Archive

The Hunter

Posted 3:53pm Sunday 15th April 2012 by Andrew Oliver

Daniel Nettheim’s The Hunter is a beautiful and hypnotic piece of visual art weaving the dreamscape terrain of the Tasmanian bush and the powerful presence of Willem Dafoe into a delectably tense thriller that delivers action, suspense and drama in equal parts. Dafoe plays Martin, a professional Read more...

Mirror Mirror

Posted 3:53pm Sunday 15th April 2012 by Sasha Borissenko

What better way to engage an audience who are afflicted by today’s frightful economic climate than to present a storyline based around a financially burdened kingdom thanks to the follies of a beauty-obsessed queen? In one sense Tarsem Singh’s Mirror Mirror affirms issues of violence, Read more...

The Lorax (3D)

Posted 3:53pm Sunday 15th April 2012 by Jane Ross

If you were raised on the whimsical poetic meters and trippy cartoon drawing style of Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) you may find the nauseating pace of the new 3D film version a tad too much sensory overload. There is just so much going on, and while you won’t want to miss out on the hectic Read more...

Sweet, sweet burlesque

Posted 3:53pm Sunday 15th April 2012 by Siobhan Milner

Burlesque is an art form that is becoming more and more respected each year in our society. With competitions such as Miss Burlesque New Zealand, and Dunedin’s very own Amateur Burlesque Nights, it is gaining popularity and recognition as a creative and valid dance form. The art of the tease is one Read more...

Path of Exile

Posted 3:53pm Sunday 15th April 2012 by Toby Hills

There’s a really subtle hint of Aotearoa in Path of Exile. Certain characters, such as the playable hulking marauder, are adorned with koru-inspired patterns. Swamps are packed with bipedal bird-like, but monstrous, Rhoa, and donating to the free-to-play (at least when it gets released; it’ll be in Read more...

SSX

Posted 3:53pm Sunday 15th April 2012 by Tom Pullan

After what feels like an age, SSX is back. 2012’s iteration brings the amazing snowboarding franchise into the real world, but retains all the madness that defines SSX. With 9 deadly descents – from the Whitehorn Mountain in the Rockies to New Zealand’s own runs down Tasman and Wakefield – Read more...

Boy bands: the new get-rich-quick scheme

Posted 3:53pm Sunday 15th April 2012 by Lauren Wootton

I’m just looking for a good night/like baby, baby, baby, oh/that’s what makes you beautiful! One Direction, JBiebs, Reece Mastin … just a small sample of our daily bombardment of images of young(ish) boys telling us how amazing we are. Despite encouraging cradle-snatching in anyone over the Read more...

Ignorance

Posted 3:53pm Sunday 15th April 2012 by Josef Alton

Ignorance is not just stupidity. Milan Kundera’s thoughtful examination of repatriation is qualified by his own experience as a Czech émigré living in France. His firsthand experience of what it is like to leave home and start over provides the novel with a problematic yet realistic interpretation Read more...

Franny and Zooey

Posted 7:07pm Sunday 1st April 2012 by Josef Alton

Franny and Zooey is a book about the two youngest siblings of the Glass family. It’s separated into two distinct sections — the first being a short story called Franny, and the second being a novella entitled Zooey. The first part focuses on Franny and her boyfriend Lane when they meet up Read more...

Why We Write

Posted 7:07pm Sunday 1st April 2012 by Lukas Clark-Memler

It’s not easy being a music critic. Score an album too low and you’re labeled a cynic; too high, you’re a naïve optimist. Take the easy road out by giving it a 6 or a 7, and you’re criticized for having no backbone. Then there’s always the case of trivializing artistic intent with pompous Read more...

Caramelised Onion Flatbread

Posted 7:07pm Sunday 1st April 2012 by Ines Shennan

Bouncy flatbread adorned with a blanket of sticky, sweet red onions and rosemary? Yes please. Making bread from scratch is a simple pleasure that contrary to popular opinion is remarkably easy. You don’t need to possess a bread maker, nor do you need to slave away in the kitchen for hours with flour Read more...

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Posted 7:07pm Sunday 1st April 2012 by Bronwyn Wallace

Directed by: Luke Agnew “Every time you play hangman a stick figure family loses a father.” For the final issue before out beloved mid-semester break I believe a change of pace is in order. This week I interviewed the cast of the latest Lunchtime Theatre at Allen Hall and attempted to Read more...

Binary Domain

Posted 7:07pm Sunday 1st April 2012 by Toby Hills

If you asked someone who had never played a videogame to describe a one you would be provided with a fairly accurate breakdown of Binary Domain: A group of burly humans, who form a gleaming ethnic-rainbow, gun down robots that swarm about the player like schools of herring. It ain’t Read more...

