Archive

Whole Mushroom and Ham Tart

Posted 4:49pm Sunday 5th August 2012 by Ines Shennan

The inspiration for this savoury tart came from a gorgeous Auckland café called Little and Friday, which sadly is no more than a welcome daydream when I’m in Dunedin. So when I venture to the humid north a trip to Little and Friday is always on the cards. My first true love was the dizzyingly cheesy Read more...

Always Read The Label

Posted 4:49pm Sunday 5th August 2012 by Isaac McFarlane

Yes, New Zealand has some pretty amazing music, but we have some pretty amazing music labels floating around as well — some in plain sight, some a little better hidden. Most geographically relevant to our cold little enclave of Dunedin would be the revered Flying Nun Records, the original home of Read more...

OSCURA

Posted 4:49pm Sunday 5th August 2012 by Toby Hills

In Oscura you play, in established platform-game tradition, as a small mammalian everyman who plies a noble trade. Not a bandicoot plumber, I’m afraid, but a non-specific rodentish creature who attends to the lighthouse on a fantastical island. One day the bulb is shattered, unleashing shadowy Read more...

The Grand Duke

Posted 4:49pm Sunday 5th August 2012 by Bronwyn Wallace

After 11 long years of “The Really Authentic Gilbert and Sullivan Performance Trust” presenting the famous works in Dunedin, they are winding things up with the big finale work The Grand Duke. W S Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan began writing their comedic operas in the late nineteenth century, Read more...

Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present

Posted 4:49pm Sunday 5th August 2012 by Loulou Callister-Baker

The New York-based, Serbian-born performer Marina Abramović is one of the most important artists of the second half of the twentieth century. Since Abramović’s career began in the 1970s she has continued to use performance art to enthrall, shock, seduce, and explore the possibilities of Read more...

Chasing Ice

Posted 4:49pm Sunday 5th August 2012 by Sarah Baillie

[FILM FESTIVAL PREVIEW] National Geographic photographer James Balog was a climate change skeptic before he saw for himself the immense recession of glaciers he had photographed on separate occasions. This moment of realisation led Balog to set up the extensive “extreme ice survey” (EIS) Read more...

Barbara

Posted 4:49pm Sunday 5th August 2012 by Loulou Callister-Baker

[FILM FEST PREVIEW] Barbara is set in the German Democratic Republic, informally known as East Germany, during the 1980s. Barbara (Nina Hoss), a doctor working in Berlin, has been banished to a countryside hospital after she expressed her wish to leave the GDR. In this hospital she works Read more...

Late Bloomers

Posted 4:49pm Sunday 5th August 2012 by Taryn Dryfhout

Late Bloomers chronicles the lives of Mary (Isabella Rossellini) and Adam (William Hurt), who have been married for 30 years. A series of life events and an episode of memory loss prompt retired teacher Mary to undergo a medical exam, which in turn stimulates a lot of contemplation about her Read more...

ZINEFEST 2012

Posted 4:49pm Sunday 5th August 2012 by Josef Alton

Glue Gallery - 26 Stafford St Friday August 10th 5pm-9pm & Saturday August 11th 10am-6pm THE ZINE MINUS THE MAG: THE UBIQUITOUS, TRASHY, PRETTY, TINY TAILORED TREASURE OF WORDS, SITTING RIGHT UNDERNEATH THE NOSE ON YOU. Zines. They’re in cafes, pubs, boutiques, and dairies. You Read more...

A Study in Vivacity

Posted 4:49pm Sunday 5th August 2012 by Beaurey Chan

Sensory overload is the first thing that comes to mind when you first encounter Micci Cohan’s stunning collage artworks. There’s so much going on in each piece that looking at them can be a jarring and overwhelming experience. Sizzling colours practically pop off the page, energetic squiggles and Read more...

Soy and Ginger Dumplings

Posted 2:15pm Sunday 29th July 2012 by Ines Shennan

When eating at Dunedin’s Japanese restaurants, dumplings are a favourite choice of mine. The art of balancing them between chopsticks while dunking them in the provided dipping sauce is comparable to the art of making them yourself – seemingly daunting, but remarkably easy after you’ve done it once. Read more...

Mixed Messages

Posted 2:15pm Sunday 29th July 2012 by Ally Embleton

Have you ever made a mixtape? Like, a real one? Maybe you sat eagerly by the stereo, waiting for your song to play, winding the take-up reel on the cassette by hand so you could get that perfect transition timing. Or sat in a locked bedroom with your friends playing a “borrowed” tape/CD from a Read more...

Travis Kooky

Posted 2:15pm Sunday 29th July 2012 by Bronwyn Wallace

"The constraints of the theatre are only limited to your creativity… and your lack of budget.” Hitting the stage this week at Allen Hall Theatre is Travis Kooky and the One Problem, an original work by Rosie Howells, a second-year student at Otago who is becoming renowned around campus for Read more...

The Last of Us - PREVIEW

Posted 2:15pm Sunday 29th July 2012 by Toby Hills

With The Last of Us, developer Naughty Dog replaces the lush temple vistas, charmingly witty characters, wholesome fun and will-they-won’t-they dynamics of their previous franchise Uncharted with lush overgrown cities, gloomy-but-still-likable characters, brutal strangulations, and adult Read more...

Watch Dogs - PREVIEW

Posted 2:15pm Sunday 29th July 2012 by Toby Hills

Watch Dogs, another intriguing title from this year’s E3, is about killing people using Facebook. Aiden Pearce, the painfully generic protagonist, wields dystopian “Google-goggles” to identify his target. In an instant, a juicy fact is revealed about every person he scans: “HIV positive”, “charged Read more...

Film Festival Picks!

Posted 2:15pm Sunday 29th July 2012 by Sarah Baillie

The New Zealand International Film Festival opened on Thursday night with Wes Anderson’s latest gem, the super-cute Moonrise Kingdom. Running from 26 June to 19 August, the film festival marks an annual academic slump in Sarah Baillie’s calendar – three weeks of not much study and lots of sneaky Read more...

Letters to Father Jacob

Posted 2:15pm Sunday 29th July 2012 by Taryn Dryfhout

Letters to Father Jacob is a Finnish subtitled film set in the 1970s, about a thick-skinned ex-convict named Leila and her experience working with Father Jacob. The recipient of a life sentence (presumably murder, though it is never explicitly stated), Leila is given a pardon (much to her disgust) Read more...

The Dark Knight Rises

Posted 2:15pm Sunday 29th July 2012 by Daniel Duxfield

The story picks up sometime after the end of The Dark Knight. “Batman” is a spurned memory from a darker time in Gotham City's recent history, and billionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne is a recluse. Christopher Nolan starts this episode of the Batman legend by planting the seeds of this story in Read more...

The Forgotten Waltz

Posted 2:15pm Sunday 29th July 2012 by Bradley Watson

Attraction works in mysterious ways, and we often find ourselves wanting things we cannot have. But what happens when we get what we want? What happens when our lust for our husband’s attractive, married friend shifts from fantasy to reality? What about his family, our family, and our marriage? At Read more...

Fun-Sized

Posted 2:15pm Sunday 29th July 2012 by Beaurey Chan

It’s probably become obvious to those who regularly read Critic’s art section that the majority of exhibitions I write about are “official” ones. What I mean by this is that these exhibitions, curated by various art galleries around the city, feature New Zealand artists who are well established Read more...