Latest news with #Chameleon
West Australian
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- West Australian
Jacinta price destined to be in the public eye as she admits ‘I've always loved being a performer'
One of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price's favourite things to do is play boardgames with her family — lately a game called Chameleon has been popular. Price may love it, but it is hard to imagine the firebrand Senator being much good at a game that, as the name suggests, is all about trying to blend in. Being part of the wallpaper is not exactly her style. Forget politics, Senator Price has been standing out from the crowd since she was a young girl who fell in love with music. 'Music has always just been a part of who I am and the way I've expressed myself,' Price told The Sunday Times at the tail end of a tumultuous week and a half that saw her defect from the Nationals to the Liberal Party and a blink-and-you-missed-it tilt at its deputy leadership. 'I sang in the choir, I started to learn the violin when I was about nine-years old. . . and then I was involved in a hip-hop group in my teenage years when I thought classical music was no longer as cool as hip-hop. 'I guess I've always loved being a performer onstage and with my music. . . it was quite empowering to be on stage, to feed off the energy of an audience.' These days, although Senator Price sometimes gets pulled onstage by her Scottish singer-songwriter husband Colin Lillie — the two worked on the TV show Yamba's Playtime together — and admits to contributing 'the odd lyric,' the closest she gets to performing is politics. 'My favourite part of the job is engaging with audiences around the country,' she said. 'And so there is an element of that, there is an element of connecting to an audience and electrifying an audience through being able to speak about things that I'm passionate about. 'I think, you know, music and having such a career onstage has lent itself to stepping into that, I guess, with more ease, perhaps than others might.' Senator Price, who went from entertainer to Alice Springs councilwoman in 2015, has been in the spotlight since entering Federal Politics in 2022, following in the footsteps of her mother Bess Price, a former politician and Warlpiri woman. Part of that is down to her high-profile role leading the No campaign against the Voice to Parliament. The other part is likely down to her forthright — and, yes, polarising — personality. This week, she made headlines when she threw her hat in the ring to be the new Liberal deputy leader under Angus Taylor, only to step back when Sussan Ley narrowly won the leadership ballot. Asked how she switches off after a working week like that, Senator Price's answer was surprising — 'cleaning.' 'I've been cleaning the house and working on my yard in order to prepared for my youngest son's 18th birthday tomorrow (on Saturday),' she said. 'Generally family time means a lot to me, being able to hang out with, whether it's my husband or my sons and their partners. 'We're a family that loves board games, various different kinds. So we love that sort of thing. 'We love walking through the walking tracks and the hills that's around Alice Springs with our dogs and getting out bush whenever we get the opportunity.' Senator Price's youngest son becoming an adult is one of two looming milestones for Price that have nothing to do with Canberra. In August she will become a grandmother when her eldest has his first child. 'I'm really, really excited,' she said. Top of the agenda? 'To spoil them rotten.' Earlier this year the singer turned children's entertainer turned council woman turned Federal politician mad another addition to her increasingly lengthy resume: author, with the release of her memoir, Matters of the Heart. Senator Price said nobody tried to talk her out of baring it all on the page but there were moments of self-doubt. 'There was the moment of, sort of, am I sure this is what I really want to do?' she said. 'But then, you know, I thought, there's no point hiding from the person you are and the experiences that have built you as a human being and your character. 'And I think it's important, because quite often, particularly in this role, your detractors want to dehumanise you and I thought it was really important to point out, well, actually, I am human and I have made mistakes in my life and I have overcome adversity and deep challenges and that is part of what it means to be human. 'Mind you, day before launch day, I kind of thought to myself: well, what have I gone and done? Too late, now it's going to be out there. 'We'll have to see how the next one goes down the track. . . the experience of politics will definitely have to be part of that.' Canberra — consider yourself warned.
