Archive
Jon Hopkins - Immunity
Posted 4:45pm Sunday 28th July 2013 by Basti Menkes
Rating: 5/5 Producing for Coldplay. Collaborating with Brian Eno. Scoring films. Over the course of the last decade, London-based producer Jon Hopkins has built himself an impressive CV. However, almost all of his work has been on the periphery of or in cooperation with other artists. This Read more...
Mario and Luigi: Dream Team (3DS)
Posted 4:45pm Sunday 28th July 2013 by Baz Macdonald
Rating: 8/10 How is it that an Italian plumber has become such an iconic and enduring figure within the gaming industry and pop culture in general? It’s a question that has been posed many times over the years, and though many have proffered possible answers, I don’t think there is a Read more...
MOTHRAs
Posted 4:45pm Sunday 28th July 2013 by Tim Lindsay
The MOTHRAs were a way to celebrate Scarfie filmmaking, and usually featured a wide variety of submissions ranging from wacky and weird to funny but sincere. It was sort of like the Oscars, except it was probably much less grand. The Mothra is a fictional Japanese monster. It sometimes Read more...
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Posted 4:45pm Sunday 28th July 2013 by Rosie Howells
“The Belafonte, home to Team Zissou, skilled crew of deep sea divers, adventurers, documentary filmmakers. Led by internationally renowned oceanographer captain Steve Zissou, expert on every aspect of marine life.” The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was Wes Anderson’s fourth feature film, Read more...
Pacific Rim
Posted 4:45pm Sunday 28th July 2013 by Basti Menkes
Rating: 3.5/5 Guillermo del Toro is one of my favourite modern directors. Regardless of whether he is dabbling in horror (The Orphanage), dark fantasy (Pan’s Labyrinth) or action (Hellboy), he brings to each of his movies a unique sense of wonder and imagination. Pacific Rim sees del Toro Read more...
Twice Born
Posted 4:45pm Sunday 28th July 2013 by Jonny Mahon-Heap
Rating: 2/5 The trope of love blossoming amid war is as old as cinema itself, with many of these films achieving classic status (Casablanca, Atonement, The English Patient – to name a few). Plenty more, however, have struggled to depict romance against the backdrop of conflict without lapsing Read more...
Monsters University
Posted 4:45pm Sunday 28th July 2013 by Amber Pullin
Rating: 4/5 As the “prequel” to Monsters, Inc. (2001), Pixar’s Monsters University revisits monsters Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) and James P. Sullivan (John Goodman) in their college freshman days, before they became “scarers.” Now, don’t be put off by this film’s “prequel” status; this Read more...
Self-Crusting Tomato and Brown Lentil Quiche
Posted 4:45pm Sunday 28th July 2013 by Kirsty Dunn
Halt! Before you freak out at the presence of the “L” word and let memories of bland bygone quiches prompt you to move on to the next column, let me assure you that this is, hand on heart, the tastiest, most flavoursome quiche I’ve ever had; maybe even the best of all egg-based savoury dishes ever. Read more...
The Violent Bear it Away
Posted 4:45pm Sunday 28th July 2013 by Lucy Hunter
Francis Marion Tarwater was born in the wreck of the car crash that killed his mother and grandmother and drove his father to suicide. Adopted by Rayber, his school-teacher uncle, baby Francis is oblivious to the devastation he was born into. But crazy great-uncle Tarwater decides he need someone to Read more...
Café Art
Posted 4:45pm Sunday 28th July 2013 by Charlotte Doyle
A friend of mine regularly teases me about being a “snob” when it comes to all things cultural. The best example of this snobbery I can give you is refusing to get coffee from the link – the aesthetics just don’t cut it. The counter-argument, however, is that having standards is not Read more...
Interview: Ruban Nielson (Unknown Mortal Orchestra)
Posted 3:59pm Sunday 21st July 2013 by Loulou Callister-Baker
In between touring the world and playing gigs with international acts like Grizzly Bear and Wavves, Ruban Nielson has returned to New Zealand to tour with Nielson’s current band, Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Loulou Callister-Baker had a brief and appropriately abstract conversation with Nielson to work Read more...
App of the Week | Issue 16
Posted 3:59pm Sunday 21st July 2013 by Raquel Moss
You know those vibration masturbation apps that are widely available in app stores? I have questions: Why would that be a good idea? First of all, your phone is a disgusting piece of equipment. It’s covered in germs and you probably use it while you’re on the toilet. And secondly, the Read more...