The Hunger Games

Posted 7:07pm Sunday 1st April 2012 by Ella Borrie

Director: Gary Ross The Hunger Games is the most recent piece of Young Adult lit to roll off the Hollywood production line. In a post-apocalyptic America, the indulgent Capitol rules over twelve districts. Tributes are picked from a lottery of citizens for the Capitol’s instrument of Read more...

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Posted 7:07pm Sunday 1st April 2012 by Emma Scammell

Director: John Madden The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel follows a group of bitter and bored 70-plus retirees who feel the need to fight the injustices of an ageist English society by travelling to India to “find themselves.” Abounding with distinguished actors, each of the seven main Read more...

La Bella Luna

Posted 7:07pm Sunday 1st April 2012 by Beaurey Chan

I’m just going to put it out there: The full moon is kind of, well, freaky. Studies have cropped up throughout history striving to prove a connection between the nights the moon is full and all kinds of crazy human antics on earth, including insomnia, insanity and of course lycanthropy. Make of it Read more...

Scrawls and Swirls

Posted 7:07pm Sunday 1st April 2012 by Beaurey Chan

The lecturer is droning on and on, and you’re bored to death but can’t be bothered taking notes. Inevitable solution? You start doodling. Stars, spirals, stickmen, dragons, Pokémon – whatever takes your fancy. They might one day appear in a gallery as part of your own art exhibition. Read more...

Balsamic and Sun-dried Tomato Roast Chicken

Posted 4:26pm Sunday 25th March 2012 by Maeve Jones

Unfortunately, autumn is technically upon us. However there are still many reasons to celebrate; most important among these is that we still have a few weeks left to revel in the glories of summer produce. Fifty-cent corn can still be skimmed off the cob to transform any salad. Seconds tomatoes can Read more...

Necrotising Fasciitis

Posted 4:26pm Sunday 25th March 2012 by Luke Agnew

Walking into the performance space I immediately felt like more than a spectator; the darkness, the soundscape and the organised chaos of the space drew the audience in before we could fully appreciate that we were immersing ourselves in the installation that is Flesh. Walking around was Read more...

Dragons and Daydreams

Posted 4:26pm Sunday 25th March 2012 by Beaurey Chan

Gallery De Novo, 101 Stuart Street March 16-29 It’s a funny thing about life that we always seem to want the opposite of what we have. Cue hideously overused trope “the grass is greener on the other side”, and all that jazz. Ironically, this cliché seems to apply even more to those things Read more...

Scarfies Come Home

Posted 4:26pm Sunday 25th March 2012 by Lauren Wootton

An interview with Six60 bassist Chris Mac is one of the easiest 20 minutes a music journalist can ask for. Sure I asked him the important stuff, but considering how nervous I was about calling a member of Six60 (I messed up the phone number three times, my hands were shaking so much), the yarn I had Read more...

The Binding of Isaac

Posted 4:26pm Sunday 25th March 2012 by Toby Hills

I didn’t realise that the Isaac (a nude baby, the eponymous protagonist of The Binding of Isaac) was tossing large spheres of his own lukewarm salty tears at his enemies until I’d attempted the game a handful of times. Forgivable, I think, as Binding is filled with dozens of depraved, silly plot Read more...

The 10pm Question

Posted 4:26pm Sunday 25th March 2012 by Natasha Loveday

“Frankie liked very much to remember that February the fourteenth had begun badly and shown every sign of becoming a real horror, but – as the benefit of hindsight proved – it marked, ultimately, a turning point in his mood and fortune, because at 8.36 a.m. the new girl boarded Cassino’s East-West Read more...

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Posted 4:26pm Sunday 25th March 2012 by Sarah Baillie

Martha Marcy May Marlene is not the full name of the young woman in this film – thank goodness. Her real name is Martha. Marcy May is the name given to her by Patrick, the leader of the cult she has been living with for the past two years. Having fled the cult community, disoriented and distressed, Read more...

Project X

Posted 4:26pm Sunday 25th March 2012 by Lukas Clark-Memler

Imagine the best party you never had. Thousands of people and limitless booze; DJs, fireworks and a flamethrower; a smorgasbord of uppers and downers; topless girls and a bouncy castle. So sets the stage for Project X, the latest incarnation of the “found-footage” genre. But instead of monsters Read more...