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Taiwanese Drama ‘The World Between Us: After the Flames' Sets Premiere Date On Prime Video
Six years after the release of acclaimed Taiwanese series The World Between Us, a sequel titled The World Between Us: After the Flames will premiere on June 7 on Amazon Prime Video, as well as on streaming platform Catchplay+, Taiwan's local broadcaster PTS and Iqiyi. Building on the spirit of its predecessor, the second season features a new storyline and fresh cast. More from Deadline Brillante Mendoza's Crime Drama 'Chameleon' Picked Up By SC Films International For Sales Launch In Cannes Writers Guild Of America West Staff Union Wins Voluntarily Recognition, Moves To Negotiate First Contract AMC Networks Boss Kristin Dolan On Why Streaming Is Better When It's Wholesale, And What She Learned From 'Dark Winds' Netflix Run The cast is headed by Vic Chou (Meteor Garden), Hsueh Shih-ling (Taiwan Crime Stories), Hsieh Hsin-ying (The Assassin), Yang Kuei-Mei (Yen and Ai-Lee) and Yu Tzu-Yu. Lin Chun-yang, director of the first season, has returned to direct the sequel after also working on Gold Leaf and Netflix's Wave Makers. The series will co-premiere in Taiwan on PTS and Catchplay Movie Channel, as well as stream on Catchplay+, PTS+ and Iqiyi International. After the Flames will also stream on Catchplay+ in Singapore and Indonesia, as well as on Amazon Prime Video globally in more than 240 countries and territories, excluding Taiwan. The series is produced by TAICCA, Taiwan's Public Television, Catchplay, Koko Entertainment and DaMou Entertainment. 'We are pleased to play a part in expanding the platforms for this celebrated Taiwanese drama,' said Catchplay CEO Daphne Yang. 'We've always believed in the power of partnerships, and are committed to enhancing visibility and maximizing the impact of the content we co-produce.' Producer Jayde Lin, who also led the original season, added: 'As we approach the global premiere, we're incredibly proud to bring this new chapter to audiences around the world,' she said. 'We worked hard to elevate the production quality and narrative scale in this new season, and it's encouraging to see the effort recognized with a global launch across more than 240 countries and territories.' Director Lin said: 'The first season focused on revealing the humanity behind malice. In the upcoming season, we build on that foundation with more intricate character dynamics and interwoven fates, exploring themes of choice, healing, understanding, and the power of holding on to one another.' After the series' June 7 premiere, two new episodes will air every Saturday. Best of Deadline 'Ginny & Georgia' Season 3: Everything We Know So Far Everything We Know About The 'Reminders of Him' Movie So Far 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery
The Guardian
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Taut', ‘extraordinary delight', ‘absolutely bonkers': the best Australian books out in March
Fiction, Ultimo, $34.99 Diana Reid's breakout debut, Love and Virtue, tapped the millennial zeitgeist from all angles: a campus novel exploring class, power and rape culture. Her fast follow-up, Seeing Other People, dealt in similar grey areas, starring two sisters in their 20s, both drawn to the same women. Signs of Damage is something of a departure: a thriller set in Europe across two time periods, as a family reckons with unknown trauma. It starts in 2008 in the south of France, where the Kelly family are holidaying when 13-year-old Cass goes missing. Something happens to her, but we don't know what. Sixteen years later, in Europe again for a friend's wedding, Cass is on a balcony when someone else tumbles off and dies – but she can't remember anything at all. The writing is taut, the mysteries abundant, and the trauma plot deftly handled and subtly subverted, in a book whose pages turn themselves. – Steph Harmon Fiction, Text, $36.99 Memoir and nonfiction writer Robert Dessaix offers a window into his life in his new book, Chameleon. The author of Twilight of Love, A Mother's Disgrace and Night Letters, Dessaix writes with beauty, wit and infectious energy about his early experiences, particularly in Morocco, where he discovered and uncovered his homosexual masculinity. Chameleon is an education on the role travel and literature can have in shaping our identities and imaginations; Dessaix delves into his long life to tease out the key moments, and books, that have made him the man and the writer that he is. – Joseph Cummins Fiction, Ultimo, $34.99 Madeleine Watts' stunning second novel is about a young couple who go on a road trip through the American south-west, as the calamitous California wildfires rage across it. She's there as an academic obsessively researching the Colorado River: colonised, diverted and destroyed. He's there in his capacity at a land art organisation, surveying