overjoyed to see a real person that I can relate to standing on the screen in front of me. I feel like ...
Interview: Stephanie Lake, The Dark Chorus
November 30, 2016 03:16 - 8 minutes - 7.7 MBBeth 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.
Interview: Alice Nash, Lady Eats Apple
November 30, 2016 03:11 - 10 minutes - 9.35 MBAlice 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.
Review: Blessed, Attic Erratic (Poppy Seed Theatre Festival x Malthouse Theatre)
November 13, 2016 03:53 - 3 minutes - 3.62 MBThere’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 talk about their past and what they’ve been up to and then towards the end it turns out that Maggie is pregna...
Review: Anti-Hamlet, Theatre Works
November 13, 2016 03:50 - 7 minutes - 6.92 MBThis 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’s opening weekend, but not only because I loved it, but because it was so complex and intelligent...
Review: The Light Between Oceans
November 13, 2016 03:47 - 6 minutes - 5.52 MBDerek 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 itself up to be a charming love story about a mild-mannered lighthouse keeper (Michael Fassbender...
Interview: Jonathan Holloway, Melbourne Festival
November 13, 2016 03:44 - 5 minutes - 5.35 MBBen 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.
Interview: Sean Patten, War and Peace (Gob Squad x Malthouse Theatre)
November 13, 2016 03:40 - 8 minutes - 7.86 MBThierry 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.
Interview: Linda Shevlin, RMIT Gallery
November 13, 2016 03:34 - 9 minutes - 8.81 MBChristian 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 artist in imagining future states and explore[s] the impact this revolutionary period has had o...
Review: Julieta
November 13, 2016 03:22 - 1 minute - 1.5 MBJulieta 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 everything from her parents to her daughter to her love. Some have criticised the film for being emotionl...
Interview: Clare Watson, Gonzo
October 22, 2016 10:49 - 10 minutes - 9.8 MBThierry, Andrew and Ayden interview Clare Watson about Malthouse Theatre's 2016 production, Gonzo. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Interview: Ted Gott, NGV's Vincent Van Gogh exhibition
October 22, 2016 09:55 - 11 minutes - 10.1 MBChristian interviews curator of the NGV's Vincent Van Gogh exhibition, Ted Gott. It will be opening in 2017, on April 28th, and running until July 9th. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Review: Café Society
October 22, 2016 09:48 - 3 minutes - 3.12 MBIf you’re fan of that strange nostalgia that comes from witnessing old Hollywood glamour, Café Society might just be for you. Complete with a backdrop of wonderfully detailed fashions, an upbeat jazzy soundtrack and in the company of presumably rich, carefree socialites, Woody Allen’s latest venture is a rabbit hole into that bygone era of Hollywood romanticism. Set in the late 1930s, Café Society details the life of the young and naïve Bobby Dorfman, as he sets foot in Hollywood, eager to...
Review: The Neon Demon
October 22, 2016 09:41 - 8 minutes - 7.69 MBNicolas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon would have been, I imagine, quite an easy film to pitch, but a very hard one to describe. Since seeing it I've been explaining it to people as "the Black Swan of modelling,” which might sound very reductive, but given how much it invites comparison with Darren Aronofsky's film, I wouldn't be surprised if that's how Refn had originally conceived it. Both of them begin by introducing a gifted but naive young woman wanting to enter into a soul-crushing pr...
Review: The Masque of Beauty, La Mama Theatre
October 22, 2016 09:39 - 5 minutes - 4.64 MBLa Mama Theatre’s The Masque of Beauty seems to have taken its name from Ben Johnson’s courtly masque composed in 1608. However, in Peter Green’s ‘Renaissance Cabaret’ we certainly feel far away from the England court, even if he uses a few Shakespeare passages on one of his literary medleys. Green’s writing, and indeed Faye Bendrups’ directing, both take Australian audiences to very different theatrical territory than they might be used to. True to the form of a masque, this show is a meand...
Review: Hell or High Water
October 22, 2016 09:36 - 1 minute - 1.79 MBHell or High Water is a 2016 film written by Taylor Sheridan and directed by David McKenzie. Set in blistering rural Texas, it focusses on two brothers, played by Chris Pine and Ben Foster, who rob banks, and a cop on the verge of retirement who is chasing them, played by Jeff Bridges. There’s action, there’s tension, there’s laughs. Tonally, the film carries itself with a particular relaxed, laid-back nature that seems to befit the type of life present in small-town Texas. What makes this...