My Week with Marilyn

Posted 4:26pm Sunday 25th March 2012 by Michaela Hunter

My Week with Marilyn is based on the diaries of Colin Clark (played by Eddie Redmayne), a third assistant to the film director of The Prince and the Showgirl which famously united Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) and Lawrence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) in 1956. Clark revealed in 2000 that he had Read more...

Brother Number One

Posted 4:26pm Sunday 25th March 2012 by Taryn Dryfhout

Brother Number One is a New Zealand documentary which follows former Olympic athlete Rob Hamill as he journeys to Cambodia to testify against the man responsible for the torture and killing of his brother, over thirty years ago. Rob’s brother Kerry disappeared in 1978 while sailing towards Read more...

The 2012 Dunedin Fringe Festival

Posted 4:27pm Sunday 18th March 2012 by Bronwyn Wallace

Over the next 11 days the Dunedin Fringe Festival will change the way that you think about entertainment. The 2012 programme features over 50 events and more than 370 artists from places as exotic as the UK, and Canada. This week’s theatre page previews some of the best stuff on in the next few Read more...

Sweet Tooth

Posted 4:27pm Sunday 18th March 2012 by Beaurey Chan

“Canker” by Audrey Baldwin 5pm, 22 March 2012 Blue Oyster Gallery That’s your preview so far for Audrey Baldwin’s performance art piece “Canker”, which features as part of the Blue Oyster Gallery’s Performance Series for the Visual Arts section of the Fringe Festival. While perhaps not Read more...

John Cooper Clarke

Posted 4:27pm Sunday 18th March 2012 by Tash Smillie

In a brilliant coup d’état for Critic’s poetry section, Dunedin has snared itself a poet of international infamy as the headline act of this year’s Fringe Festival. John Cooper Clarke, “punk’s poet laureate” will be bringing his iconic performance poetry to Sammy’s this month. Described as Read more...

We Need to Talk About Kevin

Posted 4:27pm Sunday 18th March 2012 by Loulou Callister-Baker

Do you hate your mother for bringing you into this sinister world? Do thoughts about your high school days invoke shivers of disgust throughout you? Have you ever considered putting your baby hamster into the waste disposal? Is your name Kevin Khatchadourian? If yes – we need to talk about you. Read more...

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Posted 4:27pm Sunday 18th March 2012 by Nicole Muriel

If you tend to tear up in films about serious-faced, tormented kids struggling against adversity, you’ll probably be all-out sobbing before the end of this film. Its hero, Oskar (Thomas Horn) is spikily adorable with his Asperger-esque interactions and philosophical musings. Oskar is keeping Read more...

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Posted 4:27pm Sunday 18th March 2012 by Vimal Patel

I realise that reviewing the single player portion of a Call of Duty game is like reviewing McDonalds’ salads: It’s there on the menu, but no one expects you to pay good money for it. However, I did enjoy the campaigns from the first two Modern Warfare games, and subsequently thought I might kill a Read more...

1000 Amps

Posted 4:27pm Sunday 18th March 2012 by Toby Hills

It’s always a concern when a download is only 12mb. How much complexity, really, how many flamboyant characters, particle effects, grenade-launcher attachments and pre-baked cutscenes could possibly be packed into such a squashed bundle of kilobytes? 1000 Amps by Brandi Brizzi has layered Read more...

Summery Fettucine

Posted 4:27pm Sunday 18th March 2012 by Ines Shennan

This pasta dish is a simple combination of vivid ingredients that will trick you into thinking summer is still in full swing. As Dunedin’s sunshine-filled days become a rarity, a colourful meal brings joy into the ritual of dinner. Rather than being coated in a heavy sauce, fettucine is nestled Read more...

Music For Whenever

Posted 4:27pm Sunday 18th March 2012 by Lauren Wootton

So it’s autumn guys. And if there’s one thing about people in Dunedin, they love to talk about the weather. Is there so little going on in the world that we have to start every conversation with “it’s a bit nippy out isn’t it”? But with the new season I find myself in front of my iTunes and Read more...

Be | Longing

Posted 6:37pm Sunday 11th March 2012 by Beaurey Chan

Be | Longing was a piece of documentary theatre presented through the Theatre Studies department here at Otago. Documentary theatre involves the actors working without a script. People are interviewed, on whatever subject matter the directors decide, and actors completely replicate the interview Read more...

Be Glad You're Neurotic

Posted 6:37pm Sunday 11th March 2012 by Bronwyn Wallace

Be Glad You’re Neurotic is a one-man show based on Louis Edward Bisch’s self-help book, which Phil Braithwaite chanced upon in an op shop for fifty cents. For the past five years he has been putting together the show, taking Bisch’s very serious statements and turning them into humorous Read more...