giant works as they take (or remove) shape across the desert. (The thrill of a novelist who can invent conceptual art you actually want to look at!) Those who have road-tripped in America will be delighted to revisit some of these spots, rendered here vividly and with love. But as the climate crisis clouds their windscreen, grief ruptures the pair's relationship – and a mysterious, unfathomable loss unfolds in the rear view. – SH Fiction, Ultimo, $34.99 The Theory of Everything is a frustrating, extraordinary delight. Frustrating because of how resolutely it defies convention: a short story told in fragments might make way for a poem, or a list, or a manifesto. There's no 'easy' narrative to settle into here; the story itself is elusive, seemingly one thing before becoming another. That's why it's extraordinary too. Yumna Kassab, author of The Lovers and Politica, makes the reader work hard for the rewards. They're to be found in the book's form – experimental in the truest, most liberating sense – and in its incisive interrogation of the central themes (power, race, gender, wealth, freedom) delivered as sharp little punches to the gut. Kassab has written fireworks into these pages. – Bec Kavanagh Cookbook, Hardie Grant, $60 When Melbourne chef Helly Raichura opened a restaurant inside her home in 2018, she named it Enter Via Laundry. Diners did precisely that, before sitting down to eat regional Indian dishes like the ones she'd known growing up in India.. Raichura has now poured her knowledge of India's long culinary history into a beautiful tome of 68 recipes structured into key historical periods, starting with pre-Vedic (before 1500BC). They include a cheat's guide to ghee, recipes for lentil fritters and samosa warqi (pastries stuffed with smoked lamb) and Enter Via Laundry's ever-popular khandavi (ribbons of chickpea flour in coconut sauce). – Emma Joyce Nonfiction, HarperCollins, $35.99 Full disclosure: Alyx Gorman is Guardian Australia's lifestyle editor. But we must shout out this impressive work of journalism, which saw Gorman interview more than 130 people to explore 'the orgasm gap': the discrepancy between how often straight women orgasm during sex when compared with straight men. In Australia, the orgasm gap sits at about 26% for straight women – far higher than women who have sex with women, and men who have sex with men. So why is this? Gorman not only interviews regular people about their sex lives, but also sex workers, sex therapists, scientists and academics, to unpick why straight women can be unsatisfied by the sex they're having – and what men can do to improve things. Men, buy this book. – Sian Cain Fiction, UQP, $32.99 When Steve MinOn won the emerging category at the 2023 Queensland Literary awards, judges praised his manuscript for 'offering a fresh cultural perspective and challenging conventional notions of our national literature'. That's all well and good but it sort of glides over the absolutely bonkers main character: a dead man named Stephen Bolin (an anglicised almagamation of two Chinese first names, inspired by MinOn's own second name), who escapes from the morgue to walk his decomposing body to Far North Queensland, the town of his birth. Accompanying these gruesome and occasionally very funny passages is the story of where Bolin came from: four generations of migrant families – from China to Scotland to the UK to Australia – brought to life in a truely original debut. – SH Fiction, Penguin, $36.99 Few authors would admit to using a ghost writer. But portrait artist Vincent Fantauzzo has been open about enlisting Craig Henderson for his memoir, and with good reason: Fantauzzo is dyslexic, so he told his life story to Henderson in a series of difficult, emotional phone calls. And what a story it is. Unveiled tracks Fantauzzo's life, from growing up with an abusive father in Melbourne's public housing system through to his current glittering career as one of Australia's most commercially successful artists. It's an underdog success story you can't help but root for, and a peer behind the curtain at Fantauzzo's most famous works – like the haunting portrait of Heath Ledger he completed one day before the actor's death. – Katie Cunningham
The Guardian
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Chameleon by Robert Dessaix review – a dazzlingly beautiful mix of sex, travel and intimacy