Interview: Ryan Good, Cosmonaut
October 22, 2016 09:33 - 9 minutes - 8.86 MBThierry, Ayden and Andrew are joined in the studio by writer and performer, Ryan Good, about his production Cosmonaut in the Melbourne Fringe. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Review: Five Lesbians Eating a Quiche, Melbourne Fringe Festival
October 20, 2016 02:51 - 3 minutes - 3.22 MB“Sharp, smart and hysterically funny!”… “A cult hit….gleaming with comic polish.”… “A frothy, sill, saucy and spectacular affair.” These are just some of things critics have said about 5 Lesbians Eating A Quiche, a play written by Evan Linder and Andrew Hobgood, currently being performed for Melbourne audiences as part of the Fringe Festival. And it was the reviews that initially attracted me to the show, although, as I realised afterwards, no words could really describe what I had witne...
Review: Francofonia
October 20, 2016 02:33 - 1 minute - 1.75 MBFrancofonia is the latest film by Russian director Alexander Sokurov, who is perhaps best known for his 2002 documentary Russian Ark, an ambitious and awe-inspiring one-take trip through St Peterburg’s Hermitage museum during the Russian Revolution. In Francofonia, Sokurov once more returns to the themes of art and war and museums, this time focussing on the Louvre during the Nazi occupation of France. As someone who doesn’t get on terribly well with documentaries, I found Francofonia rath...
Review: Hot Milk, Deborah Levy
October 20, 2016 02:29 - 2 minutes - 2.59 MBHi, it's Adalya with my second review from this years Man Booker Prize shortlist. This week I'm looking at Deborah Levy's Hot Milk. Hot Milk follows Sofia and her mother Rose as they travel from England to clinic of questionable merit in Spain, seeking answers to Rose's litany of mysterious ailments. Set in the searing heat of Southern Spain, Sofia undergoes a twisted iteration of the classic beach sexual awakening narrative while Rose undergoes Dr Gomez's treatment. As the reliability of ...
Interview: Patrick Durnan Silva, Cull x Melbourne Fringe
September 22, 2016 02:47 - 9 minutes - 8.28 MBHosts Beth and Thierry interview Patrick Durnan Silva on his production, Cull in the 2016 Melbourne Fringe Festival. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Review: 4th Place, Korean Film Festival In Australia (KOFFIA)
September 22, 2016 01:53 - 4 minutes - 3.98 MBThursday, 1st September marked the seventh year for the Korean Film Festival In Australian (KOFFIA). ACMI hosted Melbourne’s festival and invited guests to share canapés of kimchi, cocktails and listen to traditional music on the Gayageum. This festival boasts twenty newly released and critically acclaimed Korean films, however it was the film titled 4th Place, written and directed by Jung Ji-woo, which opened the festival. Commissioned by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, 4th...
Review: Do Not Say We Have Nothing, Madeleine Thien
September 22, 2016 01:41 - 4 minutes - 4.07 MBOn Tuesday, the Man Booker Prize Shortlist was announced. For those of you not in the know, the Man Booker is a prize given for what the judging panel deems to be the best novel written in English and published in the UK each year. For many including myself, the Booker is the Prize to watch, the AFL Grand Final for nerds. This year's shortlist consists of: Paul Beatty's The Sellout Deborah Levy's Hot Milk Graeme Macrae Burnet's His Bloody Project Otessa Moshfegh's Eileen David Szalay's All...
Review: Kelvin Campervan's Midlife Crescendo - Melbourne Fringe
September 22, 2016 01:38 - 2 minutes - 2.35 MBRupert Burns is Kelvin Campervan. Or is Kelvin Campervan Rupert Burns? They seem to get along pretty well in the one body, but can never quite decide who is the artist and who the creation. The one man show explores the nature of a person's relationship with themselves and their history. It is set from the vantage point of mid life, but even at my age of 21 I was inspired to be existential about my own history of years and to ponder their value, as well as the missed opportunities I have alr...