Mundane, Fleeting, Fun
Posted 3:59pm Sunday 21st July 2013 by Raquel Moss
Occasionally, I have reason to suspect that at the grand age of 22 I might already be “over the hill.” This realisation came several weeks ago when I found myself asking, irritably, “what is this Snapchat thing and should I be on it?” I had heard that teenagers were using it to sext each other. As Read more...
Shortbus (2006)
Posted 3:59pm Sunday 21st July 2013 by Rosie Howells
Shortbus is the holy grail of sex cult films. It makes The Rocky Horror Picture Show look like My Little Pony: The Movie (this actually happened – Danny Devito voice acted for it). The plot follows love therapist Sofia on her quest for sexual discovery, her blossoming friendship with gay couple Read more...
The Lone Ranger
Posted 3:59pm Sunday 21st July 2013 by Basti Menkes
Rating: 3.5/5 Director Gore Verbinski really rubs film critics up the wrong way. This is likely due to the tendency his films have to be loud, densely-plotted and half an hour too long. His latest, a big-budget adaption of The Lone Ranger, is no exception. Like most of Verbinski’s films (such Read more...
The Look of Love
Posted 3:59pm Sunday 21st July 2013 by Baz Macdonald
Rating: 3/5 This biopic, directed by Michael Winterbottom and starring English comedian Steve Coogan, tells the true story of real estate mogul and smut peddler Paul Raymond. Though Paul Raymond is not well known to our generation, he was once known as the “King of Soho” due to the large Read more...
Despicable Me 2
Posted 3:59pm Sunday 21st July 2013 by AJ Anderson
Rating: 4/5 Heading off to see Despicable Me 2 I was filled with high hopes of fake Russian accents, adorable one-liners and, of course, the darn cutest minions you’ve ever seen. Within the first couple of minutes I already knew that I was not going to be disappointed. The movie takes Read more...
Whip It
Posted 3:59pm Sunday 21st July 2013 by Kirsty Dunn
Now that I have your attention, deviants, listen up: If Barry White’s voice could be distilled into dessert form, it would look, and taste, like this. This sumptuous chocolate mousse takes a mere twenty minutes to prepare, pleasures the palette in ways you never knew existed, and allows you Read more...
The Walking Dead: 400 Days
Posted 3:59pm Sunday 21st July 2013 by Baz Macdonald
Rating: 8.5/10 Telltale Games announced earlier this year that season two of The Walking Dead was indeed in development – an announcement that surprised very few considering the runaway success of the first season of this flawless point-and-click adventure based on Robert Kirkman’s comic Read more...
Let’s Get Physical
Posted 3:59pm Sunday 21st July 2013 by Basti Menkes
The BestMassive Attack - Mezzanine Ignore the album cover. When it comes to “soundtracking” coitus, Massive Attack’s third album Mezzanine is the undisputed champion. Regardless of where you are, what state you’re in, who you’re with and in what position, the album’s brooding textures and Read more...
Sweet Tooth
Posted 3:59pm Sunday 21st July 2013 by Lucy Hunter
This is the sex issue, so I decided to write about a sexy spy book. It is 1972. Serena Frome is the beautiful daughter of an Anglican bishop, groomed by her much older lover to join the British Secret Services in the patriarchal ranks of MI5. Serena is considered something of a freak of Read more...
Among the Machines
Posted 3:59pm Sunday 21st July 2013 by Charlotte Doyle
The use of technology has become a natural part of our lives. However, the idea of technology manipulating nature itself and becoming a controlling, dominating force tends to sit a little uncomfortably. Among the Machines is one of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s (DPAG) major exhibitions for 2013 Read more...
App of the Week | Issue 15
Posted 8:23pm Sunday 14th July 2013 by Raquel Moss
Evernote is not just an app – it’s so much more than that. Evernote, once you start to use it, becomes an extension of your brain. If you’ve ever sat in the middle of a pile of paper, wailing because you can’t find the notes you need, you could probably benefit from using it. There’s a reason its Read more...
Making the web your bitch
Posted 8:23pm Sunday 14th July 2013 by Raquel Moss
You’re already one of the thirty-seven per cent of people worldwide using Google Chrome to navigate our beloved web, right? So I don’t have to begin this by nagging you to use it? No? Still using Internet Explorer like a schmuck? Come on, even my Nana uses Chrome, and all she’s doing is playing Read more...
Deadpool (XBOX 360, PS3, PC)
Posted 8:23pm Sunday 14th July 2013 by Baz Macdonald
Rating: 8/10 Just when you thought Marvel had adapted every single one of their heroes, here comes Deadpool, a character I believe has been under-utilised and misrepresented thus far in Marvel’s attempts to take over the world … or at the very least the entertainment industry. For those of Read more...
