Latest news with #Rake
ABC News
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Australian actor and original Play School presenter Donald MacDonald dead at 86
Australian actor Donald MacDonald, who was one of the first Play School presenters, has died at the age of 86. MacDonald, who performed in Australia and the United Kingdom, died of cancer on the Gold Coast in the early hours of Monday. Cousin and fellow actor Paula Duncan said she would never forget MacDonald's storytelling ability, comedic flair and impeccable sense of timing. "Donald was like a big brother to me — I grew up with him and he helped train me," she said. "I've had an adoration for him all my life. MacDonald's career in film, television and on the stage spanned decades and included credits on The Box, Cop Shop and A Town Like Alice. More recently he appeared in Rake, Kenny and Superman Returns. Duncan said MacDonald was humble by nature. "He was someone who appreciated life but was never vain or a personality that wanted a lot of attention — in fact he'd probably shy away from it," she said. Duncan said MacDonald also wrote plays and novels. "His career was so substantial," she said. "It's kind of sad in a way, because all this media is going to come out now. "I wish it came out when he was alive and all these people could see what he actually did — he was just extraordinary. Showbusiness reporter and friend Craig Bennett said he shared a cheers with MacDonald in the hospital on the weekend. He said MacDonald's career, which began in Sydney, showcased his range. "[Including] The Box, the sex-and-sin soapie of the 1970s, where he played a closeted gay newsreader," Bennett said. "Back then people clutched their pearls and grabbed their smelling salts because we didn't hear much of these things.
Sydney Morning Herald
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Getting Muriel's Wedding made Matt Day a household name. It's still one of the best days of his life
Matt Day jokes that he's 'part of the furniture'. His early start came as a teenager on TV classic A Country Practice, where he clocked up more than 200 episodes, before he was cast in the iconic film Muriel's Wedding and the romcom Love and Other Catastrophes. Then there is a solid list of roles in series such as Tangle, Rake and The Unusual Suspects, plus a scene-stealing turn as the villain in last year's family film Runt. Being part of the furniture is no bad thing. Many actors struggle for years to be recognised – and I'm not talking celebrity here – more like, 'Oh, he's always good, I'll watch anything he is in'. Day has long been at the level – not around a lot but just enough that, when he does pop up, it's always a pleasure to see him. 'I've been making a living out of it pretty much since I was 14 years old,' he says. 'There are quiet times but I've always worked, I've always made a living, which is something that I'm proud of, I suppose: to get to my age and to still be at it. 'I still have this very strong memory of when I was doing A Country Practice when I was a teenager, and I left that and I remember a lot of people saying, 'You're crazy. This is a proper job.' And I'm like, 'Well, that's exactly why I'm leaving – because it's become a proper job.' 'And on the final day I was running around with a video camera and I videoed this assistant director, Eddie, and he goes, 'You're gonna be OK, kid. Do you know why? Because you're a survivor. Do you know how I know? Because I'm a survivor and I know one when I see one.' And I wear that mantle quite proudly.' Day – who is now 53, with wild, greying hair and clear-framed spectacles – puts his survival down to 'having no plan B. I don't really have anything to fall back on, I never really did, so I just had to stick at it.' He jokes he has PTSD as a surviving child actor. Was that from being bitten by Fatso the wombat on A Country Practice? 'That's kind of how you knew you were welcome on the show,' he says, laughing. 'Fatso bites your leg under the table.' Day is now back in season two of Strife, the Asher Keddie vehicle loosely based on journalist Mia Freedman's book about her early days starting up the website Mamamia. He plays Jon, the ex-husband of Keddie's character Evelyn, an even-keeled yin to her neurotic yang. The couple, who separated in season one, are 'birdnesting' – splitting their time between the family home, where their two teenagers live permanently, and Evelyn's mother's house. There's a reconnection, of sorts, but otherwise they hum along in their supportive yet slightly dysfunctional way. Loading 'It was a real gift for both of us, for Asher and myself,' he says. 'There are more levels to him in this season than maybe there was in season one. You're always finding your legs in the first season. No one's sure exactly who everyone is and where they fit in but we're laying down some really great groundwork in this second season.' There is also a joy, says Day, in working on something that's grown-up. Jon and Evelyn have an adult relationship and teenage children. Yes, they also have an impossibly large and lovely TV house, but their life and worries feel real. 