One of Australia's finest writers of memoir and nonfiction, Robert Dessaix, returns with another journey into his past. His writing is highly regarded, particularly 2005's Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev, and this new book, Chameleon, is a similarly artful mix of biography and travelogue: a dazzlingly beautiful reading experience, tightly focused on sexuality and travel. Dessaix writes with a fun, free-wheeling, excited energy and it's infectious. 'Even today, at 80,' he writes, 'I sense a failure on my part to see life as an endeavour rather than a frolic, an endless outing with friends'. He threads together memories from across a long life – he was born in Sydney in 1944, and currently lives in Hobart with his partner, Peter Timms – while always remaining rooted in the present. At the core of this work is the question of what it is to be an authentic, real man: 'At every point in my life, what passersby would see, if they cared to stop and take a look, was some sort of shadow play about being a man: a sensitive man in particular, a man with feelings. Behind the screen the puppets were up to all sorts of tricks.' The motif of puppets returns again and again: a rich concept for Dessaix that speaks to his conception of how we perform our identities, 'this pantomime of masculinity … Even this morning, when I popped into the grocer's, the show, I noticed, was still running. I have never been the man I seemed to be.' Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning From his position, late in his life, Dessaix does not bemoan this performance – as he writes: 'I don't suppose anyone ends up exactly as he or she hoped to be.' In musing on this question, Dessaix examines characters as diverse as Lawrence of Arabia, John Cheever and Aldo Busi, as well as a range of books and fictional characters like Andre Gide's The Immoralist, Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe (from The Sportswriter) and James Joyce's Leopold Bloom (from Ulysses). It was illuminating to read about the impact of fiction – both writers and their words – on a life. It's something we often see in memoirs, of course, but Dessaix's way of looping around and around his literary and fictional heroes sheds so much light, both on these figures and on Dessaix himself. For Dessaix, visiting Morocco in the early 1960s for the first time was a life-changing event. 'What did happen in Morocco […] – without fanfare, not in a rush – was this: something in me began to shrink into the shadows while something else was sparking into life in the light. Shyly, I turned to face it. This was the real start of a gentle, sweet debauchery, I suppose.' This 'slow turning' is into a full recognition of his self: his masculinity and his sexuality. Dessaix's writing has its greatest depth and richness when he talks about homosexual sex in the Arab world. He is ebullient on the impact of experiences, of all kinds of intimacy, in places like Morocco or Tunisia (particularly Morocco: 'Skin me and that's what you will see: Morocco.'). He never writes explicitly about the kinds of sexual encounters he has; it's more about the sort of permission and acceptance he finds in those places. Describing a huge swath of territory, 'a burnt-yellow belt that stretches (in my head) from Morocco to India and then, these days, a whole lifetime later, down into the pullulating green of Java and Sulawesi', Dessaix writes: 'What is liberating about the attitude to sex in this zone is that you may take pleasure in sexual intimacy without feeling any need to change your identity.' Despite describing an experience that contradicts our present understanding of restrictions on homosexuality in the Arab world, this distance between sex and identity is what Dessaix finds so attractive and informs how he wants to live his life. 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 Dessaix proclaims that he wants these sexual partners to be his 'brothers'. To him, it's not an exploitative relationship; he mentions Edward Said's concept of 'orientalism', but thinks it irrelevant, despite clearly describing a privileged touristic experience. He always has the ability to escape – as a visitor, one can come and go as one pleases. Having the mobility of being able to head for the deserts of north Africa 'whenever my own life is killing me' did make me feel uneasy about the power dynamics Dessaix describes, despite how liberating they were for him. But it's the humour and energy of his writing style that most propelled me through these pages. At times it's pure whimsy: 'Even at 10 I knew hair made promises,' he writes of a boyhood crush. He can evoke past crushes with a rare poignancy: 'Getting these letters from Ahmed was oddly like smoking: I was always pining for the next one, often thinking of little else, yet each letter, to be absolutely honest, was a faint – wispily faint – disappointment.' His writing is sophisticated and funny, and Chameleon is a rich and entertaining education on a man's life; a detailed map of the literature, ideas, and places that shaped him. Chameleon by Robert Dessaix is published by Text Publishing
The Guardian
22-02-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Do you want to buy a British kettle? Go whistle
