Marvel Stadium, Melbourne The pop star’s first Australian show in a decade comes after years of physical and mental pain – so it’s a great relief to see her having a good time again As Lady Gaga is carted on stage atop a crinoline structure that resembles both a red velvet cake and a toilet roll doll cozy she states her dictum: “Dance or die”. Mother Monster’s ruling sets into motion an operatic 150-minute show – her first in Australia since the artRAVE in August of 2014. For the entirety of the Mayhem Ball, Gaga careens between dancing and dying in what she calls her “gothic dream” – although it often reads more Halloween. Skeletons abound – no doubt a homage to the late Gaga muse Rick Genest, otherwise known as Zombie Boy. At times it’s downright Hitchcockian, Gaga a veritable Kim Novak as she switches between blond and brunette selves with each wig change. Continue reading...

New South Wales south coast faces highest category of heatwave as the rest of the state, along with Western Australia and the NT, also facing extreme temperatures * Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Communities across large parts of Australia have been urged to take precautions as temperatures begin to soar ahead of severe and extreme heatwave conditions. The Bureau of Meteorology has issued heatwave warnings in New South Wales, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, with an extreme warning in place on the NSW south coast – indicating the highest level of risk. Continue reading...

Lachlan Marchant says the massive cloud over the Tanami desert in Northern territory ‘reminded us of Uluru’ * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Lachlan Marchant and his colleagues were driving their golf buggies back to their shed when they saw the earth sweeping towards them. “It reminded us of Uluru, the sheer size and width of this thing,” Marchant says. “It was just rolling at us.” Continue reading...

Over the past year, The Hollywood Reporter has published, in print and online, somewhere in the vicinity of 18,000 articles. Mining that mountain of reading matter to find the “best” stories of 2024 is an editor’s Sisyphean task — enjoyable, exhausting and ultimately impossible to accomplish. There were just too many good tales to choose from.