From Stubbies & SoGos to Rosé and Berets

Posted 6:37pm Sunday 11th March 2012 by Beaurey Chan

Bet Dunedin’s not the first place you’d think of if someone said “arts and cultural capital of New Zealand”. It’s not particularly surprising, considering our scarfie reputation seems to almost overwhelmingly overshadow any other image linked to the city so well known for its large body of partying Read more...

The Prince of Soul and the Lighthouse

Posted 6:37pm Sunday 11th March 2012 by Sasha Borissenko

If you are not alarmed by the orange colour of the book-face, perhaps it is the Crouching-Tiger-Hidden-Dragon font that ought to be questioned. Superficiality aside, this fantasy-epic essentially involves the following storyline: Boy pines over exotic girl. Boy sings to girl. Boy has trouble Read more...

Shame

Posted 6:37pm Sunday 11th March 2012 by Alec Dawson

This film is a beautiful and explicit depiction of a taboo subject in the same league as Requiem for a Dream. But of all films it most reminded me of American Psycho, except the damage is far more hidden and self-inflicted. Michael Fassbender is brilliant as Brandon, who appears to be a regular (if Read more...

The Ides of March

Posted 6:37pm Sunday 11th March 2012 by Eve Duckworth

George Clooney’s new film The Ides of March tells us something we probably already knew: That the experience of running an American political campaign is damaging for both one’s heart and soul. In an atmosphere heavily dripping with betrayal it is easy from the outset to be drawn in amongst the Read more...

Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na BATMAN Ryan Adams

Posted 6:37pm Sunday 11th March 2012 by Josh Pemberton

Upon taking the stage at the Regent Theatre, Ryan Adams thanked the audience. “I’m excited to share my feelings with you,” he revealed. And share his feelings he did – starting with a slow, gentle rendition of “Oh My Sweet Carolina” from 2000’s classic Heartbreaker, before taking us on a Read more...

The Creation of Lana Del Ray

Posted 6:37pm Sunday 11th March 2012 by Lukas Clark-Memler

How do we talk about Lana Del Rey? We seem to focus on her Angelina Jolie-like lips, her glamorous ’50s vibe, and authenticity – well, authenticity comes up a lot whenever the sultry sex symbol is deconstructed. At this point it’s pretty much pointless to write about Del Rey’s music. So much has Read more...

Butter Chicken

Posted 6:37pm Sunday 11th March 2012 by Ines Shennan

Ah, the classic Kiwi curry. Carefully-balanced spices, not too much chilli and a devilishly rich sauce. Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for a wickedly hot lamb vindaloo, or an extra-spicy tikka masala, but sometimes a mild curry is all you need to settle yourself into a quite-content food coma. The Read more...

Bioshock Infinite

Posted 6:37pm Sunday 11th March 2012 by Toby Hills

In the aftermath of its first trailer, a friend of mine described Bioshock Infinite’s setting as predictable. “It’s like Pokemon: You’ve got the water ones, and then the fire guy, and then poison and then fucking Gastly and Gengar and shit.” Truthfully, a city in the sky is likely to be the Read more...

Theatre du Grind Guignol

Posted 4:53pm Sunday 4th March 2012 by Bronwyn Wallace

Directed by: Ben Blakely and Alex Wilson Theatre du Grind Guignol was the first evening production at Allen Hall this year, and what a great welcome home it was! Seeing familiar faces and taking a warm break inside from the rain felt great until the programme wished us “a terrifying evening”. Read more...

Sex: An Exercise in Boredom

Posted 4:53pm Sunday 4th March 2012 by Beaurey Chan

Kushana Bush “All Things To All Men” exhibition at Hocken Collection 25 February - 14 April There is a curious gathering occurring in the middle of nowhere. A dark-skinned man in a party hat seems to be the center of attention. Busy figures swarm around him, carrying out various tasks. Read more...

Monsieur Pain

Posted 4:53pm Sunday 4th March 2012 by Josef Alton

Paris, 1938: a Peruvian poet named Vallejo is dying of the hiccups in a hospital bed. Monsieur Pain is a mesmerist, a man living on a meager war pension; his lungs were scorched in Verdun. Two Spaniards are following him; General Franco has sacked España; the middle-aged war veteran is in love with Read more...

Mass Effect 3

Posted 4:53pm Sunday 4th March 2012 by Toby Hills

You know you’re an adult when you realise that Return of the Jedi is the worst of the trilogy. It’s rip-roaring fun, saturated with kooky creatures and clever Force manipulation, but nobody (except poor, innocent old Darth Vader) dies. Mass Effect 2 was strongly influenced by Empire Strikes Back, Read more...