Austra - Olympia
Posted 8:23pm Sunday 14th July 2013 by Basti Menkes
Rating: 3.5/5 Canadian synthpop outfit Austra emerged in 2011 with a bang, their first album Feel It Break among the finest debuts in recent memory. It wove gothic electronica around Katie Stelmanis’ operatic vocals to stunning effect; picture Kate Bush collaborating with The Knife and you Read more...
Kanye West - Yeezus
Posted 8:23pm Sunday 14th July 2013 by Bella King
Rating: 4.5/5 The moment Yeezus, Kanye West’s sixth solo album, leaked online, it set a million keyboards around the globe on fire. Suddenly everyone was a critic, scrambling to push their opinion of an album worlds away from its predecessor, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Indeed, in Read more...
Winter Whisk(e)y Cake
Posted 8:23pm Sunday 14th July 2013 by Kirsty Dunn
Gie him strong drink until he wink, // That’s sinking in despair; An’ liquor guid to fire his bluid, // That’s prest wi’ grief and care: There let him bouse, an’ deep carouse, // Wi’ bumpers flowing o’er, Till he forgets his loves or debts, // An’ minds his griefs no more. (Robert Read more...
The Silence of the Lambs
Posted 8:23pm Sunday 14th July 2013 by Tim Lindsay
Read the title to yourself a couple of times. It is freaking creepy. It sends shivers down your spine then back up to your head to remain for days. When you watch this film, you do not see the face of evil. You enter its mind. The Silence of the Lambs won five Oscars in 1991: Best Actor and Read more...
White Lies
Posted 8:23pm Sunday 14th July 2013 by Rosie Howells
Rating: 3/5 White Lies is a film adaptation of Witi Ihimaera’s novel Medicine Woman, which tells the story of Paraiti (Whirimako Black), a Maori healer from the 1920s, and her strange involvement in the lives of the rich Pakeha woman Mrs. Vicars (Antonia Prebble) and her maid Maraea (Rachel Read more...
After Earth
Posted 8:23pm Sunday 14th July 2013 by Baz Macdonald
Rating: 2.5/5 M. Night Shyamalan has had a roller coaster of a career, from the unadulterated success and cultural penetration of The Sixth Sense to his ultimate demise with the painful The Happening and the destruction of the much-loved Avatar with The Last Airbender. Frankly, he has become Read more...
The Internship
Posted 8:23pm Sunday 14th July 2013 by Tim Lindsay
Rating: 2/5 Start of the U.S. summer? Check. An assorted cast of misfits with the odds stacked against them? Check. A worrying lack of originality in the plot? Check. Welcome to The Internship, your regular Hollywood light comedy. The film seems to benefit from director Shawn Levy’s Read more...
The Magic of Reality
Posted 8:23pm Sunday 14th July 2013 by Lucy Hunter
“Reality is everything that exists. That sounds straight forward, doesn’t it? Actually, it isn’t.” Thus begins Dawkins’ introduction to science for young people. I didn’t realise this was a young adults’ book until I started reading it, but, being an eager yet largely ignorant admirer of science, I Read more...
Art From a Laboratory
Posted 8:23pm Sunday 14th July 2013 by Charlotte Doyle
I don’t find a plastic crucifix immersed in a glass of urine offensive. However, the artist responsible for the Piss Christ received death threats for this sacrilegious work, indicating that some feel otherwise. Different individuals find different things “shocking,” but in spite of this it often Read more...
The Great Gatsby
Posted 6:05pm Sunday 7th July 2013 by Ella Borrie
Rating: 3.5/5 Baz Luhrmann is known for making beautiful films, and The Great Gatsby is no exception. The film is a polished homage to the roaring twenties that emphasises aesthetics over source material. The story follows Nick (Tobey Macguire) as he befriends the mysterious Jay Gatsby Read more...
The Hunt
Posted 6:05pm Sunday 7th July 2013 by Rosie Howells
Rating: 4.5/5 Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen) is a gentlemanly father who, due to a lack of teaching work in his small Danish village, takes a job at the local kindergarten. Owing to an imaginative child and a jumpy co-worker, Lucas is wrongly accused of sexually abusing his best friend’s young Read more...
World War Z
Posted 6:05pm Sunday 7th July 2013 by Rosie Howells
Rating: 3.5/5 World War Z is the sophisticated man’s zombie film, the fine malt whiskey to the rest of the genre’s pre-mixed orange and vodkas. Based on the 2006 Max Brooks novel of same name, production companies have been scrambling for the film rights ever since the book was published, Read more...
