Articles + Quotes on Film & TV

 In the middle of year six, I started attending Helen O'Grady's Drama Academy. Typical education sneakiness of actually teaching kids the skills to enable them to be confident out in the "real world" and with the fun bonus of how to project your voice while simultaneously messing about on the "stage" and acting out improvisation prompts and at the end of each year, a whole play. Nearly seven years, growing and learning in community buildings, after school during term time.  Good times all round. And it was definitely part of the draw card for me, for this new film, set at a summer theatre camp that beautifully illustrates the allure of performing on stage, telling stories and bringing them to life, for both the kids that attend and the teachers - and it's hard to tell who is the more committed or passionate about the craft. It's clearly a labour of love for Molly Gordon, Ben Platt, Noah Galvin and Nick Lieberman - all four wrote it, the first three a

 For your consideration today, two reviews for the price of one. The Bear and The Newsreader.  Not only do both series have a strong cast and gripping scripts for each and every episode but both also open the curtains for us to have a peek behind the scenes of a world usually off limits for mere mortals. We only see the finished product but here we see the shouting matches fuelled by emotional energy, impassioned speeches, tears, hugs and luck of the moment that brings it all together to make it work, that of a high end restaurant and the newsroom respectively. Both worlds also have that sense of the "other" family bond, strengthened by joint victories and triumphs and sour moments of failures made less painful by those in the room, bonded together through thick and thin to make a perfected dish or news television broadcast.  And indeed, they are not only fighting each other but up against the world, nameless - if not faceless, critics, ever judging, never silent and always o