Best of 2009 A to Z
On stage and screen, on page and plate, via sight, sound, smell, taste and touch, Sydney got spoiled in 09. Join us for an alphabetical ode to a year of entertainment highlights
A
Time In Alec Baldwin took home an Emmy for his brilliant performance in the ridiculously funny 30 Rock, which also got the nod for Best Comedy Series... Music All Tomorrow's Parties made its Australian debut at Cockatoo Island in January with a line-up selected by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and was as perfect a festival as could be imagined - even if it turned out to be the last ever Seeds show by Cave's longtime sideman Mick Harvey... Comedy Arj Barker's sold-out State Theatre run in October proved that the US comic is seconds away from superstardom - and we saw him first, rest of the world... Film Australian movies reached a tipping point in 2009. After years of mediocrity, not only did the local industry give us a bona fide masterpiece in Samson & Delilah, Warwick Thornton's powerful portrait of a petrol sniffer, we also got an admirable animation about Asperger's from Adam Elliot, Mary & Max; a daring depiction of drug dealers from Serhat Caradee, Cedar Boys; a smart and sweet suburban story My Year without Sex from Sarah Watt; and a rice paddy-to-riches crowd-pleaser in Bruce Beresford's Mao's Last Dancer. Five greats in one year? Are we dreaming?
B
Theatre Baghdad Wedding It was Oscar Wilde in Abu Grahib in Belvoir's excellent production of this angry-funny Iraq play by the UK's Hassan Abdulrazzack... Stephen Page and the gang celebrated 20 years of Bangarra Dance Theatre with retrospective Fire, a cultural milestone at the Opera House... Unsung Sydney treasure Sandra Bates, Ensemble Theatre's artistic director, notched up her 100th show directing The Ruby Sunrise... Games Batman: Arkham Asylum's story, gameplay, visuals, acting and all-round atmosphere proved that, even in the bullshit-heavy world of video games, every so often you can believe the hype... Music Bon Iver were the must-see act of Sydney Festival, with word of mouth forcing extra gigs to be shoehorned into the still-too-short schedule... Art Bushwhacked Ivan Dougherty Gallery gave us a searingly political art show attacking the war criminal who preceded Obama... Film The side-splitting Brüno proved that Sacha Baron Cohen is no one-trick pony, with a traffic-stopping Australian premiere at the State Theatre, hosted by Time Out, and a truly spectacular haute-couture-meets-Roman-Empire outfit from the man himself... Food Sydneysiders tightened their belts, but not their gullets this year and lo, BYO was back with a vengeance with more than 50 of Sydney's best restaurants actively encouraging it. Meanwhile, 6,000 Sydneysiders brought their own dawn picnic for the first ever Breakfast on the Bridge – and the weather just about behaved
C
Film Carey Mulligan Everyone's falling for the impish star of An Education, and that includes half of Time Out Sydney's staff... Art Cressida Campbell This sensational Aussie printmaker showcased her career's work of still life and landscape at the SH Ervin Gallery... Book Robert Crumb made us wait until this year to see what his version of god would look like in The Book of Genesis Illustrated. There were comebacks aplenty in 2009: AC/DC recharged; Sydney Comedy Store reopened its doors with international headliners week after week; and the iconic Bayswater Brasserie fought off rumours of closure. Cheers to that.
D
Book Dave Eggers, of McSweeney's fame, threw his hat into the Sendak ring with The Wild Things, a rumination on what life must have been like for seven-year-old Max... Classical The Australian String Quartet's unsettling performance of Brett Dean's 2003 piece Eclipse had audiences emotionally at sea with his response to the Tampa crisis. It's our CHAMBER MUSIC PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR!... Film District 9 Even geeks who have never heard of Apartheid could appreciate the satirical overtones of Neill Blomkamp's aliens-in-Johannesburg action romp... Film Duplicity Clive Owen and Julia Roberts sizzled together on screen in Tony Gilroy's twisty, turny industrial espionage thriller
E