Man of Steel
Posted 6:05pm Sunday 7th July 2013 by Baz Macdonald
Rating: 3.5/5 In the eight years since Superman was last on the big screen in Superman Returns, the film industry has gotten into superheroes in a big way. Whereas we used to see only one or two of these films a year, it now seems a week doesn’t go by without a new caped crusader hitting Read more...
Southern Comfort
Posted 6:05pm Sunday 7th July 2013 by Kirsty Dunn
Ah, the Great Cheese Roll. The epitome of comfort food in all its toasted, cheesy, buttery, get-it-in-your-mouth-quick-before-it-runs-down-your-chin-y glory, these bad boys are the perfect antidote to a cold Dunedin eve. Not only are they tasty, inexpensive, and easy to make, they take pride of Read more...
App of the Week | Issue 14
Posted 6:05pm Sunday 7th July 2013 by Raquel Moss
Google Reader is dead. Google Reader, that faithful web servant, which, for the past seven years, has fed me my web content. Its demise is a sad loss for we traditionalists who still get our news and read blogs via RSS. But all hope is not lost – hopefully, before its end, you exported your Google Read more...
Putting the Social Back in Social Networking
Posted 6:05pm Sunday 7th July 2013 by Raquel Moss
Remember when social networks were new? And Facebook? Back when you could poke someone and gift them a picture of a flower … just because? It was exciting back then – social networks were revolutionising the way we connected with people. But what has that really amounted to? Facebook has become a Read more...
A Broader Perspective
Posted 6:05pm Sunday 7th July 2013 by Charlotte Doyle
At the beginning of last year I was lucky enough to be taken to the United States by my parents, which involved traipsing around the Midwest and California for five weeks. Being avidly art-oriented, my mother has an incredible knack of finding galleries: take a very recent trip to the depths of the Read more...
E3 2013
Posted 6:05pm Sunday 7th July 2013 by Baz Macdonald
The next generation of gaming is upon us. Despite industry assurance that the next generation of consoles would not hit the market until 2015, it seems that fierce competition between Sony, Microsoft and, to a smaller degree, Nintendo, have pushed that date forward a year. Nintendo launched Read more...
The Last of Us (PS3)
Posted 6:05pm Sunday 7th July 2013 by Baz Macdonald
Rating: 10/10 The gaming industry is abuzz with anticipation surrounding the impending new generation of consoles and games, as am I (turn the page for my coverage of E3 2013). However, while we are all dreaming of what the next generation has to offer, the future of gaming is right before Read more...
Sigur Rós - Kveikur
Posted 6:05pm Sunday 7th July 2013 by Basti Menkes
Rating: 4.5/5 Fairies. Fireflies. Icebergs. Rain. Learning how to fly. Whatever imagery people associate with Icelandic post-rockers Sigur Rós, there is a common sense of wonder to it. I’ve always likened listening to them to diving into an ocean, the way their music engulfs you and makes Read more...
Beady Eye - BE
Posted 6:05pm Sunday 7th July 2013 by Basti Menkes
Rating: 2.5/5 There is no shame in not knowing who Beady Eye are. After a tumultuous relationship with brother Liam for the entirety of Oasis’ 18-year career, chief songwriter Noel Gallagher exited the notorious Britpop group once and for all in 2009. Intent on carrying on making music but Read more...
The National - Trouble Will Find Me
Posted 6:05pm Sunday 7th July 2013 by Richard Ley-Hamilton
Rating: 3/5 With every listen of The National’s latest, I have become more and more conflicted. This time around, should I be expecting something refreshing and innovative from the Brooklyn quintet? Or should I be satisfied with something familiar, a more reassuring release? In brief, Read more...
Boards Of Canada - Tomorrow’s Harvest
Posted 6:05pm Sunday 7th July 2013 by Basti Menkes
Rating: 4.5/5 No electronic composers affect me quite like Boards Of Canada. With but a few notes the Scottish duo can fill me with loneliness, nostalgia, dread, or a mixture of all three. Since their 1998 debut Music Has the Right to Children they have maintained a distinctive sonic Read more...
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus
Posted 6:05pm Sunday 7th July 2013 by Lucy Hunter
Mary Shelley, at the age of 21, published what is arguably the first science fiction novel; a fantasy story with a scientific rather than supernatural explanation. Shelley had apparently heard of recent experiments to “reanimate” corpses by making them jerk around with electric shocks, and dreamed Read more...
The Editor
Posted 3:03pm Sunday 26th May 2013 by Josef Alton
Tales of obsession never lose their appeal. If there is a character’s flawed logic, actions ignited by the flame of desperation, and the smell of blood disrupting the logical flow of common sense, we the readers love to wait for the eventual calamity. Samuel Dansam’s The Editor reads like an Read more...