Arts In 30

Weekender: Best of the year - movies, music, theatre and more

Ce and Sky share their favourite picks of 2025. Movies mentioned includes Freaky Tales, KPop Demon Hunters, Twinless, Sirat, The Secret Agent, Sinners, One Battle After Another, and One of Them Days. Music mentioned includes Kathryn Joseph - We Were Made Prey, Ethel Cain - Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You; Perfume Genius - live & Glory; Billy Woods - Golliwog; Backxwash - Only Dust Remains; Abel Selaocoe - Hymns of Bantu; Ganavya; Jaime Martin & the SSO - Bolero. Theatre mentioned includes the Siegfried and Roy opera, Hadestown, Beetlejuice, and Scout Boxall's God's Favourite. And in poetry: Evelyn Araluen's The Rot and The Nightmare Sequence by Omar Sakr & Safdar Ahmed.

Weekender: Best TV shows of the year, the fifth Indigenous Art Triennial, and arthouse Summer films

Rudi Bremer from Awaye joins the team to take us to the NGA where After The Rain, the fifth National Indigenous Art Triennial is bringing together a remarkable collection of work under the supervision of Artistic Director Tony Albert. And with Summer holidays ahead, we recommend our TV shows of the year for your binge-watching pleasure. Ce chooses Wayward, Sky picks The Lowdown, and Rudi argues for The Residence. Hidden Rivalry might not make the end of years list, but it has Ce and Rudi watching and fondly reminiscing about Yuri! On Ice!! Sky looks ahead at some of the most interesting art-house releases of the Summer season, including The History of Sound, Sentimental Value and No Other Choice. Ce is very unimpressed with Maggie Nelson's new book, which tries to compare and contrast the work and lives of Taylor Swift and Sylvia Plath. And the biggest hip-hop artist in the world, Kendrick Lamar, is currently on tour around the country.

Sarah Hanson-Young on local content quotas and ABC funding plus proposed changes at the State Library of Victoria

Last week, the federal government passed legislation that will require video streaming services with more than 1 million Australian subscribers to invest 10 percent of their Australian expenditure or 7.5 percent of their gross Australian revenue into new Australian productions each year.  The bill passed with the support of the Greens, and as part of the negotiations, the ABC will also receive $50 million in additional funding over 3 years to spend on locally made children’s and drama content. Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, arts spokeswoman for The Greens, joins us to talk about the bills and about Federal arts priorities in 2026. And reports suggest that the State Library of Victoria will cut its reference librarians from 25 to 10, reduce its publicly available computers and remove their children’s and family engagement officers in a new round of reforms. The Library has pushed back against the reporting [https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/interact-with-us/media-centre/state-library-victoria-reorganising-and-renewing-our-promise]. Gideon Haigh [https://substack.com/@thecogitorium], award-winning writer and passionate advocate for the library, shares his perspectives on the changes, the messages he's heard from current and former staff, and mounts the case for the importance of the state institution. Our track of the week is Evensong, part 1 [https://jjjjjerome.bandcamp.com/track/evensong-part-1-for-and-after-june-kramer] by JJJJJerome Ellis

Weekender: Wake up Dead Man wraps demagoguery, faith, grace, and power in a fun mystery & Evelyn Araluen returns with The Rot

Three films in, at a point where most franchises have run out of ideas and started phoning it in, Knives Out has returned with its best episode yet in Wake Up Dead Man. With a star turn by Josh O'Connor and an exceptional ensemble, it's an examination of faith and belief, of the potential for good will and redemption, and of the negative power of anger, corruption, and hatred, all wrapped up in a fun and funny mystery. And speaking of examinations of corruption, power, and hatred: Disney’s Zootopia 2 is also out this week. Sky claims that its a delightful buddy comedy that continues the excellent world-building of the original and has more sight-gags and Easter eggs than you could possible notice in one sitting. Plus it manages to present a pro-community, pro-diversity, anti-racism, anti-corruption message without overdoing it. Evelyn Araluen, who won the Stella Prize for her poetry collection Dropbear, returns with her latest collection The Rot [https://www.uqp.com.au/books/the-rot]. The team are big fans with rave reviews, plus a reading of Change Agent by Evelyn. In music, Ce recommends the new single by Pulp, a cover of Johnny Cash's The Man Comes Around [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfXo2yhqjYs]; and Sky looks back to Super Realm Park [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXO4arUvZ5Y] by Sleepmakeswaves ahead of the 15th birthday celebrations for Birds Robe. And two excellent Australian exhibitions at Heide Museum.

What constitutes success (or failure) in Hollywood? And Peyton Reed on the 25th anniversary of Bring It On.

Wicked: For Good has launched to a big opening weekend, taking in $226 million US in worldwide box office revenue, a substantial improvement on the already successful first film. But that makes it something of an outlier for Hollywood this year. Industry [https://puck.news/summer-box-office-review-meh/] experts [https://www.indiewire.com/news/analysis/what-is-box-office-flop-anymore-1235161380/] have pointed [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/14/business/media/box-office-collapse-hollywood.html] out that - accounting for inflation - the Summer tentpole season in the US had lower numbers than we’ve seen in decades. Is this just an off year? Or the sign of a bigger problem for an industry already grappling with the rise of streaming and the after-effects of Covid? Scott Mendelson from The Outside Scoop [https://scottmendelson.substack.com/] explains what it all means. And Peyton Reed, who has been part of the Marvel cinematic universe in recent years, is in Australia for the Brisbane International Film Festival, where he’ll be celebrating the 25th anniversary of Bring It On. Our track of the week is Obscure Things [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3HnG9knI_Y] by Will Hearn