Author Archive: James Madden

Ever made a blooper or a blunder and accidentally slipped out a few choice words? Are you a fan of the video sensation website Youtube? (How could you not be?) If you answered yes to these two questions, then it is possible than you may have heard of “The Winnebago Man” Jack Rebney, or as he is also infamously known as “The Angriest Man in the World”.

The lyrics “You gotta get a gimmick, if you want to get ahead” by Stephen Sondheim for the Broadway musical Gypsy have never been more appropriate when discussing an entertainer.…

Three San Francisco-based musical acts – Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, and Vetiver – tour the country performing their genre-defining music in the summer of 2004. They help each other overcome family tragedies and car accidents, and meet colorful characters, forgotten musical heroes, and folk luminaries as they travel across the country.

Amidst the buzz and the hoopla that so rarely hits the Australian film industry comes David Michod’s feature film debut Animal Kingdom in a blaze of glory. Loosely based on the Walsh Street Murders in the 1990s, Animal Kingdom centers around the Cody family. When Josh “J”‘s mother dies of a heroin overdose, grandmother Jeanine “Smurf” comes to J’s aid and takes him under her wing and into the Cody family home alongside three notoriously criminal uncles. Add a dozen deaths and a few interrogation scenes into the picture, and you’ve got a full film.

Director Radu Mihaileanu (Train of Life, Live and Become) has brought a French/Russian masterpiece to the screen, with an unusual but hilarious…

On one perfect, sunny Saturday afternoon in Melbourne, I strolled down Lygon Street to the Cinema Nova to see a preview of a film called Accidents…

Before I walked into the cinema, I already loved writer/director Scott Cooper‘s debut Crazy Heart. I had not seen this film. This feeling also…

From the opening image of Tom Ford’s directorial debut, A Single Man, you can tell that you are in for an aesthetically focused piece of cinema…

Logorama was this year’s winner for the Best Animated Short Academy Award, beating out perennial favourite Nick Park (with his latest Wallace and…