Paul Dalgarno, The Conversation and Madeleine De Gabriele, The Conversation
It’s another year in Arts + Culture, so in case you missed it we’ve collected all the best coverage of screen, theatre, music, books and culture in one place.
BB-8 (left) is a new droid addition to the Star Wars universe.
Disney
It was the year of the grown-up superhero. Dark, witty and complex, superheroes on the big and small screen have – mostly – matured past mindless violence.
Drugs scare us and fascinate us. Societies might fight “wars” against drugs – but we also drink, smoke, ingest and inject an awful lot of them. The Ancient Greeks captured this instability with their concept…
Even with Kate Winslet and Judy Davis cast in The Dressmaker, the film was considered too high a risk for international buyers.
Courtesy of Universal Pictures.
If the Australian screen industry is to grow into the future and prosper, it cannot ignore the untapped creative talent and leadership potential of women. We need strategies to address this problem.
The great detective’s purchase on popular culture was not always so assured.
Benedict Cumberbactch and Martin Freeman in Sherlock, courtesy of Channel Nine
As Benedict Cumberbatch prepares to return to 221B Baker Street for a Sherlock Christmas Special, a great, unsolved mystery remains: what is the source of the detective’s enduring appeal?
Dev Patel plays Ramanujan (right) with Jeremy Iron’s as his Cambridge mentor G H Hardy (left) in The Man Who Knew Infinity.
Icon Films
Srinivasa Ramanujan was one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the 20th century. His story is told in the movie The Man Who Knew Infinity, screening tonight in selected cinemas in Australia.
Doc (Christopher Lloyd) and Marty (Michael J Fox) in 2015.
Universal Studios
The movie got some predictions right on what Doc and Marty would find when the arrive in the “future” today. But what could they find if they took another 30 year leap into the future?
Great Scott! We’re in the future.
Ricardo 清介 八木/Flickr
Hoverboards, self-fitting jackets, nuclear fusion generators…. Some of Back to the Future’s wacky inventions are closer to reality than you might think.
Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Deputy Dean Research at Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, The University of Melbourne