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Byron Shire
March 28, 2024

Cinema Review – Going In Style

Latest News

Making Lismore Showground accessible to everyone

The Lismore Showground isn’t just a critical local community asset that plays host to a number of major events each year, but has also been used as an evacuation centre during past natural disasters in the region. 

Other News

Community grants on offer

Ingrained Foundation is running its fifth annual grants program, with a funding pool of $150,000.

NORPA’s wild ride at Lismore Showgrounds

NORPA is taking audiences on an adventure outside the theatre once again, announcing it will stage its original work Wildskin in a warehouse space at the Lismore Showgrounds. A sensory, destination theatre experience, Wildskin inhabits an outrageous and unpredictable world that’s part bush-thriller, part road-trip and a whole lot of NORPA’s signature theatrical style.

Lismore Labor MP called out over native forest logging

More than five hundred people marched in the rain through Lismore to the local state member’s office in protest against government sanctioned native forest logging on Sunday.

‘Smooth stroking’ Rainbow Dragons earn trophies

Rainbow Dragons (Lennox Head Ballina) won three trophies and had a fantastic weekend of fun, fitness and friendship at Grafton Dragon Boat Club’s regatta earlier in March.

Belongil Beach nude bathing

I am very concerned about the proposed revocation of legal clothing-optional beach use at Tyagarah. When I was last in...

Protecting nature and naturism from prejudice in Byron Shire

A new regime of social repression is imposing itself over the Byron Shire. Supported by local conservatives, the NSW National Parks Wildlife Service is attacking diversity and a particular minority group in Byron Shire – naturists.

Michael Caine is eighty-four years old, and he looks and acts every day of it in an underwhelming comedy that is as stale as last week’s bread.

To think that he was the toast of swingin’ sixties London and the heroic, golden-haired lieutenant at the battle of Rorkes Drift – not that Morgan Freeman comes off looking much better. Out of the three old codgers who combine to rob a bank, only Alan Arkin appears to be more than a heartbeat from death’s door, and the kindest thing we can say about Ann-Margret is that maybe next time she should consult Cher’s cosmetic surgeon. Zach Braff’s sporadic career as director includes the charming Garden State (2004), so it was a surprise to see how clunky his new offering is – the scene in which the gang pinch stuff from a supermarket is embarrassingly bad. From the minute that Joe (Caine) walks lead-footed and expressionless into his bank to be told that he is overdrawn, the movie is wrapped in an octogenarian fugue.

Joe, who has miraculously not lost his Cockney accent, despite working at a steelworks for thirty years with Willie (Freeman), has also seen his and his mates’ superannuation moved offshore, so the only reasonable option for them is to pull a heist and take back from the oppressors of the working man what is rightfully theirs. But first they need to learn the ropes and tool up.

There is so much potential wasted by a dreary script and a cast happy to hit the bundy every morning for the million or so bucks they will have been paid to go through the motions. I found myself staring at those weird black freckle-things that are scattered around Freeman’s eyes and hoping for Matt Dillon, an actor with a subtly honed comic skill, to be more involved as Detective Hamer. Braff tries to jazz it up with split screen, collage and a few other tricks of the trade, but a potential gem turns out to be a Joe Cocker.


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Iconic Lennox beach shed upgraded –  not demolished

Lennox Park and the shelter shed has now been upgraded and reopened.

Govt cost-shifting ‘erodes financially sustainable local government’

Byron Shire Council looks set to add its voice to the growing chorus calling on the state government to stop shifting responsibilities and costs onto local government.

Saddle Road group home DA decision this week

Plans to build Byron Shire’s first permanent group home for women and children in housing stress are moving ahead, with the development application for the project coming before Council this week.

A health check as Medicare turns 40

If you’ll forgive the earnest tone, I’d like to propose a toast. To a friend who’s almost always there when you need them most. To a system that aims to treat people fairly and respectfully.