'Sarah [Scheller] wrote something that feels really lived in,' he says. 'And this relationship between these two characters feels very genuine. And I think that is because it's from a writer who's of a similar age – you can bring a lot of experience to it. 'And it does go beyond a lot of the cliches that we might see on screen. There's this idea that [Evelyn has that] her breaking out of this relationship was the only thing she had to do to grow, where there's a possibility that being within this relationship actually is more empowering.' Day was about 10 when he started in amateur theatre in Melbourne's Moonee Ponds, but he reckons there are only a few times in his career he's really got it right, most recently in the Melbourne Theatre Company's production of Sunday. He still finds it difficult to watch himself on screen and has only just started revisiting some of his old performances. Loading 'There are some downfalls to early success,' he says. 'You feel like, 'Oh, well, this is it. This is how it works.' You have found this thing that you do, and you think that will get you through, but I probably work a lot harder now than what I did when I was younger. 'I'm less ambitious but I'm more ambitious about the work. Opportunities and great bits of writing that fall into your lap are actually very rare, so when they do turn up I want to wring the most out of them. Every job is an opportunity to get it right. I used to say that as a joke but I've realised it's actually very true.' That early success, of course, was Muriel's Wedding, in which he played Brice, Muriel's soft-hearted first boyfriend (they met at the video store where they worked). Released in 1994, it turned a then-unknown Toni Collette into a star and gave Day an international profile. In honour of the film turning 30 last year, Collette made a surprise appearance at a screening at the Glasgow Film Festival in March and ended up dancing on stage. Has Day watched it back? 'I haven't watched it for a very long time,' he says. 'I probably will. I watched Love and Other Catastrophes a couple years ago because they had a screening at the Melbourne Film Festival, and that was quite confronting. I was watching it, going, 'Why am I doing that? Why did I do this?'' Loading He did, however, go and see Muriel's Wedding: The Musical, after much hesitation. 'I found it really, really confronting, hard to deal with, but also kind of beautiful as well, to have been a part of something that obviously means so much to people.' He still regards the day he landed the role as the best in his career. 'I grew up in the '70s and '80s, when Australian film was really prominent in the world and had a very distinctive brand,' he says. 'We had the new wave of filmmakers and I wanted to be like Barry Otto, Jack Thompson and Bryan Brown and Sam Neill. 'And the only way you could do that was to be in a film. Television was still looked down upon – that's why I left A Country Practice, because I desperately wanted to get into film. The only guys who were getting cast in films were Noah Taylor and Aden Young, so to have actually cracked a film was, it's still one of the best days of my life. 'When [director] P. J. [Hogan] told me I got the part – I'd come in to audition three times, and then I came in and did the beanbag scene with Toni – I was still sitting in the beanbag and he said, 'It's yours.' 'It did open a lot of doors. It's nice now, at this age, to know that I'm still part of the furniture in Australia and a lot of it is down to that film.' Loading Day still has big-screen ambitions – he's about to direct his first feature-length film, the thriller Killer Breed, which he also wrote – but he acknowledges it's hard in the Australian film industry to attain success these days, especially at the blockbuster level of Muriel's Wedding. Instead, he's looking to the young mavericks, such as Danny and Michael Philippou, the Adelaide twins who started with a YouTube channel and are now about to release their second horror film with the uber-cool distributor A24. Day met them while he was working on the TV series Wolf Creek and they'd show him their videos. 'I was like, 'Good luck with that',' he says. 'They just went out and shot all this crazy stuff and built their own audience and made the film that they wanted to make. That's quite inspiring. But that's no different from Bruce Beresford saying, 'I want to do Breaker Morant ', and optioning the book and then going out and shooting it for $200,000 in South Australia. The sensibilities are probably different but the step is still that drive and that desire to get it made and to tell a story.' Maybe he needs a YouTube channel. 'My boys would die of embarrassment if I did that.' Or what about a limited series about Muriel's life, covering where Muriel, Rhonda and Brice are now – that sort of thing? 'I'm available!' he says, laughing. 'That's where it's all at. At the moment it's TV, and it's incredible how that's completely flipped around. When I was a kid, like, no one wanted to do TV. Everyone wanted to do film. And now people do film as a favour. Everyone wants to do TV. That's where the storytelling is.'