Theatre It's not rocket science: cast Cate Blanchett in one of the finest dramas of the 20th century, A Streetcar Named Desire, get a legend (Liv Ullmann) to direct, and you've got the theatrical event of the year. What we didn't expect was that Joel Edgerton would be so great as Stanley Kowalski... Exhibition Egyptian Treasures The mummies returned along with coffins, sphinxes, jewellery and other relics of the pharaohs at the Australian Museum... Music Empire of the Sun made their triumphant live debut at Parklife - well, Luke Steele and his band did, minus the mercurial Nick Littlemore
F
Exhibition Femme Fatale Bad, bad women of Sydney met sinister screen sirens at the Justice & Police Museum... Dance Firebird and Other Legends Graeme Murphy's sci-fi take on Stravinsky's Firebird joined Les Sylphides and Petrouchka in an Australian Ballet tribute to the Ballets Russes... Food While the GFC hit everyone hard, restaurants turned that frown upside down, offering the likes of fixed price menus - Marque's $45 Friday lunch is all the fine dining and none of the bankruptcy... Albums Future of the Left's second album Travels with Myself and Another was the cleverest, loudest, brattiest and most downright awesome album of the year - and the Welsh trio are touring next month too
G
Music Guy Garvey's incredible voice and genial banter converted us into Elbow fans at V Festival... Theatre Gatz The Great Gatsby: great novel, great actors, great show from Elevator Repair Service... Film We cheered for veteran stylist Grace Coddington of American Vogue - the Clarice Starling to Anna Wintour's Hannibal Lecter - in fash-mag flick The September Issue... and in Gran Torino it was Clint at his absolute best as a racist widower confronting Korean gangsters... Theatre Guys & Dolls MUSICAL OF THE YEAR! Frank Loesser's 1950s classic of gamblers and showgirls had a dream cast, street-smart choreography and charm to burn. Love it? You bet your pretty neck we did. Food Growers' markets sprung up in several school playgrounds and church yards, and a huge number of fancy delis opened up this year, especially on the fast-gentrifying Crown St
H
Theatre Melbourne's Hayloft Project updated Ibsen with The Only Child at Belvoir. Way to go, Bleak City!... Art Head On Australian Centre for Photography's answer to the Archibalds showcased portraiture at its best... Music NYC late bloomers the Hold Steady brought joy to 30-year-old men of all ages and genders with their triumphant Australian tour and Laneway Festival headline berth... Book Homer and Langley by American literary giant EL Doctorow showed us modern American history through the eyes of a blind New Yorker
I
Film Inglourious Basterds FILM OF THE YEAR! It's World War II, rewritten with only war movies and wishful thinking as reference materials. It's the most talky action movie ever made. It's an exercise in both nail-biting suspense and stomach-churning violence. It's Quentin Tarantino at the top of his game... Art Intensely Dutch ART SHOW OF THE YEAR! Colour exploded in the AGNSW in this major show of postwar Dutch painters. From Appel, Constant and Corneille, to Bogart and De Kooning, this high art from the Lowlands was Amster-damn good fun... Dance It's a Jungle Out There Martin de Amos portrayed the city as an organism in his one-man show at the Campbelltown Arts Centre... Art I Walk the Line: New Australian Drawing We lapped up these hip scribbles by hot young artists at the MCA
J
Time In Wolverine and Australia may have disappointed but our Hugh Jackman redeemed himself with a superb song-and-dance turn as host of the best Oscars broadcast in years... Film Japan in the movies There was lovable sushi in Miyazaki's animated Ponyo. There was poisonous sushi in Louis Prohoyas's successful save-the-dolphins doco The Cove. And there was a moving look into the Japanese way of death in Departures... Theatre Jerry Springer: The Opera TV's sleaziest talk show became the stuff of operatic arias in this short season of the West End hit at the Opera House starring David Wenham. We felt like we'd all been covered in (musical) chocolate and thrown to the (comedy) lesbians... Meanwhile, Jonathan Biggins gave us three highlights of the stage year by directing one of the funniest musicals ever written, the Muppet-tacular Avenue Q; spoofing Bob Brown singing Leonard Cohen's ‘Hallelujah' in another irreverent Wharf Revue, Pennies from Kevin; and starring in the Sydney Theatre Company's mind-bending revival of Travesties by Tom Stoppard... Comedy She may not be getting any younger, but Judith Lucy's return to the stage was both welcome and hilarious...
