Israeli-born artist premieres in Adelaide

Avital Sheffer’s award-winning ceramics are being exhibited in Adelaide….her first exhibition in the South Australian capital. Read more

Sydney lawyer’s 10th play…

Jewish eastern suburbs writer/lawyer Tony Laumberg’s latest comedy opens  5 August….and this time national security is at stake! Read more

Apr-20 Melbourne: Australian Jewish Music Ensemble in concert

The Australian Jewish Music Ensemble performs at the Bennetts Lane Jazz Club. Read more

Seven Jewish Children fails to win award

The controversial Caryl Churchill short play Seven Jewish Children went empty-handed at the Gala Awards Final of Short+Sweet play festival at NIDA’s Parade Theatre on Saturday night. Read more

Controversial play in Sydney drama final

The controversial play “Seven Jewish Children”  which spans Israel’s history from the Holocaust to the 2008/9 Gaza War seen from the perspective of children is one of twelve finalists in this year’s Sydney’s Short+Sweet drama festival. Read more

Shutter Island ***

Spoiler Alert: Although every effort has been made to limit the revelations in this review, it’s difficult to provide a coherent discussion of Shutter Island without giving away something, so readers are hereby placed on alert. If you’re familiar with the book, however, there’s no reason to stop here…

What’s wrong with Shutter Island? This has been the question ever since Paramount Pictures elected to move the Martin Scorsese-directed thriller from its comfortable pre-Oscar position to the wastelands of February. It turns out that there’s nothing wrong with Shutter Island – except perhaps that it’s not Oscar worthy material. An atmospheric mind-twister of a thriller, this movie delights in playing games with the audience’s perceptions and has been crafted with such competence that it rises above the somewhat generic storyline that forms the basis of Dennis Lehane’s novel. The strength of the film, like the book, is that it never allows the viewer to feel comfortable with what he is watching. That’s because Shutter Island is presented from the perspective of an unreliable narrator and, as such, the lines between fantasy and reality sometimes blur so strongly that it’s easy to become unanchored in trying to distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t. A case can be made that the movie is so enamored with this aspect of its approach that it fails to connect on an emotional level. Shutter Island addresses some powerful, disturbing concepts but, despite effective performances by the leads, the movie’s psychological impact is minimal. It doesn’t pack the powerhouse punch one has come to expect from Scorsese. Still, the director’s consummate skill has lifted what might otherwise be a middling endeavor into something compellingly watchable. It’s another Cape Fear.

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Law Abiding Citizen **

The premise of Law Abiding Citizen – angry father seeks revenge on the system when his daughter’s murderer gets off with a light sentence – probably sounded great in the pitch meetings but, as with all high concept motion pictures, the devil’s in the details. For a while, F. Gary Gray’s thriller works on a purely visceral level, offering a degree of guilty satisfaction to viewers as one sleazy individual after another gets eliminated in a gruesome, Saw-esque manner. Unfortunately, Law Abiding Citizen isn’t content to be a Death Wish for 2009. It wants to be bigger and bolder. So it takes a simple revenge fantasy and uses it as the core of an elaborate high-stakes game that, in shooting for “inventive,” ends up hitting “preposterous.” The more Kurt Wimmer’s screenplay reveals about the lead character’s scheme, the more difficult it is to believe that Law Abiding Citizen is intended to be taken seriously.

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Melbourne’s Jewish Museum comic book art exhibition from Paris

Superheroes & Schlemiels   –   Jews & Comic Art Read more

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