Interview + Review: Georgia Symons, You Must Come Alone to Read the Last Book on Earth
September 22, 2016 01:12 - 15 minutes - 14.4 MBEbony interviews Georgia Symons, creator of Fringe 2016 show You Must Come Alone to Read the Last Book on Earth. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Interview: Rachel Shrives, UHT Macbeth + Macdeath: a coda
September 22, 2016 00:49 - 11 minutes - 10.1 MBHosts Beth and Thierry interview Assistant Director of the UHT production of Macbeth + Macdeath: a coda, Rachel Shrives. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Interview: Matthew Lutton, 2017 Malthouse Theatre Program
September 22, 2016 00:41 - 8 minutes - 8.03 MBHosts Christian and Adalya interview Matthew Lutton about the Malthouse Theatre's 2017 Program. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Interview: Made Stuchbery, Born to Die
September 22, 2016 00:24 - 9 minutes - 8.4 MBChristian speaks to writer/broadcaster Made Stuchbery, chatting about her ten part radio series Born to Die. It's available on soundcloud. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Interview: Alexia Brehas and Chanelle Nillson, Rave in Paradise
September 06, 2016 04:21 - 19 minutes - 18.1 MBHosts Christian and Jim sit down with artists Alexia Brehas and Chanelle Nillson to discuss their upcoming joint exhibition 'Rave in Paradise', Off the Kerb Gallery and Studio. Showing from September 9 at 6pm. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Review: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui - Theatre Works
September 04, 2016 09:41 - 5 minutes - 5.13 MBPhil Rouse decides to introduce his production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui with a very peculiar sight: some slides of Elizabethan text hover above our very skilled ensemble as they are all club dancing to ‘Turn Down for What.’ It’s one of those audacious mixes of the highbrow classical and the lowbrow modern that the theatre world can never get enough of. Arturo Ui (played here by George Banders), the fictional Chicagoan crime lord, is of course Bertolt Brecht’s parodic and blatantly...
Review: The Ribcage Collective x La Mama Theatre
September 04, 2016 09:34 - 4 minutes - 4.1 MBOn Thursday night I showed up at La Mama ready to see The Ribcage Collective’s new work of experimental theatre. The Ribcage collective are a collaborative group of young theatre makers from varied theatrical backgrounds. For a second year running they have written, devised and performed works of immersive, sight-specific theatre at La Mama in Carlton. Their previous show was described by ArtsHub as “an intimate theatrical experience enough to reawaken a childhood sense of play”. That sounde...
Review: Yoga Hosers
September 04, 2016 09:29 - 6 minutes - 5.85 MBKevin Smith's Yoga Hosers is one of the most bafflingly entertaining films of the year. A part-time cheesy teen movie, part-time goofy horror flick and full-time American satire of Canada, Nazis, Canadian Nazis, ‘kids today,’ and of course yoga, it never really asks to be taken seriously, just to be enjoyed. It's a follow-up to Smith's previous film, Tusk, with Johnny Depp reprising his role as the eccentric Guy Lapointe. However, it still works as a standalone film. Those who haven't seen t...
Review: Girl Asleep
September 04, 2016 08:21 - 1 minute - 1.76 MBHeavily stylised and endearingly quirky, Girl Asleep could be very easily described as “Wes Anderson does Napoleon Dynamite”, but in reality it’s much, much more than that. Sure it’s full of dorky humour and a kitsch yet meticulous 70s aesthetic, but it’s got a unique and very sweet take on the coming-of-age story. The girl of the film’s title is 14-year-old Greta, who’s just moved to suburban Adelaide and is having trouble fitting in at school. She meets another outcast kid named Elliott an...
Review: The Beast - Eddie Perfect
September 04, 2016 08:03 - 4 minutes - 3.66 MBCattle, contemporaries and canapés, Eddie Perfect’s play; The Beast, promises to touch you inappropriately in all the right places. By challenging a lifestyle that conceals itself behind a facade of authenticity, the show wastes no time in establishing a humorous destabilisation of friendships; stripping characters down to their inauthentic cores. With sensitive subjects used as punchlines to boot, it’s no lie to say that The Beast works to attack and offend, although this may not be a b...
Review: Captain Fantastic
September 04, 2016 07:35 - 3 minutes - 3.21 MBA film that opens with a lens-flared shot of a forest is only ever going to be a particular kind of film, I thought. A twee, wilderness-worshipping kind of film with smug self-contentedness. But Captain Fantastic, written and directed by Matt Ross, is not really that kind of film. Or rather, not entirely that kind of film. Yes, it’s full of obsession over nature and that brand of anti-consumerism that we all learn during our teens that pretty much starts and ends with “stick it to the man” –...
Interview: Chris Hosking, The Ribcage Collective x La Mama Theatre
September 04, 2016 06:55 - 6 minutes - 6.28 MBHosts Christian and Jim are joined by Chris Hosking, The Ribcage Collective's Co-Artistic Director for their upcoming immersive theatre production. It will be running at La Mama Theatre until September 11th. Tickets and more information available: http://lamama.com.au/2016-winter-program/the-ribcage-collective See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Interview: Francis Greenslade, You Got Older
September 01, 2016 04:40 - 9 minutes - 8.79 MBHosts, Jim and Christian, interview actor Francis Greenslade, best known for his televisions roles opposite Shaun Micallef in Mad as Hell and Denise Scott in Winners and Losers. Greenslade is also a seasoned stage actor and speaks about his upcoming role in Red Stitch Theatre's production of You Got Older. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.