The Age
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Getting Muriel's Wedding made Matt Day a household name. It's still one of the best days of his life
Matt Day jokes that he's 'part of the furniture'. His early start came as a teenager on TV classic A Country Practice, where he clocked up more than 200 episodes, before he was cast in the iconic film Muriel's Wedding and the romcom Love and Other Catastrophes. Then there is a solid list of roles in series such as Tangle, Rake and The Unusual Suspects, plus a scene-stealing turn as the villain in last year's family film Runt. Being part of the furniture is no bad thing. Many actors struggle for years to be recognised – and I'm not talking celebrity here – more like, 'Oh, he's always good, I'll watch anything he is in'. Day has long been at the level – not around a lot but just enough that, when he does pop up, it's always a pleasure to see him. 'I've been making a living out of it pretty much since I was 14 years old,' he says. 'There are quiet times but I've always worked, I've always made a living, which is something that I'm proud of, I suppose: to get to my age and to still be at it. 'I still have this very strong memory of when I was doing A Country Practice when I was a teenager, and I left that and I remember a lot of people saying, 'You're crazy. This is a proper job.' And I'm like, 'Well, that's exactly why I'm leaving – because it's become a proper job.' 'And on the final day I was running around with a video camera and I videoed this assistant director, Eddie, and he goes, 'You're gonna be OK, kid. Do you know why? Because you're a survivor. Do you know how I know? Because I'm a survivor and I know one when I see one.' And I wear that mantle quite proudly.' Day – who is now 53, with wild, greying hair and clear-framed spectacles – puts his survival down to 'having no plan B. I don't really have anything to fall back on, I never really did, so I just had to stick at it.' He jokes he has PTSD as a surviving child actor. Was that from being bitten by Fatso the wombat on A Country Practice? 'That's kind of how you knew you were welcome on the show,' he says, laughing. 'Fatso bites your leg under the table.' Day is now back in season two of Strife, the Asher Keddie vehicle loosely based on journalist Mia Freedman's book about her early days starting up the website Mamamia. He plays Jon, the ex-husband of Keddie's character Evelyn, an even-keeled yin to her neurotic yang. The couple, who separated in season one, are 'birdnesting' – splitting their time between the family home, where their two teenagers live permanently, and Evelyn's mother's house. There's a reconnection, of sorts, but otherwise they hum along in their supportive yet slightly dysfunctional way. Loading 'It was a real gift for both of us, for Asher and myself,' he says. 'There are more levels to him in this season than maybe there was in season one. You're always finding your legs in the first season. No one's sure exactly who everyone is and where they fit in but we're laying down some really great groundwork in this second season.' There is also a joy, says Day, in working on something that's grown-up. Jon and Evelyn have an adult relationship and teenage children. Yes, they also have an impossibly large and lovely TV house, but their life and worries feel real. 'Sarah [Scheller] wrote something that feels really lived in,' he says. 'And this relationship between these two characters feels very genuine. And I think that is because it's from a writer who's of a similar age – you can bring a lot of experience to it. 'And it does go beyond a lot of the cliches that we might see on screen. There's this idea that [Evelyn has that] her breaking out of this relationship was the only thing she had to do to grow, where there's a possibility that being within this relationship actually is more empowering.' Day was about 10 when he started in amateur theatre in Melbourne's Moonee Ponds, but he reckons there are only a few times in his career he's really got it right, most recently in the Melbourne Theatre Company's production of Sunday. He still finds it difficult to watch himself on screen and has only just started revisiting some of his old performances. Loading 'There are some downfalls to early success,' he says. 'You feel like, 'Oh, well, this is it. This is how it works.' You have found this thing that you do, and you think that will get you through, but I probably work a lot harder now than what I did when I was younger. 'I'm less ambitious but I'm more ambitious about the work. Opportunities and great bits of writing that fall into your lap are actually very rare, so when they do turn up I want to wring the most out of them. Every job is an opportunity to get it right. I used to say that as a joke but I've realised it's actually very true.' That early success, of course, was Muriel's Wedding, in which he played Brice, Muriel's soft-hearted first boyfriend (they met at the video store where they worked). Released in 1994, it turned a then-unknown Toni Collette into a star and gave Day an international profile. In honour of the film turning 30 last year, Collette made a surprise appearance at a screening at the Glasgow Film Festival in March and ended up dancing on stage. Has Day watched it back? 'I haven't watched it for a very long time,' he says. 'I probably will. I watched Love and Other Catastrophes a couple years ago because they had a screening at the Melbourne Film Festival, and that was quite confronting. I was watching it, going, 'Why am I doing that? Why did I do this?'' Loading He did, however, go and see Muriel's Wedding: The Musical, after much hesitation. 'I found it really, really confronting, hard to deal with, but also kind of beautiful as well, to have been a part of something that obviously means so much to people.' He still regards the day he landed the role as the best in his career. 'I grew up in the '70s and '80s, when Australian film was really prominent in the world and had a very distinctive brand,' he says. 'We had the new wave of filmmakers and I wanted to be like Barry Otto, Jack Thompson and Bryan Brown and Sam Neill. 'And the only way you could do that was to be in a film. Television was still looked down upon – that's why I left A Country Practice, because I desperately wanted to get into film. The only guys who were getting cast in films were Noah Taylor and Aden Young, so to have actually cracked a film was, it's still one of the best days of my life. 