K
Classical & Jazz Katie Noonan singing with the Australian Chamber Orchestra with images by Bill Henson delivered so much haunting beauty in Luminous that the State Theatre needed ghostbusting... Theatre Barry Kosky's Poppea comingled Monteverdi and Cole Porter with the blood of Seneca in a bathtub. A gobsmacker... Food Korean fried chicken - that crunchy, peppery, salty gear that goes oh-so-well with a giant beer - is just one delicious part of the bigger Korean food revolution that sprung up on Pitt Street this year Music Kings of Leon rocked the Ent Cent, even though we spotted Caleb having a sneaky chunder off stage
L
Classical Licht The highlight of the day-long festival of Stockhausen's music was a complete act of his rarely-performed 29-hour opera... Theatre Lipsynch OK, so it was eight hours long, but Robert LePage's epic play about the power of the human voice enthralled audiences at the Sydney Festival... The Little Dog Laughed and so did we, at Douglas Carter Beane's sparkling satire of gays and lesbians in Hollywood, at the Ensemble... Music It was a great year for live music venues in Sydney: sure, the (hopefully temporary) loss of the Hopetoun was a kick in the teeth, but we welcomed the Red Rattler, Notes Live, CAD Factory, Quikz and more to the Sydney scene, while a growing number of established names started having live entertainment again... Music The Brian Eno-curated Luminous programme was a highlight of Vivid Sydney with incredible performances by Jon Hopkins, Ladytron, Jon Hassell and (especially) Battles. And those fancy light projections on the Opera House sails didn't look too shabby either
M
Music Too often reunions are tragic affairs, but Madness showed the V Festival crowd that they've lost none of the old magic... Meanwhile MGMT proved they could live up to the hype with a Hordern show that could easily have sold out multiple times over... Time In MasterChef had us glued to the television week after week and brought back the cravat as a fashion item... and after season two, does anyone seriously doubt that Mad Men is the best show since The Wire?... Film Is Meryl Streep the new Reese Witherspoon? The 15-time Oscar nominee confirmed her spot as the biggest thing in movie comedy with her hilarious portrayal of TV chef Julia Child in Julie & Julia. Meanwhile, for Moon, Duncan Jones directed the awesome Sam Rockwell in a retro-boosted sci-fi gem... Opera Jim Sharman's Opera Australia production of Mozart's comic opera Così Fan Tutte managed to be sexy and funny and enlightening while still giving us space to enjoy the music. Bravo
N
Book Norman Doidge, MD, author of The Brain That Changes Itself, got us all thinking outside the traditional model of a permanently "hardwired" brain in his book about neuroplasticity... Dance The Australian Ballet revived Graeme Murphy's Nutcracker: The Story of Clara and showed why this uniquely Aussie take on a classic is a real 'cracker
O
Theatre One hour, 13 Belgian teenagers and about a billion raging hormones made Once and For All We're Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen at the Wharf Theatres a rollicking teenage rampage (a bit like Boxing Day must-see movie The French Kissers)... Albums Only Built for Cuban Linx II Raekwon wins the battle of the sequels (Jay-who?) and releases one of the best hip-hop albums of the year... Around Town Events and exhibitions celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin reminded us of the power of a simple idea - and of Darwin's connections with Newtown and the Blue Mountains... Food North is the new east, with a clutch of new restaurants opening up from Mosman to Manly such as Brescian newcomer, Ormeggio
P
Theatre One of Australia's finest actresses, Pamela Rabe, took on Richard III in The War of the Roses and gave us a master class in evil. Then she directed Norwegian play Elling and gave us an endearing portrait of mental institution misfits struggling adjusting to the real world... Dance Pilobolus DANCE PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR! Purists scoffed, but we loved the shadow-play and naked insectoid exploits of Connecticut's dance theatre troupe... Music Pink must have risked overstaying her visa, so extended was her Australian jaunt with sold-out show following sold-out show. The Prodigy's one-off show at the Hordern was unexpectedly epic... Art Play Me, I'm Yours Thirty pianos around town were among the ‘keys' to the success of SMAC Award winner Fergus Linehan's last Sydney Festival
Q
Gay & Lesbian Queer rights made some important leaps forward at the tail end of 2009. Barack Obama's confirmation of the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act means HIV positive people will finally able to enter the United States as of early 2010 - a huge step forward in a shamefully backward law. In a local breakthrough for the transgender community, the Department of Foreign Affairs has restored the right for people heading abroad for sex reassignment surgery to travel on a passport of their chosen gender
R
Music/Comedy We don't know how to categorise Reggie Watts, but his performances were downright incredible - and his improvised song about us at the Time Out Sydney Comedy Awards warmed the very cockles of our hearts... Food Rockpool Bar and Grill, Sydney's most talked about restaurant opening of '09 and the restaurant that gave the GFC the middle finger, also serves Sydney's most talked about wagyu burger with amazing pickles. Meanwhile roast dinners were hot, hot, hot over the winter, our pick being The Local Taphouse's Host a Roast deal: $35 a head for lunch like your mum used to make. Yum... Theatre Ruben Guthrie Toby Schmitz made us drunk with laughter in the return season of Brendan Cowell's alcoholism classic at Belvoir... Dance Dequincey Company's Run: A Performance Engine danced the history of CarriageWorks, as vulnerable flesh swung and fell with massive steel scaffolds... Comedy Sydney opened up for Russell Brand on his Sydney visit - though his stand up paled in comparison to his priapic performance at Time Out's after party at Ivy Pool Club
S
Art Sculpture by the Sea The all-too-brief annual art by the ocean show was once again a highlight of the year... Book Scott Schuman raised the stakes for fashion bloggers when he published a book of photographs from his phenomenally popular website, The Sartorialist, while The Song Is You, Arthur Phillips' fourth novel, is a Brief Encounter for the iPod generation and a must-read for anyone who's ever fallen for a pop singer... Bars Finally, some small bars actually opened. Then closed. Then opened again on a different street (we're looking at you, Ching-a-lings). Pocket, The Pond, Pong, Small Bar, Park St Social Club, The Hive – if 2009 was the seed, then 2010 will be the bloom... Film Star Trek Moving along at warp-speed, JJ Abrams' inventive reboot surpassed all expectations. May the reborn franchise live long and prosper... Opera Stuart Skelton earned lifetime sole title to the role of Peter Grimes in Neil Armfield's world-beating new production. It's our OPERA OF THE YEAR!