Britons might never again get the chance to buy an electric kettle made in the UK. Even a £150 kettle from Dualit, the company most famous for making its celebrated toaster in Crawley, West Sussex, is produced by Chinese workers 5,000 miles away. Most consumers think the whereabouts of the factory or assembly plant riveting their latest purchase together is irrelevant, but those who do want it to be produced locally do not have a choice. There have been 'buy British' campaigns in the past, and supermarkets, under pressure to show their support for UK farmers, continue to plaster domestic produce with union jack labels. These days it might seem a bit Trumpian to talk about fostering homegrown kettle making. And Malcolm Featherstone, who wants his nascent company to be part of a manufacturing renaissance, stood as a Reform candidate in Harlow, Essex in last year's general election. Yet, this seasoned business executive, one of three founders behind the British Domestic Appliance Company, is tapping into the climate change debate and the post-pandemic concern about economic security much more than he is a sense of nostalgia for a bygone age. Sadly, he has tried to drum up interest in his latest scheme – manufacturing kettles under the brand Chameleon – to no avail. Featherstone says his experience after three rounds of fundraising is that 'no one is interested in putting their money into UK manufacturing', adding 'everyone who is looking to invest is only really interested in two things, green finance and fintech companies'. He hopes to keep his business alive with a prototype and a fresh round of visits to potential investors, but admits 'we are stuck at this time'. The company's pitch should appeal to people who want to reduce carbon emissions and cut waste as the would-be kettle will be made in the UK – reducing transport costs – and like a Dualit toaster, have replaceable parts, also made in the UK. (Consumers would have to be willing to pay a premium, however – at £80 to £90, Featherstone's kettle would initially be more expensive than its Chinese rivals.) 'I didn't see why every kettle on the shelves in Britain is made in China,' he says. 'There are Italian and German kettles, but we seem to have given up.' Avoiding Chinese goods in favour of domestic producers under the America First banner was a feature of the US president's rhetoric in his first term. Since taking office for a second time, Trump has revived the slogan and said he will impose wide-ranging import tariffs to give extra support. For instance, in the US there are a number of statutes that require firms receiving federal assistance to prefer goods, products and materials made within the country's borders. The EU has rules on imports to prevent domestic producers being outrun by Chinese imports, something the UK has stepped back from implementing. Meanwhile, slogans urging UK consumers to buy British have never gained the same traction. In 2023, the UK ran a trade deficit in goods of £188bn, offset by a surplus of £173bn on trade in services to leave an overall deficit of £15bn. Maybe, says Featherstone, consumers will begin to look more favourably on UK-produced goods when they consider how complicated supply chains stretching halfway round the world can easily be disrupted, sending prices rocketing in times of economic stress. Concerns about environmental damage from shipments of fast fashion and not-so-durable goods from the far east could also give consumers added impetus to buy British. China's cheap prices are viewed through an ethical lens that marks Beijing down for using slave labour and pursuing pro-democracy campaigners in Hong Kong while plotting to subsume Taiwan into a vision of greater China. China, though, has made deep inroads into western domestic markets, making it difficult and costly to buy elsewhere. And attempts to invent or revive mass market British brands have a chequered history. According to official figures, factory output accounts for 8.2% of national income, or gross domestic product (GDP), down from about 30% in 1970, indicating the diminishing role manufacturing plays in the UK economy. Except, a recent report by Oxford Economics and Lloyds Bank argued that with all the add-ons and service contracts associated with the sector included, its impact is far greater than the official measure, concluding it was worth £518bn in 2022, or nearly a quarter (23%) of UK GDP. Labour's long-awaited industrial strategy is expected to appear this summer and is likely to give support to homegrown manufacturing. Tackling high energy prices should be a cornerstone of new policies when, according to government data, a small UK manufacturer pays 25p per kilowatt hour (kWh) compared with 19p in France and Germany. The cost drops to 9p in the champions of renewable energy, Denmark and Finland, and 8p in the US. Chinese firms pay less than 1p per kWh. Maybe Featherstone and business people like him will find backers when the costs underpinning their enterprises are lower. It would benefit the nation if the manufacturing sector can claim more winners.