'When [director] P. J. [Hogan] told me I got the part – I'd come in to audition three times, and then I came in and did the beanbag scene with Toni – I was still sitting in the beanbag and he said, 'It's yours.' 'It did open a lot of doors. It's nice now, at this age, to know that I'm still part of the furniture in Australia and a lot of it is down to that film.' Loading Day still has big-screen ambitions – he's about to direct his first feature-length film, the thriller Killer Breed, which he also wrote – but he acknowledges it's hard in the Australian film industry to attain success these days, especially at the blockbuster level of Muriel's Wedding. Instead, he's looking to the young mavericks, such as Danny and Michael Philippou, the Adelaide twins who started with a YouTube channel and are now about to release their second horror film with the uber-cool distributor A24. Day met them while he was working on the TV series Wolf Creek and they'd show him their videos. 'I was like, 'Good luck with that',' he says. 'They just went out and shot all this crazy stuff and built their own audience and made the film that they wanted to make. That's quite inspiring. But that's no different from Bruce Beresford saying, 'I want to do Breaker Morant ', and optioning the book and then going out and shooting it for $200,000 in South Australia. The sensibilities are probably different but the step is still that drive and that desire to get it made and to tell a story.' Maybe he needs a YouTube channel. 'My boys would die of embarrassment if I did that.' Or what about a limited series about Muriel's life, covering where Muriel, Rhonda and Brice are now – that sort of thing? 'I'm available!' he says, laughing. 'That's where it's all at. At the moment it's TV, and it's incredible how that's completely flipped around. When I was a kid, like, no one wanted to do TV. Everyone wanted to do film. And now people do film as a favour. Everyone wants to do TV. That's where the storytelling is.'
The Guardian
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Correspondent review – Richard Roxburgh is excellent as jailed journalist Peter Greste
Latvian-Australian journalist Peter Greste became the story when he was arrested in Cairo in 2013 on trumped-up terrorism charges with two of his Al Jazeera colleagues. In a sham trial the following year he was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison, ultimately spending 400 days there. It's no spoiler to say that director Kriv Stenders' grittily immersive film about Greste's story has a happy ending – Greste was returned to Australia in 2015 and freed – capping off a tense and twitchy viewing experience, where the pressure valve is released only at the very last minute. Richard Roxburgh is in fine form as Greste, eschewing the slippery charisma he does so well (in TV shows such as Rake and Prosper) to depict the protagonist as a pragmatic but deep-thinking individual, navigating a crisis in which he's close to powerless. At one point Greste is told by a fellow prisoner that he won't survive 'unless you're able to make peace with yourself'. Lines like that can feel on the nose, but this moment registers, feeding into an important part of Greste's characterisation – as a person who responds to extreme situations partly by looking inwards, analysing himself as well as his circumstances. The Correspondent opens with Greste's editor at Al Jazeera calling him as 'things are crazy in Cairo', asking him to 'cover the desk there, just in case something breaks'. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Early shots incorporate visions of the crisis unfolding in Egypt at the time, when the political arm of Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood was ousted from power and their supporters took to the streets in violent protest. We briefly see Greste reporting on the street, in the thick of it all, but the script – adapted by Peter Duncan from Greste's memoir The First Casualty – doesn't dilly-dally, with authorities raiding his hotel room very early in the runtime and carting him off to prison. Thematically (and to some extent tonally) the ensuing experience has obvious similarities to Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously and Robert Connolly's Balibo, two other Australian films about journalists stationed overseas in terribly fraught political circumstances. There are also notes of Franz Kafka's The Trial, with Greste and his two colleagues – producer Mohamed Fahmy (Julian Maroun) and cameraman Baher Mohamed (Rahel Romahn) – facing preposterous allegations and an obviously crooked bureaucratic system, in which the concept of guilt has nothing to do with justice, entirely defined according to the motivations of those in power. About 20 minutes in, Stenders begins to deploy flashbacks, marking the first point where I felt pulled out of Greste's perilous circumstances. Initially I wasn't entirely sure about these intermittent scenes, which detail the relationship between Greste and BBC journalist Kate Peyton (Yael Stone), as it felt as if the film was sacrificing some immediacy. But rather than being pockets of the past presented here and there, they have a clear dramatic arc and the full weight of their significance is eventually revealed. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion Cinematographer Geoffrey Hall (whose other collaborations with Stenders include Red Dog, Australia Day and a Wake in Fright reboot) gives the frame a coarse and grainy veneer – rough and banged up, which suits the material. As does the nervy editing of Veronika Jenet (whose work includes Jane Campion classics The Piano and Sweetie), which adds an additional element of jumpiness, as if the screen itself is being rattled. Like so many films, The Correspondent could do with a trim, feeling a little stretched in its second half. But this is unquestionably an important story, powerfully and robustly told; you've never seen a courtroom drama quite like it. The Correspondent opens in Australian cinemas on 17 April
The Guardian
15-04-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Dear chefs: what are the perfect sides for Easter lamb?