T
Book It's been a great year for big, colourful coffee table books. Our favourites are the affordable re-release of Helmut Newton's Sumo; Dennis Hopper's Photographs 1961-1967; and the black Perspex-covered Zaha Hadid Complete Works 1979-2009, all published by Taschen. Australia's crime fiction master Peter Temple fires off his greatest thriller yet in Truth: a spare, brutal, sardonic Melbourne cop odyssey that cuts to the bone... Bars Gimlet. Tequila Old Fashioned. Tommy's Margarita. Tequila's had a fierce comeback in Sydney bars, used in the place of gin to make some of the most delicious (and deadly) drinks around...Time In Twitter Love it or hate it, everybody is tweeting these days, from your favourite celebrity to the world's most powerful figures. Make sure you are following us - twitter.com/sydneytimeout
U
Film Up Pixar took us to new heights in this bittersweet comedy about youth, old age and big dreams starring Ed Asner (Lou Grant lives!)... Games Uncharted 2: Among Thieves made up for the poor man's Tomb Raider of the first title and followed through on its promise of creating an interactive adventure film. Er, so why are they also making it into a film?... Time In Underbelly 2 The second season of this homegrown true-crime series was as popular and controversial as ever, thanks in no small part to Matthew Newton's buttocks.
V
Film/Time In It was all about the vampires in '09 with Swedish schoolyard chiller Let the Right One In and the lecherous goings on in Bon Temps in Alan Ball's True Blood. Edward who?... Classical Vladimir Ashkenazy conducted his own arrangement for orchestra of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition landing BEST SYMPHONIC PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR... Book Vladimir Nabokov's final wishes for his novel-in-parts The Original of Laura to be destroyed were overturned, and Penguin published the incomplete work in November... Food Victor Churchill, the most beautiful butchery ever designed, opened just down the road from Bistro Moncur, to the delight of Woollahra residents... Comedy Versus Vs Versus was our pick for the Sydney Comedy Festival and its performers, US duo The Pajama Men, are superstars in the making. Not gross. Vale The Hopetoun. Please come back
W
Theatre When the Rain Stops Falling PLAY OF THE YEAR! Andrew Lantana Bovell's latest effort was a play of astonishing ambition and emotional power. Imported from Adelaide by the STC, it had audiences weeping nightly... Film Where the Wild Things Are Spike Jonze got into the soul of Maurice Sendak's children's book to give us a film to treasure. Roarrrrr!!... Theatre Wicked This big-budget witchy musical surprised us all with its brains, its heart, and its courage, not to mention catchy songs and fabulous visuals... Comedy This was Wil Anderson's year, with The Gruen Transfer proving a huge success on the small screen and his Wilosophy live show his most successful yet... Film The Wrestler The tale of a pitiful loser with nothing to show for his once promising career? Yep, that's the Mickey Rourke story, and hey, it's also the story in his funny and moving comeback movie... Music Wu-Tang Clan Finally, New York's most famous rap crew brought the ruckus to our shores, with support from none other than the King of Crunk, Lil Jon
X
Exhibition Exposed! The Story of Swimwear It wasn't exactly ‘X-rated' but the perfect museum show for Sydney gave us Aussie cossies and plenty of skin at the Maritime Museum... Bars Kings X got a makeover and became less about trading in the pleasures of flesh and more about over-the-counter cocktails and bar snacks with over six new bars opening on the red strip. It's chk-chk-booming again
Y
Art Yayoi Kusama Sydney joined the dots at the MCA to see the playful work of Japan's spot-loving art star... Food Yum cha in pubs - aka Pub Cha - is the new schnitzel, a tasty foodstuff bringing in the punters to The Annandale and Ruby L'Otel
Z
Film Zack Snyder's attempt to bring Watchmen to the big screen may be an honourable failure, but we'll still be buying the director's cut... Food Adriano Zumbo, thanks to a stint on the ridiculously popular MasterChef, quadrupled his business and continues to make some of Sydney's most interesting baked goods
By Jason Catlett, Nick Dent, Angus Fontaine, Pauline Manley, Myffy Rigby, Dan Rookwood, Andrew P Street, and Jonathon Valenzuela