What are the best sides to pair with lamb at Easter? 'Lamb has a deep, rich flavour; it's distinctive, but it's versatile, too,' say Jay Claus and Syrus Pickhaver of Rake at The Compton Arms in north London. 'As long as you render the fat slowly and fully, so the flavour is released and the lamb is tender, you can take it in all sorts of directions.' Something 'with good salinity', be that gherkins or anchovies, is as good a start as any in their book, as is erring towards a 'Greek vibe' for Anna Hedworth, author of Service (think 'yoghurty, fresh or sharp things, such as tzatziki or salsa verde'). Happily, lamb also lends itself 'beautifully to an abundance of fresh herbs, and to spring produce – asparagus, wild garlic, peas, fennel and globe artichokes,' adds Ben Allen, head chef at the Parakeet in north-west London. When it comes to specific sides, however, that all really depends on how you're cooking the lamb. That said, we can all agree potatoes are non-negotiable. 'If the lamb is quite simple [with herbs and garlic, say], it can take the robustness of a dauphinoise,' says regular Guardian columnist Georgina Hayden. The richest spud dish of all gets Claus and Pickhaver's vote, too – but with added anchovies to tick their salty box: 'Slice potatoes and onions thinly, add anchovies and layer in an oven dish. Cover with cream, milk and some butter, then bake gently.' Hedworth, meanwhile, keeps things simpler, preferring to roast cubes of potato with lots of olive oil, garlic, rosemary and lemon peel, until 'crisp on the outside and soft inside'. Don't forget to eat your greens, either. Hedworth suggests braising cabbage or cavolo nero to dress up with salsa verde: 'Blitz whatever herbs you can get your hands on – mint, tarragon, dill, parsley – with garlic, dijon, red-wine vinegar, olive oil and salt.' Otherwise, give peas a chance: 'These should be Birds Eye and unsullied by anything more creative than salt and butter,' say Claus and Pickhaver. Carrots, on the other hand, should be accompanied by thyme and honey and cooked 'so they're really sticky', Hayden says, or a mustard cream, which is on Rake's menu alongside a Barnsley chop: 'Thin strands of carrot are soaked in sweet vinegar, then we add creme fraiche and a lot of dijon; the creaminess matches the fatty lamb, but it's light and sweet.' For a taste of sunnier climes, Hedworth puts cherry tomatoes (halved, if large) in a tray with smoked paprika, onion seeds, sugar, salt, olive oil and a mix of toasted and ground coriander seeds, cumin seeds and cardamom seeds. Roast until 'fully soft and starting to blacken', then pile on to Greek yoghurt: 'The lamb juices melt into the tomatoes and yoghurt, making them really delicious.' For another simple side, Allen would be inclined to knock up a Turkish-style salad with chickpeas, cucumber, plenty of herbs and sumac. 'Then just toss everything in olive oil and a squeeze of lemon for a vibrant, refreshing side.' And if you're going down the spiced lamb route – a slow-cooked shoulder with harissa, for example – rice would be very nice. 'I'd make a lovely, herby pilaf to soak up all of those juices,' Hayden says, alongside some spiced carrots and braised fennel to seal the deal for the weekend's big meal. Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@
